Last week, the Escambia Children’s Trust failed to pass Escambia Sheriff Chip Simmons’ request $432,501 for Movie Nights ($40,000), Public Service Announcements ($50,000), Virtual Reality Training Simulator ($152,201.14) and a Real Time Crime Center ($190,000).
The Sheriff’s Office approach was they do “more than most” with children in the community and deserve Trust dollars.
During the Trust board’s discussion of the request, board member David Peaden asked Ronnie Rivera of the sheriff’s office to come to the podium to answer questions. Rivera and Chief Deputy Tommi Lyter didn’t plan to speak – “We feel like documents and what we do in the community sort of backs up what we’ve already said,” but he would answer any questions.
Peaden asked if the rumor that the Trust staff begged Sheriff Simmons to submit a proposal was true.
“‘Begged’ it is a strong, strong word. I will say that they reached out to us. That is true,” said Rivera.
Peaden asked, “Our staff reached out to you and encouraged you to do what?”
Rivera said, “To look into the funding opportunities of the Children’s Trust.”
The Trust’s Executive Director Tammy Greer injected that she had met with several leaders. “What we discussed was some of the things that are happening in other communities and partnerships between Children’s Services Councils and sheriff’s departments, so that we could introduce the Children’s Services Council here in Escambia County. We’ve done that with anybody who called us.”
Greer added that she approached the sheriff about the Trust helping to fund his Blazer Academy. However, she said, “Do we tell people in the community that they can apply for funding from the Children’s Trust? Absolutely. Do we tell them that they’re going to get funded? No. I absolutely tell everyone that I talk to that it is up to the board, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I do tell people when we meet with them that they are welcome to apply for funding and we do talk about the kinds of partnerships that are in place in other parts of the state.”
Greer said, “We did make them aware that there was an Out-of-School Time RFP that was available because they have the Blazer Academy, which we thought was an out-of-school time program.”
Note: The sheriff’s office didn’t apply as part of the Out-of-School Time RFP. The agency applied as sole-source request and did not include the Blazer Academy.
Greer told Rivera, “You were not told to apply for unsolicited.” And Rivera backed down: “Not anything specific, but look into the funding, look into what the Children’s Trust may have to offer. That parallels with what we do at the Sheriff’s office. Obviously the Sheriff’s office does a wonderful thing for children in Escambia County. In fact, we do more than most, in fact.”
Peaden asked Rivera about the Law Enforcement Trust Fund (LET Fund), which is assets received in drug seizures.”That’s drug money or seizures that y’all get to keep and spend on certain programs?”
Rivera replied, “Yes, sir” but did not elaborate. Chief Lyter said the fund doesn’t have a big budget but didn’t share its budget.
Peaden pointed out that initially Sheriff Simmons had said that his foundation would be paying for movie nights. Chief Lyter said the $40,000 would be to expand the program – but gave no specifics.
Chair Stephanie White questioned how the Virtual Reality Simulator and Real Time Crime Center fit the state statute governing the trust.
Chief Lyter said, “Specifically with the Real Time Crime Center, school safety is certainly a big concern. I actually spent all day at Mobile at the Realtime Crime Center to see how it ties in and think the numbers just over a 1,700 children are victims of crimes. That’s just this last year, 1700. That’s a lot of victims. A lot of our victim, victimized online. So it’s an opportunity with the realtime crime center, with the software packages that they have to track a lot of that stuff to divide it to identify potential victims. And then certainly the small percentage, 10%, 20% of the kids that actually cause problems to be able to identify those early on. So it ties directly to school safety.”
He said the Virtual Reality Simulator will have 3D images of all of public schools. “So if we’re training at say any one of the elementary schools, high schools, middle school, we can actually pull up that school and we have the actual layup of it.”
He said the simulator will also cover interactions with those children. “So to be able to train in that virtual reality aspect and pull up that age of the child and then get those reactions is part of it.”
The chief didn’t say how much of the crime center or simulator would be devoted to children or explain why the Trust should foot the entire cost of each.
He was asked about the Public Service Announcements and why the Trust should fund them.
“I think the idea with it is to leverage the sheriff and all of the social media outreach that we have,” said Chief Lyter. “We call them in law enforcement, ‘trusted messengers.’ Do you have somebody that you trust in the community? – Whether it’s a community leader, whether it’s a pastor or somebody that you with our message and we step back and let them speak for us, for lack of a better word. So when you look at the PSA, it’s just that it’s to use our leverage, our social media and our agency and our image and everything that we’re doing and to kind of further that message.”
