By Christopher J. Lewis
Mayor Ashton Hayward enjoyed a massive financial advantage in the campaign raking in $153,471 in money and in-kind contributions. Hayward invested $50 into his own campaign. “The Lewis Family” received five Hayward campaign mailers full of many pretty pictures. The mailers mostly regurgitate outlandish claims of political grandeur changing a few words here and there. As an exercise in political fiction, the mailers appear to be little more than a warm pile of words. The more mailers we received, the deeper the pile of words. Mostly using Hayward’s own words, actions and inactions, I have analyzed five of Hayward’s brashest claims below:
Unemployment Cut Nearly in Half
One mailer claims, “Since Ashton took office, unemployment rates have fallen from 10.3% to 5.9%.” Hayward says he did it himself, “Under his leadership….” For all Hayward had to do with it, he could just as well have written, “Since Ashton took office, the sun has continued to rise in the east and set in the west.”
No doubt, if the situation had been less positive – if nationwide unemployment had remained high and so a bad news story – Hayward would have campaigned claiming there is little he can do. It seems very unlikely that anyone closely tracks detailed unemployment numbers “inside” city limits to include full-time versus part-time, seasonable jobs and even underemployment.
The FY 2015 Annual Budget’s Appendix Q: General Information Concerning the City provides no usable information about employment or unemployment “inside” city limits. On the other hand, Appendix Q does inform readers that during Hayward’s tenure the city population declined between 2010 (51,923) and 2013 (51,820).
12,766 New Jobs
In its October 15 story Outtakes – What Jobs?, the IN Weekly dissected Hayward’s brazen claim to have had something to do with creating “exactly” 12,766 new jobs. The mailers refer to an undefined “area” but in one commercial Hayward’s female voice-over person utters aloud the phrase “in Pensacola.”
It seems doubtful that even Hayward knows how his out-of-state and Tallahassee campaign handlers arrived at such an exact number – 12,766. Hayward even appears eager to take credit for the 5,000 future new Navy Federal Credit Union jobs in Beulah. He showed up to have his picture taken at the big announcement on October 29 giving two thumbs up for the camera as he spoke. Governor Rick Scott is seen in the Facebook-ready snapshot gazing upwards in approval at Hayward.
In its November 1 editorial For Governor, Hold Your Nose, the PNJ Editorial Board better explained, “Governors and elected officials have little to no power to affect job creation and economic health. It’s a glaring farce each time a politician shows up to tout jobs, like Scott [and Hayward] did last week at Navy Federal.” We often hear about existing city jobs moving “outside” of city limits but it seems very doubtful that Hayward remembers to subtract them from his faux job creation numbers.
As example, later this year Goldring Gulf Distributing on South Pace Boulevard will leave the City of Pensacola for East Milton taking with it hundreds of jobs. Earlier this year, Hayward spoke at the groundbreaking of the new East Milton facility saying the move was not a loss for the City of Pensacola because it is a win for Northwest Florida adding, “All the impact they’ve had in Pensacola will now be in the city of Milton and Santa Rosa County.”
It seems unlikely Hayward even lifted a finger to try to help keep the jobs in Pensacola. It could get worse. If reelected, Hayward will press the Council to finalize approval of his brand new minority/women’s business enterprise city contracting program drafted by a consulting firm in Tallahassee covering two states and six counties from Mobile County in Alabama to Walton County.
Since taking office, Hayward has shown little to no interest supporting businesses already located “in” the City of Pensacola to include his vendettas against The Fish House and Varona’s. Earlier this year, Hayward even very publically torpedoed a smart initiative by Commissioners Gene Valentino and Lumon May to tie payment of millions in county taxpayer subsidies for VT Mobile Aerospace Engineering to a measurable goal to create jobs for “Escambia County” residents.
Our Property Taxes are Reduced
During his first budget effective October 2011, Hayward pressured the Council to make a very small and mostly symbolic reduction in the city’s property tax millage rate. Hayward has for the last two years failed to recommend or allow the Council to “roll back” the millage rate to reflect rising property values, one of the variables used to calculate property taxes about which the current budget document says, “Revenues are anticipated to increase $361,300 or 3% over the FY 2014 level of $12,075,800.”
It is even worse. When the Council agreed to transfer control of the West Florida Public Library System to Escambia County, the deal was that both Escambia County and the City of Pensacola would cut their property tax millage rates by an amount corresponding to a new Library Municipal Services Taxing Unit (MSTU) property tax. Escambia County did. Hayward did not recommend the Council lower the property tax. City property owners now pay the new Library MSTU tax to the county but get no tax relief from the city, a “net” tax increase.
