Escambia County Commission Honors Students at the Cox Heroes Awards 2024

Last Thursday, the Escambia Board of County Commissioners approved a proclamation in support of exceptional students in our community that were recognized last night at a ceremony at UWF.

I was honored to be asked to bring greetings on behalf of the board--and humbled to be asked to read the proclamation for those in attendance who are dealing with adversity much more profound than most of us could even imagine.  

These students that were celbrated last night have overcome tremendous adversity in their lives; the types of hardships that could destroy grown adults.  And yet, these students overcame.

Loss of limbs, tremendous physical challenges, the death of parents, and other unimaginable hardships--hearing the stories of these 54 students was moving.

Many of us who feel like we deal with frequent adversity could learn a lot from hearing the stories of these children and their families. 

Thanks go out to Cox Communications and the Escambia County Council of PTA's/PTSA's for recognizing these exceptional students and their families.

COX Communications Not Bidding on Escambia's Broadband Re-Solicitation

 Late last week COX Communications sent the below letter to the county.  Late this afternoon, as the solicitation is now closed, staff has forwarded this letter and information to the commissioners.  

After filing a bid protest over the county's selection of EREC last month for the county's broadband  project,  and after the county decided to re-solicit the project and put it out for bid a second time--COX has now officially bowed-out and will not be bidding on this project.  

They (COX) gave their reasoning in their letter to the purchasing director --- which I am posting below.

On 1370 WCOA's Real News with Rick Outzen Tomorrow Morning at 7:10

 

Rick Outzen, host of the Pensacola/Escambia County area's best, most trusted and popular morning drive news program "Real News with Rick Outzen" on 1370 WCOA-- has asked me to appear tomorrow morning at 7:10 as a guest on his show.

Rick has asked me on the show to discuss my latest blog posts on the COX bid protest and also the other post--- about how one citizen is costing the county and ordinary citizens hundreds of thousands of dollars with multiple identical and unsuccessful challenges to opt-outs from the county's very unpopular sector plan.

Interesting to me that the COX bid protest was picked up off of my blog by literally every local media outlet as I was the first to break that story.  They all ran that story with no attribution of where they got it but that is standard and I could really care less;  I put things on this blog that they all read and I only put things on here I want them to pick up and cover.

But the other story----the one that is more important in many respects--has been all but ignored  and has received no follow-on coverage by the local media.  This is perplexing as that blog post on this site is getting much more volume/comments/attention from the readers of this blog.  It is getting crushed.  It is a compelling story, how one citizen can weaponize a legitimate process to force property owners to spend tens of thousands of dollars even as every single such complaint this serial plaintiff has filed has been unsuccessful.

Perhaps this is because the citizen that is causing all of this consternation via this vexatious litigation is actually slated to win an award from CIVICON (PNJ) tomorrow.  What?!?This is emblematic of just how out of touch the PNJ is with what is really happening here in the county as they are rewarding a serial petitioner who has cost the taxpayers and ordinary citizens literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and expert witness fees over the last several years utilizing antagonistic, never winnable cut and paste complaints that have been rejected by DOAH multiple times over and over.  PNJ ignores this.  Just totally tone-deaf to what really is going on around here--that's the PNJ.

Anyway--hopefully we will have ample time to discuss both tomorrow morning on Rick's show.

I'm glad he's willing to entertain the discussion.  Once Rick publishes the podcast I will post it here.

COX Communications Files a Bid Protest on the BCC's Broadband Selection

Late yesterday afternoon COX Communications filed a formal bid protest regarding last Monday's decision by the board to move forward with EREC's proposal for phase one of the county's Broadband

construction in the north end of the county.

The nine page document from the Gunster Law Firm on behalf of COX lists multiple reasons why COX and Gunster believe the decision made Monday by board vote  should not only be walked back by the board, but that the Board should also, affirmatively and  unilaterally reverse course and AWARD the project to COX.

From the firm's letter of 11-30-2022:

"The County is obligated to provide Cox recourse following the County’s materially extensive RFP revision and arbitrary blackout suspension for only a select two of the shortlisted proposers. If the County persists in awarding EREC the RFP and fails to invoke the discretion the County’s Purchasing Ordinances provide, Cox will be unfairly and inequitably excluded from consideration despite having submitted a technically sound proposal covering the entire service area requested. Allowing such a deviation from standard procurement procedure to stand taints the entire RFP process the County has established.  Therefore, the City must uphold Cox’s protest and award it the contract pursuant to the RFP."

Much more to come on this.  I will publish the full document once the county attorney agrees with me that this is a public record which can be released.  I believe it is, but am awaiting her confirmation before I release it.

Read it, below

Cox Heroes Awards-An AMAZING Night!

Yesterday afternoon the folks from Cox Communications honored some exceptional district students.

The very nicely conducted ceremony was held in UWF's conference center, and included students, parents, dignitaries from government, and staff from Cox Communications.

4 of the 5 members of the Escambia County School Board, as well as Deputy Superintendent of Schools Norm Ross attended this very memorable ceremony.

A total of 47 students and their families were recognized.  Tears were flowing throughout the room.  People in my row, myself included, were swallowing hard and wiping tears from our eyes--these stories were soooooo touching...

One student was born with half of a heart and has had to endure multiple open-heart surgeries.  Several students had major, life altering debilitating disabilities.  Several students have lost family members.

One young student, when it was announced that he had lost his older brother, started to break down on the stage.  I broke down with him in the audience....it was heart-wrenching watching this young