Pumpkins Arrive At Popular Church Pumpkin Patch
October 11, 2015
Hundreds of pumpkins arrived Saturday afternoon and were unloaded by volunteers ata St. Luke United Methodist Church on Nine Mile Road. The church’s annual pumpkin patch, at 1394 East Nine Mile Road, will be open Monday-Saturday from 1-7 p.m. and from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays. Pictured top: St. Luke’s first pumpkin patch customer Saturday afternoon. Pictured below: Hundreds of pumpkins arrived Saturday afternoon. Submitted photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Fields of Faith: Student Led Community Worship Event Planned For Wednesday
October 11, 2015
The Northview High School Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) is sponsoring a student led worship event, “Fields of Faith” Wednesday at Tommy Weaver Memorial Stadium in Bratt.
Northview students, area churches, youth groups and community members will come together to worship, hear student testimonies and enjoy a brief message from a guest speaker.
The public is invited to attend the event at 6:30 Wednesday. In the event of rain, the event will be moved indoors.
Pictured: Last year’s Fields of Faith event at Northview High School was moved into the school gym. NorthEscambia.com file photos, click to enlarge.
JV Volleyball Results: Northview, Tate, Escambia, Washington
October 11, 2015
Results from JV tournament volleyball Saturday at Tate High School:
Washington def. Northview 25-13, 25-10.
Tate def. Northview 25-8, 25-12.
Escambia def. Northview 25-21, 25-21.
NorthEscambia.com photos by Gary Amerson, click to enlarge.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Firearms, Religious Freedom And The Rebel Flag
October 11, 2015
A ruling from Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis late Friday quickly overshadowed a week dominated by guns, religious liberty and the Confederate flag.
Lewis’s choice of a congressional map supported by voting-rights groups struck a blow to House and Senate leaders, who argued that maps drawn by lawmakers and aides would better comply with Florida’s anti-gerrymandering “Fair Districts” standards.
The case will ultimately be decided by the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled in July that some congressional districts crafted by the Legislature in 2012 unconstitutionally favored Republicans.
Friday’s ruling came at the end of the Legislature’s second pre-session committee week, filled with discussions about allowing Floridians to openly display their handguns, letting pastors say no to gay weddings, stripping the Confederate battle flag from the Senate’s official seal, and the state’s beleaguered unemployment benefits website.
LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT
A measure that would let individuals with conceal-carry permits walk around with their guns exposed made it through its first House hearing on Tuesday.
But, in a state where pro-firearms measures have advanced at a record clip over the past four years, concerns were quickly raised about how allowing individuals to openly display their handguns may conflict with private property rights.
The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee voted 8-4 Tuesday to support the proposal (HB 163), filed by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach. The bill would allow people with concealed-weapons licenses to openly carry firearms, something the state has banned since the law authorizing the licenses went into effect in 1987.
Gaetz described his proposal, one of a number of gun-related bills up for consideration this legislative session, as allowing citizens to be “armed with their own liberty.”
But a sign that the measure may have a tougher journey through the more moderate Senate, where Gaetz’s father, Sen. Don Gaetz, has sponsored an identical measure, the Florida Chamber of Commerce wants more clarity about private property rights.
“That’s an important issue to many businesses who feel like that’s something that could be of concern to them,” Gary Hunter, a lobbyist representing the Chamber, said.
Others argued that the proposal needs to better define the manner in which people can publicly display handguns.
“What we’re talking about is allowing people to walk down a street with a firearm in their hand — pointed down, not pointed at anyone but pointed down — they can lawfully walk past a bank, past a bar, past a school, not encased in a holster,” said Rep. Dave Kerner, a Lake Worth Democrat who voted against the measure. “The right to carry a weapon irresponsibly is not a constitutionally protected right, and that is what this bill will do.”
Shawn Bartelt, an Orlando mother of two, told the committee that, while crime is down, allowing people to walk around with exposed firearms creates a “less civilized” society.
“I do not want to walk around Lake Davis, when I walk my dogs, and know somebody is carrying an open gun there,” Bartelt said. “There is a reason Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, doesn’t walk around with his shirt off all the time, because it’s intimidating. It’s scary.”
GIVING PASTORS A PASS
A measure that would allow pastors and others to refuse to perform marriage services that violate their theological beliefs cleared its first House vote on Wednesday.
In a party-line vote, the House Civil Justice Subcommittee advanced the emotionally charged proposal (HB 43) that supporters say is needed to reinforce First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom in the aftermath of this summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down state-approved bans on same-sex marriages.
