Slight Chance Of Rain Today

September 22, 2015

Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:

Today: A slight chance of showers, then a chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1pm. Mostly sunny, with a high near 85. North wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Tonight: A 20 percent chance of showers. Partly cloudy, with a low around 67. Northeast wind around 5 mph.

Wednesday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 86. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.

Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 67. Northeast wind around 5 mph.

Thursday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 85. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.

Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 65. Northeast wind around 5 mph.

Friday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 85. Northeast wind around 5 mph.

Friday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 66. Northeast wind around 5 mph.

Saturday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 83. Northeast wind around 5 mph.

Saturday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 66.

Sunday: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 84.

Sunday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 67.

Monday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 84.

Sex Offender Gets 130 Months In Prison For Failing To Register

September 22, 2015

Lateef Harris, 38, was sentenced Monday to 130 months state prison for failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements by Circuit Judge Linda Nobles.

Florida law requires  that certain individuals convicted of sexually related offenses register with the State of Florida.  This registration provides a database through which the State can track their whereabouts. Harris has been a registered sex offender since 1995 and had previously  been convicted of failure to comply with the registration requirements.  Harris had left  the jurisdiction and was arrested in Georgia.

He was originally convicted of sexual battery by an adult on a victim under 12 in Escambia County, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records.

Bond Set At $1 Million For Cantonment Suspect That Shot At Deputy

September 22, 2015

Bond has been set at $1 million for a Cantonment man that allegedly opened fire on an Escambia County deputy Thursday night before holding deputies at bay during a two hour standoff.

Christopher Allen Payne, 19, is charged with felony assault on an law enforcement officer following the incident in the 1500 block of Crystal Drive.

Payne’s family called for Escambia County EMS, thinking he might be having a heart attack after taking an illegal substance. Sheriff David Morgan said the family believed the man had ingested some type of narcotics, possibly LSD.

Payne kicked his family out of the, barricading himself inside with two rifles and a shotgun, Morgan said. The Sheriff’s Department SWAT team was called to assist, and neighboring homes were evacuated as a  precaution. A Sheriff’s Office hostage negotiator was able to reach Payne on the phone and establish a rapport, Morgan said. Payne was eventually talked into a peaceful surrender.

Payne appeared in Escambia County Circuit Court Monday. He is due to be back in court for an arraignment hearing in just over two weeks.

Fall Senior Parent Night Is Tonight At Tate High School

September 22, 2015

The Fall Senior Parent Night will be held tonight at Tate High School.

Items to be discussed include college applications, financial aid, scholarships, Bright Futures and graduation requirements. The event will take place at 6 p.m. in the Tate high School Cafeteria. For more information, call the school at (850) 937-2300.

Escambia County 4-H Presents Annual Awards

September 22, 2015

Escambia County 4-H recently awarded youth, volunteer and club efforts in the past year.

Youth Awards

Beasley Junior Achievement Award – Leah Rutherford, Gracie Meredith
Intermediately Leadership Award – Dillon Conti
Extension Director Leadership Award – Allison Woodfin
Dave and Sylvia Timberlake Helping Hand Award – Danielle Tinker
Langley Bell Award – Tori Kelson and Karrigan Scott
Margie Gindl Public Speaking and Public Awareness Award – Amanda Tanner
Cecil Guidy Animal Science Award – Kaley Lashley
4-H’er of the Year Award – Jessica Conti and Hannah Thorne

Youth Standards of Excellence

Cloverbud

Nathan Jacobs

Senior

Emerald – Rachel Grammer, Tori Kelson, Amanda Tanner, Danielle Tinker, Michelle Tinker

Silver – Karrigan Scott

Intermediate

Emerald – Dillon Conti, Jessica Conti, Lauren Walsh
Silver – Raven Hollis, Ami Rodgers, Raven Thompson
Bronze – Avery DeStafney

Junior

Bronze – Tanner DeStafney, Brayten Workman

Volunteer Awards

Margie Gindl Volunteer Leader Award – Christine Rodgers
Jean Guidy Volunteer Award – Sarah Jane Conti

Volunteer Standards of Excellence

Emerald – Sarah Jane Conti, Christine Rodgers, Sharon Tanner
Gold – Teresa Myrick

Club Awards

Historian’s Book Award – Cool Clovers 4-H Club, by Ami Rodgers
Treasurer’s Book Award – Cool Clovers 4-H Club, by Dawn VanIderstine
Secretary’s Book Award – Barrineau Park 4-H Club, by Jessica Conti
Scrapbook Award – Escambia County Shooting Sports

Club Standards of Excellence

Emerald – Barrineau Park 4-H Club
Gold – Escambia County Shooting Sports

Traffic Shifts At Scenic To I-10 On Ramp

September 22, 2015

Traffic on the Scenic Highway on ramp to Interstate 10 (I-10) westbound was shifted to the the south beginning Monday night, Monday. The new traffic pattern will be in place until summer 2016.

