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.
