The Urban Development Center fought to keep its Escambia Children’s Trust grant – $1.2 million over three years – at the ECT program committee’s workshop this morning. The grant was intended to launch YouthFirst Century, a workforce development program for youth 11-18.
Since signing th ECT contract on March 3, UDC has spent $189K and only attracted 30 middle and high school youth to its after-school program. The UDC leadership – Dr. Jessica Griffen and John Rigsby – had asked to lower the age limit to five.
Century Mayor Luis Gomez defended the program, calling it the only after-school program for children in his town.
“Now it seems that some protocol has not been followed, or whatever the case may be,” the mayor said. “And I just want to advocate for the Town of Century because I saw a lot of articles written here at length that I don’t really think they understand the demographics in Century. It doesn’t represent what the program actually brings to the Town of Century.”
Gomez continued, “See if you were in Pensacola and you took away a program such as this, it is not a big deal because the community has a choice to go to other places to seek these services for the children of the community…If you take this program away from Century, you’re not taking away one of the programs in the city. You’re taking away the only program in the Century.”
The mayor said canceling the program would be “devastating.”
UDC and Gomez wanted to shift YouthFirst from providing job training – which is the focus of the many companies that Rigsby and Griffen own – to being after-school childcare for Century.
The program committee didn’t seem to favor the shift.
Dr. Rex Northrup, an ECT board member, pointed out that the board has a responsibility to the taxpayers to ensure that the programs funded meet the goals and outlines for which they’ve contracted.
“if that is taking place, then things are good,” said Dr. Northrup. “And if it is not, we have an obligation and responsibility to the taxpayers of Escambia County to say that we either have to make some significant revisions or we need to say that I’m sorry this is not going to work.”
He added, “We are up here sitting in a bit of a hot seat, very privileged to do so, but nonetheless, looking after taxpayers dollars and with the intent of getting as much positive impact on the lives of children as we can. And I hope and think that that’s what we are all here to do.”
UDC blamed his failure to recruit students on
1) “The struggles that families were having with the schools being stripped out of Century,
2) Racism – “Our program had been identified in many cases as a black program for black children.” Note: UDC cited the poverty in Century’s Black community to support its grant request.
3) Youth sports
Rigsby explained why they have shifted the program to focus only on Century’s children.
“We initially had planned to go to the schools, pick up children and bring them directly to the program,” he said. “We found that to be cost-prohibitive from the start…This is one of the reasons why we focused primarily on the children who were directly in Century.”
According to the 2020 Census, Century only has 332 children ages 5-17:
Ages 5-11: 166
Ages 12-14: 59
Ages 15-17: 107
For UDC to attract 250 kids annually – it would need to capture nearly 75% of all the town’s children. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 156 children live in poverty – which is the focus of the Out-of-School Time grants.
When Dr. Griffen spoke, she talked about sending her trainers to Ernest Ward Middle School and recruiting students from Bratt Elementary’s after-school program. She acted as if their entire student bodies were candidates for YouthFirst, despite Rigsby stating a few minutes earlier that transportation outside of Century was cost prohibitive.
How many children are participating in YouthFirst? Rigsby said 30 a day – first, he said it was different children every day, then he changed to say it was mostly the same kids regularly.
ECT Compliance Director Kim Krupa said, “The reporting deadline was November 15th and we had that there were 30 total served (11-18) through November 15th and that 11 of those attended in the past 30 days.”
So 30 kids – 11 regularly. Cost per child: $6,300
Melissa, I understand your frustration with the ECT “process” of grant making, however, to conflate that anxiety with the insinuations of something improper with UDC is not proper. Firstly, if you haven’t visited the program nor have had any contact with Dr. Griffen or Mr. Rigsby, how can you assess whether the program is adequately serving those children that DO participate?
Furthermore, your statement of money going to the adults that run these programs is misplaced, Dr. Griffen is a PhD in early childhood education and Mr. Rigsby is an educator that specializes in education solutions for disadvantaged children, like in Century. They both staff the center in Century daily and Dr. Griffen gets $1,000 per week for PhD teaching and tutoring children. Mr. Rigsby makes $800 per week. They drive 90 miles round trip daily with no reimbursement, they borrowed money to acquire the equipment for the computer center AND have repaid that money. Since when does a program vendor be required to purchase computer equipment for city computer lab serving its citizens? Then you see petty comments about how Dr. Griffen’s designer dresses and jewelry and it sounds like petty jealousy. WHAT ELSE DO THESE KIDS HAVE IN CENTURY?
