Century Chamber Names Citizen, Student Of The Year
February 28, 2018
The Century Chamber of Commerce’s citizen and student of the year were named Tuesday night.
Byrneville Elementary School Principal Dee Wolfe-Sullivan was named Century’s Citizen of the Year. Northview High student Logan Calloway was named Student of the Year.
Pictured top: Dee Wolfe-Sullivan (left) was named Century’s Citizen of the Year Tuesday night. The award was presented by Tame Dunsford, Byrneville Elementary’s lead teacher. And Logan Calloway was presented Century’s Student of the Year, with the award presented by Northview Principal Gayle Weaver. Pictured inset: Logan Calloway. Pictured below: A large number of Byrneville Elementary staff and friends were on hand to see their principal receive her award. Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Escambia County Contracts With Panhandle Equine Rescue
February 28, 2018
Escambia County has entered into a an agreement with Panhandle Equine Rescue in Cantonment to house equines for the county animal shelter.
The county has budgeted up $20,000 for PER to provide shelter, food, veterinary care and transportation. Payments will be made on a cost reimbursement basis.
The only horse rescue in Escambia County, PER was founded by a small group of concerned citizens with a mission to rescue, rehabilitate and provide adoption services for abused, neglected and abandoned equines. PER is authorized by the court system to investigate equine cruelty in Escambia County.
File photo.
Auburn, Georgia And Beekeepers Could Get Specialty License Plates
February 28, 2018
A House committee has approved a bill that would revamp state laws dealing with specialty license plates, including creating plates for Auburn University and the University of Georgia.
The bill (HB 1359), sponsored by Rep. James Grant, a Tampa Republican and Auburn alum, is ready to go to the House floor after being approved by the Government Accountability Committee.
The measure would make a series of policy changes to laws dealing with specialty plates, including setting a limit of 125 plates and taking steps to weed out plates that have relatively few sales. But in proposing to create Auburn and University of Georgia plates, the bill would add to the long-standing plates of Florida colleges and universities.
It would require that fees collected from the Auburn and Georgia plates go to scholarships for Florida residents attending those schools.
bill also would create other new specialty plates, such as the Florida State Beekeepers Association plate, the Beat Childhood Cancer plate and the Florida Bay Forever plate.
Elementary Students Compete In Science Olympiad
February 28, 2018
The Escambia County School District’s Elementary Science Olympiad was held recently.
The primary goal of the science Olympiad is to allow students to have fun while showing off what they know in nine different competitions.
North Escambia area schools are listed in bold. Scroll to bottom for additional photos.
Overall
- 1st Place- Blue Angels
- 2nd Place- Hellen Caro
- 3rd Place- Lipscomb
- 4th Place- Pleasant Grove
- 5th Place- Cordova
Spirit Award
- 1st Place- Montclair
- 2nd Place- McArthur
- 3rd Place- Beulah
Robotics
1st Place- Bratt
- Laura Laborde
- Colby Pugh
2nd Place- Blue Angel
- Carter Mills
- Noah Brown
- Tyler Parriman
3rd Place- NB Cook
- Ford Reeves
- Tori Sappington
- Amaya Ross
4th Place- Oakcrest
- Gaven Carter
- Isaiah Smith
5th Place- Lipscomb
- Parker Beyl
- Hollis Scott
- Andrew Presley
Science Bowl
1st Place McArthur
- Beatrice Bunnell
- Bailee Luciano
- David Martins
- Arthur Johanson
2nd Place- Cordova Park
- Brooks Lurton
- Madison Tennant
- Alice Zhang
3rd Place- Blue Angels
- Lana Carter
- Skyler Hardison
- Tyler Parriman
- Noah Brown
4th Place- Hellen Caro
- Izzy Owens
- Makayla Gustave
- Lydia Pound
- Jake Hilley
5th Place- Molino
- Ayden Crabtree
- Joshua Kennedy
- Raegan Holley
- Blakely Campbell
Reflection Relay
1st Place- Bratt
- Ally Richardson
- Mary Catherine Hughes
- Maggie Scott
2nd Place- Warrington
- Ayden Reed
- Keegan Britt
- Tristan Matovina
3rd Place- Cordova Park
- Alice Zhang
- Brooks Lurton
- Madison Tennant
4th Place- NB Cook
- Sophie Thompson
- Emree Long
- Brendan Boyer
5th Place- Lipscomb
- Trevor Gage
