FWC Law Enforcement Report
July 9, 2018
The Florida FWC Division of Law Enforcement reported the following activity during the weekly period ending June 21 in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
ESCAMBIA COUNTY
Officers Allgood and Manning conducted offshore saltwater fisheries patrol and issued several notice to appear citations for federal and state violations. The charges include undersized red snapper, undersized gag grouper, possession of trigger fish during a closed season and possession of stone crabs during a closed season.
Officer Allgood performed a fisheries inspection on an individual fishing quota (IFQ) vessel as it returned to the dock in Pensacola to offload their catch. One of the subjects on board had a warrant for driving while his license was suspended. Officer Allgood arrested and transported the subject to the Escambia County Jail.
More than 20 officers participated in targeted enforcement of reef fish violations in Gulf waters south of Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties. Multiple vessels from FWC’s Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) program in conjunction with aviation support checked nearly 300 subjects in state and federal waters. The enforcement effort resulted in 17 federal citations, three state citations and 19 resource warnings. Charges included undersized red snapper, undersized cobia, undersized greater amberjack, possession of gray triggerfish during closed season, undersized vermillion snapper and other reef fish species, along with charter fishing without a federal reef fish permit.
SANTA ROSA COUNTY
Officer Ramos was conducting patrol in a designated shorebird nesting site in Navarre where a colony of black skimmers were nesting. Black skimmers are a species of special concern and one of several imperiled shorebird species in the area. He saw the birds become visibly disturbed and flushed from their hatchlings when a subject ducked under the ropes and entered the closed area. Although the area was roped off and posted with multiple signs, the subject ignored the barricades and went down to the seawall where she began to fish. She was issued a notice to appear citation for the violation.
FWC’s dispatch received a Wildlife Alert complaint that various waste materials were disposed of in the Yellow River Wildlife Management Area. The complaint included the license plate for the vehicle and trailer involved. Officer Ramos and Environmental Investigator Hughes located a pile of waste debris on the south side of the management area. Using the tag number in the complaint they located the suspect. During an interview with the suspect he admitted to disposing of the waste materials. Investigator Hughes issued the defendant a criminal citation for disposing of solid waste at a non-permitted location.
This report represents some events the FWC handled over the past week; however, it does not include all actions taken by the Division of Law Enforcement. Information provided by FWC.
NorthEscambia.com photo.
BOCC Weekly Meeting Schedule
July 9, 2018
Here is a schedule of Escambia County public meetings for the week of June 9-13:
Monday, July 9
Firefighter Interviews – All day event, Public Safety Building, 6575 North “W” Street
Inspection Fund Advisory Board – 2 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place (Agenda)
Marine Advisory – 5:30 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place (Agenda)
Tuesday, July 10
Planning Board-Rezoning - 8:30 a.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place (Agenda)
Planning Board Regular Meeting – 8:35 a.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place (Agenda)
Budget Committee of the Whole – 9 a.m., Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, 221 Palafox Place (Agenda)
Environmental Code Enforcement Special Magistrate – 1:30 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place, Room 104 (Agenda)
Escambia County Local Mitigation Strategy Board – 2 p.m. Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place
Escambia County Housing Finance Authority – 5 p.m., 700 South Palafox Street, Suite 310
FDOT Public Information Meeting on Blue Angle Parkway Improvements – 5:30 p.m., Liberty Church Blue Angel Campus, 2221 South Blue Angel Parkway
Wednesday, July 11
Budget Committee of the Whole – 9 a.m., Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, 221 Palafox Place
Contractor Competency Board – 9 a.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place
Development Review Committee – 1 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place
Santa Rosa Island Authority Board Meeting – 5 p.m., 1 Via de Luna, Pensacola Beach
Thursday July 12
Committee of the Whole – 9 a.m., Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, 221 Palafox Place
Science Hour – RESTORE Update, Matt Posner, Escambia County – 6 p.m., Escambia County Central Office Complex, 3363 West Park Place
Tate Aggies Softball Camp Is This Week
July 9, 2018
The Tate Summer Softball Camp will be held on Thursday, July 12.
The cost is $40 for a softball and hitting skills clinic from 9 a.m. until noon, plus $10 additional for a pitching clinic from 12:30 until 1:30 p.m. at the Tate softball field.
The clinic will be presented by the Tate Aggies coaching staff assisted by current and former Aggie players.
Click here for a registration form for ages 7 through the eighth grade. The form can be returned with payment to any board member or on the day of camp from 8:30 until 9:00 a.m.
