Saturday: Northview FFA Alumni Bluegrass Festival Featuring Marty Raybon
April 2, 2010
Tickets are still available for the April 3 Northview FFA Bluegrass Festival presented by the Northview FFA Alumni Scholarship Fund and NorthEscambia.com.
To purchase tickets click here to order online and print at home/work.
Tickets are also available at ticket outlets — Davisville Country Store at 10251 Highway 97, the Ann’s Hallmark & Gift Shop at 1741 E. Nine Mile Road in Pensacola, and the Ann’s Hallmark & Gift Shop at 4805 Hwy. 90 in Pace. Tickets will also be available at the door for both shows.
To learn more about the concert, click here or see the ad above. Concessions will be available from the Northview Band, click here for info.
All proceeds from the event benefit the Northview FFA Alumni Scholarship Fund. This is an indoor event.
Firefighters Respond To Molino House Fire
April 1, 2010
Firefighters responded to fire involving a vacant house on Highway 99 in Molino Thursday afternoon.
The fire was reported about 3 p.m. in the 7000 block of South Highway 99 near the intersection of Crabtree Church Road. The fire was reportedly contained to a small area of the house and was quickly extinguished.
There were no injuries reported, and the cause of the blaze was not immediately known.
The Molino, Walnut Hill, McDavid and Cantonment stations of Escambia Fire Rescue responded to the call.
Low Water Pressure In Walnut Hill
April 1, 2010
Some customers of Walnut Hill Water Works are experiencing low water pressure this afternoon.
Walnut Hill Water Works is working on the water system, and the pressure was dropped so that the work could take place. Water company officials tell us that the water pressure should return later this afternoon.
Bank Robbery Suspect Caught, Also Wanted For Robbing Two Fast Food Restaurants
April 1, 2010
[Updated] The man responsible for a robbery at a Nine Mile Road bank on Wednesday and two fast food restaurant robberies earlier in the week is now behind bars.
Richard Andrew Ray, 37 of Pensacola was taken into custody in Mobile by a fugitive task force.
The latest robbery occurred just after noon Wednesday at the Bank of America at 31 East Nine Mile Road when a man walked in, handed a note to a teller, and fled with a handful of cash.
Ray acted as if he had a handgun, according to Sgt. Ted Roy, spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office. The man fled the bank with an undisclosed amount of money and was last seen eastbound from the bank on a bicycle, Roy said. No one was injured in the robbery.
Ray is also wanted for the Sunday night robbery of the McDonald’s restaurant at 123 East Nine Road and the Monday night robbery of the Arby’s Restaurant at 18 East Nine Mile Road. In both robberies, a while male entered and demanded money from the register while also displaying what appeared to be a handgun under his shirt.
All witnesses in the three cases identified Ray as the suspect from a photo lineup, according to Roy.
Anyone with information about the robberies is asked to call the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office at (850) 436-9620.
Pictured top: A bank robbery suspect receives an undetermined amount of cash during a Wednesday robbery of the Bank of America on East Nine Mile Road. Pictured inset: The man was wearing a shirt with a lizard design on the back. Pictured below: The man waits for the teller to read a note. Screen shots from surveillance video provided by the Escambia County County Sheriff’s Office for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
It’s Census Day: Officials Urge North Escambia Area Residents To Be Counted
April 1, 2010
Governmental agencies across the North Escambia area are urging their residents to take 10 minutes on Thursday, April 1 — Census Day — to fill out and mail back their 2010 Census forms if they haven’t already done so. As the official reference date for the once-a-decade civic ceremony, Census Day will serve as the point-in-time benchmark for the nation’s population count for the next 10 years.
It’s important to us that we get an accurate count because that affects our federal funding for this town,” Century Mayor Freddie McCall said recently. “I would like to encourage everybody in Century to fill out these forms and get them back in so we can get a good, true census count.”
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 46 percent of Century residents bothered to mail their census form back to the government in 2000. That compares to the national average of 67 percent in 2000.
Census form help is available at the Century Branch Library or the Jay City Hall. The assistance is available 1p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; and Friday from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the Century Branch Library. Assistance at the Jay City Hall is available from 8 a.m. until noon Tuesday through Friday.
The U.S. Census Bureau mailed or hand-delivered about 134 million 2010 Census questionnaires to households in March. To date, just over half of those households have mailed back their census forms, an important milestone.
Residents still have time to fill out and mail back their 10-question census form, saving the government about $57 for each household that does not have to be visited by an enumerator. If every household across the nation mailed back its completed form, taxpayers could reduce the cost of administering the census by about $1.5 billion, according to the Census Bureau.
Visit With The Easter Bunny At The Library This Afternoon
April 1, 2010
The Easter Bunny will be hopping into Century Thursday afternoon.
The Easter Bunny will be at the Century Branch Library at 4 p.m. Thursday. Children will have the opportunity to visit with the Easter Bunny, hunt eggs, enjoy a story and make a craft.
