Still A Chance Of Rain For Tonight
April 28, 2013
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
- Tonight: A chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1am, then a slight chance of showers. Patchy fog after 1am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 60. South wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light and variable in the evening. Chance of precipitation is 50%.
- Monday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 80. Calm wind becoming northwest around 5 mph in the afternoon.
- Monday Night: Patchy fog after 1am. Otherwise, mostly clear, with a low around 57. South wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.
- Tuesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after 8am. Patchy fog before 8am. Otherwise, partly sunny, with a high near 82. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph in the afternoon.
- Tuesday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Patchy dense fog after 1am. Otherwise, partly cloudy, with a low around 58. South wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.
- Wednesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Patchy dense fog before 8am. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a high near 80. Light and variable wind becoming south 5 to 10 mph in the morning. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
- Wednesday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Cloudy, with a low around 61. Southeast wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.
- Thursday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Cloudy, with a high near 81. North wind 5 to 10 mph.
- Thursday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Cloudy, with a low around 61. East wind around 5 mph becoming north after midnight.
- Friday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 77.
- Friday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 57.
- Saturday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 78.
- Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 53.
- Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 79.
Operation Blister Pack: Another North Escambia Resident Arrested
April 28, 2013
Another North Escambia resident has been arrested in connection with Operation Blister Pack 2.
Steven Daniel Kite, age 35 of North Hwy. 99, Century, was charged with felony drug possession. He was released from the Escambia County Jail on a $15,000 bond.
At the time Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan announced the results of Operation Blister Pack 2 at a news conference last week, arrest warrants were still outstanding on about 20 people.
The operation targeted 76 individuals on methamphetamine and pseudoephedrine related charges. Many of those arrested were involved with drug groups dubbed “The Village Group”, centered around “The Village” area of Forrest Street and Lakeview Avenue in Cantonment; and “The Ayers Group”, a group centered around Ayers Street in Molino, according to the Sheriff’s Offfice.
For an earlier story about Operation Blister Pack 2, click here.
Job Fair To Be Held Monday
April 28, 2013
A World of Possibilities Job Fair will be held Monday from 2 until 6 p.m. at the Pensacola Bay Center.
This no-cost public event will take place on the third floor of the arena and will be accessible by Gate 2. Employers representing healthcare, communications, retail, education, transportation, manufacturing, hospitality, correctional, accounting and more will be on-site recruiting talented individuals. Attendees are advised to dress to impress and bring copies of their resume.
Employers scheduled to participate in the job fair include:
1. Florida Fish & Wildlife
2. Express Employment Professionals
3. Spectrum House, Inc.
4. Goldring Gulf Distributing
5. Clear Channel Broadcasting
6. Ingalls Shipbuilding
7. Workforce Escarosa
8. PSC Student Job Services
9. Pep Boys Auto
10. Pensacola State College HR
11. Aerotek
12. Lowe’s Home Centers, Inc.
13. Escambia County Sheriff’s Office
14. Landrum Staffing
15. Domino’s Pizza
16. Payroll Management, Inc.
17. Regions Bank
18. UTC Aerospace Systems
19. United Cerebral Palsy of NWFL
20. Maxim Healthcare Services
21. Camelot Academy
22. Lifeguard Ambulance Services
23. Buckle Stores
24. Lakeview Center, Inc.
25. University of West Florida HR
26. Kelly Services
27. Springhill Suites by Marriott Pensacola
28. Two Men and a Truck
29. Pensacola Metro Treatment Center
30. Global Business Solutions, Inc.
31. Mundy Companies
32. All Risk Insurance, Inc.
33. West Corporation
34. U.S. Navy Officer and Reserve Programs
35. GEO Group—Blackwater River Correctional
36. Mediacom Communications
37. Western & Southern Life
38. Coastal Nursecare of FL
39. Covenant Hospice
40. CEREX Advanced Fabrics, Inc.
41. AGS Installations
42. TLC Caregivers
43. Navy Federal Credit Union
44. Satellites Unlimited, Inc.
45. Gulf Power Company
46. Loomis
47. Waffle House
48. Tom Thumb Food Stores
49. Outokumpu
50. Escambia County
51. Cox Communications
52. Crossmark
53. Emerald Coast Utilities Authority
54. PSA Healthcare
55. West Florida Hospital
56. Priton, LLC
57. Enterprise Rent-A-Car
58. Verizon Wireless
59. American General Life & Accident
60. Kaiser Realty by Wyndham Vacation Rentals
61. H2 Performance Consulting
62. Burger King Restaurants
Tate High Showband Marches In San Antonio’s Fiesta Flambeau Parade
April 28, 2013
The Tate High School Showband of the South marched in the 2013 Fiesta Flambeau Parade Saturday night in San Antonio, Texas.