For more information, call Brian at (850) 393-6587
Wahoos Beat Mobile
July 9, 2018
Tony Santillan (W, 1-0) had an outstanding debut on the mound in the Wahoos 2-1 victory Sunday night against the Mobile BayBears at Blue Wahoos Stadium.
Keury Mella was called up to Triple-A Louisville and Pensacola relied on Santillan to fill the All-Star’s void. Santillan did not fold to the pressure and displayed his effectiveness in his outing. In six innings, the Reds prospect struck out five, allowed seven hits and just one walk. His only blemish of the game came in the top of the third inning as Brennan Lund hit a solo homer to right field.
With the game tied 1-1 in the bottom of the third inning, Mitch Nay crushed a ground ball RBI single to left field that scored TJ Friedl, giving the Wahoos the lead at 2-1.
The BayBears had a chance to tie or take the lead in the top of the ninth inning, but Alex Powers (S, 9) halted the threat. Powers wiggled out of a jam with runners on the corners and one out in the inning thanks to Bo Way, who grounded into a double play to second baseman Mitch Nay to end the game and secure the win for the Wahoos.
The Wahoos will look to carry their momentum in game two of the series and RHP Daniel Wright (4-5, 4.12) will start for Pensacola, and RHP Jeremy Beasley will take the hill for Mobile, making his Double-A debut.
Authorities Seize Multiple Animals From Molino Property
July 8, 2018
Authoriries seized multiple animals recently in Molino due to their deteriorating physical conditions.
Escambia County Animal Control, with assistance of Panhandle Equine Rescue (PER), seized four horses, a donkey, a miniature mule, a cow and a pig from a property on Chestnut Road in Molino.
“They had been working with the owner for several months, but the condition of the animals only deteriorated,” Panhandle Equine Rescue President Diane Lowery said.
PER transported two horses and the donkey to their facility in Cantonmnet. The other animals were transported by the Escambia County livestock officer to their facility. All of the animals will receive adequate care until they are ready to be re-homed.
The case remains under investigation by Escambia County Animal Control. No charges were immediately filed.
The only horse rescue in Escambia County, the non-profit Panhandle Equine Rescue 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.
For more information on Panhandle Equine Rescue and how to donate to the organization visit www.panhandleequinerescue.org. The group is specifically seeking donation’s to help with the care of the recently seized animals.
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Local 4-H Members Take Part In Mock Legislative Session
July 8, 2018
Escambia County 4-H members recently took part in a mock legislative session at the Florida State Capitol.
The civic education event allowed students to write bills, act as lobbyists, pass the bills through various committees and debate the potential laws on the Capitol House and/or Senate Floor as acting representatives and senators. The event provided the 4-H’ers an opportunity to debate issues and experience the legislative process first-hand.
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Beryl Has Dissipated
July 8, 2018
Beryl has dissipated. The latest information on Beryl is in the graphics on this page.
FWC Hunter Safety Courses Offered In Cantonment And Jay
July 8, 2018
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is offering a free hunter safety internet completion course this week in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.
Students who have taken the online course and wish to complete the classroom portion must bring the online-completion report with them.
Firearm use, ammunition and all materials are provided free of charge. Students should bring a pen or pencil and paper. An adult must accompany children younger than 16 at all times.
Anyone born on or after June 1, 1975, must pass an approved hunter safety course and have a hunting license to hunt alone (unsupervised). The FWC course satisfies hunter-safety training requirements for all other states and Canadian provinces.
The locations and times are:
Escambia County
July 10 (6 to 10 p.m.) & July 14 (7 to 10 a.m.)
Langley Bell 4-H Center
3730 Stefani Road in Cantonment
Santa Rosa County
July 11 (6 to 10 p.m) & July 14 (7 to 10 a.m.)
Jay Community Center
5259 Booker Lane in Jay
Those interested in attending a course can register online and obtain information about future hunter safety classes at MyFWC.com/HunterSafety.
Celebrate National Park and Recreation Month in Escambia County
July 8, 2018
Escambia County is celebrating National Park and Recreation Month in July by inviting residents and visitors to get out and explore everything your local parks have to offer, from athletic fields and playgrounds to nature trails and beach accesses. Escambia County Parks and Recreation maintains parks throughout the county for the public to enjoy, with park properties from Century in the north all the way south to Pensacola Beach, west to Perdido Key and scattered in between.
An initiative of the National Recreation and Park Association, National Park and Recreation Month aims to highlight recreation opportunities and encourage the public to support local parks and recreation.
