Statewide Amber Alert Issued For Missing 2-Year Old
September 2, 2018
Bratt Road Bridge Closed Almost Nine Months With No Work
September 2, 2018
The Bratt Road Bridge over Canoe Creek has been closed for nearly nine months, and it will be several more weeks before work begins on a replacement bridge.
The current wooden-support bridge was constructed in 1956 and was closed by FDOT December 6 after it failed an inspection.
The Florida Department of Transportation is set to award a contract to replace the bridge on September 26. Once construction begins, it will take up 90-120 days to install a temporary bridge and open it to traffic.
Once the temporary bridge is opened, construction will begin on a new permanent concrete bridge.
The bridge averaged 425 vehicles per day prior to closure.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
One Injured In Highway 29 Incident Early Sunday
September 2, 2018
One person was transported to the hospital following an incident on Highway 29 in McDavid early Sunday morning.
At about 12:45 a.m., Escambia Fire Rescue and Escambia County EMS were dispatched to the report of a single vehicle wreck on Highway 29 about two miles north of Highway 164. The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office also responded to a reported disturbance following the crash.
Authorities discovered a southbound Ford pickup truck had crossed the median and rotated into a ditch alongside northbound Highway 29. The Florida Highway Patrol responded but did not work the incident as a traffic crash because there was no property damage.
A female was transported by Escambia County EMS to Sacred Heart hospital in Pensacola, but exactly how she was injured was not immediately clear.
Further details were not released by authorities.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
60 Percent Of Sunday Showers And Thunderstorms
September 2, 2018
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
Sunday: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 1pm. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 87. Southeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.
Sunday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71. Calm wind becoming east around 5 mph.
Labor Day: Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 1pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 90. East wind around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Monday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 71. East wind around 5 mph.
Tuesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 86. East wind around 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%.
Tuesday Night: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 72. East wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Wednesday: Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 89. Southeast wind 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Wednesday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 72. East wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Thursday: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 90.
Thursday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly cloudy, with a low around 71.
Friday: A 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 90.
Friday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 71.
Saturday: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 89.
Huelsbeck Retires After 70 Years Service To Cantonment, Molino Catholic Communities
September 2, 2018
Longtime Cantonment resident Jody Huelsbeck has retired from St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church in Cantonment after over 70 years of service to the Catholic church community in Cantonment and Molino.
Whether he was keeping the church campus mowed, changing light bulbs, eradicating wasp nests, or whatever needed to be done, he was there.
He served as an altar boy at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church many years ago, was involved with Santa Maria Church, and was involved with St. Judge’s since its inception – even helping with construction of the church.
He was a member of the Knights of Columbus Santa Maria Council, donating his times and talents to help and serve wherever needed.
Huelsbeck, according to those that know him best, always had a smile on his face and a witty greeting for anyone he encountered.
He also known for the creating beautiful rosaries, sometimes combining them with a religious artwork print for bishops, priests and other dignitaries. He has also sent his special artwork with greetings from St Jude’s to Pope Francis and President Donald Trump, receiving replies of gratitude in return.
NorthEscambia.com graphic.
Florida Smokers Puff More Than Counterparts
September 2, 2018
Slightly more than 13 percent of Florida adults smoked in 2017, but they go through more tobacco than average smokers nationally, a draft report given Tuesday to Florida health officials shows.
The findings, culled from the Florida Adult Tobacco Survey, show that a Florida smoker on average puffs 14.6 cigarettes a day, Erik Crankshaw, a researcher with North Carolina-based RTI, told members of a tobacco advisory council who met in Tallahassee.
Nationally, the draft report said smokers average 11.4 cigarettes per day. About 14 percent of adults nationally smoked in 2017.
Crankshaw said researchers don’t know why Florida smokers smoke more.
“It continues to stand out, it’s one we don’t have a good explanation for, and we are always looking for creative thoughts on why it might be,” Crankshaw, told members of the Comprehensive Tobacco Education and Use Prevention Program Advisory Council. “It is significant, and it has been for years.”
While they smoke more cigarettes, Florida smokers try to kick the habit more often than their peers nationally. According to the draft report, 59.8 percent of adult smokers in Florida had made an attempt to quit in 2017, compared to 48.9 percent nationally.
