Donald Edgar Lail
April 17, 2015
Donald Edgar Lail, age 75, of Andalusia, AL passed away on April 16, 2015, in Andalusia. He was a former resident of Jay. Donald was born January 4, 1940, to the late Robert and Mary Lail in Dayton, Ohio. He was a member of the Andalusia Praise and Worship Church of God and he enjoyed woodworking, fishing, and gardening. He was a loving husband, father, grandfather, brother, and friend to those who knew him.
He was preceded in death by his parents; daughter, Vickie Denise Lail; brother, Ronnie Lail; and sister, Mary Jane Salter.
He is survived by his wife of 35 years, Jennie Lail; sons, Jeffrey Lail and Joey (Yonju) Lail; four grandchildren, Brandon, Dena, Diana, and Edgar. He is also survived by brothers, Robert Lail, Kenny (Maggie) Lail, and Richard (Mary) Lail; and sisters, Bernice Barlow and Joyce Courtney and Shirley (Jimmy) Barlow; and numerous nieces nephews and friends.
Funeral services will be held on Monday, April 20, 2015, at 2 p.m. at New Bethel Baptist Church in Jay with Reverend Glen Vaughn officiating.
A visitation will be held from 1 p.m. until service time.
Burial will follow the funeral at Cavalry Baptist Church cemetery.
Active pallbearers will be Jimmy Barlow, Travis Barlow, Joey Lail, Lamanuel Courtney, Lus Earl Lail, and Jerome Lail.
Jay Funeral Home is entrusted with the arrangements.
Barrineau Park Bridge Closed; Perdido River, Escambia River Flood Warning
April 16, 2015
Barrineau Park Road at the bridge crossing the Perdido River into Alabama is flooded due to the rising river. Escambia County has closed the road.
A flood warning has been issued for the Perdido River at Barrineau Park from Friday morning until Saturday afternoon. At 7 a.m. Thursday, the stage was 11.8 feet. Minor flooding is forecast; the flood stage is 13 feet. The river is forecast to rise above flood stage by tomorrow morning and continue to rise near 13.2 feet by early Saturday morning. The river will fall below flood stage by Saturday morning. At 13 feet, the Perdido River begins to leave it’s banks at the parking lot of Adventures Unlimited and threatens several permanently parked travel trailers.
A flood warning has been issue for the Escambia River at Century from late Friday night until further notice. At 8 a.m. Thursday, the state was 14.7 feet. Minor flooding is forecast. Flood stage is 17 feet. The Escambia River is forecast to rise above flood stage by Saturday morning and continue to rise to 18.1 feet by Sunday morning. At 17 feet, considerable flooding of lowlands will occur.
Battle Over Future Of Escambia Fire Services Heats Up
April 16, 2015
There’s a battle of sorts heating up over the future of fire services in Escambia County. Will fire stations be staffed by volunteers? Paid firefighters? Both? Will fire taxes be raised for some, or all? Will fire fighters respond at all to an emergency at your home?
Good Friday morning, there were two house fires in the area served by the Ferry Pass Volunteer Fire Station, but no truck from Ferry Pass ever rolled to either fire due to a lack of volunteers at the time. Escambia County Administrator Jack Brown placed 24/7 paid fire crews at the station to “assist” the volunteers to ensure proper coverage for the district that includes ares such as North Davis Highway, University Parkway and eastern Nine Mile Road. The firefighters are being paid with funds already available in the county’s fire services budget this year.
In over half of the county’s 23 fire districts, volunteers are the first to answer the call for help.
A “manpower summary” report provided to NorthEscambia.com last week by Escambia County show nothing less than a dismal, even a frightening, response level by volunteer fire stations.
(article continues below report, click to enlarge)
That report shows volunteer firefighter stations did not respond at to one-third of all calls and missed 45 percent of critical incidents where life or property were threatened. Wednesday, the Escambia County Professional Firefighters Local union posted the summary information above online, and relayed it in a Twitter message to several media outlets. But now that report has come under fire as being inaccurate in regards to North Escambia stations.
