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Escambia Consolidation Effort Officially Ruled Dead
February 26, 2010
Governmental consolidation in Escambia County has been pronounced dead.
The local legislative delegation failed Monday night to send the Escambia County Consolidation Study Commission plan toward a referendum or delay action until 2012. That effectively killed consolidation, but Rep. Clay Ford, chairmen of the legislative delegation, technically had until 5 p.m. Friday to gather members for another vote and submit the bill in the Legislature.
“But now it is dead,” Rep. Clay Ford told NorthEscambia.com moments before 5 p.m. Thursday. “If we were going to meet again, we needed to give the public reasonable notice so people would have a chance to attend the meeting. I set the arbitrary deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday.”
He did not call the meeting, he said, because none of the members were willing to budge from their Monday positions for or against consolidation.
“We would have needed some movement, some momentum on the part of one member,” he said. “I can’t get anybody to tell me that they will change their position.”
On Monday, Rep. Greg Evers and and Ford voted to give the Consolidation Commission until 2011 to rework their document, but that motion failed with Sen. Don Gaetz and Rep. Dave Murzin against. A motion to send the plan forward to the legislature this year also failed, with with Gaetz and Ford for, and Evers and Murzin against. The fifth member of the delegation, Sen. Durell Peaden, was unable to attend Monday’s meeting and expressed to Ford that he was not willing to attend another meeting.
“I’m disappointed that we can’t find a position where we can agree on this,” Ford said.
Ford placed a portion of the blame for consolidation’s death on the Consolidation Commission, specifically Chairman Ken Bell. The commission dissolved shortly after drafting their final plan in January. According to their legislative mandate, the commission could have remained intact until summer.
Evers’ motion Monday night to extend the life of the Consolidation Study Commission until November 2011 –if half the meetings were held outside of Pensacola and 25 percent were held north of Nine Mile Road — drew a response from Ken Bell, who chaired the consolidation committee. He told the legislators that he felt the members of the now dissolved committee would not be willing to reconvene.
“He (Bell) drew a line in the sand,” Ford said. “They could have worked to smooth out the rough spots, but they decided not to do so.”
“It just hit the end,” Ford said Thursday as the clock approached the five o’clock mark. “It’s dead.”
Comments
9 Responses to “Escambia Consolidation Effort Officially Ruled Dead”
R.I.P. Forever consolidated government! Will they finally get the message that we do not want their consolidated gov.? How many years do they have to keep trying to push this thru? As said sometime before, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig!
Becoming part of L.A. (lower Alabama) sounds much more attractive to me!
I am surprised that the “downtowners” don’t have Acorn down here trying to get this on a ballot , then stuff the ballot box. It has been one hustle after another, Maritime parks, sewer plants. A clear case of 2 dissimilar groups of people, one wanting the other to subsidize their special interests. My poor old Daddy used to say “Someday there will be enough northerners here to have liquor in Santa Rosa County and charter government in Escambia”.One of those has come to pass – let’s not have the other, please.
It will be back.
Guaranteed. Just like a date rapist, they just don’t understand that NO means NO!!
Ding Dong The Witch is Dead!!! Let’s bury it! Drop it…….in a deep hole and put it behind us! God is Good! Remember Pensacola, WE IN THE NORTH END OF THIS COUNTY ARE CONTENT TO STAY EXACTLY AS WE ARE!! You have taken all the services and such down there already and closed all our local offices. So, keep it. And we will just visit you when we have to, for tags and licenses, and we will return to our SANE and enjoyable countryside to live out our lives. WE DON’T WANT TO BE PART OF Y’ALL!!!!!! Get it????
I wish the downtown crowd would stop bring this one county government up every year or so. Don’t they realize it has to be a plan that is “FAIR” for “ALL” the county not just the downtown good ole boys. As long as the downtown crowd keep trying to consolidate the county without first getting the north end of the county involved (on board), then a plan of any kind is not going to work. Maybe the north end should just draw a line at 9 mile road and become apart of “Lower Alabama” and forget about Pensacola completely.
Thank God.
Our wallets and pocketbooks are safe from this Soviet-style plan.
Well, you know, we could build a monument to the dead bill in the way of voting all these incumbents out; at every level-local, state, federal.
Mike ( the neigborhood gone to hell ) Hill , has a called a press conference for today in pcola to demand the reps seen this to a vote. Please send Dave,Greg and Clay emails again we can’t loose this now where to close. Forget Don he only takes the high road for sure he could care less about escambia county people, he likes the fat cats for sure. Don’t give up the ship yet. Wasn’t bell that said he had these reps in his pocket he must have meant the ritz carlton Obama Hill. Trying to push something down the peoples throats they clearly don’t won’t!!!!!! The emails worked the first time send them again let them know how we fell ,time is short.!!!! Doc peaden stay in tally please………………….and doc if they get it to tally you kill it like you said you would…
Fairly certain it would have died at the ballot box anyway!
Instead of having a commision spend the next two years working on a new consolidation plan, how about working a plan that would bring better paying jobs to our area.