Martha Sue Augustus
September 28, 2015
Martha Sue Augustus of Century passed away on September 15, 2015. She was born on February 12, 1949, to Dewey and Mazzie Knowles Smith in Flomaton. She was a loving wife, mother, grandmother, sister, and friend. She will be truly missed.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Dewey and Mazzie Smith; brother, John Smith and son, John McShea.
She is survived by her husband, Kevin L. Augustus of Century; Gerard McShea of Jay; grandchildren, Connor McShea of Jay and Dariann McShea of Pensacola; brothers, Billy (Judy) Smith of Flomaton and Donnie (Sandra) of Phoenix, AZ; sisters, Wanda Lou Standeford of Flomaton and Betty Faye McCall of Flomaton and numerous friends and family.
Private family services will be held at a later date.
Jay Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Only 14 Projects Submitted So Far For Potential Escambia RESTORE Funding
September 27, 2015
The deadline is Wednesday for interested parties to submit ideas to possibly receive a share of millions of dollars in RESTORE Act funding for Escambia County. The act provides for the allocation and use of funds gained through civil penalties from the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill.
As of Friday, there were 137 current registrations in Escambia RESTORE project submission portal, with 91 active project entries. So far, only 14 projects have been submitted as the Wednesday deadline approaches.
Projects submitted for RESTORE act funding as of Friday were:
- Cantonment Community Center
- Community Gathering Center
- Raise the Homes
- Hampton Lakes Flooding Issue
- Dune Walkover Protection Project
- Brownsville Nature Trail
- G.R.U.B.
- Sidewalks, Bike Lanes, Curbs and Gutters Everywhere
- Bayou Chico Restoration
- Escambia County Regional Sediment Management Plan
- STEM Story
- Digital Radiology at Nemours
- Multi-Purpose Suite of Water Quality Models for Escambia County
- Pedestrian Safety on Main Street
The County’s RESTORE project submission portal website launched on July 1. The submission deadline is September 30.
The Escambia County RESTORE Advisory Committee will meet Tuesday, October 20, at 4 p.m. in the BCC Chambers, 221 Palafox Place, to discuss the submitted projects and the next step in the process. The public is invited and encouraged to attend. The Committee is tasked with reviewing projects and submitting recommendations to the Escambia Board of County Commissioners for consideration.
To submit a project idea today or for more information, visit restore.myescambia.com or contact Shelly Marshall, RESTORE coordinator for Escambia County, at (850) 595-3460 or email restore@myescambia.com.
Pictured: A RESTORE project information meeting held recently in Cantonment. NorthEscambia.com file photo, click to enlarge.
Gulf Low To Bring Rain, Elevated Chance Of Minor Flooding
September 27, 2015
Rain chances increase by late Sunday, with rain expected to continue through at least the early part of the week as an area of low pressure forms and drifts north across the central Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center gives the area a low chance of development over the next 48 hours and a medium chance over the next five days.
Regardless of tropical development, forecasters expect local impacts to be primarily heavy rain, rough surf, and an increase in potentially life threatening rip currents. According to the National Weather Service Office in Mobile, up to 2-4 inches of rain can be expected across the southern half of the area with locally higher amounts possible.
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
Tonight: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Cloudy, with a low around 70. East wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%.
Monday: Showers and thunderstorms. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. High near 81. East wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%.
Monday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Cloudy, with a low around 71. East wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%.
Tuesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Cloudy, with a high near 83. Northeast wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Tuesday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 69. East wind around 5 mph becoming calm after midnight.
Wednesday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 82. Northeast wind around 5 mph.
Wednesday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 67. North wind around 5 mph.
Thursday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 83. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.
Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 65.
Friday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 83.
Friday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 63.
Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 84.
Escambia Man Gets 30 Years For Killing Elderly Man
September 27, 2015
An Escambia Count man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the second degree murder of an elderly man.
Marcus Ferrell Toler, 37, pleaded guilty to beating 76-year-old Ben Stallworth to death in 2014. He later attempted to change his guilty plea, but that motion was denied by a judge.
In March 2014, deputies responded to a disturbance in the 1700 block of West Lakeview Avenue where they found Stallworth was sitting on his couch with obvious injuries. He was transported to a local hospital by ambulance were he was pronounced deceased.
Escambia County Weekly Traffic Alerts
September 27, 2015
According to the Florida Department of Transportation, drivers will encounter traffic disruptions through Sunday, October 4 on the following state roads in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties as crews perform construction and maintenance activities.
