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Blog: Century Council’s Actions Were Just Plain Stupid

Irresponsible. That’s probably the best word to describe the actions of the Century Town Council at their Monday night meeting. At least it is a better word than stupid.

The Century Town Council spent more time debating and put more apparent thought process into hiring a man to clean ditches with a shovel than they did to hire an attorney to take on the Escambia County School Board.

Less than 24 hours before the school board was to make the final vote to close Carver/Century K-8 School,  the council listened to a short presentation from Leroy Boyd of the group Movement for Change. Boyd told the council that they could hire lawyer Jeffery Toney for $7,500 to $8,000 to file an injunction against the school board in an attempt to save the school.

Boyd told the council that he had been “asked to come here”, but declined to say who asked him to speak to the council. He told them that the school board had already made their decision, and in order to save the town’s only school “you will have to file a legal challenge”.

With that little information, the council was ready to whip out the checkbook and sign a blank check over to an attorney they apparently did not know; Council President Ann Brooks even had to ask Boyd how to spell Toney’s name.

Boyd cautioned the council that the up to $8,000 to file the injunction might not be the end of their expenses. He warned the council that Toney had told him to expect an appeal on whichever side lost the injunction hearing, plus if an injunction were obtained there were be additional fees for fighting a case and any appeals.

At no point did any council member or the mayor ask what the legal basis for an injunction against the school board might be. At no point did any council member or the mayor ask about Mr. Toney’s qualifications or experience as an attorney.

It took a question from NorthEscambia.com, not the council, for Boyd to say he did not know what the legal basis for a court case might be, other than “it won’t be race”.

It was nearly a year ago that NorthEscambia.com broke the story that Carver/Century could be targeted for closure, nearly a month before the topic was brought up at a school board meeting.  We even ran an investigative piece in May that detailed where students that live in the Carver/Century attendance zone actually attend school, one of the primary sets of data used by the school board in their closure decision.

The council has known for at least almost one year the the school board would eventually vote to close the town’s only school. But the council decided to hire an attorney they knew very little, if anything, about less than 24 hours before they knew the ax would fall on the school.

We are not going to discuss the school closing; what is done is done. We are making no insinuations about the legal expertise of Mr. Toney; we frankly know very little about him. It’s not about Mr. Toney’s rates for his services; he’s got as much right to make a living as the next guy.  And we are indifferent toward Movement for Change, also knowing little about their group. This is not an opinion about whether or not the council should be fighting the school board, that’s why you get legal advice before deciding if you should announce you’ll try to seek an injunction against somebody. (Oops.)

Our problem with the Century council’ s stupid (sorry — irresponsible) actions Monday night would be the same if the lawyer were Mr. Toney or Pensacola’s Fred Levin, the well known attorney for which the law school at the University of Florida is named.

The council spent nearly 10 minutes discussing if they should hire a laborer to clean ditches. The candidate, chosen from a field of 28 applicants, had qualifications that the mayor and department supervisor felt were adequate for the job. The mayor and a supervisor interviewed him. The gentlemen passed his criminal background check. The mayor recommend that the council hire him.

But after much discussion, the council decided that they wanted to meet the man that will clean their ditches for $10 an hour before they hired him.

But when it came time to hire an attorney to file for an injunction against the Escambia County School Board for legal reasons unknown to the council, the council made a quick and irrational decision 5-0 to hire Toney for perhaps $8,000 plus. But wait…don’t fill in that check yet because there might be appeals and other expenses. We think the legal terminology is “blank check”.

This is the same council that, also at Monday night’s meeting, was unable to approve a $500 donation to the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life until they could find a budget category where they had the money. The council has made a great effort this year to play by their own rules and spend no money until it was in a budgeted category.  There was no discussion where the council will get the funds to pay Mr. Toney.

Perhaps there is enough money in the town’s legal expense category. The council does, after all, have a town attorney. And they did save money by not bothering to discuss their legal concerns over the school closure with their own attorney. Why would you know there was an issue for a year and not discuss it with your own attorney, but instead hire someone unknown to you 24 hours before the school’s D-day?

Where was the thought process on the part of the council? They apparently did not learn from their past mistakes that making quick decisions of a major nature based upon a fast presentation can come back to bite them.

A few months ago, the council approved a resolution supporting the creation of a commission to study consolidated government in Escambia County. A special interest group make a slick presentation, and they were soon smiling and signing a resolution they had never seen before that was prepared by that special interest group.

It was not long before they learned that perhaps what they had signed so quickly might not have been what they thought it was, and they were soon rescinding the resolution much to the delight of the Pensacola media that made them look worse than foolish.

Let’s hope the young man that has applied for the $10 an hour job to clean and dig ditches in Century passes the scrutiny of the of Century council and gets his job. He’s willing to bust his butt to have a job if he’s willing to clean ditches for $400 a week. What a responsible man.; we like him already. And he can be proud to know that he will undergo more review than a lawyer hired on an unbudgeted whim by the council.

The council’s actions were not irresponsible, the first word we used in this blog. It’s that second term we should have used — stupid.

We welcome your appropriate on-topic comments below.