- Paige Raiter
- Richard Jester
Straw Egg Drop
1st Place- Pine Meadow
- Carly Gray
- Aleora Holman
2nd Place- Blue Angels
- Veronica Ryan
- Corrin Cole
3rd Place- Scenic Heights
- Sonya Boccino
- Aiden Iglesias
4th Place- Bellview
- Brashaun Pello
- Deborah Maxi
5th Place- Hellen Caro
- Anna Baumann
- Victoria Sipperly
Tennis Ball Catapult
1st Place- AK Suter
- Mason Haddocks
- Cooper Lindemann
2nd Place- NB Cook
- Alastair Casler
- Brody Turner
3rd Place- Pleasant Grove
- Matthew Halloran
- Samuel Zylstra
4th Place- Ferry Pass
- Reese Goff
- Abbey Wilmoth
5th Place- Cordova Park
- Elyse Carmichael
- Joslyn Gamber
Large Number Estimation
1st Place- Sherwood
- Jocelyn Collins
- Ian Megill
2nd Place- Bellview
- Taegin Johnson
- Christian Stokes
3rd Place- Lipscomb
- Brayden Gryskiewicz
- Oscar Ryder
4th Place Beulah
- Elijah Agcaoili
- Jaysa Ciccone
5th Place- Hellen Caro
- Jake Hilley
- Maddie Stoker
Pentathlon
1st Place- Hellen Caro
- Makayla Gustave
- Avery Rodzewicz
- Lydia Pound
- Jake Hilley
2nd Place- Pleasant Grove
- Landon Fernandez
- Matthew Halloran
- Bella Golson
- Trysten McVoy
3rd Place- Cordova Park
- Lucy Adams Stevenson
- Joslyn Gamber
- Sawyer Kuba
- Berkeley Morris
4th Place- Lipscomb
- Paige Raiter
- Trevor Gage
- Brayden Gryskiewicz
- Adalynn Druhl
5th Place- Ferry Pass
- Justin Lowery
- Reese Goff
- Ally Robinson
- Jacob Sargent
Tower Challenge
1st Place- Montclair
- Z’maya McPherson
- Shamaya Johnson
2nd Place- Warrington
- Kloee Griffin
- Dolin Willis
3rd Place- Holm
- Kendall Willette
- Maya Hernandez
4th Place- AK Suter
- Jude Mason
- Olivia Rabby
5th Place- Hellen Caro
- Lydia Pound
- Gretchen Williams
Picture This
1st Place- Pleasant Grove
- Bella Golson
- Wyatt Destaffaney
- Matthew Halloran
2nd Place- Lipscomb
- Ava Hayes
- Vivienne Hayes
3rd Place- Blue Angels
- Lana Carter
- Nolan Jones
- Aliyah Williams
4th Place- AK Suter
- Annabelle Apel
- Reid Bassett
- Lilo Vuong
5th Place- Hellen Caro
- Izzy Owens
- Gretchen Williams
- Victoria Sipperly
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Local Students Selected For Washington Youth Tour
February 28, 2018
Three area high school students have been selected to represent Escambia River Cooperative on 2018 Washington Youth Tour in June. They are Lydia Smith from Northview High, Gabby Chavers from Central High and Bryce Cook from Jay High.
Judges from PowerSouth Energy Cooperative in Andalusia, AL, and Southern Pine Electric Cooperative in Brewton, AL, scored contestants in their interviews based on their knowledge of Escambia River Electric Cooperative and the history of rural electrification. Personal attributes of each candidate such as character, academic ability, personality and leadership skills were also considered.
The students will also have the chance learn about the nation’s capital, rural electrification and more.
Sports: Wins For Northview Softball, Tate Baseball
February 28, 2018
Softball
Northview 8, Baker 1
The Northview Chiefs defeated Baker 8-1 Tuesday night.
Tori Herrington pitched a complete game with 14 strikeouts and allowing just two hits. She was 2-3 at the plate with a triple, single and four RBIs. Also for Northview: Lydia Smith 1-3 with three stolen bases; Valen Shelley 1-3, RBI, two stolen bases; Anna Sullivan 1-3, one stolen base.
Shelby Sloan of Baker went 3-3 with a single, double and triple.
Up next — the Chiefs will host Central on Thursday at 4:00 (JV) and 6:00 (varsity)
Milton 5, Tate 0
Baseball
Tate 4, Gulf Breeze 3
ECHS @ Northview- rescheduled for Thurs, 4/6:30
NorthEscambia.com file photo.
Century Town Clerk Leslie Howington Resigns
February 27, 2018
Century Town Clerk Leslie Howington submitted her resignation on Monday. Her last day with the town will be Friday, March 9.
“Century is marching toward greatness, nothing going on has spurred me on elsewhere. This was a personal decision in my life,” she said.
Howington has accepted a leasing and marketing position with the Lincoln Property Company, which handles residential leasing for the Studer Properties’ new downtown Pensacola Southtowne apartment development and Majestic Oaks in Pensacola.
Howington was working as a leasing specialist in South Florida when she moved to Century about seven and half years ago to take care of her aging parents.