“The court has redefined marriage as we see it today,” said Rep. Charlie Stone, R-Ocala. “So what’s to say the court won’t redefine what a (member of the) clergy can do next week, next month, next year?”
But opponents of the proposal questioned where such an exemption might lead.
LGBT supporters at the meeting didn’t dispute that church officials should be free to choose whom they marry. Carlos Guillermo Smith of Equality Florida, one the state’s most prominent gay-rights organizations, said his group would be willing to defend any church that refused to marry a gay couple and would even contribute to the congregation’s defense fund.
But Guillermo Smith also said he was concerned about the precedent the legislation might set.
“At best, it’s an insulting proposal that is pretty much a simple disapproval of same-sex relationships by a secular government,” he said. “But what’s worse, and what our top concern is, is that this bill is a Trojan horse which can be a vehicle that will bring even more anti-LGBT legislation to our state.”
Democratic Reps. Kionne McGhee and Cynthia Stafford, who are both black, said they were worried that the bill would open the door for discrimination by white supremacists, who could use religious grounds to defend their racist views.
“As it currently states today in the language that we have before us, we have a dangerous, dangerous bill that can explode at any moment and rewrite our history books and return us to the days of Jim Crow,” McGhee, a Miami lawyer, said.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, dismissed the concerns.
“They seem to be talking about a bill other than this one,” he said. “So I think that this would be mainly for (same-sex marriage), but I don’t see any reason or I didn’t hear any reason today why you would simply say that.”
JACK LATVALA, DEFENDER OF THE UNION
Jesse Panuccio, Gov. Rick Scott’s jobs chief who still needs Senate confirmation to keep his job next year, found himself having to defend his comments to a union lobbyist before outraged Republican lawmakers during a Senate Transportation, Tourism and Economic Development Appropriations Committee meeting on Wednesday.
Panuccio already was facing heat from lawmakers, who told him that they continue to receive complaints from constituents having a hard time accessing the two-year-old, $77 million unemployment benefits website called Connect.
But committee Chairman Jack Latvala went further, accusing Panuccio of being arrogant and displaying a “sense of entitlement,” because of the way the agency head dismissed Florida AFL-CIO lobbyist Rich Templin’s assertion that Florida may be purposely last in the nation in paying unemployment claims.
Latvala, who has sparred with Panuccio on a number of issues during the past couple of years, didn’t defend Templin’s claims, but took issue with the manner in which a speaker before his subcommittee was addressed by another speaker.
“I frankly don’t like your attitude,” Latvala, R-Clearwater, told Panuccio. “I think that there is an arrogance in the way you present this that’s a sense of entitlement. And I just think it’s wrong.”
Panuccio said he didn’t intend to attack any individual and defended how his agency handles jobless claims.
Templin had pointed to a Sept. 22 report from the National Employment Law Project that found fewer than one in eight unemployed Floridians — 12 percent compared to 27 percent nationally — receive jobless aid.
“Our concern is that you have a state agency, and perhaps Connect and the system itself, going above and beyond what the Legislature intended and is making it really hard for workers to get benefits,” Templin said. “My personal concern is that is by design.”
Panuccio described Templin’s comments as “not valid” and the statistics by the National Employment Law Project as “specious.”
LOOK AWAY, LOOK AWAY, LOOK AWAY, SENATE SEAL
Senate President Andy Gardiner and a couple of staff members scoped out the size of the wall behind the rostrum in the Senate chamber on Wednesday. Noticing reporters in the press gallery looking down on the scene, the Orlando Republican waved before he and his aides returned to their offices.
Earlier in the day, the Senate Rules Committee took a step towards establishing a new seal that doesn’t include the Confederate battle flag.
The Senate’s seal should include the flags of “those sovereignties that were legitimate sovereignties of this state,” committee Chairman David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, said.
Under the proposal approved by the committee, the Senate’s official insignia would still include other non-American flags that flew over Florida, including the 1513 Spanish flag, the 1564 French flag and the 1763 flag of Great Britain. The U.S. flag and the Florida state flag would also appear on the marker.
The move is another step in a continuing backlash against symbols of Southern rebellion that started after a white supremacist massacred nine black churchgoers in South Carolina this summer.
The new Senate seal may not be the Legislature’s only attempt to further bury the 1860s conflict.