My, but you’re having yourself a field day with your feeble attempts to blow the town up on your Nobody Will Listen To Me retribution tour, CJ.
And as usual, your ignorance of the actual nuts and bolts shows through what you clearly consider schoolings from the smartest person in the room. Not to mention talking out of both sides of your mouth, from comment to comment. Last week, the Sheriff’s Department wasn’t adequately funded. This week, they are squandering money. Which is it?
Here’s a lesson on the LET funds that you clearly need. For two years, I advocated publicly to get the LET fund spending under control, even *after* Jeff Bergosh took the lead with the BCC on getting the front end of the paperwork squared away. For years previous to Commissioner Bergosh’s insistence on cleaning things up, Morgan had been spending LET like a drunken sailor and not getting BCC approval before he did, simply coming for reimbursement on the funding after it was spent, and with inadequate paperwork at that. Once the BCC put a stop to that practice, Bill Eddins cooked up a little party with Pam Childers and some higher-ups at ECSD so that Morgan could get away with not filing the proper paperwork on the LET spends *after* he had doled them out, opining that a single form submitted at the beginning of the process could somehow constitute both the front and back ends of the paperwork. Because here’s how it is supposed to work, by state statute: the Sheriff makes the ask, the BCC votes and dispenses the allocation to the sheriff, and then the sheriff is supposed to file receipts with the County demonstrating the money made it to the proper place.
Ms. Childers performed some of her finest dais acrobats in not answering across multiple meetings why she wasn’t filing and auditing the monies properly. Since you’re needing projects to wile away the hours, why don’t you get with the Clerk and ask her where the last ten years of back-end paperwork are at, and how she went about auditing it?
Or, I can do you a solid and just tell you there isn’t any back-end paperwork until Sheriff Simmons came to office, and she didn’t audit the LET properly in her auspices as comptroller for the County–that famous “I hold the checkbook” scenario. When Sheriff Simmons was elected, it is my understanding that he put an end to that nonsense and started submitting the back end paperwork to be filed. If you have any documentation that there have been LET-funded “champagne brunches” asked for during Sheriff Simmons’s tenure, or gifted to him by the BCC, then bring it on down to a BCC meeting. I won’t hold my breath, but as somebody who was out on a dead limb advocating against the previous sheriff’s LET fund spending, I’d be interested in knowing if there’s any more to it than your typical hot air and gaslighting on insufficient evidence.
Per the Children’s Trust, when things reach this sort of impasse, while there is blame to go around everywhere, it rests with the policy board to straighten it out. To be more clear, it rests with the de facto leadership of a policy board, and from where I sit Patty Hightower owns this mess. When I said at the last meeting that it was sheer chaos, I did not intend to criticize the well-intentioned folks on that Board who do not have the procedural prowess of Ms. Hightower, who knows every rule in the book and knows how to run circles with them. And she’s never better than when she’s pretending that she doesn’t know what’s going on. When Ms. Hightower seems to be confused or mistaken about what’s on the table, danger Will Robinson. As was the case at that particular meeting, where her toggling back and forth between (1) deft utilization of RRR and procedural curiosities she seems to have baked into the by-laws; and (2) convenient moments of procedural confusion and negligence being a primary driver of the debacle. Case in point was when the public pointed out they weren’t voting on the proper motion, she said they were, the public reminded her there was a friendly amendment on the table, she said there wasn’t, public insisted there was, she said it wasn’t accepted, public said yes it was, forcing Ms. Woods into a corner on her having accepted the amendment. It was then stated they were “on another motion,” although nobody identified at that moment what it was. Then there was the moment where two different motions got voted on back to back, with nary a suggestion of better order from the procedural “wonk,” as Ms. Hightower declared herself to be that evening. With the final touch on the mess she had helped engineer being to leave it on the sheriff’s item needing a motion for reconsideration to be heard again. Hogwash. At that meeting, perhaps. Not at a future one.
Clearly, Ms. Greer and the rest of the staff have a lot of work to do on bettering the grant procedures. As I said at the podium, Grant Administration 101 was not in play, whatever explanations were offered for some of the irregularities. The financials should always be vetted before they go to the board for consideration; it’s a tricky razor’s edge to walk between “encouraging” grant proposals and “soliciting” them; there seems to have been no set rules on limits to the asks; and there was confusion about whether portions of the ask could be awarded. In addition, the board members were not instructed properly on the “cone of silence,” which is the ED’s job.