The Century Branch Library is located at 7991 North Century Boulevard. For more info, call (850) 256-6217
First Baptist Cantonment Youth Spend Their Spring Break Volunteering At Children’s Home
April 1, 2010
A dozen youth from the First Baptist Church of Cantonment spent their Spring Break Wednesday helping the youth at the Florida Baptist Children’s Home in Pensacola.
The youth worked to clean out from around an overgrown pond on the children’s home property. The pond will be used for fishing and to provide activities for the young people that live at the home.
“We had a great time serving the Lord. All of these youth are out on Spring Break this week, so they could have chosen to be doing many other things,” said Drayton Smith, associate pastor at the First Baptist Church of Cantonment.
Pictured above and below: Youth from the First Baptist Church of Cantonment helped the youth at the Florida Baptist Children’s Home clean a pond on Wednesday. Submitted photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Sheriff: Gangs Are In North Escambia; No One Is Completely Safe
April 1, 2010
No one in Escambia County is safe from gangs and gang activity, including residents of North Escambia.
That’s the word from Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan. Wednesday afternoon, NorthEscambia.com sat down for an exclusive interview with the sheriff in his office to discuss the growing gang problem in Escambia County, and specifically how gangs impact North Escambia.
There are 17 active gangs in Escambia County with about 300 members, according to the sheriff. About 80 percent of the crime in Escambia County has a gang connection, he said.
Much of the gang activity in the southern part of Escambia County is organized, while the gang activity in North Escambia is more unorganized. But that’s not a good thing, the sheriff said.
“The unorganized gangs that you have in the north part of the county can be more dangerous than the organized gangs,” Morgan said. When there is no structure to a gang’s leadership, the man with the most money or drugs tends to be in charge, and that can mean a change in leadership from day to day, he said.
“If the guy in charge today is a wacko, he might just decide it’s a good day for a drive-by (shooting),” he said. “It’s like an unguided missile.”
The sheriff termed North Escambia gangs as “hybrids” — not full-fledged gang members of well known national groups like the Bloods or Crips. The hybrid gangs, he said, are gaining more and more members but have not yet become more violent or more organized. “These hybrid gangs don’t have the rules of the national groups.”
Asked if the recent dismissal time brawl at Ernest Ward Middle School could be gang related, Morgan said “We know there are gang members in schools, but there is not gang activity in your schools. But just outside the edge of the schoolyard at every school in the county, the problem exists.”
The sheriff said the school district closely monitors any potential gang activity in school across the county, and they quickly move in to prevent an problems. So far, he said, that strategy has worked well.
It’s no secret that Cantonment and Century have gang members, Morgan said. “Molino is relatively untouched, but there are a few members there.”
Morgan said his department is actively working to curtail the gang problem in Escambia County. He said that residents of the county can take an active roll against gangs by reporting activity and by organizing neighborhood watch programs to be on the lookout for problems.
A person is labeled as a potential gang member if they meeting several criteria, including the wearing of gang colors or symbols, displaying gang signs, wearing gang tattoos, self admission, or the participation in organized crime for the gang.
The sheriff’s comments came following a “Protecting Our Children From Gangs” public forum that was held Tuesday night. The event was sponsored by the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, Escambia County School District and Sacred Heart Hospital.
At that forum, Dr. Karanbir Gill, trauma surgeon and medical director, Sacred Heart Trauma Center, talked out the impact gangs have on the hospital system in our communities due to violent injuries.
Pictured top and top inset: Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan discusses gangs in his office Wednesday afternoon. Pictured bottom inset: A recent fight at Ernest Ward Middle School. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Century Correctional Institution Safe; Compromise Will Prevent Prison Closures
April 1, 2010
Senate Ways and Means Chairman JD Alexander and Senate President Jeff Atwater have agreed to a compromise that will prevent the closing of prisons that had been floated earlier, and put $20 million into the Department of Corrections budget to avoid any job cuts.
The department would also retain discretion on how to fill a new private prison in Santa Rosa County under the agreement between Senate leaders and critics of the earlier plan, said a spokeswoman for Senate Democrats. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, had promoted an earlier plan to fill the newly built private prison in the Panhandle that would have meant job losses at other DOC facilities, stirring up opposition from lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, in areas with lots of prison jobs.
Alexander’s plan would have including closing two state-run prisons and laying off 639 prison guards. He also would have privatized a now-unidentified 1,350-bed prison. The prisons that would be closed, and the 1,350-bed prison to be privatized were not been named. Century Correctional Institution fits that profile, with a maximum capacity of 1,345 prisoners, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Century CI was over capacity with 1,435 inmates as of January 31. Century is not the only prison facility in the state with an approximate capacity of 1,350.
The compromise pleased some law enforcement officials, but left some Democrats and the state’s largest labor union uneasy as the Florida Senate took up its budget Wednesday.