While not everyone who attempts to quit is successful, Crankshaw said it’s important data to track because it is “something that is quite sensitive to programmatic efforts” to reduce smoking.
While RTI has conducted independent reviews of the Bureau of Tobacco Free Florida, the findings this year may have added importance.
Public health advocates beat back efforts this spring to eliminate a decade-old requirement that mandates certain funding requirements for Florida’s anti-smoking efforts.
Les Beitsch, a state deputy secretary of health who chaired Tuesday’s meeting, said it would be very important to show the return on investment that the anti-smoking program has had for the state.
Beitsch was referring to a proposal this year that would have eliminated a requirement in the Florida Constitution to set aside 30 percent of overall tobacco education and prevention funding for an edgy advertising and marketing campaign. The money comes from a 1997 multibillion-dollar legal settlement with the tobacco industry.
Ultimately, the proposal was never endorsed by the Constitution Revision Commission, which meets every 20 years and has the ability to put amendments on the ballot. Nevertheless, Beitsch said public health advocates need to be prepared to answer some tough questions about Tobacco Free Florida in the coming years.
To that end, RTI’s analysis this year included a section on the economic analysis of proposed funding cuts. According to RTI’s analysis, smoking-related health care costs between 2019 and 2028 will total $86.3 billion.
A 5 percent reduction in funding, according to RTI, could increase the cost estimate by $500 million over 10 years.
Crankshaw also told the group that a 2017 survey of 2,000 health care providers across the state showed that many of them were not aware that Medicaid offered smoking-cessation services, including nicotine patches.
“Seventy-three percent of those polled did not know that Medicaid covered the nicotine patch,” he told members of the advisory council, which meets quarterly to advise the Department of Health on policies to help eradicate smoking.
The percentage of smokers in the Medicaid program is high. Pooling the data between 2012 and 2016, RTI estimated that the total population of smokers in the state was 14.6 percent.
Insurance status also affects smoking status according to the RTI analysis. Whereas 9.8 percent of those with private insurance were smokers, 25.4 percent of people on Medicaid were smokers. That nearly equals the percent of smokers among the uninsured, which equaled 25.8 percent.
by Christine Sexton, The News Service of Florida
4-H And FFA Youth Show Out At Cow Show In Molino
September 2, 2018
The Barrineau Park 4-H Club hosted the Escambia County 4-H Labor Day Classic Classic Steer and Heifer Show Saturday at the 4-H property in Molino.
Nineteen 4-H and FFA youth from Alabama and Florida participated in a showmanship clinic before showing their animals in showmanship, heifer and and steer classes.
Fallon Ray won the junior division of showmanship, with Dow Boyd winning the intermediate division, and Jacey Adkins winning the senior division. Dow Boyd also took home both the Supreme and Reserve Supreme Champion heifers. Whitnie Yoder won the Prospect steer class with Dalton Coleman placing second. For the market steers, Allen Thomas Bridgers took home the Supreme Champion with Jessica Conti taking home the Reserve Supreme Champion.
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Monday Century Council Meeting Rescheduled
September 2, 2018
The Century Town Council has rescheduled their regular council meeting from Monday to September 10 at 7 p.m. due to the Labor Day holiday.
A budget workshop will be held on Tuesday at 3 p.m.
Unless otherwise rescheduled, the Century Town Council hold regular meetings on the first and third Mondays of each month at the Century Town Hall.
NorthEscambia.com file photo, click to enlarge.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: On The Road To November
September 2, 2018
Florida made history this week, with Democratic voters backing Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum to become the first African-American nominated by a major party to run for governor.
And Democrats and Republicans are opening a new chapter in gubernatorial politics by nominating candidates who have their strongest support in the extreme wings of their parties.
The Republican nomination of Ron DeSantis, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump and is one of the most conservative members of Congress, may be less of an ideological shift in a party that has advanced hardline conservatives before, including when Rick Scott was elected governor in 2010.
But the Democratic nomination of Gillum, who embraced the progressive wing of his party and won the support of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, is a sea change in a party that has nominated a series of centrist candidates but hasn’t won a governor’s race since 1994.