Tsubooka Hired As Escambia PIO

September 22, 2015

Escambia County has hired Joy Tsubooka as its community and media relations division manager. Her first day on the job will be November 2.

Tsubooka has 10 years of county-level, direct media and community relations experience. Over the last eight years, she has served as the Santa Rosa County public information officer. Previously, she worked as a communications coordinator in the Escambia County Public Information Office, now the community and media relations division. Tsubooka has a BA in Communication Arts from the University of West Florida.

In her position with Santa Rosa County, she was responsible for creating and implementing seasonal campaigns, managing crisis- or disaster-related event information, as well as executing day-to-day internal and external communication strategies. Her communication work was recognized locally when she was selected by a panel of media representatives as the 2009 Florida Public Relations Association Pensacola Chapter Crisis Communicator of the Year and the 2015 Non-profit Communicator of the Year. She also serves as a member of the Florida State Emergency Response Public Information Officer Deployment Team, whose members travel to disaster hit areas to assist local governments with crisis communication needs.

The screening committee for this position was comprised of Escambia County Administrator Jack Brown, Assistant County Administrator Chip Simmons, Escambia County’s Chief of Emergency Management John Dosh, Pensacola News Journal Executive Editor Lisa Nellesen-Lara and WEAR Managing Editor Randy Wood. NorthEscambia.com Publisher William Reynolds was invited to be a part of the committee but was unable to serve due to time constraints.

Tsubooka was selected from a pool of 18 qualified candidates.

Panel Proposes Doing Away With ‘Red Flags’ In Pain Pill Rule

September 22, 2015

Pharmacists would have to get extra training and be encouraged to fill valid prescriptions for controlled substances under a proposed rule revamp aimed at ending the “pharmacy crawl” forced on patients who can’t get their pain medications filled.

But some doctors say the proposed changes to the “Standards of Practice for the Dispensing of Controlled Substances for the Treatment of Pain” don’t go far enough.

A Florida Board of Pharmacy subcommittee on Monday proposed scrapping the rule after hearing complaints from doctors, pharmacists and patients, like a four-year-old kidney cancer survivor whose prescription for pain medication following surgery was repeatedly rejected.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s insufficient,” said Jesse Lipnick, a Gainesville doctor whose specialties include pain management and who served as the Florida Medical Association’s representative on the subcommittee Monday.

The panel agreed to do away with the “red flags” included in the current rule and instead focus on trying to address pharmacists’ fears about filling valid prescriptions for powerful narcotics.

“The Board of Pharmacy recognizes that it is important for the patients of the State of Florida to be able to fill valid prescriptions for controlled substances,” the proposed new regulation begins. “Pharmacists should not fear disciplinary action from the Board or other state regulatory or enforcement agencies for dispensing controlled substances for a legitimate medical purpose in the usual course of professional practice.”

Patients like Robin Haas, who has undergone more than a dozen surgeries on her ankles and neck after two serious car accidents, sometimes travel to more than a dozen pharmacies in a frustrating quest for pain medications. The “pharmacy crawl” has also impacted patients who receive non-opiod drugs such as Adderall, prescribed for attention-deficit disorder.

Pharmacists complain that distributors are limiting their supply of narcotics, forcing the pharmacists to ration their limited stock to their regular patients.

Haas, who is prescribed Dilaudid for chronic pain, said pharmacists have demanded to see her medical records and “treated her horribly.” Going without the medications can cause patients like Haas, already suffering, to experience painful withdrawal symptoms.

“You want to die. You want to be dead,” Haas said.”Withdrawals and the pain, any two alone are horrible. Together, it is your biggest fear. You’re already dealing with this pain on a daily basis. Hand-in-hand with this pain goes depression. Nobody can have this kind of chronic pain day in and day out and not be depressed. Then you have the constant stress and the fear of worrying about, am I going to be able to get my meds to get out of bed at all this month?”

Flipping the rule from its current, negative focus to a more positive approach represents a shift in attitudes towards powerful narcotics, once a scourge in Florida, where travelers from northern states traveled down what became known as “the Oxycontin Express” to purchase pain medications from rogue “pill mills.”

“The changes will help ease some of the anxiety that the pharmacists have,” said Florida Pharmacy Association executive vice president and CEO Michael Jackson, who serves on the subcommittee and who helped craft the original 2002 regulation.

But the changes may do little to eliminate pharmacists’ fears concerning the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which has cracked down on drug stores in an attempt to shut down rogue clinics and stem the prescription drug addiction epidemic.

And the new rule won’t force corporations like Walgreens — which paid an historic $80 million fine related to dispensing of highly addictive narcotics — and CVS to change their policies and procedures, which may be contributing to the problem by making it harder for some patients to get their prescriptions filled.