“We have a lot of concerns,” said Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams. “If this leads toward continued privatizations, I can’t stand up and support (it).”
Williams said that he was “really uncomfortable” with the entire plan to open the Blackwater River Correctional Institution, not just the compromise reached Wednesday by Democrats. He also lamented not having an opportunity for a “meaningful review” of the legislation.
Opponents have said the plan to privatize more than 5,000 prison beds could result in more than 1,000 correctional officer layoffs. But Sen. Democratic Leader Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said that the compromise with Alexander was the best Democrats could to with the proposal, which emerged late in the budget process in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
“It has not been an easy situation, but right now, we have what I think is a great compromise,” Lawson said during a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday morning. “What I’ve hammered out here is the best way for us to go into conference. We do not need to go into conference closing the facility. We do not need to go into conference having lost 1,900 jobs.”
Just as quickly, however, Lawson acknowledged that the deal was a temporary fix that would not completely eliminate privatization at state prisons.
“Right now members I certainly hope that you all will support these amendments because it…saves a lot of jobs,” he said. “Now in terms of how do you move forward in the future, we really don’t know.”
But Lawson said Wednesday’s vote on the compromise would not be the end of the conversation and pledged to make sure labor unions had “a seat at the table” as the Senate and House conference on differing budgets.
The compromise was good enough for Florida Police Benevolent Association Vice President Jim Baiardi, who agreed with Lawson that the deal was better than nothing.
“It’s not the best solution out there, but I did what I had to do, I saved my people’s jobs,” Baiardi said. “It’s not the best outcome that we like at this time, but we’re moving ahead.”
Baiardi still chastised lawmakers for even considering the prison cuts, saying “we think it’s very unfair that when these cuts came down, it went on the backs of the state correction officers.”
“It’s wrong. We’ve got a tough job out there,” he said. “Often we consider ourselves the unsung heroes of law enforcement. I don’t think we deserve every session to come up here and be treated like this for the job we do.”
Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, joined Williams in questioning the compromise, however, taking issue with what the Senate would have to not fund in order to save the prison jobs.
On the floor Wednesday, Republicans questioned the compromise too. Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, criticized both the initial plan and the deal, saying the issue wasn’t vetted by committees. Dockery, a candidate for governor, also criticized spending money to get Blackwater open.
“In this amendment, we’re coming up with nearly $23 million out of the existing budget to open a new facility,” she said. “My number one concern is this didn’t go through committees to vet a policy decision of this magnitude, but number two is what effect is this going to have on the existing facilities and the employees of those facilities. By opening this new facility, it’s not in the same geographic region as the existing facilities, so people are going to lose their jobs.”
Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, who chairs the Senate’s Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations, said that any job eliminations would take place over time, noting that about 300 of the Department of Corrections’ 30,000 employees retire or leave their positions each year.
“The way that this is set up is we will be able to transfer employees to other facilities, absorb them through the attrition process,” he said.
The architect of the original plan to close the existing prisons, Alexander, acknowledged that even with the compromise with Democrats, the deal would still increase the number of private prison beds in the state.
“That decision was made a couple years ago when we commissioned this prison to be built,” he said. “We spent $113 million or so of taxpayer dollars to put this prison there, we’ve done contracts with the provider, it was guided in an open bidding process.
“I don’t particularly care about private vs public,” Alexander said. “What I care about are the costs.”
Lawson’s amendment containing the prison was approved on a voice vote, and the budget was later unanimously approved.
Keith Lang, News Service Florida, contributed to this report.
Benefit Fund Established For Wounded Marine Corporal
April 1, 2010
A fund has been set up to raise money for an area Marine that was wounded by roadside bomb in Afghanistan.
On March 20, Marine Corporal Joseph Daniel Palmer was severely wounded in Afghanistan by the improvised explosive device. He lost his right foot and has severe damage to the other leg. Palmer, 24, has a young wife and 15-month old son. He will receive medical treatment at Bethesda Naval Hospital for an extended period of time.
“He knows that things very easily could have been much worse, and is thankful that his life was spared,” said Melissa Moye, Palmer’s sister who lives in Century. “He is in really good spirits, and does not want anyone to feel sorry for him.”
The Santa Rosa County Military Advisory Committee has worked with the family to establish a Wounded Marine Benefit account for Corporal Palmer. Contributions can be made at the Santa Rosa County Teachers Federal Credit Union.
“This young military family and the extended family will continue to go through some trying times. They certainly will incur personal expenses and will need the support of the community,” said Santa Rosa County Commissioner Don Salter.
Palmer is a 2004 graduate of Central High School. He joined the marines in October 2008 and was deployed to Afghanistan in January. He has several relatives in the North Escambia area.
For more information on the memorial fund, contact the Santa Rosa County Teachers Federal Credit Union at (850) 623-3877 or memberservices@srcfcu.org.