Using the report as ammunition, the union is calling for paid staffing at more of the county’s fire stations, and they will push the Escambia County Commission for a $50 increase in the MSBU (municipal services benefit unit) to fund the firefighters.
“It’s a small price to pay,” Nick Gradia, union president said Wednesday. “It would increase the $85 now paid by each resident up to $135, but that’s less than many areas.” Gradia and union envision the county’s volunteer firefighters continuing their service, working alongside the paid firefighters for an even better response to emergencies.
“This is not about getting rid of the volunteers. This is about making sure there is a guaranteed response from the fire station when a resident makes a call for help,” Gradia said.
In North Escambia — specifically the Beulah, Century, McDavid, Walnut Hill and Molino fire stations — the numbers provided last week (above) show a poor response by volunteers, including a 47 percent “understaffed” response to critical emergencies by the Walnut Hill Fire Station.
According to Escambia Fire Chief Pat Grace, the “understaffed” response computations were based on any response where a fire apparatus did not roll out of a station with at least three firefighters on board.
As NorthEscambia.com investigated the county report, we found apparent errors as the numbers relate to the rural North Escambia departments. For instance, apparatus used in the north-end include brush trucks and, in Walnut Hill, a medical squad — all of which have only two seats and can never respond with three firefighters. At fire stations in the north end of the county, one firefighter may respond from the station in a fire engine, while three or more of certified firefighters may respond directly to the incident scene in their private vehicles, but that would have been included in the report as an inadequate response, according to county officials.
In a letter dated Wednesday to each of the Escambia County Commissioners, union secretary Dimitri Jansen said the report data (above) provided to commissioners “could be construed as incorrect”, specifically among the North Escambia stations. Other inaccurately reported data could show a non or inadequate response when a specific apparatus is dispatched but instead response was in a different vehicle, or, in the case of Walnut Hill, Century and Molino, the response came from the district’s substation, the letter states.
Jansen’s letter admits that the problem with insufficient responses is an issue with departments in the south-end of the county, not among the northern, more rural departments.
“Overall the responses for North Escambia have been very successful and should be considered a model for any fire district within Escambia County,” Jansen wrote to commissioners. “It has never been our intention to inflate or deflate the data we provided to you in order to further any agenda. It is both for the citizens of Escambia County as well as that of Escambia County Fire Rescue best interest to provide you and the public with an accurate analysis of the large gap in fire protection.”
Gradia said it had been brought to his attention that data for north-end stations might not be completely accurate due to reporting criteria and different response methodology, but a volunteer response problem still exists in North Escambia, despite better responses than south end stations.
“We are not as concerned about the north end where they are doing a much better job,” Gradia said.
With the $50 fire tax increase, he said the union would like to see an additional 24/7 advanced life support fire crew stationed in North Escambia, likely in Molino or McDavid, to supplement the volunteer response, along with a 24/7 paid crew already in place in Cantonment and a daytime paid crew already in Century.
But Escambia County Public Safety Director Mike Weaver disagrees.
“I see nothing in the near future, the next 5-7 years at least, that shows any additional paid crews are needed north of Nine Mile Road,” Weaver said. He said the county “manpower” report being circulated was inaccurate for the North Escambia volunteer fire stations.
An internal Escambia County public safety report obtained Wednesday by NorthEscambia.com paints an entirely different picture for several fire stations than the report circulated by the firefighter’s union.
(article continues below report, click to enlarge)
The report details response from all fire stations in the county during fiscal year 2014. The report was generated after each and every questionable response was analyzed in the county’s fire services software, eliminating almost all inaccurate data for each station.
“This report more accurately reflects the true picture of department responses,” Weaver said. Rather than showing 47 percent inadequate response by the Walnut Hill Fire Station, for instance, the newly researched report (above) shows Walnut Hill missed zero percent of calls.
“We should be looking at the northern stations, particularly Walnut Hill and McDavid, and see what they are doing right,” he said. “Some of these stations are a perfect model of how the volunteer system can work”.
