Councilman Jerralds is, to our knowledge, the first Council member to publicly announce his interest. Word on the street is that Councilman Sam Hall may be interested, also.

The President of the Council, under the new government, will chair Council meetings and have principal responsibility for setting meeting agendas.

WEAR reported last night that Ms. Castro “has been relieved of her duties as BP’s spokesperson for the Pensacola area.”

Check back for more video throughout the day. We’ll start with Councilman Sam Hall:

Now Councilwoman Diane Mack, who calls BP’s presentation “insulting”:

Councilwoman Maren DeWeese asks Ms. Castro a basic question but (you guessed it) doesn’t get an answer:

And finally, Councilman Larry B. Johnson tells Ms. Castro and BP to take their operation somewhere else:

No charges over Consolidation Commission emails. NorthEscambia.com reports that the State Attorney’s office has completed a probe into emails between members of the Escambia County Consolidation Study Commission, which Progressive Pensacola brought to light. The emails contained potential Sunshine violations, but the State Attorney’s office has opted not to prosecute. Big surprise there!

Pensacola Beach Blog Ard commentary. The excellent Pensacola Beach Blog has some worthwhile commentary about Pensacola Police Officer Jerald Ard’s killing of teenager Victor Steen and an analysis of a potential federal civil rights claim.

Candidate fundraising. News Journal columnist Mark O’Brien talks about political fundraising and recaps the first quarter hauls of various candidates.

Lewis to run against Hall? Rick’s Blog has heard the rumour that C. J. Lewis may file soon to run against City Councilman Sam Hall. Mr. Hall currently serves as the District 2 Council member but is seeking one of two at-large seats this November. We heard the same rumour, and spoke with Mr. Lewis last week. He told Progressive Pensacola he’s been encouraged to run but has no plans to do so at this time.

Bicycle/pedestrian master plan. For those interested in bicycle and pedestrian accommodations, City Councilwoman Megan Pratt highlights the West Florida Regional Planning Council’s public workshops on that topic. The next two will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, April 20. Check out Councilwoman Pratt’s blog for the details.

Notable attendees included our mayor, Mike Wiggins, as well as District 2 City Councilman Sam Hall, who has repeatedly insisted he is not an IPC member.

One IPC member showed up with a blown-up print of a recent cartoon by the PNJ‘s Andy Marlette, which portrayed IPC ringleader Jim Reeves as standing tall above the criticisms of City Council members Larry B. Johnson and Diane Mack. The print was signed by various IPC members as a memento for Boss Reeves.

News Journal reporters Mark O’Brien and Jamie Page were both invited and attended. We hear Mr. Reeves is trying to promote a better public image of the IPC.

Later, we’ll have a more thorough list of IPC members who attended last night’s meeting.

Some have speculated that Mr. Hall may be trying to move to an at-large race in order to raise his profile, hoping that it will improve his chances to win a seat on the Consolidated Government’s Council if consolidation is approved in November.

In a statement to the News Journal‘s Jamie Page, Mr. Hall said, “I just want the opportunity to do for all of Pensacola what I have been able to accomplish for District 2. I think this gives me the opportunity to serve at a different level and think about citywide issues. I am not abandoning District 2, I just want to be able to serve in a different way.”

Hall calls out P. C. City Councilman Sam Hall calls out fellow Councilman P. C. Wu for his negative comments regarding the City’s new charter. Indeed, Councilman Wu did make several such comments during Monday’s Council committee meetings. Councilman Wu has long been involved with the Florida League of Cities and his opposition to the new charter seemed genuinely philosophical. That said, the voters have spoken; we will have a mayor-council government. Councilman Wu should either get on board and help make it the best government possible, or step aside and let others do so.

McLaughlin on thin ice as County Administrator. Escambia County Administrator Bob McLaughlin’s contract is up for renewal today, and it’s not looking good for him. Several County Commissioners have expressed dissatisfaction with a number of Mr. McLaughlin’s decisions over the past year, including his budget proposals and aborted decision to hire Cindy Anderson as assistant county administrator. Commissioner Kevin White told the News Journal that he would vote not to renew McLaughlin’s contract.

Pratt on checks and balances. Pensacola City Councilwoman Megan Pratt makes the case for an independent staff for the City Council under the new City government. She argues that, in order for the new government to have adequate checks and balances, the City Council must be a strong legislative branch. That requires staff to research, help draft ordinances, etc. More on this soon.