In celebration of Park and Recreation Month, Escambia County’s Parks and Recreation Department is highlighting one park in each commission district, with several featuring new or recently upgraded amenities:
District 5 – Molino Community Center Playground: Located behind the popular Molino Community Center, this playground offers a fun place for children to play near the community center and Molino Library. Along with the playground, there is a new .24-mile walking path, pavilion and picnic tables. There is also a newly-renovated school cafeteria that is available for the public to rent, featuring a full kitchen and seating for up to 100 people. Call 850-679-4817 for pavilion or cafeteria rental information. For information about renting a room at the Molino Community Center or auditorium, contact the Molino Mid-County Historical Society at 850-587-5011.
District 1 – Beulah Regional Park: Located off Mobile Highway near the Escambia County Equestrian Center, this park truly offers something for everyone and is one of the busiest parks in the county. Beulah Regional Park has basketball and tennis courts, dog park, .33-mile walking path and a pavilion that can be rented for birthday parties and special events. To rent the pavilion, please call 850-475-5220.
District 2 – Civitan Park: This 2-acre neighborhood park in Warrington is a beautiful waterfront park with a covered pavilion, playground and a fishing pier. Tremendous upgrades have been made recently at the park, including a new .22-mile walking path, workout equipment and a new pavilion. To rent the pavilion, please call 850-475-5220.
District 3 – Brownsville Community Center Playground: A brand new playground unit was recently added outside of the Brownsville Community Center, offering a fun place for children to play in the Brownsville area. The playground features slides, monkey bars and more. Since opening in May 2017, the Brownsville Community Center has hosted dozens of community events, including town hall meetings, festivals, expos and holiday celebrations. To rent the community center, please call 850-595-3130 for scheduling information.
District 4 – Regency Park: Spread over 10 acres, Regency Park is one of the largest parks in Escambia County. It features a .33-mile walking path, dog park and plenty of open space for recreational activities. It also offers a basketball court, practice baseball backstop, security lights and a picnic area for residents of all ages to enjoy. A pavilion is available to rent for special events; call 850-475-5220 for more information.
Pictured: The playground at the Molino Community Complex. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Florida Gov’t Weekly Roundup: Weed Wars
July 8, 2018
Folks in Florida might think their pot-smoking pals in Massachusetts are a bunch of crybabies.
Six months after marijuana became legal in the Bay State, purveyors of pot and their advocates are kvetching after a July 1 rollout date, self-imposed by Massachusetts officials, came and went without the advent of retail sales for recreational use.
But, by Sunshine State standards, a six-month turnaround seems pretty speedy.
Florida voters in November 2016 passed a constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana. But an October 2017 deadline to license new vendors — a deadline later modified by state lawmakers — elapsed nine months ago, and Florida pot czar Christian Bax has yet to begin processing new applications from medical marijuana firms.
Bax and other state health officials are fending off nearly a dozen administrative and legal challenges as interested parties seek to plant a footprint or defend their territory in Florida’s blossoming marijuana industry — estimated by some market analysts to generate $1 billion by 2020.
Carl Sagan, the astronomer who was the gateway to the cosmos for amateur astronomers and the generally curious public, also earned a reputation as a marijuana advocate in an era when the legalization of cannabis seemed as far off as the “billions and billions” of stars Sagan brought into the living rooms of television viewers.
“The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world,” Sagan, then 35, observed in 1969.
Nearly fifty years later, this “mad and dangerous world” could use serenity, insight, sensitivity and fellowship more than ever.
UP IN SMOKE
In what seems to be the never-ending weed wars in Florida, an appellate court this week snuffed out the possibility of sick patients being able to smoke their cannabis treatment any time soon.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal came in a lawsuit initiated by Orlando trial attorney John Morgan and others who maintain that a Florida law barring patients from smoking their treatment runs afoul of the 2016 constitutional amendment.
The appeals court chided a Tallahassee judge who sided with patients, saying plaintiffs likely won’t win on the merits of the case and refused to allow smokable medical marijuana while the legal fight continues.
Leon County Circuit Judge Karen Gievers in May agreed with Morgan, who largely bankrolled the constitutional amendment, and plaintiffs in the case. The state appealed, touching off legal maneuvering that led to the appellate panel Tuesday issuing a five-page decision that effectively blocked Gievers’ ruling while the case continues.
“I respect the 1st DCA immensely, but no matter what, this goes to the Supreme Court, so why not now,” Morgan, who has repeatedly called on Gov. Rick Scott to drop the state’s appeal, said in an email Tuesday. “It is just a waste of time and taxpayer money. Cathy Jordan may die as this snails its way through the system. All of this proves why people don’t trust politicians. They know what they voted for.”