“I was so honored to be hired as the town clerk of my hometown, and I set out to be the very best clerk possible, constantly learning and evolving with the town. The town is continuing on the right path to set up for success. I have great faith in good things to come,” she said.
“I was blessed when I found my dream job at the Town of Century,” Howington said. “My heart is in Century.”
Florida Senators Back School Safety Plan
February 27, 2018
The emotionally raw conversation about guns escalated Monday in the Capitol, as a group of gun-control advocates flailed a key Senate panel considering legislation that students, parents and educators angrily argued would do little to make Florida’s schools safer because it does not include a ban on assault-style weapons.
The intense debate came during a Senate Rules Committee hearing on a broad package addressing school safety, guns and mental health, in response to this month’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that left 17 people, including 14 students, dead.
More than 1,000 people, many of them wearing “Rally in Tally” neon orange T-shirts emblazoned with #GunReformNow, traveled by bus to Tallahassee to rally and meet with lawmakers before attending the Rules Committee meeting, where the outspoken and frustrated crowd berated members of the panel.
The sea of orange confronted senators during a discussion of an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, that would ban more than a dozen types of semi-automatic, assault-style weapons like the one used by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz to mow down students and teachers at the Broward County school.
In the days following the Valentine’s Day mass shooting, many students from the Broward County school have pleaded with lawmakers — and President Donald Trump and Gov. Rick Scott — for the prohibition on assault-style weapons, an idea opposed by the powerful National Rifle Association and many leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature.
“Assault weapons are weapons of war. They’re designed for the battlefield and then modified for civilian use … to efficiently extinguish human life,” Rodriguez, a Miami Democrat who is running for Congress, said.
But Marion Hammer, the NRA’s Florida lobbyist, argued Rodriguez’s proposed amendment would stop just “short of banning practically every gun known to man.”
Eric Friday, general counsel for the gun-rights group Florida Carry, likened the weapons targeted in Rodriguez’s amendment to the “equivalent of the same hunting rifle my father and grandfather used.”
The comments of the gun-rights proponents elicited jeers and hisses from the overflow crowd and drew a rebuke from two 15-year-old survivors of the catastrophic event.
“I don’t understand how you can find the hobby of murdering animals the same importance as the murdering of my classmates and teachers,” Bela Urbina said. “This weapon has killed so many people. It is a militarized weapon that we don’t need. We don’t need civilians to have it.”
Her friend Katherine Guerra was even more pointed.
“Do you think that your sport is more important than human lives? And if you believe that, you need to reassess yourselves,” she said.
The raucous crowd erupted in applause for the girls, wearing their school colors of burgundy and silver.
Dozens of speakers lined up to weigh in on the proposal. Nearly all of them spoke heatedly in favor of the ban.
“Shame on all of you,” Andy Oliver, a Methodist pastor from St. Petersburg, angrily scolded lawmakers for failing to enact stricter gun laws in the wake of previous mass shootings, including the 2016 murders of 49 clubgoers at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. “The blood is on your hands.”
The amendment failed in a 7-6 vote, with Miami Republican Anitere Flores crossing party lines to join Democrats, who voted as a bloc in favor of the proposed ban on assault-style weapons.
After the ban failed, the crowd again erupted, threatening lawmakers with being voted out of office in November.
The overall package approved by the Rules Committee would allow specially trained teachers to bring guns to schools, prohibit people younger than 21 from buying rifles or other long guns, and give law enforcement officers the ability to get court orders to take guns away from mentally ill people they deem dangerous.
Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky read notes of support for the bill, even without the prohibition on assault weapons, from the parents of two students who were killed. Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jamie was slain, called the proposal a “minimally acceptable first step.”
Hunschofsky said her community is “still grieving and mourning” the event that rocked the tight-knit enclave in northern Broward County.
“Everybody knew somebody who was affected,” the mayor said. “It’s a very difficult time for all of us.”
Hunschofsky said the bill isn’t perfect but she supports the measure.
“My friends who just buried their children, they want action,” she said. “I remind everybody, three weeks ago, I don’t think anyone in the state of Florida would have thought we would ever be discussing a bill like this. So I appreciate any step in the right direction.”
The mayor said she was “not a fan” of a controversial element in the bill that would allow teachers who receive special training and are deputized by the local sheriff to serve as school “marshals.” School districts could choose whether they want to participate in the program.
The school marshal program, not included in a similar package being pushed by Scott, would require trained teachers to be “distinctly and visually identifiable to responding law enforcement officers, faculty, staff, and students, in the case of any active assailant incident on a sponsoring school district’s campus.”
But Rodriguez asked if such an identification program would potentially make teachers “become targets of mass shooters rather than individuals who are presumably helping defend us.”
Sen. Bill Galvano, a Bradenton Republican who is sponsoring the $400 million package, said it would be up to local law enforcement “to make sure they know who these participants are and how to identify them.”
