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Community focuses on gardening

In Local News, News on May 25, 2010 at 10:43 am

Community activists will unveil a new community garden today off North Davis Highway with a neighborhood cookout event.

The garden took root after some Pensacola Bay Area residents were inspired by first lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden.

The garden is a joint effort between civil rights advocacy group Movement for Change and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources and Conservation Service department in Milton.

The garden features a variety of peppers and tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, squash, cabbage, okra and herbs such as thyme and rosemary.

Andrew Williams, a USDA soil scientist and one of the originators of the garden, wants the garden to have a long-lasting presence within the community.

“The idea is to hand it off to a dedicated group of people who can handle it from there on in,” Williams said.

About two months ago, Williams, with retired Pensacola lawyer Kim Kirschenfeld, pitched the idea for a community garden to Movement for Change President LeRoy Boyd.

Williams said the project cost $2,000, funded by Three Rivers Resource Conservation. Volunteer hours and other help were provided by Manna Food Bank and other community groups, Williams said.

Boyd said the harvest from the garden will not be formally distributed; neighbors are encouraged to harvest what they need from the garden themselves, Boyd said.

Boyd, an avid gardener himself, said he hopes the garden teaches younger generations the value of eating healthy and growing their own food.

“The children and the community will be the beneficiaries of our efforts and energy,” Boyd said.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Arts fest offers taste of Milton on the river

In Local News, News on May 24, 2010 at 7:36 pm

Hundreds of Santa Rosa County residents converged in downtown Milton on a sunny Saturday to enjoy the 22nd annual Riverwalk Arts Festival.

The festival, which continues until this afternoon, celebrates folk art and local culture. Food and arts and crafts vendors line both sides of Willing Street, along the banks of the Blackwater River.

The centerpiece of the festival was the All County Youth Art Exhibit, a two-room building filled with more than 700 pieces of award-winning art from Santa Rosa County students. The exhibit’s goal is to encourage students to take a greater interest in the arts.

“This kind of stuff makes children perform well,” said Toni New, education chairwoman for the Santa Rosa Arts and Culture Foundation. “When they’re acknowledged, they perform even better. If we don’t do stuff like this, they won’t see a bigger world.”

The long-term goal of the festival is to re-create Milton as a cultural and artistic hub for the county. New, who has been teaching art at Rhodes Elementary School for 22 years, says that while Milton has the potential to earn such a reputation, it may be another 10 years before it happens.

“We have the location and the beauty in Milton, and we have the support. We just have to put it together,” New said.

In addition to the art exhibit, the foundation also is rewarding the literary achievements of Santa Rosa students by publishing their work in this year’s edition of the “Creative Writing Expressions Booklet.”

Several students were honored for their poetry, essays and short stories, including three students who were given cash prizes.

“It’s amazing the talent we have in Santa Rosa County,” said Tim Wyrosdick, the school superintendent. “It’s truly impressive.”

Wyrosdick said that Santa Rosa’s schools have “made a concerted effort” to preserve their art programs in spite of budget cuts.

Other projects from the foundation include downtown Milton’s Dragonfly Gallery, a small venue for local artists to display their work and hold public workshops.

The foundation also is promoting performance art through Moonshine Creek Productions, which it hopes will raise funds for a fine arts center.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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AIDS activist urges community effort in fighting disease

In Local News, News on May 16, 2010 at 12:08 pm

Emmy award-winning AIDS activist Rae Lewis-Thornton visited Pensacola on Saturday to speak about her experiences living with the disease.

She urged the audience to become more aware of HIV and AIDS in their community.

“Our education has got to move with the times and with the technology if we are going to do something about this disease,” she said.

Lewis-Thornton, 47, was diagnosed with HIV after donating blood at age 23. By the time she found out, she had been HIV positive for four years. When she learned of the infection, she kept it a secret for years, fearing prejudice and violence.

“It was a cruel and ugly time to be told you had HIV,” Lewis-Thornton, of Chicago, told the packed conference room at the Corinne Jones Community Center at Sanders Beach. “The secret was killing me.”

Rather than continue to hide the illness, she became a motivational speaker to encourage others to protect themselves. She also worked in the media and won an Emmy award for a series of TV news segments about living with AIDS.

Lewis-Thornton’s keynote address was a highlight of the first Women’s Health and Empowerment Conference. The daylong conference was organized by the Sistas Organizing for Service initiative.

Erica Douglas, who organized the event, said Lewis-Thornton’s message helped dispel stereotypes about the disease.

“She really wants to let people know that this disease does not have a face, and that it doesn’t matter who you are … it can (still) affect you,” Douglas said.

Members of the audience added that Lewis-Thornton spoke from the heart, and that her address succeeded in raising awareness of HIV and AIDS.

“I think we can all learn from her,” said Olga Stewart, 61, who works with AIDS cases at Sacred Heart Hospital. “It’s best to learn from her experience than your own.”

The Florida Department of Health said there are 2,657 people living in Northwest Florida who have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Another 600 to 700 people are suspected of having the disease but have not been diagnosed.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Millions nearly cut from sheriff’s budget

In Financial News, Local News, News on November 7, 2009 at 7:30 pm

A motion to reduce the Sheriff Office’s budget by $2.5 million was rejected on Thursday at the Board of County Commissioner’s second public hearing regarding the county’s new budget.

The idea was brought forth by County Commissioner Mike Whitehead and was rejected by the other members of the board 3-2.