DeWeese on Port plan. City Councilwoman Maren DeWeese expresses her support for the new plans outlined by Port of Pensacola staff in a recent presentation. Also check out Councilman Sam Hall’s comments on the Port plan; he calls for a “decisive plan” from elected leader.

Council members Wu and Townsend, who both advocated against the new charter, were absent for the special November 25 meeting to certify the referendum results.

There are no longer any Council members with perfect attendance. Mayor Mike Wiggins, the last holdout, was absent for the November 12 special CRA meeting and now stands in a tie for second place with 98%.

The leader is Councilman Sam Hall, who has zero absences and one early exit, leaving him with 99% attendance. He remains the only Council member who has made an appearance at every meeting.

At the bottom of the board we have Councilman Ron Townsend, with a total of ten absences, one late arrival, and two early exits since the current Council took office in January.

Councilman Hall:

What did I take away from the trip? I should manage my expectations. There is a clear interest in coming to Pensacola but everything must fit. That MBS is interested in no way means that this is a done deal.

So I asked the take-away question at our final meeting, “What must we do as a community to get MBS to come help with our redevelopment?” They said, the city and county governments must work better together, petty political posturing must stop, the school board should come on board.

When asked what it is the local governments are doing right, they said cooperative funding for moving the waste water treatment facility was extremely positive, plans for opening up our waterfront, our new CRA plan, and that such a broad base of community leaders came to meet with them (more than double than normally get).

Their biggest criticism was the school board operating in a vacuum, working on strictly a business model and not an organic community model.

I really like this group. When they invest in a community, they come with money and they come to stay. They have three components of their group. One does development, another management, and the third ties the first two together with a multiplier in that it goes after multi-level government funding from outside the community, foundation grants, and local investment into community centers, schools, libraries, arts centers, etc.

Councilwoman Mack:

This past Monday a seven-member delegation from the City of Pensacola along with ten others representing Escambia County, the Downtown Improvement Board, Belmont-DeVilliers, and downtown business, flew to St. Louis, MO, to meet with McCormack Baron Salazar (MBS). In business since 1973, MBS is nationally acclaimed as a for-profit residential development company specializing in the revitalization of urban neighborhoods. Their success has placed them in the position of taking on only those projects that they believe in and know can succeed.

If Pensacola could achieve a MBS class of housing development within the Pensacola CRA area, it would transform not only the urban landscape but the way we think of public housing. That revelation is what I took away from our trip to St. Louis.

Our delegation did not have the opportunity to walk around several of their developments due to time constraints and the rainy weather. But we learned, and saw enough from our minibus, to be amazed.

The development that most impressed me was Westminster Place, a neighborhood of what look like North-Hill size homes, beautifully designed and built and landscaped (no cookie-cutter style there). Yet they were, in fact, buildings containing four to six rental units each, with a third of the units renting at full market rate, a third partially subsidized for working-class families, and a third for poverty-level residents.

Westminster Place has been in operation for over 15 years and the homes are as pristinely maintained today as the day they were built. The development is a true social “salad,” in the tradition of small towns of another era when people of diverse circumstances lived side by side.

All we need to do to persuade McCormack Baron Salazar that they can achieve success in partnership with us is to:

• Set aside Council district territorial envies for the good of the whole.
• Convince Commission Chairman Marie Young that the development we contemplate would in no way be another New Aragon.
• Remind Superintendent of Schools Malcolm Thomas that school properties are public assets and that there are times, such as this one, when good stewardship of vacant properties is best fulfilled by investing them in a transformative community project, rather than sitting on them, perhaps for years, waiting for them to appreciate in value.
• Show the general public that housing for poor people does not have to look like nor be managed like Pensacola Village.

That would have been a tall order for old Pensacola, but I choose to believe that it is achievable for progressive, up-and-coming Pensacola!

Mr. Peterson, 30, is a member of the Pensacola Young Professionals and currently serves on the City’s Zoning Board of Adjustment. He is a registered Republican, though he has in the past donated to the Libertarian Party.

Councilman Hall argues that under the proposed Mayor-Council government, both the mayor and City Council would have “the power,” and that they would have to work with one another to get things done. Anti-charter advocated No Boss Mayor argue that power would be consolidated in the “strong” mayor, who would dominate the Council.

He criticises the current government process as staff-controlled:

In order to understand, let’s look at how the agenda is set now. It’s set by staff, the unelected 900 at city hall.

To be sure, committee chairs have “some” control, but not much, and junior councilmembers have almost no control, despite the fact that Pensacola now has one of its most aggressive freshmen classes in most of our recollection.

