Escambia Fire Rescue Offers Free Smoke Detector Installation
December 11, 2016
Escambia Fire Rescue is offering to install a new smoke detector with a 10-year battery at no charge for local residents.
The Escambia County Commission has purchased over 1,100 smoke detectors since January in hopes of helping the community reach the goal of every home in the county having a working smoke detector.
Escambia Fire Rescue Chief Patrick Grace stressed the importance of having a properly installed and maintained smoke detector year round, but especially with colder weather by saying, “As residents rely more heavily on heating devices in the colder weather, they will have additional fire risks in their homes. Statistics show that a working smoke detector in your home can make the difference in escaping a fire without injuries and with your life.”
Saturday, Escambia County Fire Rescue installed over 100 smoke detectors in 71 homes in the Lakewood area in the southern part of the county, the largest single day installation to date in the county.
For information about obtaining a home smoke detector, call 850-595-HERO (4376).
Courtesy photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Cantonment Knights Of Columbus Receive International Award
December 11, 2016
Knights of Columbus, Santa Maria Council 7402 of Cantonment, St Jude’s Parish has again earned the distinction of Star Council, one of the organization’s top awards, for the 2015-2016 fraternal year.
The award recognizes overall excellence in the areas of membership recruitment and retention, promotion of the fraternal insurance program, and sponsorship of service oriented activities. The award was presented to the membership by District Deputy John Recke at a special ceremony held recently.
In announcing the local winner of the Star Council Award, Carl A. Anderson, chief executive officer of the organization said, “Your dedication to the Order is seen in the high standard of excellence you have achieved. At the same time, I encourage you to carry forward this enthusiasm to meet the challenges that will face the Knights of Columbus in the years ahead. May this award be a reminder and an inspiration to the members of your council to continue to promote the ideals of Columbianism for the good of the Church, your community,and the Order”.
“Receiving the Star Council Award for three years in a row is quite an honor for us. We’re extremely proud of this accomplishment,” proclaimed Grand Knight Brian Hagensick, head of the local council. The Knights of Columbus is the world’s largest Catholic lay organization. It provides members and their families with volunteer opportunities in service to the Church, their communities, families and young people.
Byrneville Elementary Holds Christmas Carnival (With Gallery)
December 11, 2016
Hundreds attended the annual Byrneville Elementary School Christmas Carnival Saturday at the Byrneville Community Center.
The event included plenty of carnival games for the kids, food, entertainment and the ever popular basket auction.
For a photo gallery, click here.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Faith Chapel Founder Swede Danielson Passes Away
December 11, 2016
N. L. “Swede” Danielson, co-founder of Faith Chapel Funeral Home, passed away Thursday. He was 94.
Danielson was a U. S. Navy veteran who honorably served his country in World War II. He was stationed at Whiting Field and Okinawa, Japan. While in Pensacola, he met and married Myrtle Davis of Brewton and together they moved to Kansas
His love for the funeral business started at age 14 while working with his uncle Arvid Danielson. Upon returning to Kansas, he completed mortuary college at Kansas City College of Mortuary Science in 1949 and worked again with his uncle. The couple returned to Pensacola in 1950 with their first son (Ray) and he went to work at Fisher Pou Funeral Home with the ultimate dream of one day owning his own funeral home.
Swede worked five jobs at one time while working to fulfill his dream. He worked as a painter, monument salesman, gravedigger, and ambulance driver — all while working at his job at the funeral home. In 1964 his dream came true after meeting the late Tommy Smith. In 1965 they partnered to open Faith Chapel Funeral Home on Beverly Parkway.
He surpassed his dream by opening the second Faith Chapel Funeral Home location in December 1999, and an onsite crematory in 2009, both in Cantonment. Danielson formally retired in 2012 and was the oldest active funeral director in the State of Florida.
Funeral services will be held at 12:30 Tuesday at Faith Chapel Funeral Home North with Dr. Jerry Passmore officiating and Dr. Ted Traylor assisting.
For the complete obituary, click here.