So recognizing all of this as she clearly would, and moreover having positioned herself as the head of both the By-Laws and the Policy committees, why didn’t Ms. Hightower put the brakes on the public discussion before the meeting? Did she feel that another public round of Board uncertainty would be fruitful in some regard? What are her–along with the School Board she represents–goals for the Trust?
It seems at least a possibility that neutralizing the efficacy of the Trust and bringing things to a point where the money gets spread around in a panic towards the typical, uneffective appeasement of various entities in the community might make even the Escambia School Board look functional, in comparison. Anyone watching that board’s agenda review session earlier this week, however, and their handling of this year’s committee assignments can read the tea leaves of the background chicanery. Hats off to Paul Fetsko and Kevin Adams for their theatrical buffoonery in pretending they were going to supplant Ms. Hightower with Mr. Alexander on the Trust. Bill Slayton swooped in to point out that Ms. Hightower was crucial towards supporting a group that is still under construction, Fetsko immediately reversed, and Ms. Hightower said she was “helping” with the by-laws and policy.
If the best she can do on that note is to pretend she doesn’t know what motion is on the floor after sliding through a vote on uncompetitive and non-defined scholarship funds first thing out of the gate that night, then perhaps the Board should select someone else to lead those committees. Can a non-policy board member chair those crucial committees? I have no idea, but Ms. Hightower does. A bunch of well-meaning people–staff and Board members alike–seem to have been led farther into a scenario where anything goes. Which typically leads to a procedural moment where *nothing* goes, because nobody knows what is going on. Ms. Hightower is a highly intelligent person with masterful command of the rules. She needs to do better for a Board that seems to have entrusted her leadership with their ultimate success.
State law gives the Escambia County Commission expansive power to spend and misspend “our” money on just about anything unless preempted by state law. The state law authorizing the BOCC to create the Escambia Children’s Trust – a special district of the county government – makes very clear that the county can do everything that the Escambia Children’s Trust can do. Why didn’t it? Yes, the BOCC has a three-year budget agreement with the Sheriff but nothing stops the BOCC from writing the Sheriff a check for $432,051 to pay for all of the items described above and anything else that the Sheriff wants. Escambia County is flush with money for private pork-barrel projects wanted by individual commissioners to include city quality broadband services for people living in mobile homes on dirt roads out in the boondocks in north county. The BOCC seems very determined to waste the free ARPA dollars to include on clay tennis courts in the city at its private membership tennis club where a city resident family has to pay more than $1,000 a year to play tennis. Every year the BOCC votes to increase the property tax levy and then wastes all of the money. Every year the BOCC imposes a Law Enforcement Municipal Services Taxing Unit (MSTU) on most property owners in Escambia County but half-cleverly has the Tax Collector put the word – “Sheriff” – next to the amount on the tax bill to make it look like Sheriff did it. When I looked into it, years ago, no one on county staff or in the Sheriff’s Office even knew where the money “went” once it was given to the Sheriff because it is all comingled into a big pile. The BOCC even taxes city property owners to pay for the Sheriffs’ Road patrols that are “not” conducted in the City of Pensacola. They are conducted in the Town of Century. When I looked into it, I was told it may not be right but it’s legal. Long ago, the city sued the county over “taxation without Sheriffs’ Road patrols” and lost in the Florida Supreme Court. I told several city council members who did not care. Nobody in local government cares about the public’s money. They take it because they can and waste it and there’s nothing that we can do to stop them. In 2014, about $13 million in county property taxes paid by city property owners was used to pay for the Sheriff that did not patrol in the city. I verified this with Amy Lovoy then the county budget director. I’m sure it’s much more by now. The BOCC oversees the Law Enforcement Trust Fund – not the Sheriff. State law allows the Sheriff to ask to spend the money. Only the BOCC can actually spend it. Mostly the BOCC wastes the LETF money to include for champagne brunches at Portofino Island Resort and to pay the regular operating expenses of non-profits. The justification given by some non-profits is often an outright lie. There is never any accounting of how prior money was spent or misspent. All that said, no matter how much is spent on the Sheriff’s Office it doesn’t seem to matter. For every year that Sheriff Morgan and Sheriff Simmons have been in office, Escambia County has been in the top ten counties for the highest per capita crime, #3 for the last two reported years and twice #1 and twice #2 when Morgan was in office. When you drive into Escambia County there should be big signs that read – “End of Accountability.”