- 10 (I-10) eastbound between Davis Highway (Exit 13) and Scenic Highway (Exit 17). Alternating lane closures began Friday, and will continue for approximately two weeks. The closure will be in effect from 8 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. as crews place asphalt on the outside shoulders of the roadway.
- Chief’s Way (State Road 294) from west of Corry Field Road to west of West Navy Boulevard will be temporarily closed Tuesday, September 29 through Friday, October 2. The temporary closure will allow crews to perform shoulder construction, remove concrete pavement and replace it with asphalt. Corry Field Road and West Navy Boulevard will be utilized as a detour route. Variable message boards are in place to alert drivers of the change in traffic pattern.
- U.S. 90 (Scenic Highway) emergency repair at the intersection of Scenic Highway Circle continues. No lane closures are anticipated, however, traffic flaggers will be on site to assist with traffic control as construction vehicles enter and exit the work area.
- I-10 between U.S. 90 Alt. (Exit 5/W Nine Mile Road) and U.S. 29 (Exit 10), including the on and off ramps at W Nine Mile Road and Pine Forest Road (State Road 297), on Thursday, October 1 and Sunday, October 4 from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Slow moving vehicles will be used as crews stripe the roadway. Drivers may experience minor delays. Drivers are reminded to watch for workers and equipment.
Drivers are reminded to use caution, especially at night, when traveling through a work zone. All planned construction activities are weather dependent and may be rescheduled in the event of inclement weather.
Big Brothers Big Sisters License Plate Now Available
September 27, 2015
A Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) specialty license plate has been released by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Proceeds from the BBBS tag support their programs to bring caring mentors into the lives of children. The group says that youth today will be the professionals, leaders, and caregivers of tomorrow, and BBBS’s vision is to invest time, talent, and treasure in today’s youth to maximize the quality of life in the future.
This specialty plate is now available at the offices of the Escambia County Tax Collector. The annual cost of the tag is $25 in addition to regular registration and service fees.
Open House This Week, Grand Opening Next Week For Ernest Ward Middle School
September 27, 2015
Two big events are planned for Ernest Ward Middle School.
An Open House for parents and students will be held from 6-7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 29.
An official grand opening ceremony will be held on Tuesday, October 6 at 10 a.m. The even will include remarks from school district officials, the architect and construction company.
NorthEscambia.com photo.
State Board Of Education Members Push For Higher Standards
September 27, 2015
State Board of Education members are pushing for Florida officials to use the transition to a new standardized test as an opportunity to boost how well public school students have to do on the exam to be judged “proficient.”
Several members used their comments at a board meeting on Monday to urge Education Commissioner Pam Stewart to recommend more stringent “cut scores” to the board in the coming weeks. The new scores will be set as part of the state’s move to the Florida Standards Assessment, or FSA.
“The FSA test score is the only objective piece of information the state provides to parents about how their individual child is doing,” said Gary Chartrand, a member of the board and a recent chairman. “Some states, like Massachusetts, New York or Wisconsin have little or no gap between their state results and their national test results. Florida should move in this direction.”
The cut scores are the latest controversy to emerge over the FSA, which was dogged by a botched rollout earlier this year. Technical problems, including a cyberattack, caused widespread delays on an online portion of the test in March.
An independent report commissioned by the Legislature recently said the test was valid for use to evaluate teachers and grade schools, but cautioned against weighing it too heavily in making decisions about whether students can graduate or be promoted from grade to grade.
While Florida has often been viewed as a laboratory for school reform, some groups have taken aim at how the state’s standards on test scores compare to national exams like the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In a report issued last year and based on 2011 data, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation gave the state a “C” in what the group called “truth in advertising.”
A more recent report by Achieve, a national nonpartisan group that calls for higher standards, found that there was a 16- to 20-point gap between how many Florida students were found proficient on the national tests in 2013 and the state’s former standardized test that year.
Michael Olenick, another member of the Florida education board, tied the push for higher scores to Gov. Rick Scott’s focus on the economy.
“But the reality is, without great education reform, we’ll never have great economic reform,” he said.
The board will ultimately decide what to do with the cut scores after receiving Stewart’s recommendations, which will also be reviewed by the Legislature. But John Padget, vice chairman of the board, indicated there was “a huge gap” between what board members wanted and what technical committees advising Stewart on cut scores were recommending.