Legislation has been filed to replace a statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, whose likeness is one of two sculptures that represent Florida in the National Statuary Hall Collection at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis recommended Friday that the Florida Supreme Court adopt a set of congressional districts proposed by voting-rights organizations.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Well, it is part of history, but the Nazi flag is part of history and shouldn’t be forgotten, but it also shouldn’t be lifted up.” — Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, on removing the Confederate battle flag from the Senate seal.
by Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
Cantonment Man Charged In Home Invasion, Carjacking
October 10, 2015
A Cantonment man has been charged with a home invasion, robbery and carjacking.
Ramoe Tyvon Smith, 30, is charged with home invasion robbery, aggravated assault with a firearm, grand theft, aggravated battery using a deadly weapon and carjacking. He remained in the Escambia County Jail Saturday with bond set at $220,000.
According to an arrest report, Smith entered a mobile home on West Hannah Street, pointed a handgun at the resident and demanded his wallet. Smith and a female accomplice then allegedly took a 5-gallon bucket from inside the home that contained copper scraps before fleeing.
Within hours, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office investigators were able to determine that the copper was sold at a local recycling business by Smith and the female and warrants for their arrests were issued. The female has not yet been arrested.
In a previous incident, Smith is accused of carjacking a vehicle and beating the victim.
FDOT: Weekly Traffic Alerts
October 10, 2015
Drivers will encounter traffic disruptions on the following state roads in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties as crews perform construction and maintenance activities.
- State Road (S.R.) 294 Chief’s Way from Corry Field Road to S.R. 295 (New Warrington Road) in Escambia County will be temporarily closed from Friday, Oct. 9 through Friday, Oct 23. The temporary closure will allow crews to perform shoulder construction and remove concrete pavement and replace with asphalt. Corry Field Road, West Navy Boulevard and New Warrington Road 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) repairs at the intersection of Scenic Highway Circle continues in Escambia County. 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 east and westbound, between the Escambia Bay Bridge and State Road 281 (Avalon Boulevard) in Santa Rosa County. Alternating lane closures Sunday, Oct. 11 through Thursday, Oct. 15. Lane closures will be in effect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. as crews place concrete barrier wall.
- U.S. 98 between Live Oaks Village shopping center and the Gulf Breeze Zoo in Santa Rosa County. Alternating lane closures from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, through Friday, Oct.16. Crews will be placing the final layer of asphalt on the roadway and continue shoulder widening work.
- U.S. 98 between the Gulf Breeze Zoo and Okaloosa County line in Santa Rosa County. Striping operations began Thursday, Oct. 8. Motorists may encounter minor delays and intermittent lane closures from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. for approximately three weeks as crews restripe side roads, major intersections, and the mainline. Slow moving vehicles will be used to perform the work.
- S.R. 297 (Pine Forest Road) from Mobile Highway to Nine Mile Road in Escambia County. Intermittent lane closures at intersections and turn lanes Monday, Oct. 12 through Thursday, Oct. 15 as crews refurbish pavement markings and restripe the roadway. Lane closures will remain in effect from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. Drivers can expect slow moving vehicles during the striping operations.
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 re-scheduled in the event of inclement weather.
Roux Named NHS Homecoming Queen (With Photo Gallery)
October 10, 2015
Savanna Roux was named Northview High School’s homecoming queen for 2015 Friday night.
Pictured top are Junior Maid Morgan Myrick, Freshman Maid Ashtyn Carnley, 1st Runner-up Jadlyn Agerton, Homecoming Queen Savanna Roux, 2nd Runner-up Danielle Robinson, and Sophomore Maid Celeste North. Pictured inset: Roux reacts to winning. Pictured below: Roux is crowned by last year’s queen, Kamryn Brock.
For a photo gallery, click here.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Breezy And Cooler Tonight
October 10, 2015
Here is your official North Escambia area forecast:
Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 54. Northwest wind 5 to 10 mph becoming light in the evening.
Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 81. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph in the morning.
Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 52. West wind around 5 mph becoming calm.
Columbus Day: Sunny, with a high near 83. Calm wind becoming southwest around 5 mph in the afternoon.
Monday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers after 2am. Mostly clear, with a low around 60. South wind around 5 mph.
Tuesday: A 20 percent chance of showers. Mostly sunny, with a high near 83. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon.
Tuesday Night: A 20 percent chance of showers before 8pm. Mostly clear, with a low around 54. West wind around 5 mph becoming north after midnight.
Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 81. Calm wind becoming northwest around 5 mph in the morning.