Weaver said paid-only crews would never work in northern stations. For instance, if a paid crew placed in Walnut Hill responded to a structure fire in the Molino district, it would leave 200 square miles in the Walnut Hill district without any response. “You are always going to have to rely on volunteers at some of these stations.”
But one thing is clear on both reports — volunteer non-response at several south-end stations is a problem, and the volunteer only model is simply not working at those stations.
“It’s just absolute garbage that the union is trying to push out the volunteers,” Gradia said. “Nothing could be further than the truth. Volunteer and paid can work together and compliment each other in a fire station.”
In addition to Ferry Pass, the union is currently pressing for the fire tax increase to fund career crews to higher volume stations in Bellview, Myrtle Grove, Innerarity Point and West Pensacola.
“We know that changes are necessary,” Escambia County Administrator Jack Brown said. “The north end is doing fine, but we must do something to provide adequate protection to the citizens of the south end. We need stations in the south where paid firefighters and volunteers are working together.”
Escambia County Commission Chairman Steven Barry said the commission will begin to hammer out the fire services issues at a workshop meeting on April 23.
Pictured: Volunteer firefighters battle a full-involved house fire on Highway 97 in Davisville last November. NorthEscambia.com file photos, click to enlarge.
Evers’ School Gun Bill Likely Dead
April 16, 2015
A Senate bill that would allow school superintendents to tap employees or volunteers to carry concealed weapons on school property was effectively killed by a committee Wednesday, meaning that two high-profile proposals blending firearms and education could fail during the legislative session.
The Senate Education PreK-12 Committee agreed to temporarily postpone — a procedural move similar to tabling — the “school safety” bill (SB 180). Because the committee is not scheduled to meet again, the legislation is bottled up and can’t go before the full Senate. It also can’t be added to another bill on the Senate floor.
The bill was postponed as a courtesy to Sen. Greg Evers, the Baker Republican who sponsored the measure, according to Education PreK-12 Chairman John Legg, R-Lutz. It would have failed if the panel voted on it, Legg said.
“It did not have the votes in this committee,” he said.
Technically, the language could still end up before the Senate. House lawmakers could attach the proposal to another bill, then send it over to the Senate. The upper chamber would then be free to vote on that legislation — but Legg said he thought that move was unlikely.
“If it was (amended) onto something, it would put that bill in severe jeopardy,” he said.
The House companion (HB 19) to Evers’ bill has cleared all of its committees but is also essentially dead as a stand-alone bill without its Senate counterpart.
Bills that would lead to guns at schools have traditionally faced an uphill challenge in the Senate, which is more moderate on such issues than the House. With supporters saying it would improve school safety, the Evers bill called for allowing trained volunteers or employees to be able to carry guns. Those people would need to have backgrounds in the military or law enforcement.
Another controversial measure that would allow people with concealed-weapons licenses to carry guns on the campuses of Florida colleges and universities (SB 176) also has been bottled up in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I’ve polled the members of the Senate, and there doesn’t seem to be too much support for that bill,” committee Chairman Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, said last week.
Evers represents the North Escambia area.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida
Escambia Man Convicted On Child Porn Charges
April 16, 2015
A federal trial jury convicted Thomas Victor Sway, 24, of Pensacola, of receipt, attempted receipt, and possession of child pornography.
At trial, the government presented evidence that, between November 2012 and May 2013, Sway received and possessed child pornography, including videos depicting images of minors less than 12 years of age engaged in sex acts. Undercover law enforcement officers discovered and downloaded the pornographic files from a public file sharing network that could be traced to Sway’s computer.
After agents executed a search warrant at Sway’s residence, a forensic analysis of his hard drive revealed at least 140 video files containing images of child pornography. Additionally, the system file history indicated a pattern of Sway using dozens of distinct search terms to locate child pornography on the internet.
Sway faces a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years in prison. Sentencing has been scheduled for June 30 before Chief United States Judge Casey Rodgers in Pensacola.