The prime casualty of the strategic shift was former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham of Tallahassee. Ironically, it was Graham’s father, Bob Graham, a former governor and U.S. senator, who was one of the leaders in a national movement that began in the 1980s with the goal of shifting the Democratic Party back to a more centrist position.
The leaders of the movement formed a group, called the Democratic Leadership Council, and claimed success with the 1992 election of Bill Clinton, who served two terms as president.
But the Democratic Leadership Council’s star began to fade by the 2000s, with the group formally dissolving in 2011.
In Florida, Democrats nominated a string of centrist candidates for governor, including former Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay, another DLC leader while he was in Congress. MacKay lost to Jeb Bush in the 1998 governor’s race.
But Gillum’s nomination is a clear break in that strategy. And the Nov. 6 general election will be the first test of whether a more progressive Democrat can win the governor’s race and break a nearly a quarter-century losing streak for the party.
MAKING HISTORY
In what could be one of the biggest upsets in recent political history in Florida, Gillum, 39, captured nearly 34.4 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, compared to Gwen Graham’s 31.25 percent.
A crowd of supporters assembled at The Hotel Duval in Tallahassee was exuberant as results showed Gillum slowly making gains on Graham throughout the evening, chanting “Bring it home” and “I believe we will win.”
The race “is not about me,” Gillum told the ecstatic crowd.
“It never has been, and it never will be. This race is about every last single one of us,” he said. “Those of us inside this room. Those outside of this room. Those who voted for me. Those who didn’t vote at all. And those who didn’t vote for me because they are Republicans. But I want to be their governor, too.”
Gillum has long been considered a rising star in the Florida Democratic Party but trailed in the polls in a crowded primary that featured Graham, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, Winter Park entrepreneur Chris King and Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene.
But Gillum’s campaign gained momentum after picking up endorsements from the progressive icon Sanders and financial backing from billionaires Tom Steyer and George Soros.
“I sincerely believe that what is going to deliver us to victory in November is the fact that there are every-day, hard-working people in this state who believe that they deserve a voice in our government too. We are going to give it to them,” Gillum said Tuesday night.
At a concert venue in downtown Orlando, hundreds of Graham supporters appeared stunned by the election results as it became clear that Gillum had bested Graham, who was long considered the frontrunner in the race.
“I was expecting to give a much different speech tonight,” she said.
Graham urged her supporters to “put all of our efforts behind” behind Gillum’s campaign.
“This election is about the future of Florida,” she said, reiterating a campaign theme. “That’s what we were fighting for. It was never about the candidate.”
‘THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT’
With the enthusiastic backing of Trump, DeSantis handily defeated Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in the Republican primary.
DeSantis, a three-term congressman from Ponte Vedra Beach, got 56.5 percent of the vote and a congratulatory phone call from the president.
“I want to thank him for viewing me as someone who could be a great leader for Florida,” DeSantis told the crowd gathered at his election-night viewing party in Orlando. “So, thank you Mr. President.”
The double-digit victory was an electoral exclamation point for DeSantis, 39, who began the campaign as a little-known congressman facing a veteran politician who had the backing of most of the Tallahassee Republican establishment.
DeSantis, who has been one of Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress, had the ultimate asset in the president’s support. It began in a series of favorable presidential tweets and reached a crescendo in a July 31 rally in Tampa where Trump gave DeSantis an in-person endorsement.
A Harvard-educated lawyer and Iraq war veteran, DeSantis melded Trump’s support with frequent appearances on the Fox News network, where his campaign strategists astutely projected he could raise his profile among GOP voters despite Putnam’s early advantages in the race.
DeSantis’ victory derailed Putnam’s storied political journey, which began when he was elected as a 22-year-old to the Florida House of Representatives in 1996. Putnam also served 10 years in Congress before winning two four-year terms on the Florida Cabinet as the commissioner of agriculture.
But at age 44, Putnam has plenty of time to resurrect his political career.
BATTLE FOR THE BASE
While Gillum hopes to make history as the Sunshine State’s first black governor, DeSantis is trying to parlay his support from Trump into a gubernatorial win.