“A regulatory board does not have that kind of authority to change what goes on in the (corporate headquarters),” Jackson said. “But what we’re doing here will help modify a little bit the behavior of pharmacists that are out there, to give them comfort knowing that this tribunal, this panel, this regulatory board of their peers are taking a different approach to overseeing what pharmacists are obligated to do under Florida laws and rules.”

The pharmacy board’s Controlled Substances Standards Committee could vote on the changes to the rule at its next meeting on Oct. 5. The committee has held two meetings on the issue since June.

While more education about Florida and federal law and an emphasis on filling valid prescriptions could help some patients, some subcommittee members balked at requiring pharmacists to document when they refuse to fill a prescription.

“If pharmacist x doesn’t like you because you have blue hair, that prescription will never be filled in that pharmacy chain ever. That is a problem,” said Harold Dalton, president of the Florida Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, who serves on the subcommittee that met Monday. “That is one of the things we’re dealing with. If one pharmacist is having a bad day, and they deny a prescription for that patient, and we don’t know why because we’re never told, then that patient will never get that prescription.”

But Board of Pharmacy member Jeffery Mesaros, who chaired Monday’s meeting, said that requiring documentation could slow down the process and exacerbate the problem. Pharmacists might be more likely to refuse to fill a prescription if they see that a few of their colleagues have already rejected it, Mesaros said.

“I think that’s going to create the red flags and create the crawl,” Mesaros, a lawyer and pharmacist, said. “It may create a cascade.”

by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida

Scott To Begin Two-Day Recruiting Trip To Kentucky

September 22, 2015

Gov. Rick Scott will fly to Kentucky early Tuesday for two days of private meetings in Lexington and Louisville with unidentified business owners about moving or expanding to Florida.

There won’t be any warm welcome from the top executive of the Bluegrass State for Scott, who has already has lined up at least one Kentucky company to say it’s bringing jobs to Florida.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, will be busy the next two days, said his spokesman Terry Sebastian.

“Gov. Beshear is meeting with a delegation of Taiwanese officials on a substantial deal for Kentucky farmers, as well as announcing an oral health initiative for thousands of Kentucky children,” Sebastian said.

Beshear, who has traded barbs with the Republican Scott over the economies of both states, has previously said the trip for Scott will “waste his time.”

But Scott, who is scheduled to be with staff from his office and Enterprise Florida in Lexington on Tuesday and Louisville on Wednesday, already is poised to announce at least some new jobs while in Kentucky.

Scott’s office declined to discuss the details of the announcement, which will be made Tuesday morning in downtown Lexington.

For Scott, this is his fourth “domestic economic development” mission this year.

Scott earlier went to Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Hartford, Conn. Each location, as with this week’s venture, was in a state with a Democratic governor.

It remains to be seen how successful these recruitment trips will be.

The Philadelphia excursion focused on the continued expansion of Wawa convenience stores in Florida, while attracting more maritime cargo highlighted the stop in Los Angeles.

Bill Johnson, president and CEO of Enterprise Florida, the state’s public-private business recruiting agency, acknowledged last week before a Senate committee that Florida failed to land a “significant” Connecticut-based company, one of “America’s oldest and largest.” He said the unidentified corporation didn’t want to go south of the Georgia-Florida line.

Scott and Enterprise Florida, in hunting for private businesses to expand or relocate to Florida, have been playing up that Florida doesn’t have a personal income tax and is “proud” to be a right-to-work state while targeting Kentucky’s “pro-union, big government policies.”

Two years ago, he wrote a public letter to Kentucky businesses about moving to Florida and two weeks ago Enterprise Florida started running an ad touting Scott’s upcoming visit.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, expressing some of the bitterness that lingers over Scott’s decision to move the headquarters of nation’s largest hospital chain out of Kentucky two decades ago, has used the words “poach” and “plunder” in reporting on the upcoming executive visit.

As CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., Scott relocated the company’s headquarters from Louisville to Nashville in the mid-1990s after publicly criticizing Kentucky’s tax structure.

by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida

Northview High Water Tests Safe; School Returns To Normal Water Use

September 21, 2015

The Escambia County Health Department said Monday morning that the water supply at Northview High School is safe, and the school has retured to regular water use.

Last Wednesday, Principal Gayle Weaver said a device known as a “backflow preventer” failed, allowed a chemical being used to test the system to flow backwards into the fresh water supply in a very diluted state.

From the time of the incident Wednesday through the close of school Friday, students were not allowed to drink the water or wash their hands. The school district provided hand sanitizer and bottled water for students to use, and the water was not used in food preparation.

Multiple samples of the water were tested Thursday and Friday. Those tests took days to complete in the laboratory, with the results first available Monday morning.

According to Escambia County School District Public Relations Coordinator Kim Stefansson, all water tests came back as safe.

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