United States Attorney Marsh praised the work of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Pensacola Police Department, and the other agencies that are part of the Northwest Florida Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, whose joint investigation led to the charges in this case. I
Editor’s note; The “Inmate” watermark on the pictured mugshot was placed by the Santa Rosa County Jail where Sway is being held.
Tate Students Get Real World Voting Experience
April 16, 2015
Students at Tate High School got a little real world voting experience Wednesday. They voted for class officers and student council officers during lunch, using real ballots and real voting equipment provided by the Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Office.
Students cast 501 ballots, the Elections Office was able register 21 students to vote in real elections.
Absentee ballots will be available Thursday for students that missed voting on Wednesday, and the winners be announced on Friday.
Tate Juniors also cast ballots for their prom court, king and queen.
Courtesy photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Overtime Looming For Lawmakers; Won’t Be Able To Wrap Budget By May 1
April 16, 2015
Ending weeks of speculation, Republican legislative leaders Wednesday acknowledged they won’t be able to wrap up budget negotiations before the scheduled May 1 end of the 2015 session.
“I don’t see a way to end the session on the 60th day,” Senate budget chief Tom Lee told The News Service of Florida.
“I would agree,” House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, told reporters later Wednesday when asked about Lee’s comment.
Uncertainty about the federal government’s funding of the Low Income Pool, or LIP, program is at the heart of the impasse. The program funnels money to hospitals and health providers that provide care for large numbers of uninsured and low-income Floridians.
Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, federal officials and House and Senate leaders have waged a public war over the LIP negotiations, which President Obama’s administration declared Tuesday are tied to an expansion of Medicaid.
The Senate included $2.2 billion for a modified LIP program in its budget plan and set aside another $2.8 billion in federal Medicaid-expansion funding to create a program that would help low-income Floridians buy private health insurance.
The House spending plan does not include money for the LIP program, with key lawmakers saying that including the money would be premature. And House leaders, including Crisafulli, have rejected outright proposals to expand coverage through Medicaid or the proposed Senate program.
Scott sent Obama a letter earlier this year stating he would not use any money from the state’s general-revenue fund to make up any shortfalls, should the federal government reduce or cease its contribution to the LIP program.
The battle over the health-care issues has erupted in a flurry of memoranda and e-mails sent by Crisafulli, Senate President Andy Gardiner, the Scott administration and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and has cast a pall over the 2015 session in a year when lawmakers expected to have a $1 billion budget surplus.
“I’m trying to keep the conversation civil, keep it focused in the present. But there is a huge policy divide here. And I don’t see how you bridge it in the time that we have available. In fact, you cannot bridge it in the time we have available. So the only question now in my mind is, are we in extended session or are we in special session?” said Lee, a Republican from Brandon who served as Senate president when the LIP program was first established nearly a decade ago.
Crisafulli said it is too early to tell whether lawmakers will extend the current session or pack up and come back some time later to reconcile the budget. Lawmakers must pass a new budget before July 1, when the new fiscal year starts.
Because of the schism over health-care spending, legislative leaders have not yet determined the overall allocations for each area of the budget. Crisafulli said an extended session would be possible in the unlikely event that budget negotiations were already underway by May 1.
“But if we’re not, there’s no reason to kid ourselves. We’ll finish up the business that we have on the policy and then we can come back and do a budget at a later time,” he said.
Other Medicaid-related concerns may also deepen the health care divide.
Lee said he is waiting for more information about the Medicaid program, which now enrolls nearly all beneficiaries in managed-care plans.
“We have mounting actuarial evidence that the Medicaid managed care rates in Florida are actuarially unsound. That’s a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar problem on top of the backfilling that would make LIP whole,” he said.
Florida schools will also have 15,000 more children than originally anticipated, meaning that lawmakers will have to come up with more money to meet Scott’s priority of funding education at record-high levels, Lee said.
