CEO Chandra Smiley explains why Community Health Northwest Florida moved its headquarters to Jackson Street in the 32505 zip code.
In the fall of 2015, the Studer Community Institute with the help of the University of West Florida built a map using U.S. Census Bureau data that showed Escambia County’s pockets of poverty. Shannon Nickinson discusses the project.
YES–this! Ding ding ding ding…
Just make sure Vince Whibbs and REAP don’t figure out a way to colonize the system with seed money, like he did with the City’s federal homeless monies. I hear he’s having the GRAND UNVEILING of a men’s shelter this morning at a location that Family Promise had understood they would be able to make use of for a family shelter. Not a single person I spoke with in the homeless community had heard about it. Nor elected officials. I suppose Mayor Reeves might have known. (?)
This isn’t to take the attention away from the Trust, as it was so good to hear Chair White’s discussion of the policy changes in the below podcast. It’s just an example to highlight strengths and weaknesses of approach (Council had a great plan for their pilot program ARP spends, but left to much grey area in how the agencies conducted themselves, with too little oversight). As I said in a previous post, Chair White, Commissioner May, and Mr. Peaden did great work in sticking against the special interest forces operating from behind the scenes, through staff, and perhaps with some Board members who–for whatever the reason–continue to purposely engender as much mess in the discussions as possible. When setting policy, it’s unpleasant but nonetheless a necessity to do the thought experiment of what self-interest actors can do to work loopholes in systems…that’s the only way of ensuring that it’s as airtight as possible. There is still *way* to much grey area in the Trust’s policies and procedures in general, but this was some big steps towards correcting that.
It’s even more a tribute to those three board members’ success in stopping some blatant nonsense that it shouldn’t have been a voting regular meeting on policy at all, BUT A WORKSHOP WITHOUT THE PRESSURE OF VOTES. Just as Commissioner May suggested. It’s telling that at the December board meeting, in order to get around the most common sense idea for moving forward a couple of Board members had to engineer a complete break with order (while appearing not to do so, of course). From where I sit, the more firmly Ms. White takes the reigns on not allowing the more practiced policy “wonks” from manipulating the meeting discussions and procedure, the better.