The night parade is recognized as the largest illuminated parade in the country. With the theme “Celebrating San Antonio” an estimated 600,000 people were predicted to attend the parade, but the threat of thunderstorms cut attendance. But the parade was halted about two-thirds of the way along its route due to storms.
Pictured: The Tate High School Showband of the South marches in the 2013 Fiesta Flambeau Parade Saturday night in San Antonio, Texas. Image courtesy KLRN TV San Antonio for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
State Employees Getting A Raise
April 28, 2013
State employees would get a raise of at least $1,000 under a deal struck Saturday by House and Senate negotiators, as the final pieces of the state budget fell into place.
Under the plan agreed to by Senate Appropriations Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and House Appropriations Chairman Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland, employees making up to $40,000 a year would receive a $1,400-a-year raise, though it wouldn’t kick in until Oct. 1. Employees earning more than $40,000 would see their annual salary boosted by $1,000, again beginning Oct. 1.
If signed by Gov. Rick Scott, the pay increase would be the first for state workers in six years. About 35 percent of state employees would also receive a $600 merit bonus.
“I think this is the best day for state employees in almost seven years,” said Doug Martin of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
How to boost compensation for state employees after state revenues were squeezed by the Great Recession has been one of the issues facing lawmakers for weeks. Scott proposed a larger performance-based bonus, but no raise; lawmakers wanted to come up with some way to increase pay and have a merit component.
“Certainly, we would like to have more, but that’s far better quite frankly than what we had anticipated,” said Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee.
The House and Senate also agreed to give state law enforcement officers an additional 3 percent pay raise, with those who have served for five or more years getting 2 percent on top of that. Lawmakers are trying to stem the tide of officers leaving agencies like the Florida Highway Patrol.
“We’ve had an issue, particularly with the FHP but with some other state law enforcement as well, where we spend a lot of money training the troopers, and then they get hired away by local government because they’re in high demand,” Negron said.
The leaders also agreed to pay $5 million to cancel a contract with Xerox to upgrade all of state government’s email systems to one unified platform — $2 million less than the state’s formal settlement with the company. The Senate agreed to a House proposal to take $5 million from state disaster funding to pay Xerox.
“We think that that’s a fair position and fair settlement, and I feel comfortable that will resolve the issue,” McKeel said.
The agreements essentially end a line-by-line examination of the budget spending items. But there is no agreement so far on the budgetary fine print that specifies how certain portions of that funding can be spent.
by The News Service of Florida
Book Sale Nets Profits For Friends
April 28, 2013
The annual Friends of the Library Spring Book Sale was held this weekend in the new downtown library. The sale included books of all kinds – hard cover, soft cover and paperback – along with CD’s, DVD’s, magazines and puzzles.
All proceeds from the used book sale benefit West Florida Public Library system.
Pictured: Shoppers at the Friends of the Library Book Sale on Saturday afternoon. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Critical Need For Some Items At Manna Food Pantries
April 28, 2013
Manna Food Pantries is critically low on items need to feed the hungry in our area.
Items needed now include:
- Canned meats (tuna, chicken, etc.)
- Soups (meat & veggies)
- Breakfast foods (individually packaged oatmeal, grits, etc.)
- Canned fruit
- Peanut Butter (12 oz. or less)
Items can be cropped off at 116 East Gonzalez Street in Pensacola.
Tate Grad Golightly Named All-Sunbelt Conference
April 28, 2013
University of South Alabama women’s golf senior Kristen Golightly was named second-team all-Sun Belt Conference, the league announced Thursday.