“So we’re getting a lot of additional news as the session progresses that’s making it much, much more difficult to resolve our differences,” Lee said. “And that’s kind of what gave rise to doing a budget that’s lean and mean. The challenge with that is sometimes it’s hard to pass a budget that funds nobody’s priorities. What’s the motivation to hit the green button?”
One way to resolve the budget divide would be “if nobody gets what they wanted,” Lee said.
“The (Senate) president doesn’t get a health care solution. The governor doesn’t get his tax cuts. And we put $2 billion in reserves and wait and see what the federal government says. We would have a budget in place. We would just have $2 billion in reserves. And we could come back here and we could deal with tax cuts and health care funding at the appropriate time. That is an option that we could certainly consider collectively,” Lee said.
But Crisafulli made clear he doesn’t want to dip into reserves to cover health-care expenses.
“I’m not interested in using reserves. Reserves are something that are there for that day that comes along that you’re not prepared for, whatever comes along, whether it be hurricane season. It could potentially be an irresponsible move to hit the reserve fund in a magnitude that would affect that,” he said.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida
House To Back Experimental Drug Bill For Terminally Ill
April 16, 2015
The House appears poised to approve a bill that could help clear the way for terminally ill patients to use experimental drugs — but the measure will not include medical marijuana.
House members Wednesday took up the bill (HB 269), filed by Rep. Ray Pilon, R-Sarasota, and could approve it as early as Thursday. Dubbed the “Right to Try Act,” the bill would help make available experimental drugs to people who have terminal illnesses and are expected to die within one year.
The measure spurred debate Wednesday when Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, offered an amendment that effectively would have allowed those patients to also have access to medical marijuana. Gaetz said the proposed amendment would follow the underlying premise of the bill that terminally ill patients should be able to make decisions.
“I want to give them less government,” Gaetz said. “I want to get out of the way and see what happens.” But Gaetz withdrew the amendment after Pilon and other lawmakers expressed concern about adding the medical-marijuana issue to the bill.
–END–
Florida Wildlife Officials Support Black Bear Hunts
April 16, 2015
Black bears are closer to being placed on the state’s wildlife hunting calendar for the first time in more than 20 years.
The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission agreed Wednesday to allow hunting for black bears during one week this fall, due to a growing number of bear and human conflicts across the state. The commission made the decision after hearing more than two hours of comments for and against the proposal.
The hunt, which is planned to begin Oct. 24, will be formally set at the commission’s June meeting. The hunt will last at least two days, with the timeframe shortened as quotas are reached in different regions of the state.
“Of the 41 states that have black bears, 32 of them already allow hunting in some form or fashion,” said commission Vice Chairman Brian Yablonski of Tallahassee during the meeting at Florida A&M University. “And all those states have managed to do it in a way that is sustainable and that works to preserve and keep a healthy, thriving bear population.”
Speakers opposed to reviving bear hunts told commissioners that the proposal won’t reduce conflict between the animals and humans. Instead, opponents contend the state should consider relocating problem bears and that people need to be held more responsible for leaving out unsecured food and trash that attracts bears.
Jennifer Hobgood, a wildlife abuse campaign manager with the Humane Society of the United States, said the goal of reducing the state’s bear population by about 20 percent a year is unsustainable without knowing the actual number of bears in the state.
“The FWC may cite calls to the agency as an index of public tolerance, but such a narrow assumption fails to account for Floridians’ genuine support for bear protection and for non-lethal conflict mitigation programs,” Hobgood said.
Florida has an estimated 2,500 black bears in four regions — the eastern Panhandle, Northeast Florida, east-central Florida and South Florida — where the hunts would be conducted. Each area had more than 200 bears by a 2002 estimate.
The agency is undertaking updated bear counts that should be available for two of the four regions this summer, which will allow the agency to adjust harvest numbers, said Diane Eggeman, director of the commission’s Division of Hunting and Game Management.
People attending the meeting Wednesday were greeted on the Florida A&M University campus by about a dozen protesters, including one in a bear suit.
