Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Friday, May 26, 2017

Tent City Redux?



Over the last several months the BCC has wrestled with the reality that we are burning through cash housing our inmates out of town with no real workable plan to bring the inmates back.

--We looked at Berrydale in Santa Rosa County--not an option apparently.

--We were presented an ambitious plan to double-bunk the prisoners....Several of my counterparts shot that down.  (I supported the idea if it could be done safely--it would have saved us $4.6 Million next year...)

--We were going to cancel a state lease at the juvenile detention facility and take that facility over...that plan fell apart due to politics.

We have to do something now.  The status quo on this issue must end and we must stop the hemorrhaging. 

So yesterday during the meeting I re-stated my firm belief that a tent-city to house overflow inmates on a transitory basis should be looked at seriously again.  It is legal to do it, we have land, so why not?!?   My rationale, which I again reiterated at the meeting, is that if cots and tents are good enough for our soldiers in Afghanistan--this is good enough for prisoners in Pensacola, Florida!



  To my amazement--my counterpart from District 2 chimed in to support such an idea.



Who knows, maybe the next plan we hear about will happen, maybe we will do a tent-city!

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