“I’m just expressing my frustration that the process has left us and left you in an awkward position,” Padget said.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida
Friends Of The Library Plan Book Sale Ends Today
September 27, 2015
Friends of West Florida Public Library, a non-profit support organization of the West Florida Public Library, will continue its Big Fall Book Sale and Silent Auction Sunday at the downtown Main Library at 239 N. Spring Street. Thousands of hardcover, paperback, and collectible books will be available for purchase, plus a variety of DVDs, CDs, puzzles, and other items. Proceeds are used to fund programs and enhancements at WFPL branches.
Sunday, is the final day of the Book Sale, with free admission and the popular $5 Bag Sale from noon to 3pm.
Book Sale items include thousands of generous donations from the public and some library books retired from circulation, many of them now out-of-print. Novels and mysteries are sorted by author or into genres like Science Fiction and Westerns. Other book categories include arts and entertainment, children’s, cookbooks, history, holidays, home and hobbies, literature, foreign language, military, modern living, nature and gardening, religion, science, sports, technical, and travel. There are also recorded books, magazines, and other media for sale.
The Collector’s Corner will feature an assortment of signed books, pre-1950s books, books by local and Florida authors, and other special books that are great for gifts. These items are priced as marked and must be checked out separately, so shoppers paying by check should bring two of them.
Payment by cash or check is preferred. Credit cards are accepted for sales of $20 or more. All profits are used to support the West Florida Public Library branches and programs.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Whistling Past The Graveyard
September 27, 2015
Evidence of widespread Republican angst cast a shadow from the nation’s capital to the Sunshine State this week.
U.S. House Speaker John Boehner on Friday rocked the political world with his announcement that he is resigning from his seat late next month.
Succumbing to pressure from conservatives, Boehner’s decision to call it a day came at the height of an intraparty GOP Game of Thrones over a possible government shutdown.
The Ohio Republican said he had planned to serve as speaker only until last year but held onto his post “to provide continuity” to his caucus and the U.S. House.
“It is my view, however, that prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable damage to the institution,” Boehner said in a statement.
Florida Republicans are just as fractious.
The ongoing battle over the Florida Legislature’s congressional map, rejected by the state Supreme Court, dragged on in a Tallahassee courtroom this week. Republican lawmakers’ failure to reach consensus on the map during a special session last month is giving political observers the heebie-jeebies as they ponder the Legislature’s ability to craft a new Senate map next month.
Meanwhile, veteran state lawmaker Nancy Detert announced she intends to quit the Senate two years early and head home in pursuit of greener pastures on the Sarasota County Commission. Detert, a moderate Republican, pinned her decision, in part, on future GOP legislative leadership that she sees as “intolerant, inflexible and too rigid.”
And Republican Party of Florida leaders reached a compromise of sorts on a plan that originally would have forced presidential wannabes to show up at a party fall fete or be kept off the state’s primary ballot in March. Some GOP critics of the original plan, the brainchild of the state’s party chief, likened it to blackmail.
Many Republicans find the fractiousness disturbing.
“The party is deeply divided on the issues and plagued by a surplus of demagogues on the one hand and a deficit of effective leaders on the other. These dangers are compounded by the lack of discipline that comes from large majorities,” J.M. “Mac” Stipanovich, a longtime Florida GOP operative, said. “We put the best face on all this by calling all it a healthy clash of ideas and telling ourselves that all will come out right in the end. My grandmother would have called that whistling past the graveyard.”
FUSSING AND FEUDING
The drama over Florida’s congressional map played out in a Tallahassee courtroom yet again this week.
Legislative aides who drew a map of congressional districts backed by the state House defended the plan Thursday, even as they conceded that other alternatives might also have positive qualities.
The testimony came on the first day of a hearing before Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, who will decide which of seven plans — or which combination of aspects of those plans — will be recommended to the Florida Supreme Court to break a logjam over lines for the state’s 27 congressional districts.
What happened in the courtroom also underlined the complexity of the legal challenge, in which the House and Senate — both controlled by Republicans — have offered competing proposals for how the districts should be drawn. A coalition of voting-rights organizations and a group of voters known as the “Romo plaintiffs” have their own ideas.
“It just makes it a little longer, but it is kind of pleasurable to watch the House and Senate fuss with each other,” said David King, a lawyer for the voting-rights organizations that have spent years locked in a legal battle over the map.