Leslie Carlile, a retired middle-school teacher and a proud “Florida cracker” from Tallahassee, said the state should consider alternatives, such as sterilization of bears, as the state’s growing human population will continue to encroach into wildlife areas.
Proponents claim the hunt will help conserve the overall black bear population.
Allan Tucker, a hunter from Tallahassee, said the increase in conflicts is a “direct result of the social experiment called halting bear hunting.”
“We have created a generation, or multiple generations, of welfare bears who are no longer scared of humans, but instead look at humans as a place to get food,” Tucker said.
National Rifle Association Southeastern Regional Director Al Hammond said the state needs to employ all options to manage the bear population to both lower interactions with humans and reduce vehicle-bear collisions.
Hammond also suggested the state lower the hunt permit fee from $100 to $50 for Florida residents.
“We truly don’t have a track record of what the harvest will be, and we do want hunter participation,” Hammond said.
The permits are $300 for non-Florida residents.
There would be a one-bear-per-hunter limit, with daytime hunts prohibited within 100 yards of any game-feeding stations. Hunters would be allowed to use bows, crossbows, muzzle loading guns, rifles, pistols, revolvers and shotguns.
Commissioners said the high profile nature of the proposal has only heightened efforts to clamp down on people leaving trash and dog food unsecured in communities encroaching upon wildlife habitat.
Commissioner Liesa Priddy of Immokalee said approval of the hunt will not decrease other efforts to manage human-bear conflicts.
“I’d rather see more bears in the environment and hunting than the amount of bears we’re euthanizing, because we’re bringing them into the neighborhoods,” added Commissioner Ron Bergeron of Fort Lauderdale. “I don’t think any person should have the right to endanger their neighbor.”
The proposal, which would set a “harvest objective” of about 200 black bears, is intended to reduce the risk of dangerous interactions between bears, which were removed from the state’s threatened list in 2012, and the state’s growing population.
The state agency claims the bear population has been steadily and rapidly growing the last 15 to 20 years.
Black bears were placed on the state’s threatened list in 1974, when there were between 300 and 500 across Florida. At the time, hunting black bear was limited to three counties. In 1994, the hunting season was closed statewide.
Meanwhile, the state has recorded a 400 percent increase in bear-related calls over the past decade.
by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
Pictured: Protesters gather outside the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission meeting in Tallahassee Wednesday, sowing their opposition to a proposed black bear hunt in the state. Photo by Tom Urgan, NSF, for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Tate, Jay Advance In Baseball Districts; Tate Baseball Beats Pace
April 16, 2015
SOFTBALL DISTRICT PLAYOFFS
District 1-7A
Tate 9, Crestview 0
The rain held off long enough for the Tate Lady Aggies advance to the District 1 -7A championship game by defeating the Crestview Bulldogs 9-0 on Wednesday night at Niceville High School.
Tori Perkins led with way with a strong performance on the mound by throwing another no hitter and striking out 13. Lauren Brennan blasted a 2-run homer in the sixth to help solidify the win. Savannah Rowell had 3 RBI and a run; Perkins had three RBI; Hayden Lindsay was 2-3 with two runs and a triple.
The Lady Aggies (21-4) advance to the championship game Friday at Niceville at a time to be determined based upon weather.
District 3-1A
Jay 16, Freeport 6
The Jay Royals advanced to the 3-1A district championship with a 16-6 win over Freeport in the semifinals Wednesday. Jay exploded in the fifth with 12 runs. Avery Jackson 3-3, 2R, 4 RBIs 2B; Kolby Bray 2-4, 2R, 3RBIs; Dana Blackmon 3-5, 2R, RBI; Michaela Stewart 2-5, R, RBI, 2B.
BASEBALL
Tate 6, Pace 3
Tate beat Pace Wednesday, 6-3. Trace Penton 1-4, RBI; Hunter Worley 2-2, 3 RBI; AJ Gordon RBI; Branden Fryman 1-3; Mark Miller 1-3, Sawyer Smith 1-2.