Wednesday Night: Clear, with a low around 55. Northwest wind around 5 mph becoming calm in the evening.
Thursday: Sunny, with a high near 79.
Thursday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 53.
Friday: Sunny, with a high near 79.
Friday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 53.
Saturday: Sunny, with a high near 76.
Liberty County Tops Northview (With Photo Gallery)
October 10, 2015
Liberty County beat the Northview Chiefs 37-14 Friday night, which was homecoming for the Chiefs.
Liberty County intercepted a Northview pass two plays into the first quarter and were held to just a field goal by the Northview defense. The Chiefs answered to make it 7-3 at the half.
“It was a good ballgame at halftime,” Northview Coach Sid Wheatley said. “We played really good defense and a good passing game. They made some adjustments and came back and controlled the game in the second half. They got up by two touchdowns and we cut it to one….but it went downhill for us fast.”
Liberty County went on for the win 37-14.
“You’ve got to give them credit. They made those big plays that you can not give up and are back-breakers in a competitive game.”
The Chiefs will travel to Jay next Friday night for their first of just two district games of the regular season. The Chiefs are in a three-team District 1A with Jay and Baker.
“Win a district game next week and you are in the playoffs. These kids are going to have to regroup, and they are going to have to come back. We’ve got to have a really, really good week and practice,” he said . “We’ve got to get some things fixed.”
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Lawmakers Seek To Shield Seniors From Shady Guardians
October 10, 2015
A Southwest Florida lawmaker is renewing a push to better protect elderly Floridians from unscrupulous guardians who take control of seniors’ assets.
The Senate Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee this week approved a bill (SB 232), filed by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, that would charge the Department of Elder Affairs with certifying and overseeing professional guardians — and disciplining those who abuse their trust.
Detert told the committee that professional guardians are a growth business in Florida but are lightly regulated.
She cited a series in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which reported in December 2014 that the number of registered professional guardians statewide had grown 1,800 percent in 11 years.
“There are predators,” Detert said. “They have kind of crawled through a crack in the law.”
Private professional guardians come into play, for example, in circumstances where families have disputes between seniors’ children. The guardians can earn $100 an hour to open mail, make appointments and pay bills — even to be present when the children came to visit.
“When you think of the power you are giving to a guardian,” Detert said. “The power to make your medical decisions, to put you on drugs, to spend your money (and) sign your checkbook.”
Private guardians often serve wealthy people, Detert said. The state also has a more heavily regulated system of public guardians who serve incapacitated people who don’t have anybody willing and able to serve as guardians.
Detert’s bill has support from the office of Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller Sharon Bock, who was represented at the Senate committee meeting by Deputy Clerk Anthony Palmieri.
Since 2011, Palmieri said, the office has investigated more than 800 elder-guardianship cases, identifying “more than $4 million in unsubstantiated disbursements, missing assets and fraud” in Palm Beach County. There have been two arrests.
“Many clerks’ offices throughout the state are auditing and investigating guardianships because of this very important legislation,” Palmieri said.
Also in 2011, Palm Beach County started Florida’s — and possibly the nation’s — first hotline for elder-guardianship fraud.
Bock said in an interview that she’d gotten the idea to review private guardianships after seeing an uptick in their numbers during the economic recession. She had also noted that guardianship laws had been largely unchanged for decades at that point.
“It wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen, even though Florida has the fastest-growing elderly population per capita of any state in the United States,” Bock said.
Last spring, however, Gov. Rick Scott signed a measure by Rep. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, requiring advance notice before hearings on the appointment of emergency temporary guardians. It would also allow the mediation of guardianship disputes among family members and require the reporting of incidents of abuse, neglect and exploitation of wards by guardians.
Detert’s new bill will be considered during the 2016 legislative session, which starts in January. A similar bill unanimously cleared the Senate during the 2015 session, but died when the House adjourned three days early. House leaders had objected to the initial $3 million cost of the measure, which Detert got down to less than $1 million.
The analysis of her new bill notes that approximately 456 guardians would be regulated, but it does not show a projected cost.
Detert said she’d recruited House Appropriations Chairman Richard Corcoran, R-Land O’ Lakes, to her cause, while Rep. Larry Ahern, R-Seminole, will return as the House sponsor.
“I’ve spoken to Chair Corcoran, and he is supportive,” she said. “Rep. Ahern is doing the bill in the House, and we expect a happy conclusion this year.”
by Margie Menzel, The News Service of Florida