Senate Minority Leader Oscar Braynon, who is black, said he fears that arming teachers could have disastrous consequences, especially for minority children.
Braynon, D-Miami Gardens, said he was unable to vote for a bill that “puts children that look like me, look like my child, in harm’s way.”
“I just cannot do it,” Braynon said.
Before the committee signed off on the sweeping measure (SB 7026) in a 9-4 vote, Galvano noted that lawmakers are hurriedly acting to respond to the catastrophe with the goal of preventing others.
And Galvano acknowledged the topic of guns evokes passion, as it did during Monday’s 3 ½-hour meeting. He praised the Legislature for being willing to “revisit” gun regulations.
“That’s not been a debate that this Legislature has ever meaningfully had since I’ve been elected,” the Bradenton Republican, who’s served in the Legislature for more than 14 years, said. “There’s still work to do, but I ask you to join me in supporting this major step in moving this to the next committee so that we never have to endure a tragedy like we have recently endured again.”
After the meeting, Hammer told The News Service of Florida the NRA does not support the measure.
“The bill contains gratuitous gun control language that will not save kids. We support hardening the schools. We support keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. We support putting armed security in the schools. We do not support taking away Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens because a mentally ill young man who should have been stopped numerous times by the system wasn’t stopped, and gun owners are being blamed,” she said.
The bill is expected to go Tuesday to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Also, the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the House version of the bill Tuesday.
by The News Service of Florida
Escambia County Awards $273K In Athletic Park Mowing Contracts, Estimates $50K Savings
February 27, 2018
Escambia County has awarded grounds mowing and trimming bids for 16 athletic parks totaling $273,603.50 for the year.
Each park will be mowed and trimmed 40 times during the year.
The Escambia County Parks and Recreation Department assumed some of the mowing and trimming responsibilities for a total of 16 athletic parks, to alleviate the costs of maintenance for athletic associations at county parks.
The county estimates that they will save over $50,000 per year using private contractors versus county staff performing the work. (Click here for the cost savings breakdown.)
The logistics of mowing and trimming during a short playing season, combined with the distances between parks, and the playing schedules make it impossible for one contractor to meet the needs of all the parks in a cost-efficient and responsive manner, so the Parks and Recreation Department divided the 16 parks into six zones, with each zone containing at least two parks of similar size, located within a reasonable distance of each other
Bids were awarded as follows, with an option to renew each for two additional one year terms:
Zone 1: Total Landscape Service, Inc / $29,450
- Bradberry Park, 4760 Highway 99A, Walnut Hill, 7 acres
- Ernest Ward, 7650 Highway 97, Walnut Hill, 2 acres
- Travis Nelson Park, 4525 West Highway 4, Bratt, 40 acres
Zone 2: Rhett James Landscaping, Inc / $63,990
- Cantonment, 681 Well Line Road, 30 acres
- Quintette, 2490 Quintette Lane, 18 acres
- Molino, 2320 Crabtree Church Road, 12 acres
Zone 3: Emerald Coast Grass Company, LLC, $36,172.50
- Brent, 4711 N. “W” Street Pensacola, 30 acres
- Raymond Riddle, 1704 N. “W” Street Pensacola, 5 acres
- Mayfair, 50 S. Garfield Pensacola, 5 acres
Zone 4: Coastal Landscaping and Maintenance, Inc / $36,950
- Bellview, 2750 Longleaf Avenue Pensacola, 20 acres
- Lewis Powell 7000 Rolling Hills, Pensacola, 2 acres
- Myrtle Grove 99 N. 61st Avenue, Pensacola, 17 acres
Zone 5: Big Orange Enterprises, LLC, d/b/a Escape Landscaping and Lawn Care / $54,720
- Brosnaham Park, 10370 Ashston Brosnaham, Pensacola, 110 acres
- John R. Jones, 555 E. Nine Mile Road, Pensacola, 20 acres
Zone 6: Gulf Coast Environmental Contractors, Inc / $52,320
- Southwest Complex, 2020 Bauer Road, Pensacola, 217 acres
- Baars, 13001 Sorrento Road, 8 acres
Pictured: The Travis Nelson Park in Bratt is mowed on Monday. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Cottage Hill Boil Water Notice Lifted For Area Including Jim Allen Elementary
February 27, 2018
Cottage Hill Water Works has lifted a boil water notice put into place last week due to a broken water main.
The boil water notice was issued last Thursday after natural gas pipeline crew hit a water main. The accident left the area bounded by Neal Road, Wellline Road and Highway 29 without water temporarily, including Jim Allen Elementary School.
The utility said the water main has been repaired and bacteriological sampling showed the water to be safe to drink.
The Escambia County School District provided bottled water and hand sanitizer to students at Jim Allen Elementary during the boil water notice.