Jail Issues Front and Center this Week

With the ongoing media spotlight on the jail, and in the wake of a congressional letter of inquiry on the matter---issues at Escambia County's Correctional facilities will take front and center stage this week.

The letter, addressed to the administrator and the sheriff, will be answered by administrator Wes Moreno this week.  The sheriff has already submitted and made public his response.

Yes, as illustrated in the pictures I have previously submitted in earlier blogs and am attaching to this post---the conditions within the old jail are unacceptable.  Yes, these are human beings and must be controlled in custody and care of our staff within safe and sanitary conditions.  Sleeping on the ground next to a stinking, leaking overfolwing toilet is something I never thought I'd see in Escambia County--I doubt you'd even find this in most third world countries  (see below)

Sadly, this condition is a reality.  Here.  Not in Guatemala, Honduras, Chad, or Eritrea--here, in Escambia.

And mold and filthy, non-serviced and maintained ductwork--to boot.  (see below).

So no,  I'm not interested in spending another nickel, not one red cent, on the old jail.  As I was directly quoted saying in Sunday's paper--I want to demo that facility and forget it ever existed.    Because it is past the point of salvage--and to attempt a temporary fix would be akin to using a band aid on a sucking chest wound.  Too many decades with feckless maintenance and care, and too many liabilities if we keep it open.  Mold.  Need I say more?

So we MUST move forward with that jail in the rear view.  ASAP.

To that end, our administrator will be bringing a plan for the board's consideration this week at our Thursday committee of the whole  (COW) meeting to do the following:

1. An action plan to, as quickly as practicable,  to move personnel and inmates from the areas where facility conditions are borderline unacceptable within our corrections department.
2. a plan to enact a near-term strategy to harden other existing county owned corrections facilities to safely allow the movement and relocation of all prisoners out of our old jail and into acceptable new buildings/spaces.
3. Utilize the $9 Million we (BOCC) have allocated toward old-jail repairs to quickly implement #1 and #2 above.

 

Additional guidance and information, as well as the way forward, will be discussed between staff, the board, and the administrator at the board’s committee of the whole meeting this Thursday, March 10^th at 0900.

Escambia County's Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) Has Been Invaluable for Citizens Over the Years

Nobody Likes Taxes---But with a Local Option Sales Tax in place---EVERYONE pays some--including tourists and folks that don't work.  Without LOST--a county's burden for facilities and infrastructure falls nearly exclusively on the collective backs of property tax payers.....

Lots of folks have been asking my opinion about the upcoming referendum in Santa Rosa County to go to a penny Local Option Sales Tax as Escambia County has done for the last 27 years.

I was asked to give my opinion, which I did when I spoke in a commercial for the folks that are backing the penny.  In the commercial I discussed some of the ways this tax has been beneficial to Escambia County over the years.

Obviously, though, this is a vote and a decision that belongs exclusively to the citizens of Santa Rosa County.  And they will decide this question next Tuesday in a special election.

But as it relates to my experience--I can tell you unequivocally--Escambia County's Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) has been invaluable for Citizens here over the years.

Escambia County's LOST has been maintained by the electorate since 1992 as follows:

LOST I                    June 1, 1992 (for 7 years per ordinance)

LOST II                  May 13, 1997 - May 31, 2007 (per ordinance)

LOST III                 June 1, 2007 - December 31, 2017 (per ordinance)

LOST IV                January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2028

According to staff with whom I have spoken--the total revenue generated over these years amounts to a massive figure:  $1,057,564,174.00 total including LOST IV's revenue in 2019 YTD.  So this equates to an average of $39 Million Dollars yearly over this period that Escambia County has utilized to modernize our facilities, parks, and infrastructure.  We have also utilized this revenue to purchase facilities and equipment, vehicles, and other items for the Sheriff's Department.  Escambia County Fire Rescue has also had fire facilities and equipment purchased with this revenue.  Because we had this revenue, we have also had the financial resources to lure huge companies to our County with economic development incentives--notably Navy Federal Credit Union and ST Engineering Aerospace.

The School Board in Escambia County (of which I was a member for 10 years) also had their own 1/2 penny LOST--which was used to build entire schools and finance the purchases of modern School Bus Fleets and tremendous numbers of renovations and upgrades at 57 school campuses county-wide.  When I was a school board member--I often wondered where our schools would have been, from a facilities perspective, without this revenue source.....Answer:  We would have been in DIRE STRAITS.

So no one knows for certain how Santa Rosa County will vote on this--again it is up to the voters and we will all see on Tuesday which way it goes over there.  For my part, I ALWAYS loved the fact that the sales tax method reduced the burden on property tax payers, it put everyone into the mix by taxing purchases by everyone (including tourists and folks that do not own property or work but who are nevertheless hyper-consumers of alcohol, tobacco, bling, iPhones, and other products upon which this tax is levied.)  In short, it forces everyone to put "skin in the game".

It has been excellent for Escambia.

We shall see if Santa Rosa property owners see this and vote appropriately on Tuesday--it will be in their interest to do so, in my opinion