When Tom Bonfield was the city manager, I tried to get items added to the agenda about three times……for discussion. He said it couldn’t be done unless staff approved it.

When I asked if there was any other way to get it on the agenda, he indicated that a committee chair could place it on there, but he also indicated I could not ask the chair ahead of time for that to be done. He cited Florida’s Sunshine Law.

While Al Coby has been a breath of sunshine, no pun intended, I know some members feel frustrated that the agenda is out of their hands. Take Maren DeWeese and her Pensacola Promise. She can’t get even 15 minutes to present it.

Why?

Staff doesn’t like it.

Councilman Hall envisions a mayor-council system in which the elected mayor and the elected Council members control the agenda, with staff serving an advisory role:

But, in a Mayor-Council government, the council will set the agenda. If the mayor is hostile to the council, then his agenda will never be heard. Conversely, if the council is hostile to the mayor, then the mayor can veto what council has passed, which is subject to override by a supermajority.

Either way, it will be the elected, the accountable ones to the public, who will set the agenda.

Yet, without a doubt, the professionals (staff) will have to weigh in to make an issue successful.

That’s a valid perspective. More than anything else, though, the precise structure of a mayor-council government, and its success or failure, would likely depend on the personalities of those elected officials.

Lewis-Hall-Wu drama. Jamie Page of the News Journal reports on his blog that Pensacola City Councilman Sam Hall asked past mayoral candidate C. J. Lewis to run against District 1 Councilman P. C. Wu instead of for mayor. Mr. Lewis claims that Councilman Hall wanted to clear the field in the mayor’s race for Brian Spencer to run. Mr. Spencer, who is the husband of Charter Review Commission chair Crystal Spencer, recently told Jamie Page that he did not plan to run for mayor.

Councilman Hall acknowledged that he did indeed ask Mr. Lewis to run against Councilman Wu, but said that he “wouldn’t do it again,” and that he had done so “at a time when I was not happy with everyone on Council … now, I am completely satisfied with everyone on Council.”

16 South Palafox. The City has for several years been trying to sell its former ESP marketing building, at 16 South Palafox, without receiving an acceptable offer. At yesterday’s Pensacola City Council committee meetings, CRA Director Thad Cohen detailed a plan to lease the building out. The upper floor is tentatively set to be leased to UWF, which will use the space for its Small Business Development Centre. The lower floor will be leased to a retail tenant.

Four-minute limit enforcement. Mark O’Brien of the News Journal reports that Mayor Wiggins intends to “tighten up” his enforcement of the four-minute time limit on speakers in open forum, “at least until the November 24 election” on the proposed new charter. At the last Council meeting, anti-charter advocate and former City Attorney Don Caton spoke on well past the four-minute limit, even as Mayor Wiggins tried unsuccessfully several times to politely cut him off.

Mayor Wiggins has done a good job of accomodating public input. Enforcement of the rules is fine, so long as those rules apply to everyone, and are enforced with the courtesy deserved by any member of the public. Mayor Wiggins’ predecessor, John Fogg, was rude, demeaning, and condescending in his enforcement of time limits, and his general interactions with many open forum speakers. We are confident Mayor Wiggins will not go down that same path.

Revised CMP funding plan. Jamie Page details the City’s revised funding plan for the Community Maritime Park, which has been made necessary after the threat of a petition and/or referendum delayed the issuance of bonds. In order to save potential tax credits, the City may seek a bridge loan, which would be repaid when the bonds are ultimately issued.

Opposing viewpoints. Finally, this past Sunday’s News Journal published viewpoints by both pro-charter and anti-charter advocates; the pro-charter piece was written by C. C. Elebash, and the anti-charter piece was written by Bryon Keesler.

Airport coverage. The Sunday News Journal has two stories concerning the City-owned Pensacola Gulf Coast Regional Airport. The first deals with the push to bring Southwest Airlines to Pensacola; the second is a profile of the airport and its expansion efforts under the leadership of interim director Melinda Crawford. Those who want to help out with the efforts to bring Southwest to Pensacola can check out the Chamber of Commerce’s web site or join the cause on Facebook.

City board openings. Pensacola City Councilman Larry B. Johnson informs constituents that there are openings on several City boards. The details and application forms are on his blog.

Sam Hall’s blog. Councilman Sam Hall explains why he doesn’t post on his blog as often as he once did.

History lesson. PNJ columnist Mark O’Brien gives us a free history lesson about downtown Pensacola’s water and flooding issues.