Golightly, a graduate of Tate High School, finished with a 76.48 stroke average in 27 rounds this season after turning in a career-low 3-under par 69 in the final round of the SBC Championship to earn a career-best third-place finish at the tournament with a three-round, even-par total of 216. She earned three top-five finishes, and finished in the top 10 in two additional tournaments this season.
“I am very happy for Kristen making the all-conference team, she is very deserving,” head coach TJ Jackson said. “From day one she has worked extremely hard in all aspects of what it takes to be a successful student-athlete. Her take-no-shortcut work-ethic and team-first attitude is the makeup that any coach would want for their players to have, and in Kristen’s case those qualities allowed her to improve her golf game each year and succeed in the classroom.
“Because of her work-ethic and the pride that she takes in being a part of this team, Kristen has been a natural leader for the team not just this year but for most of her time as a Jaguar. Kristen has led the team in stroke average the past two seasons, which is quite an accomplishment, but the intangibles mentioned above are just as important. I am very proud of her for what she has accomplished here at South Alabama and for her recognition of being named to the Sun Belt all-Conference team.”
Golightly is the first Jaguar to earn all-conference honors since Elin Andersson in 2008. She played golf for four years at Tate High, and she was on the Lady Aggies softball team as a three-year starter as catcher.
Golightly is the daughter of Chris and Vicki Golightly
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: House, Senate Agree On Health Care, Justice Budgets
April 28, 2013
As Senate President Don Gaetz and House Speaker Will Weatherford met in the middle of the Capitol’s fourth floor Wednesday, they celebrated a tidy ending to two potentially messy issues.
A short time earlier, the House and Senate gave final approval to ethics and campaign-finance bills, crossing those issues off a list of legislative priorities for this year’s session. That left the fate of the bills up to Gov. Rick Scott, amid rumblings that he could play hardball if lawmakers don’t approve his priorities such as giving $2,500 across-the-board pay raises to teachers.
Gaetz and Weatherford, however, expressed confidence that Scott would not veto measures such as the ethics-reform bill.
“I think the need to raise the standard of public conduct in this state stands on its own as a moral imperative,” said Gaetz, R-Niceville. “And we’re confident that the governor shares the same sense of urgency that the people of Florida share as Speaker Weatherford and I have listened to people all over this state tell us that they want this bill passed, they want this bill signed and they want this bill to be the law.”
But Scott’s willingness to veto bills is one of many unresolved questions still lingering as the next-to-last week of the session ended Friday.
Perhaps the noisiest questions centered on whether the House and Senate will be able to agree on a plan to expand health coverage for low-income Floridians. But legislative leaders also still needed to finalize myriad details of a roughly $74 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year — details that swarms of lobbyists watched intently.
ALL ABOUT ETHICS AND ELECTIONS
Gaetz and Weatherford have pushed all session for changes in the state’s ethics and campaign-finance laws. But those types of issues can be tricky for lawmakers, who have first-hand experience in complying with ethics laws and need to raise buckets of campaign cash to get elected.
A deal on the issues emerged quickly Wednesday, after being negotiated in private. The ethics bill (SB 2), at least in part, would bar elected officials from taking advantage of their positions to get taxpayer-funded jobs and block lawmakers from lobbying state agencies for two years after they leave office.
The campaign finance measure (HB 569), meanwhile, would eliminate a type of political funding vehicle known as “committees of continuous existence,” or CCEs. Contributions to the committees have been difficult to track, and critics also say CCEs have become a way for some lawmakers to subsidize their lifestyles.
The bill also would increase limits on individual contributions to candidates. Contributions are currently limited to $500, but that amount would go to $3,000 for statewide and Supreme Court campaigns and $1,000 for other candidates.
Scott, however, has already raised objections to the increased limits on contributions, though it remains unclear whether that uneasiness will lead to a veto.
“No one’s shown me a rationale for raising these limits,” Scott said. “So I don’t know why we’d be doing it.”
The Senate this week also approved a bill (HB 7013) aimed at fixing voting problems that again made Florida the butt of jokes after the 2012 elections. The bill, which must go back to the House, includes steps such as giving county elections supervisors the option of offering as many as 14 days of early voting and allowing more flexibility in choosing early-voting sites.
While Republicans touted the bill as addressing the elections system’s problems, Democrats said it didn’t go far enough.
