By Jeremy Morrison, Inweekly
After getting sworn in as Pensacola’s mayor last week, D.C. Reeves found himself heading into a Thanksgiving holiday weekend before he could get down to business. During his weekly press conference Tuesday, the new mayor said the first couple of days of his full week is going well so far.
“We’ve hit the ground running.” Mayor Reeves said.
While Reeves is fresh on the job at Pensacola City Hall, he has been on-boarded over the past few weeks, shadowing former mayor Grover Robinson and his team as they ran the daily municipal business.
“I’ve been so fortunate to have skilled and knowledgable staff, not even these last couple of days, but these last couple of weeks to make sure we’re ready to go,” Reeves said.
Mayor Reeves said that his mayoral transition team is putting the finishing touches on its final report, which will serve as a blueprint for Reeves as he draws up his agenda as mayor. The team’s final meeting is scheduled for Dec. 19, after which the mayor’s transition team’s staff members synthesize those reports into a collective team report.
In the meantime, Mayor Reeves said his focus would be ensuring the city’s day-to-day runs smoothly and any ongoing efforts are handled. Soon enough, he’ll have his own initiatives brewing.
“It’s being sure that we’re being urgent and intentional, not dropping anything between this transition and trying to get a lot of different things going,” Reeves said.
Mile High Club?
Flying out of Pensacola International Airport — a municipal facility — can be pricey sometimes. A recent CNBC poll ranks the airport as among the most expensive in the country, and Mayor Reeves put some qualifiers on that ranking Tuesday.
“Certainly wanted to clear the air on that a little a bit,” Reeves joked before contending that the unfavorable poll was based on selective data.
In short, Reeves said, the poll only looked at a limited number of airports — leaving out smaller facilities — and that Pensacola’s fares should be viewed within a regional context.
“If you look at just the Gulf Coast — Mobile, Gulf Port, Tallahassee, are all about 20 percent more expensive than Pensacola,” Reeves said, adding that only Panama City and Fort Walton, with their value airlines, offered lower fares.
Also, Mayor Reeves noted the city intends to expand the airport — both parking facilities as well as the number of gates — and he expects that will ease prices at the facility.
“The more service and locations we have regardless of where we sit in terms of our regular airfares — when we’ve got more gates and got more service, that only adds more competition and helps keeps costs low for our citizens.”
Corralling Scooters
As of Dec. 7, people riding rental scooters in downtown Pensacola will need to park them in designated corrals. The city instituted the corrals following complaints of scooter misuse and that the vehicles — belonging to the company VEO, which has a contract with the city — were being left in inappropriate areas.
While the corrals have been available for some time, their use will now be required, and the boundaries have been expanded. Those boundaries were bordered by Garden, Spring, Tarragona and Main streets and now have been extended to Plaza de Luna to the south and Palafox Street to the north.
Mayor Reeves said he’s confident the corrals are helping what had become a problematic situation.
“I know that in these last few weeks since that change was made, we’ve seen a significant drop in complaints in our downtown business owners or residents that felt like they were in danger because of scooters and how they were being used,” Reeves said.
The new mayor added that he agreed with a recent decision to eliminate the option of standing scooters, instead focusing on VEO’s seated variety.
“I was very much in alignment with Mayor Robinson on the direction that we’ve gone on the seated scooters being the priority and how they’re used and the issues that we’ve had with something seated that feels like you should have it on the road, versus something where you’re just standing, where it could be used on the sidewalk or the road,” Reeves said.
Pickleball Pushed to January
Plans to develop a pickleball facility that would also host several other sports are being kicked to next year. Mayor Robinson previously told Pensacola City Council members they would be looking to approve a deal focused on a warehouse at the Port of Pensacola in December, but Mayor Reeves said that the effort would now be taken up in January.
“That won’t be addressed in the December council meeting,” he said.
Reeves said that the city is still engaged in talks with the group of developers proposing the concept — “our conversations continue” — and that progress is being made. In a recent presentation to the city council, the developers indicated they would be looking for a lengthy lease to make their investment in the property worth it.
“We’ve had some really good conversations with the folks that would be operating that facility,” Reeves said, “so excited to keep that going.”