The House has backed using a “base map” drawn in seclusion by aides before a special redistricting session held by the Legislature last month. That session collapsed over differences between the House and the Senate over how much lawmakers could change the base map, which was drawn in response to a July Supreme Court decision striking down current districts for violating a voter-approved ban on political gerrymandering.
But the voting-rights organizations and the Romo plaintiffs have argued that the proposals put forward by the Legislature redraw the lines in a way that actually makes Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo’s Miami-Dade County seat safer without endangering Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a popular GOP politician in South Florida.
“Let me be clear: Our job was not to draw the best way; it was to draw a compliant way,” House staffer Jason Poreda said under questioning from a lawyer for the voting-rights groups. “I recognize that there could be other ways to have drawn that district, but it doesn’t impugn the way that we decided to do it.”
DETERT HOMEWARD-BOUND
“No-nonsense Nancy” Detert, a straight-talking Republican with an independent streak, announced her widely anticipated decision to leave the Senate in 2016, and she timed Thursday’s announcement in advance of a special session next month to draw new Senate districts.
“I got to thinking, ‘I would like to put it behind me and put it to rest once and for all, but probably it’s a good idea to do that before we start drawing maps,’ ” Detert, R-Venice, told The News Service of Florida. “Because then, I would have had more questions about whether I’m drawing a map to benefit myself — everyone will know the answer is no.”
Her plans have been closely monitored because of their potential impact on the bitter race to become Senate president after the 2016 elections. The race pits Detert’s longtime ally, Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, against Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart.
Detert said she didn’t expect her departure to change the outcome.
Detert supports abortion rights and has opposed school vouchers. She also chairs the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee and sits on the board of the economic-development agency Enterprise Florida.
Detert, who has served in the state Legislature for 15 years, has earned kudos for pushing laws to help foster children. While senators typically have four-year terms, redistricting in 2012 caused Detert to have a two-year term and then to run again. That also made her eligible to serve 10 years in the Senate until 2018, rather than the standard eight.
Despite her successes, Detert said the time is coming when an independent streak like hers will be a greater liability in the Legislature.
“I’ve been able to do a lot of great things thanks to the leadership I’ve had in the Senate,” she said. “But when I look to the future, I don’t see an atmosphere I could flourish in. … I think we have leadership coming in that is intolerant, inflexible and too rigid.”
SUNSHINE, OR ELSE
Florida Republican leaders walked back a proposal that would have required GOP White House hopefuls to show up at the state party’s “Sunshine Summit” in November if they wanted to make it onto the 2016 presidential primary ballot.
A revised rule, approved by the RPOF’s executive board in 35-1 vote Friday, will give candidates three options if they want to participate in Florida’s winner-take-all GOP primary in March: Show up at the fall meeting, pay a $25,000 fee or gather petitions from voters.
State Chairman Blaise Ingoglia originally wanted to require candidates to submit their qualifying papers for the primary at the Sunshine Summit or be banned from the ballot.
The rule approved Friday “gives clear options to candidates while empowering the grassroots of our great party,” Ingoglia said in a statement.
As late as Wednesday, Ingoglia defended his original proposal.
The GOP candidates need to throw some red meat to the party faithful in Florida this year if Republicans want to win back the White House, Ingoglia implied in an op-ed published on the website Context Florida.
“In 2016, Florida will have unprecedented influence in the general election as the largest, most diverse swing state in the nation. Republicans cannot win the White House without winning the state of Florida, and to win, we need the grassroots of our party active, engaged, and motivated,” he wrote.
But some Republicans thought the strong-arm tactics could have backfired by providing perfect cover for anyone but former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio or Donald Trump — the current GOP frontrunner, who also has Florida ties — to boycott the state, and spend their campaign cash elsewhere.
Keeping candidates who probably wouldn’t fare well in Florida off the ballot would do them a favor by allowing them to avoid the embarrassment of a poor showing, according to Stipanovich.
“It gives me the perfect excuse not to do what I don’t want to do anyway. So, thank you, baby Jesus,” he said.
STORY OF THE WEEK: The wrangling over congressional redistricting continued as Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis heard testimony in the drawn-out legal battle.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I think it is short-sighted, if not selfish, for the party leadership to consider depriving Republican voters in Florida of their full ability to influence the selection of America’s next president because of some silly desire to hold a debate.” — Veteran GOP operative J.M. “Mac” Stipanovich, on a proposal that would have required Florida GOP presidential candidates to attend a state party function in November to appear on the primary ballot next year.