In lieu of flowers, donations in the memory of Swede Danielson may be made to Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen or Manna Food Bank.
Accidental Shooting Claims The Life Of A Toddler
December 10, 2016
A young child died in an apparent accidental shooting Friday night.
The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office responded to a home in the 2200 block of Brookpark Road, just off East Kingsfield Road, at 7:21 p.m. They discovered the child suffering from at least one gunshot wound. The child was transported by Escambia County EMS to West Florida Hospital where the child was pronounced deceased, according to Rhonda Ray, spokesperson for the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office.
Ray said it appeared the shooting was accidental and occurred after the child found a loaded gun in the residence, but she said the incident remains under investigation.
Ray declined to release the age or gender of the child, but described it as a toddler.
Further details have not yet been released.
NorthEscambia.com photos by Kristi Barbour, click to enlarge.
Sunny And Cool Today
December 10, 2016
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 55. Wind chill values between 20 and 30 early. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph.
Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 34. Calm wind becoming northeast around 5 mph.
Sunday: Partly sunny, with a high near 65. Northeast wind 5 to 10 mph becoming southeast in the afternoon.
Sunday Night: A 40 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 55. Southeast wind 5 to 10 mph.
Monday: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 74. South wind 5 to 10 mph.
Monday Night: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 61. South wind around 5 mph becoming west after midnight.
Tuesday: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 72. Southwest wind around 5 mph.
Tuesday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 59. Southwest wind around 5 mph.
Wednesday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 71.
Wednesday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 48.
Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 57.
Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 38.
Friday: A 20 percent chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 58.
Senate Bill Would Allow Openly Carrying Guns
December 10, 2016
Senate Judiciary Chairman Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, introduced a controversial measure Friday that would allow the more than 1.67 million Floridians with concealed-weapons licenses to openly carry handguns.
Steube’s bill (SB 140), which is filed for the 2017 legislative session, also would expand the places where people with concealed-weapons licenses are allowed to carry guns.
It would allow them to be armed at legislative meetings; local government meetings; elementary and secondary schools; airport passenger terminals; and college and university campuses. License holders would still be prohibited from carrying weapons at locations such as police stations, jails, courtrooms, polling places and most bars.
During the 2016 session, the open-carry measure was approved 80-38 in the House but failed to advance through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was chaired by former Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami. Diaz de la Portilla lost a re-election bid in November.
A bill that would have allowed people with concealed-weapons licenses to carry guns on university and college campuses also died in the Senate Judiciary Committee during the 2016 session. This week, Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, reintroduced a House version of the campus-carry measure (HB 6005) for the 2017 session. Also, Rep. Jake Raburn, R-Lithia, has proposed a bill (HB 6001) that would allow people with concealed-weapons licenses to bring guns into the passenger terminals of airports.
by The News Service of Florida
Clean Energy Group Allowed In Gulf Power Rate Increase Case
December 10, 2016
Despite objections from Gulf Power, the Tennessee-based Southern Alliance for Clean Energy was allowed this week to intervene in the Pensacola-based utility’s rate case at the Florida Public Service Commission.
The alliance, which has often clashed with utility companies, filed a petition last month seeking to formally take part in the case.
Gulf Power, which is seeking to raise base rates by $106.8 million, objected to the petition and said the alliance had not shown that its interests or the interests of its members would be “adversely affected” by the case. But Public Service Commission member Jimmy Patronis, who is serving as the prehearing officer in the case, issued an order Thursday allowing the alliance to intervene.
“The purpose of this proceeding is to determine the fair, just and reasonable electric rates to be charged by Gulf,” the order said. “The substantial interests of SACE’s (the alliance’s) members are affected by this proceeding, since increases in the cost of electricity directly affect their monthly electric bills.”
Gulf Power, which provides electricity to about 450,000 customers in Northwest Florida, filed the rate-increase proposal in October with the Public Service Commission. If approved, the increase would take effect July 1, 2017.
by The News Service of Florida
FHP Seeks Ford Explorer Involved In Hit And Run Crash
December 10, 2016
The Florida Highway Patrol is searching for a hit and run driver after a shopping center crash Friday afternoon.