“Republicans don’t want real elections reform, they don’t want to own up to their mistakes — they just want to cross this off their list and go home,” said Scott Arceneaux, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party.
A HEALTHY DEBATE — WELL, SORT OF
Gaetz is fond of saying it “takes three” to get agreement on legislation. And nowhere is that more evident than in a battle about expanding health coverage, with the Senate and Scott in agreement and the third player, the House, taking a far-different approach.
The House on Friday approved its plan to offer $2,000 health subsidies to targeted groups of low-income people as an alternative to expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act. That came a day after House Republicans rejected going along with a Scott-backed Senate plan that would rely on billions of dollars in federal Medicaid money to offer private health-insurance coverage.
Each day, reporters ask House and Senate leaders whether they can resolve the differences. And each day, the leaders give non-committal answers.
But after about five hours of floor debate this week, House Republicans have shown no signs of moving off their position. They say their plan, dubbed the “Florida Health Choices Plus” program, would be a free-market approach to providing health care and also warn that the state shouldn’t rely on federal Medicaid money that eventually could be reduced.
“What happens when we are forced to pick up a tab that we cannot afford?” asked Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, during a debate Thursday.
The majority’s stance, however, faced heavy criticism from House Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey. Democrats repeatedly said House Republicans were ideologically driven and that hundreds of thousands of low-income Floridians could suffer.
“The war on Obamacare is really what this comes down to,” said Miami Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez, referring to the more-common name for the Affordable Care Act.
BUDGET INCHES ALONG
Lawmakers can talk all they want about the other bills, but really, truly, the only bill they have to pass before going home next Friday is a budget.
But negotiations between Senate Appropriations Chairman Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and House Appropriations Chairman Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland, were relatively slow-going this week. The budget chiefs took over the talks from conference committees Tuesday evening and met again Wednesday to swap deals on some relatively minor points — and then didn’t plan to meet again publicly until Friday night.
Throughout, the sticking points remained largely the same: The two sides have to come to an agreement about how to divide $480 million in pay raises for education personnel; the House wants higher university tuition rates, while the Senate wants frozen tuition and more student aid; both sides have their own ideas on how to overhaul Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals.
And there are a raft of smaller items, including some member projects — the very things Scott seemed to warn about Thursday when he talked about the spending plan.
“As you know, in this budget, I’ve started to see a lot of special member projects,” Scott said. “This is the first time since 2006 we have a surplus. I want to make sure that we spend the money well. … I’m responsible for all 19.2 million Floridians, and I want to make sure we get a good return on investment.”
Lawmakers seemed to be readying for weekend negotiating sessions for the second straight week in hopes that a final deal could be reached by Tuesday. With a legally required 72-hour “cooling-off period,” Tuesday is the deadline for presenting a budget so lawmakers can end the session on time next Friday.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Lawmakers approved ethics and campaign-finance reform bills that have been priorities of House and Senate leaders.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I like being married.” — Gov. Rick Scott, when asked about a bill that would revamp the state’s alimony laws.
By The News Service of Florida
Hinote, Patterson To Wed
April 28, 2013
Austin Derek Patterson and Summer Sheree Hinote, both of Flomaton, are pleased to announce their engagement and forthcoming marriage.
The bride-elect is the daughter of Greg and Kelley Hinote of Flomaton and the granddaughter of C. J. and Erline Boutwell of Flomaton, Rita Hinote of Brewton, and Alfred Hinote of Arkansas. Summer is a 2010 graduate of Flomaton High School and is pursuing a dual degree in elementary education and special education at the University of West Florida.
The prospective groom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Clint Patterson of Flomaton, and the grandson of Darlene Adams and the late Thomas Adams, Jr. of Flomaton, Dr. Larry and Wanda Patterson, of Bay Minette. He is the great-grandson of Thomas Adams, Sr. Austin is a 2012 graduate of Flomaton High School and a graduate of Jefferson Davis Community College’s air conditioning and refrigeration technical program. He is currently employed with Parker & Sons, Inc.
The couple will exchange vows on May 4, 2013, at 4:00 p.m. at Little Escambia Baptist Church in Flomaton. All family and friends are invited to attend.