As an almost hidden burden imposed upon city property owners, because the Escambia County Board of County Commissions does not make non-city property owners pay the full cost of their own law enforcement support, nearly $10 million of county property taxes collected inside city limits is used to fund the Sheriff’s law enforcement activities in Unincorporated Escambia County and the Town of Century. City taxpayers already fund the well-staffed Pensacola Police Department (PPD) at a cost of more than $20 million each year. The Sheriff’s law enforcement activities provide no real or substantial benefit to the city. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that this form of double taxation is legal. However, it could be eliminated if the Board fully funded the Sheriff’s law enforcement activities outside city limits using the existing Sheriff’s Law Enforcement MSTU paid by property owners in Unincorporated Escambia County but not the Town of Century. By a budget policy decision made each year by the Board, the Sheriff’s Law Enforcement MSTU millage rate is set at an unexplainably low 0.685 mills. Hayward has said and done nothing about the Board’s double taxation policy unwilling to challenge the status quo.
Cut Spending by $30 million in his First Term as Mayor
In the same mailer that proclaims a $30 million spending cut, Hayward also takes slightly lesser credit for having cut spending only “by $24 million since he took office, reducing the budget by 10%.” Each claim is an oversimplification of a very complex budget with six separate funds.
Both Councilwoman Sherri Myers and Councilman Andy Terhaar hinted at millions in suspected waste this past summer but were unable to get the Council to care enough to scrub in detail the proposed budget. Hayward even hired himself his own official photographer.
On the other hand, the management duties of the City Administrator – the critical Charter Officer position tasked by voters in 2009 to be “in charge of the daily operations of the City” – are now split among three people none with city management experience and so no one in charge of much of anything seemingly the better to shift the blame to nowhere.
The key part of the city’s budget is the General Fund that bankrolls the daily operations of the city government. One sentence in the budget document tells a very inconvenient truth, “The fiscal year 2015 $48,977,900 proposed General Fund budget is $2,069,500, or 4.4 percent greater than last year’s beginning budget.” General Fund “Personnel Expenses” are up from last year by 4.83% or $1.67 million.
The budget document also reports, “Public Service Tax and Franchise Fees are increasing by $729,300.” This year, the city expects to rake in $15.55 million in Public Service Taxes and Franchise Fees. This is money that Gulf Power, Pensacola Energy and ECUA collect from all of us and pays to the city, i.e. money “we” pay to our city for the privilege of using electricity, gas, water & sewer that we need to survive. As a very ironic twist, it is city residents that own Pensacola Energy.
One big sore spot is how Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) dollars are spent – or misspent. Earlier this year, former City Administrator Colleen Castille briefed the Council that LOST dollars are spent increasingly more to support the daily operations of the city government, to include buying designer furniture for Hayward’s office. Several months later Castille – who has held two cabinet posts in state government, gave Hayward his first campaign contribution in 2013 and told the Neighborhood Leadership Academy this spring that it was her job to see that Hayward is reelected – very abruptly resigned.
Safer Streets
One Hayward campaign mailer boasts, “Mayor Hayward has helped protect public safety, realizing a 25% decrease in crime.” The crime statistics tell a much darker story. The number of people murdered inside Pensacola City Limits since Hayward took office is 16, a “per capita” rate that would shock New York City residents.
My parents are from Brooklyn and some of my family still lives in New York City. The current year is not yet done but we do have crime statistics for all of 2011, 2012 and 2013. In one mailer, Hayward brags, “From 2012 to 2013 alone, reported crimes dropped by 14% – including an 18% decrease in violent crimes.” That sentence is a half-clever deception.
The facts prove that the number of reported violent crimes in the city “increased” between 2011 (383) and 2013 (389) with an unexplained 2012 spike of 473. In 2012, violent crime nationwide went up 0.7% but by 23.5% inside city limits. Comparing 2011 (3,357) total reported crime numbers with 2013 (3,002), the decline is 10.6% not 25%. The numerical drop may be the product of a rebounding economy and/or “modified” crime reporting policies and practices.
Under the city’s new highly politicized form of government modeled after the federal government in Washington DC, the Chief of Police serves at the whim of the Mayor. PPD Officers who mostly live outside city limits are quick to dismiss city residents’ fears about crime. In 2013, my wife Yvonne and I attended the city’s Citizens Police Academy. Several senior PPD Officers almost flippantly downplayed the public’s angst about crime saying that the hysterical media was blowing it all out of proportion. I doubt that WEAR Channel 3’s Amber Southard and Cat County 98.7’s Brent Lane sitting right behind us agreed. Like so many who work in the city and want to live anywhere “but” in the city, PPD Officers vote with their feet too. Few PPD Officers live inside city limits with several telling me it is a lot safer for their families to live in Santa Rosa County. If city streets ever are made safe, or just significantly safer, an early indication will be PPD Officers and their families moving back to live among us.