According to the FHP, the driver of a Ford Explorer rear-ended a Kia Soul at a stop sign in the parking lot of Publix on University Parkway. The driver of the Explorer fled the scene on University Parkway.
The driver and three passengers in the Kia Soul suffered minor injuries.
The driver of the Ford Explorer was described as a white male, possibly in his 30’s. The vehicle was described as a mid 1990’s to early 2000’s Ford Explorer that was black or navy blue in color. It has a white tape residue around the passenger side window, missing paint at the front of the roof line and rust across the top. The rear of the vehicle has a white decal across the center of the window, a red decal in the right bottom and another decal
in the bottom left corner of the window.
Anyone with information on the crash or the Ford Explorer is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (850) 433-STOP or email joshuatucker@flhsmv.gov. Tipsters can remain anonymous.
Pictured: Surveillance images of a Food Explorer involved in a hit and run crash Friday afternoon.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: The Plot Thickens
December 10, 2016
If the Florida legislative session were a television series — one of the serial types that have taken over in the last several years — this week would serve as the season premiere, where all of the plot lines were being put into motion.
Gov. Rick Scott and House Speaker Richard Corcoran worked to sell their top priorities for the 2017 session. The perennial skirmishes over gun bills and capital punishment started to boil. And there were those subplots that might play a role later, in ways that are still unclear: Attorney General Pam Bondi’s role in the Trump Administration, for example.
Meanwhile, lawmakers began their training for when the curtain officially rises in March, as the House held “Legislator University” and the Senate geared up for its first week of committee meetings. Soon enough, all of the plot lines that have started up will come together in May. Unless, of course, the show gets an extension that no one wants.
LAW AND ORDER
Associated Industries of Florida’s annual conference offers a chance for state leaders to get the powerful lobbying group behind their top priorities for the legislative session. There was never a doubt that a priority for Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, was an overhaul of the state’s judicial branch. And he argued that it should be one of Associated Industries’ top priorities as well.
Business groups need to realize that the courts — not the Legislature and not Scott — are the main obstacle to free-market reforms, the speaker told the conference, held in Tallahassee.
“If you don’t wrap your heads around the problem that we’re having with the Supreme Court, you’re just going to be doing this over and over again, and at some point you’re going to run out of a good run of conservative leaders in the (legislative) chambers that are willing to work with you,” he warned.
Corcoran also laid out his wish list for the Constitution Revision Commission, which is set to begin working in April to propose changes to the state Constitution for voters to consider in the 2018 elections. As speaker, Corcoran gets to name nine of the 37 members.
In addition to a judicial term-limits proposal, Corcoran said he would like the commission to consider trying to overrule a Supreme Court decision that struck down private-school vouchers funded directly by public money and seek to roll back the courts’ involvement in redistricting under anti-gerrymandering amendments approved by voters in 2010. Corcoran suggested a redistricting commission — an idea favored by Democrats — could be one way to go.
Scott told the conference that more tax and fee cuts could be coming in his budget proposal, which will be unveiled in piecemeal fashion between now and the beginning of the session. Scott has already proposed pay raises for state law-enforcement officers, which he pitched during an appearance the same day in Tampa.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Scott, whose $11.7 million proposal would boost the salaries of some 4,000 officers such as state troopers, Capitol police and wildlife law-enforcement officers.
Citing a 45-year low in Florida’s crime rate and a rash of recent police killings nationally, Scott said a raise for sworn law-enforcement officers —- whose last raise came in 2014, when all state workers received increases — was overdue.
Scott also refused to rule out granting Florida Department of Corrections officers a similar raise.
“They’re hard workers, correctional officers. State workers work really hard,” said Scott, adding he would consider further proposed raises as he rolls out additional aspects of his budget plan
.
GUNS AND (LETHAL INJECTION) DRUGS
Florida State University President John Thrasher didn’t waste any time this week staking out the same position he and other college presidents have held in the past about guns on campus: They’re not necessary.
