Redistricting Moving Forward--Despite One County Commissioner "Objecting"

The BCC is moving forward with final approval of our redistricting maps which 5 School Board members and 4 of the 5 County Commissioners worked diligently to finalize in a compressed timeframe. One Commissioner, one out of 10 elected officials that put these maps together, is "unhappy..." 

Tuesday the Board made a statement, approved our final redistricting map for advertising, and will advertise what was approved twice over the next four weeks. And on December 2nd, we will have our final public hearing before the BCC at which time we will vote to make the advertised map official.  That's how I see the process unfolding over the next three weeks (which will go by fast--with the Thanksgiving Holidays sandwiched between now and then.....)

Importantly--I believe in this same time period the Escambia School Board will advertise and approve an identical map so the voters will have all local offices (School Board, Commissioner, ECUA Board) running in the same geographic districts.  This will maintain a long established practice of doing this locally in Escambia County in order to assist the Supervisor of Elections and in order to diminish any voter confusion.

Now, I've heard from a smattering of diehard Underhill supporters that do not approve of the map as we voted, 4-1, to advertise for final passage.  A small number of folks who proclaim they do NOT support Underhill also have sent the same sorts of emails to me.

I have received multiple emails supporting the proposed redistricting map, too.

But---- by and large--the overall process has just not garnered a lot of public interest.  It just hasn't.

Most likely it is because folks are busy living their lives, running their businesses, going to their kids' sporting events, planning for the holidays, recovering from the last 20 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, returning to in-person events, going back to Church Services in person, travelling abroad, planning for the future,  etc., etc., etc......

Most of the more than 130,000 citizens that live in Escambia County's District 1 and District 2 are not hyper-focused on local (or even national) politics.  They are busy living their lives--catching some news at 10PM on WEAR, reading NorthEscambia, and listening to WCOA.  Some (a diminishing number) may even read the PNJ.  But they are not hyper-political; their entire lives and existances do not revolve around what happened at the County, or what the school board did, or what neighborhood is going to be reunited in this redistricting, or what 8 people on a Facebook Hate Site think. Or what Jeff Bergosh says, or What Doug Underhill thinks  They don't live it, they don't care, --they tune out the noise.  In short, they have lives.

So I understand outgoing Commissioner Underhill will plan a "rapid-fire" series of town hall meetings next week to denounce the work of the 5 members of the school board and 4 members of the BCC.  He'll likely attempt to convince folks that the nine of us got it wrong, but he is right..........uh,.... okay. 

Good luck with that line of thought.

And good.  Good for him though to shedule town halls, though.--he should do these more often like the rest of the board members have been doing.  Day late and a dollar short doing it now--just like his maps were.  Day late, dollar short.  

Again--I'm sure the centerpiece of his "town halls" will be him saying the process was corrupt.  I'm sure he will run the other four of us down as he does frequently.  He'll call us corrupt, dishonest, liars, and theives.  Of course it's all garbage from him, all lies, none of it true.  He's upset he got shot down again, 4-1, and so he's projecting, nothing more, nothing less. 

He'll then lobby for support of citizens to send us emails urging us to "VOTE NO" on December 2nd.  Ho hum.  Yawn.  

He may get a dozen or two to actually do it.  And for that, he is exercising staff and utilizing increasingly overtaxed county staff resources--including scheduling one of these on a Friday night.  It's poor form, but par for the course so far as I can tell.

And if he, by some Hail Mary, miraculous turn of events actually sways the board from approving the map on December 2nd--  what would happen then?  Well, the school board will have their map approved and the BCC would be sticking with the current status quo map for at least the next 13 months until 2023--meaning for 2022 elections ---BCC, ECUA and School Board maps would be different and this would cause a MAJOR upheaval to the elections.

For this reason alone (and for many others, too) the best course of action for the board will be to approve the map that 9 of 10 of us went with and vote YES.

This is the outcome I believe we will see.

Doug pressed the board to do this process in a compressed timeframe, he wanted to rush, then he blew off the important meeting to go watch a jet ski race, his first map failed and his second map was worse than the first.  It didn't get any support.  So apparently he is now "all fired up!"

And Doug's hastily arranged, short-notice town halls?   I think he'll have a few people show up, staff, his diehard supporters, PKA member activists, some facebook chat site participants, and a smattering of curious citizens that happen upon the event (s).  Compliant media types (Tallman and the PNJ) will cover it in an outsized way to make them appear more important than they will really be.  

But they'll be relatively small-scale affairs and non-productive.

And they won't serve to move the needle on the vote for the map, that's my prediction.

Meanwhile, Doug is a lame duck commissioner, having announced he will not seek re-election and therefore he will be out in a year----- and we will have a brand new commissioner and office secretary and intern in D2 one year from now--and the Board will finally be free of the drama, consternation, ad-hominem attacks, dysfunctional conduct, and garbage.  I predict great times ahead for the BCC beginning about one year from right now.  Cooperation, congeniality, teamwork, and professionalism from all 5.   I can't wait!