But the question remains whether either candidate can translate his primary election victory into a November triumph.
“What you’ve got is the ultimate base-turnout election on both sides. Ron DeSantis isn’t going to reach a bunch of moderates in the middle, and neither is Andrew Gillum. These are two guys who represent the absolute edge of their parties,” GOP consultant Rick Wilson, the author of the book “Everything Trump Touches Dies,” told The News Service of Florida.
The outcome of the governor’s race in November “is going to show us the heart of Florida,” said Allison Tant, a former chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party who is backing Gillum.
CABINET CONTESTS LOCKED IN
Former Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Ashley Moody, who had to counter attacks by her primary opponent about being registered in the past as a Democrat, advanced Tuesday as the Republican nominee for attorney general.
Meanwhile, state Rep. Sean Shaw of Tampa won the Democratic nomination as he continues his bid to become the state’s first African-American attorney general.
Moody and Shaw will face off in November with Jeff Siskind, an attorney from Wellington running without a party affiliation, to replace term-limited Attorney General Pam Bondi.
In the race for agriculture commissioner, state Rep. Matt Caldwell topped a four-way Republican primary, while lawyer and medical-marijuana lobbyist Nikki Fried had an easier time emerging from a field of three Democrats to become her party’s nominee for the Cabinet post.
The two will now go head-to-head in November to replace Putnam.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Florida Democratic primary voters backed Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, making him the first African-American candidate nominated by a major party in a gubernatorial race.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Let’s build off the success we’ve had under Gov. Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.” – Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis in a Fox News interview. His use of the word “monkey” drew charges of racism from Democrats. DeSantis’ campaign said his remark was aimed at Gillum’s policies and had nothing to do with race.
Wahoos Bounce Back To Win 10-6 In 10 Innings
September 2, 2018
Pensacola scored four runs in the 10th inning to surge past the Smokies for a 10-6 win Saturday night at Smokies Stadium.
It was the second consecutive extra-inning game for the Wahoos and they didn’t let Saturday’s game slip away. With Jose Siri starting on second base, Mitch Nay reached on an infield single to set up runners on the corners with only one out. Jordan Minch walked Aristides Aquino to load the bases before he walked Shed Long to bring home the go-ahead run. After a sac fly from Gavin LaValley gave the Wahoos an 8-6 lead, Chris Okey brought home a pair with a two-out single to give Pensacola the eventual winning scoreline of 10-6.
Aquino had a monster night at the plate hitting a pair of home runs and driving in four. His first dinger came in the first inning off Thomas Hatch to put the Wahoos up 3-1. Then in the eighth, Aquino took Brad Markey deep, which put Pensacola ahead 6-3 at the time.
But despite insurance, the Aquino’s bat offered, the Wahoos were unable to sustain either of those three-run leads. With the Smokies trailing 3-1, P.J. Higgins homered in the fourth off Tony Santillan to cut Tennessee’s deficit to one. The Smokies tied the game in the fifth after Conner Myers singled before Hatch doubled him home.
Tennessee’s big rally came in the eighth when they sent all nine men to the plate. After a leadoff single, Wynton Bernard hit a routine groundball to short, but Luis Gonzalez’s sent an errant throw towards second that sailed pass Shed Long for his league-leading 30th error of the season. Higgins followed with a two-run triple and later scored on a fielder’s choice from Jesse Hodges to tie the game at 6-6.
With a double in the sixth and a single in the ninth, Higgins became the third Southern League player this season to hit for the cycle and did so in reverse order. He reached in all five of his plate appearances, and even drew a walk giving him an even rarer “super cycle.”
Pensacola picks up a half-game over Mobile as they were washed out today and are scheduled to play a doubleheader on Sunday. As it stands, the Wahoos have a two-game lead in the wildcard with the BayBears having a game in hand. Biloxi earned another win over the Barons to maintain their 1.5 game lead over Pensacola.
The series continues Sunday night and the Wahoos will send veteran RHP Daniel Wright (7-10, 4.12) to the hill. Tennessee will go with RHP Michael Rucker (9-6, 3.74) in the penultimate game of the series.