The Malcolm Yonge Gym has been demolished. The citizens who tried to get a citywide referendum on the demolition have not given up their fight. Teresa Hill and Jonathan Green discussed the demolition and their next steps on WCOA’s “Real News with Outzen” this morning.
“It seems to me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this by who we talked to yesterday, that this was a flex by the mayor to underscore the exclamation point that he is above the city charter and has no regard for due process, the rights of citizens,” Hill said. “But we are really sad to come to see it come down.”
Green said, “What’s most alarming is really the fact that there was a city charter that gave a process of referendum and the petition process. And really, every city resident should be very alarmed right now that we have no checks and balances of our city government and our local officials because they do not have to follow the city charter set by this precedent as well as this violates our First Amendment rights of the United States Constitution and the state constitution because it’s our literal right to redress grievances with our government that is just blatantly disregarded.”
The city charter details how the referendum process works but does not require the city to delay action for 60 days while a group tries to gather the 4,138 signatures to force a referendum.
Green believes the delay is implied. “There’s certain express powers that are expressly given by government, and then there’s a thing called ‘implied powers.’ And if there’s a decision that’s made by the government and we have a process for it in our charter, it doesn’t mean keep going with the decision. It means the representatives stop because the people are trying to speak.”
“I’m not a lawyer, but this seems to me to be a simple case of making the citizen whole again,” Hill said. “I mean, the city took action, they tore it down despite clear knowledge that not only a referend effort was underway, but also the judge remember gave 14 days to allow Mr. Green to address his procedural issues. That’s in writing. So in my mind’s eye, I can easily foresee a court, I don’t want to step over my toes here, but I could see the court ordering the city to rebuild the center as one option for interfering with due process.”
She believes the mayor acted in bad faith, and her group is looking for a lawyer to represent at least one of the petitioners pro bono.
“What the community, what the whole feels as far as next steps and legal action that’s on the community,” Green said when asked about taking the case to federal court. “I’m not the legal spearhead of this. I’m not practicing law, but at the same time, the city government should be fearful for their unjust actions to the residents of the community.”
Hill said her group was halfway in time and numbers in gathering petition signatures.
“We are still collecting signatures,” she said. “We still believe that we can get it on the ballot to overturn this funding and then no pun intended, we will be in literal unchartered waters because if the funding is overturned.”
Hill continued, “The demolition should not have occurred. If it had just played out the way the charter outlines, we wouldn’t have all of these legal weird things that are happening. So we’re still collecting signatures at savepensacola.com.”
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Mayor’s Response
Mayor D. C. Reeves said he followed the charter when he allowed the contract to begin the demolition of Malcolm Yonge Gym yesterday. City government can’t be hamstrung by petition initiatives from what he considers a small group of citizens.
“I was elected into this position to deal in facts, and that’s what I’ve tried to do at every step of this,” the mayor said. “We don’t deal in hysteria, and we don’t deal in implied parts of the charter. As was just mentioned, you can start going down that road. We can imply a lot of things about how the city should or shouldn’t operate. But the bottom line is this, number one, there’s nothing in our charter that outlines that we should wait for 60 days.”
He gave an example of how 10 citizens could easily tie up the city.
“If 11 people bid on that and 10 people didn’t get it, under this argument that’s being made, those 10 contractors could get together and then stop anything from happening there for 60 days and then make counsel reconsider,” Reeves said. “That’s certainly not how it’s written in the charter, nor does it mention anything to that effect. If that was the case, that would completely stop the wheels of government from doing anything.”
He continued, “So while I know there’s a lot of emotion around this, and certainly I don’t expect folks you’ve had on before to agree with me or agree with me at all on most issues, but my job is to deal in what the facts are and the facts are this building was condemned.”
The mayor pointed out that the gym hasn’t had open access for 20 years and had been leased to a private organization for the past five years.
“If there is some anecdote that confirms that this was the direction to go, it only took a couple of the arches to be hit yesterday for the entire roof to come down, which is exactly what we’ve expected from the beginning,” Reeves said. “That’s why it was unsafe. And fortunately for those kids at Lighthouse Christian, no one was hurt or killed.”
He added, “I always will respect the process that’s in front of us as we did with the injunction. That was not only a hearing denied, but the case dismissed, which didn’t have to be the step that it was an additional step taken because of the lack of standing. So again, we’ll continue to move forward. I think there’s some great opportunity to do what I believe is a crisis in our city, and that’s to house people. And we’ll see what the CRA board decides from there.”
The mayor wondered if the Save Malcolm Yonge Gym group had widespread support.
“If there’s this huge protest over an idea or a thought or a proposal, it is our job to have our eyes and ears of the ground, but we have not seen that in this case, except from a handful of folks,” he said. “And again, that’s why is because, at some point, deciding to do that subjectively would then open us up to have to do that every single time 10 people disagree with the decision by the council.”
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Featured photo: Licensed under the Unsplash+ License