George, my anxiety is that a whole lotta–millions–of taxpayer dollars are landing in a whole lotta pockets they shouldn’t be. Same old story, root and branch, with this Trust just as with every other boondoggle of its ilk that has come before. And I’m certainly not singling out any one particular program. The entire grant system stinks to high heaven and invites just the sort of corruption and nepotism that it’s manifesting, regardless of which particular programs are successful shouldering their way in to the big boys who are making these decisions behind the scenes.
If not wanting to see all that money go into the pockets of the adults running the programs rather than towards the programs helping large numbers of kids is “misplaced,” well then, so be it. I’d rather err on the side of the kids rather than the chiselers on this one.
There is a lot of misplaced anxiety about the cost to kid ratio of the UDC program, however, look at the quality benefits for learning provided in Century. The center is open, the staffing is there and the kids get a PhD educator and tutoring staffing. Now the lack of utilization is low and this is the fault of the program providers? Who removed all schools from Century so the students from Century are not near the program location?
At one point I literally sat on my hands yesterday to remind myself not to waste any more time on the Children’s Trust. That and I was so angry reading how this corruption has run on I couldn’t trust myself to comment.
I’m hardly less angry this morning, thinking about a question that I’ve discussed with other local advocates a lot over the last couple of years–how do you continue to advocate to an audience that has no shame whatsoever?
Because that’s the reality of where we’ve landed as a society and as a community. In order to be successful at least every once in a while as a citizen advocate, you’ve got to have a majority of the votes on any given policy board that still maintain some shame and even a speck of ethics about how business gets done, in front of God and everybody.
When you clearly don’t have that–not even the possibility of one or two of them finding an ethical bone in their body, even of a moment–there often seems no practical value in continuing to raise your voice and point out the obvious, only to have them look down like a bunch of smug Cheshire cats and clearly take enjoyment out of their place of power to wave their special interest conniving like a banner. “Oh, you don’t like it? See how much we actually care. Watch what we do with the poor kids’ money THIS time.”
This is particularly maddening out of the sugar and honey members, who seem to relish putting on the front of being pure as the driven snow, sooooo polite, so caring, blah blah, and at the same time so obviously entrenched in back door dealing that has probably broken Sunshine laws for years on end, ten ways til Sunday.
And we’ll simply never know whether any of the current or past staff could actually do the job well, if their current lead–who has always been in charge from the get-go, it’s no secret–wasn’t running a bag game for wealthy special interests.
It’s absolutely shameful what this policy Board and Trust staff have not just allowed to go on, but ORCHESTRATED behind the scenes. *Everybody* sees it. They clearly don’t care that everybody sees it, and simply double down on their special interest and continue to coo about how much they care about the kids. As long as you keep the money men happy, right?
This is why at the meeting where there were only two honest and brave people on that dais to make the right vote concerning funding–Commissioner May and Mr. Peaden–with the same three members of the dais *clearly* having orchestrated with Krupa ahead of time (they don’t even seem to care how obvious they are), I washed my hands of engaging at meetings. If being involved in Escambia politics has taught me nothing else, it’s how to pick my battles. Having the courage to voice things and the heart to actually care doesn’t mean you have enough voice and heart for everything, so why waste time on an obvious boondoggle that is Escambia nepotism run amok through and through?
God bless you for having the tenacity to stick with it, Rick. As with so many things, you’re the only voice still insisting on speaking truths that, however obvious, nobody wants to hear–or nobody thinks it even matters are spoken. I mean, how much more do you have to expose before the community becomes up in arms about this? Before enough wealthy people who actually decide things in this town find their consciences and stop the stealing of resources from poor children?
CJ, if you think there is actually a way to blow this crap up early, rather than waiting the 12 years, start putting it out there exactly how that can happen. Because if Rick and a handful of other honest people can’t get this done, the best thing would be to cut off this fraudulent gobbling up of taxpayer money–what all of us that voted against it saw coming–altogether.
If there is actually a way to dismantle this disaster by putting it back on the ballot before the 12 years runs up, IMHO it should have been on next year’s ballot already. Even if Mr. Leonard and Mr. Alexander turn out to be far less interested in the special interest movers and shakers than the last school board member holding sway over a superintendent turned out to be, along with Commissioner May and Mr. Peaden wanting the right things, that *still* can’t offset the numbers of therest of the Board, and the staff and sub committee nightmare that was purposely engineered from the get go.
Mr. Leonard, you called out exactly what the issues are and said you’d think long and hard about where your vote was going to be. Why? What do you have to mull over? You clearly see what’s going on, so what’s the issue in whether you vote no, and started working with Commissioner May to clean this mess up? The next meeting will basically single whether there’s a chance in hell this tax fund will ever help kids. If you ever wanted to be a hero, now’s your moment to lead.