While he was a Republican legislator, Thrasher also worked against a bill that would have allowed gun owners with concealed-weapons licenses to bring their firearms to state colleges and universities.
“I opposed it. I killed it. I have worked against it since then,” Thrasher told the FSU faculty this week during his “state of the university” address. “And you have my promise that I will work against it this year also.”
The so-called “campus carry” bill, which in the past has been approved by the House, has already re-emerged as an issue for the 2017 session. Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, filed a new version of the bill (HB 6005) on Wednesday.
A companion bill to that measure — which also contains several other items off the National Rifle Association’s legislative wish list — was filed Friday by Senate Judiciary Chairman Greg Steube, R-Sarasota.
Meanwhile, another hot-button issue drew renewed attention this week when word emerged that the state decided to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit a landmark case in which the justices struck down a death-penalty sentencing process because it gave too much power to judges instead of juries.
Bondi’s office will appeal a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court in the case of Timothy Lee Hurst, according to a motion asking a judge to put on hold a resentencing hearing for Hurst. That resentencing hearing was ordered by the Florida Supreme Court in October.
The state is objecting to the Florida court’s interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in January in the Hurst case, according to the document filed last week in Escambia County.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hurst’s case found that Florida’s system of allowing judges, instead of juries, to find the facts necessary to impose the death penalty was an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury. The court sent Hurst’s case back to the Florida high court.
Amid all the legal battling about the death penalty, executions have been on hold.
But records obtained by The News Service of Florida suggest that, whenever resumption of executions happens, state officials could be planning a dramatic change.
The Department of Corrections has spent more than $12,000 this year stockpiling three drugs likely to be used to kill condemned prisoners, according to the records.
The state has never previously used any of the three drugs it has been purchasing since last year, even as Florida’s death penalty remains in limbo after a series of rulings from the courts. The new triple-drug cocktail would be the only one of its kind among the states that rely on similar procedures to kill prisoners.
One of the drugs that Florida could be planning to use as the critical first dosage, used to anesthetize condemned inmates, has never before been used as part of the three-drug execution procedure in the U.S., according to a death-penalty expert at the University of California, Berkeley Law School.
Department of Corrections officials would not comment on whether the agency is considering a change to the lethal-injection protocol or whether the state was forced to seek new drugs due to some pharmaceutical manufacturers in recent years banning the use of their products for executions.
“The death penalty is our most solemn duty. Our foremost objective of the lethal injection process is a humane and dignified process,” agency spokeswoman Michelle Glady said in an email.
MS. BONDI GOES TO WASHINGTON?
Whether the legal strategy of the state will remain in the same hands next year wasn’t at all clear this week. There were rumors that Bondi, who is barred by term limits from running for re-election in 2018, might be headed to the administration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Bondi gave few indications about whether she was really a candidate to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a position informally known as the drug czar. That speculation is in part fueled by her work as attorney general in trying to crack down on pill mills and synthetic drugs.
“I’m not going to confirm or deny anything right now. I went to New York at the request of the president of the United States-elect,” Bondi told reporters Tuesday after a state Cabinet meeting. She met with Trump the previous week. “I was up there meeting with him, and frankly I don’t think anyone should come out of those meetings and talk about anything that was said in those meetings.”
Scott, asked if he’s considered the type of candidate he’d consider as a replacement for Bondi if she were to resign, also indicated he wasn’t into the speculating.
“I have a total of about 2,900 appointments to boards and commissions. I focus on the things that are in front of me,” Scott said after the Cabinet meeting. “I hope that Attorney General Bondi stays.”
STORY OF THE WEEK: Gov. Rick Scott and other state leaders outlined their legislative priorities as preparations for the spring legislative session began.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “We don’t want this to turn into Lord of the Flies. But at the same time, we have to be cognizant of that.”—House Appropriations Chairman Carlos Trujillo, R-Miami, explaining to House lawmakers that any proposed local projects in the budget will have to be paid for by cutting spending somewhere else.
by Brandon Larrabee, The News Service of Florida