Finding $20 Million to Demo Baptist Hospital
At his weekly presser on Tuesday, Mayor D.C. Reeves said that he has met with Baptist Hospital leaders twice in the past 30 days to discuss their plans for the West Moreno District campus after they leave for Brent Lane next month.
- “What we’re working on right now is some clarity as it pertains to how we can help with a potential demolition of the building. Whether that through state or federal resources, there’re a lot of moving parts,” said the mayor.
“They have had a lot of interest in people looking at opportunities to repurpose buildings, but there’s also a lot of difficulty to that with the original hospital built in 1951.”
Reeves said to demolish the hospital would be expensive. “The price, we think it would be about a $17 million, and with other infrastructure, we’re looking at a ballpark right now of about a $20 million lift.”
He added, “This has the potential for a generational opportunity of what could happen at that place, but it’s leaving a neighborhood and what are now the gaps in that neighborhood that we can help fill.”
“The city’s not trying to be in the development business, but I do think that with the amount of acreage in the heart of our city and close to some of the most underserved areas of our city, it would be foolish of us to not play an active role.”
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21K Recycling Cans
The City of Pensacola ending its curbside recycling at the end of September has created another headache: What do you do with 21,000 recycling cans?
- “We’re going to our vendors to see if there are some options to get some funding back with those,” said Mayor Reeves. “We obviously have some uses, such as events downtown, but not to the volume of 21,000. So, we will talk with our vendors and potentially other municipalities.”
The mayor said the black cans cost about $64, and the brown ones used for recycling are a little less expensive.
“I think there’s an opportunity for us to generate some funds to modernize the equipment that we have in Sanitation.”
21K Recycling Cans: A better plan that the city council should vote to adopt is for the city to execute an interlocal agreement with ECUA to provide sanitation services inside the city limit. City customers would receive a higher level of services than they now receive and at a lower cost. On August 8th, Reeves signaled even more rate increases to come to pay for pay hikes for sanitation staff to include the paper pushers and hikes to pay for more capital equipment with much needed to be replaced. The interlocal agreement should provide for ECUA’s city customers to keep the city’s distinctive black garbage and tan recycling cans. If a customer does not want to recycle, they can have that can taken away or ask for a second black garbage can. Retaining the city cans serves three purposes. First, it lets people know the boundaries of Pensacola Proper. The only way to know for sure is to look at the color of the garbage cans: black (city), green (non-city). Second, retaining the city cans would make it easier if the city wanted to end the agreement. Third, it would save ECUA several millions not having to buy 42,000 new cans for new city customers. The city’s Sanitation & Fleet Management Department has 50 pieces of capital equipment used for various aspects of sanitation. As we know, they are poorly maintained and expensive to replace. The city could let ECUA have what it wanted and sell the rest or give it away. The city’s Sanitation Operations Division has 31 employees. There are three other employees whose job is directly related to sanitation. Mayor Reeves is proposing to increase the size of the full-time regular city staff again to 895. Reducing 34 positions would decrease the staff to 861, a move in the right direction back towards the 770 of eight years ago in FY 2016. ECUA would likely hire the city’s front-line sanitation workers but perhaps not the excessive number of supervisors and bureaucrats. In 2009, ECUA offered the give the city the wastewater treatment plant land in consideration for an agreement to provide sanitation services for a certain number of years, five as I recall. City staff had said NO because ECUA would not promise to hire all of the extra employees. I then spoke with Mayor Wiggins who told me that he didn’t know anything about it. This is not complex. It’s a type of “functional consolidation” even better than some agreements in place like for the library. The city charter only allows the mayor to make recommendations to the city council. The city council has the final say on ending recycling or giving the job to ECUA. Will be interesting to see if all councilmembers remain on bended knee on this issue. As for the 21,000 64-gallon tan rolled garbage cans with the words “Pensacola Recycles!” stamped on the side, hard to believe anyone or another “municipality” would want them. Also, Code Enforcement Officers now in Sanitation should not be militarized by making them part of the Pensacola Police Department. There should be a separate Code Enforcement Department.