“For the men and women of law enforcement it’s important for us to have the equipment and the resources to combat [the] growing criminal element,” said Lt. Jerry Cox, one of many sheriff’s deputies who had attended the hearing, “I just felt that Commissioner Whitehead has a personal agenda for political reasons.”

The motion was part of a larger process by the Board of County Commissioners to lower property taxes and make cuts to the budget for the 2008/2009 fiscal year. Whitehead had made it clear during a Sept. 4 hearing that the sheriff’s budget would be a preferable place to make multi-million dollar cuts.

“I’m not picking on the sheriff here,” said Whitehead during Thursday’s hearing, “[his budget is] the biggest chunk. It is what it is”

During the board’s previous budget hearing Whitehead had remarked that the $900,000 in budget cuts that the sheriff’s office had already made was not enough considering that the budget itself is for $79 million.

Despite warnings from other board members that cutting costs could mean reducing the number of law enforcement officers, Whitehead asserted that the cuts could be made from less important areas.

“I still believe that there’s room in this thing and you’re missing a huge opportunity if you don’t take advantage of it today,” Whitehead told the board members.

Some believe that Whitehead’s recent defeat in the local elections last August have rendered him a loose cannon.

“[Commissioner Whitehead] doesn’t have anything to lose right now,” said Eric Haines, an Escambia county deputy with the Police Benevolent Association, “He can come out and say what he wants to without fear of retribution.”

At their previous meeting the board had unanimously voted to roll back property taxes from 8.017 mills to 6.9755 and to set the millage rate for the sheriff’s municipal services taxing unit, or MSTU, at .6850.

Thursday’s hearing was the final step in deciding upon the budget for the next financial year. The MTSU is a special funding source that is provided with a separate property tax rate from the rest of the county.

Property tax rates are expressed in mills, which are $1 for every $1000 in property value.

According to Chairman Gene Valentino, this is the single largest tax cut in the history of Escambia County.

Originally published at Ricksblog.biz for the Independent News.

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Pensions on council agenda

In Local News, Political News on November 7, 2009 at 6:27 pm

Pension Plan Concerns Addressed to City Council

Citizens voiced their concern over the costliness of Pensacola’s pension plan during the open forum segment of the Sept. 25 city council meeting.

Pensacola resident Bill Cummins began the discussion when he presented the council with his assessment of the pension’s cost to city taxpayers. According to Cummins the sum of money that the city is obligated to pay for this pension has risen to $103 million, a huge jump compared to the $2.9 million that was owed just 12 years ago.

“You will have more money going to that plan than you will have received in taxes,” said Cummins.

The discussion was started as a response to one of the councilmen publicly denying that they had a pension plan under the city at the Sept. 22 meeting of the republican women’s club. Cummins was the first of three Pensacola residents who had attended the Sept. 22 meeting and had come before the council to express their views on the subject.

Members of the city council agreed with Cummins on the urgency of the matter. Councilman Sam Hall explained that the pension’s unfunded liability is approximately $20 million more than what the city takes in from its general fund and places like the Energy Services of Pensacola.

“It’s one of those things that the council is going to have to get its arms around, and pretty quickly,” said Hall, “I’m not sure exactly when it’s going to get to crisis level, but I think it’s going to reach up and bite either this council, the next council, or certainly the one after that.”

The city switched its pension plan for newly hired employees from the city plan to the Florida retirement system in June of 2007. When this happened all employees hired prior to 2007 were given the option of switching to the Florida retirement system or to stay with the city pension plan.

As Councilman Marty Donovan explained, the reason the city owes so much is because over 95% of employees didn’t switch to the Florida system.

Originally published at Ricksblog.biz for the Independent News.

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Bailey: current charter hurts city

In Local News, Political News on November 7, 2009 at 6:21 pm

Former CRA director says city charter limits problem solving

The Pensacola City Charter inhibits the city’s people and government from successfully working together to solve tough problems, Pensacola architect David Bailey told the Charter Review Commission at their meeting on Wednesday.

Bailey referred to a section of the charter, which states that the city council can only interact with the members of the city staff through the city manager. This rule creates a bottleneck that prevents the council from effectively dealing with major problems such as generational poverty and housing issues.

“The structure of the city government does not lend itself to leadership on the part of the elected officials,” said Bailey.

Bailey said that during his five years as the director of the Pensacola community redevelopment agency his working relationship with the city council was inhibited to the point of being meaningless. According to Bailey, there were members of the council who never met with him at his office during his time on the staff.

Commission Member Natalie Prim explained that the rule was in place to keep staff members from going around the city manager.

“It doesn’t mean that they can’t discuss, or that they can’t present or grieve, or hear what they have to say,” said Prim, “I think it’s just to keep order in the house and not let it get out of hand.”

Bailey responded by suggesting that the language of the charter provide an individual with the responsibility to keep that problem in check rather than using “soft” language that prevents the separate departments from communicating.

“The problems that I dealt with were not tidy problems,” said Bailey, “don’t let the desire to have very tidy structure prevent us, when we’re in the trenches, from solving problems.”

Pensacola’s government was also compared to that of big cities that exhibit a more progressive form of government, such as Jacksonville, Fla. and Austin, Texas. Bailey used the example of the mayor of Austin, Will Wynn, sitting down with members of the pubic to draft a budget.

Bailey told the review commission that Pensacola’s political boundaries do not reflect the significance of the city within the state of Florida or the United States, and that it should be more progressive.

Originally published at Ricksblog.biz for the Independent News.

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