Jeff Bergosh Blog: PADP's Next Civic Center Proposal will be Kept Confidential

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, November 8, 2019

PADP's Next Civic Center Proposal will be Kept Confidential

There are very valid reasons to keep certain proposals confidential and exempt from records requests during the competition phase of a procurement, as the BCC voted to do with the next round of P3 Proposals to replace the current Pensacola Civic Center...

The importance of protecting certain proprietary information contained within project proposals is vital--in the private sector AND in the Government sector as well.

If this information is compromised, there are all kinds of ramifications that could come from such a leak.

It is for this reason that Florida statutes allow for certain proposals to be kept confidential and exempt from public records release for certain periods of time prior to the selection process of a board being completed.

In economic development, there are protections for projects as well in statute. Unfortunately, these are not always honored.

And as we have seen locally-- if information is leaked prematurely-- projects can fall apart and ill-will is created.

This very thing happened not long ago with an economic development project here in Escambia County-- and in the fallout of that fiasco--- where our Non-Disclosure Agreement was actually violated-- we lost a manufacturing firm, several dozen jobs, a tenant in one of our commerce parks, and in the process we created a huge ruckus for this company among it's then current employees out of state--who were unaware of any planned move by the company until this information leak occurred out of Escambia County.

It is for this reason that I requested that an add-on be included in yesterday's meeting of the BCC to insure that the board voted up or down on whether or not to give the next P3 proposal from PADP (to construct a new events center and field house at the current site of the Pensacola Civic Center) this statutorily permitted confidentiality.

And last night the board voted unanimously to do this as a part of the County Attorney's Action Items.

It is now anticipated that the BCC will advertise for submission of P3 proposals for a 21 day period, and that any and all proposals received as a result of this advertisement will be treated as confidential until such time as the board takes action of proposals received. And it is likely we will receive at least one proposal; PADP has signalled that they will be sending a revised proposal and it will be kept confidential and not released to the public. Because the board voted to do this last night.

Read our attorney's letter stating this below.