Cathy Jordan, one of the plaintiffs in the case, credits a daily regimen of smoking marijuana with keeping her alive decades after doctors predicted she would die from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Jordan, who grows her own pot, testified that smoking marijuana treats a variety of life-threatening side effects of the disease and that other forms of ingestion don’t have the same positive impact.
Gievers agreed with lawyers representing Jordan and the other plaintiffs. They contended that it was understood that the constitutional amendment allowed smoking, though the measure did not expressly authorize it.
State health officials, who answer to Scott, immediately appealed Gievers’ May 25 ruling, automatically putting her decision on hold. On June 5, Gievers lifted the stay, saying Jordan and Diana Dodson, a plaintiff who has neuralgia associated with HIV, would suffer without having access to smokable marijuana.
But the appeals court Tuesday quashed Gievers’ decision to lift the stay and directly contradicted the circuit judge. Appellate judges Joseph Lewis, Lori Rowe and M. Kemmerly Thomas found that the plaintiffs “failed to demonstrate that they will suffer irreparable harm if the automatic stay is reinstated.”
Noting that a trial court may vacate an automatic stay only “under the most compelling circumstances,” the judges also scolded Gievers, saying “it was an abuse of discretion for the circuit court” to lift the stay.
Even more, the panel signaled bleak prospects for Morgan and the plaintiffs, at least as far as the appellate court — which also rejected a request to rush the case to the Florida Supreme Court — is concerned.
“Here, after the panel’s preliminary review of the wording of the medical marijuana amendment and the statute prohibiting the use of medical marijuana in a smokable form, we conclude that appellees (the plaintiffs) have not sufficiently demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits as required to justify vacating the automatic stay,” the judges wrote.
WHEN “DIRT” IS A “FACILITY”
Meanwhile, an orchid grower and investors who spent nearly $800,000 to purchase property in Pinellas County they believed would give them a leg up in obtaining a highly sought-after medical marijuana license may be experiencing buyers’ remorse, thanks to state health officials.
One of the owners of Louis Del Favero Orchids told a state judge Monday he now believes the business would have been better off keeping the cash, due to what his lawyers are calling a faulty rule proposed by the Department of Health.
The orchid grower is challenging the proposed rule, which is based on a law passed last year implementing the medical-marijuana constitutional amendment. The orchid grower argues the proposal fails to properly carry out the law, which includes giving preference for up to two medical marijuana licenses to applicants who own facilities that were used to process citrus.
Ormond Beach lawyer David Vukelja, who owns 20 percent of Del Favero, told Administrative Law Judge R. Bruce McKibben on Monday he and other investors closed on the property because they believed it would give them an edge when applying for a marijuana license.
“We looked at the statute,” Vukelja said. “We took it at face value.”
According to the Department of Health, however, there’s nothing in the law that requires a “facility” to be a structure.
But Seann Frazier, a lawyer representing Del Favero, asked if that meant that a tent, erected where a structure previously was used to process citrus, would make an applicant eligible for the citrus preference.
“You’re saying the facility is the tent. It could also be the space it’s in. So how they will convert that space. They could put a building on it,” state Office of Medical Marijuana Use Deputy Director Courtney Coppola said.
“The facility could be dirt. Unimproved dirt, that somebody could promise to put a $1 million processing plant on top of it, they would still meet the citrus preference. Is that true?” Frazier asked.
Coppola agreed.
TEACHERS UNION: SCHOOL LAW A TRAIN WRECK
In other court action this week, Florida teachers and unions filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the constitutionality of a new law that requires local unions to represent 50 percent or more of instructional personnel.
The law, which passed during this year’s legislative session and took effect Sunday, enacted a series of major changes in the public-school system.
Known as House Bill 7055, the measure created a new “Hope” scholarship program that will allow students who are bullied to transfer to private schools. The law — known as a legislative “train” — included expanded financial support for Gardiner scholarships, which provide aid to disabled students. And it raised evidentiary standards for school boards trying to terminate charter schools.
But the lawsuit, which was filed by the Florida Education Association, nine local teachers’ unions, eight teachers and eight local union representatives, is aimed at a specific provision in the law that would result in local unions losing their certification if membership falls below 50 percent of the employees they represent in the collective-bargaining process.
The new law “contains multiple subjects that have little relationship to one another and absolutely no relationship to the recertification requirement contained” in the measure, the lawsuit said.
“There is no natural or logical connection between education and union density or requiring a public employee union to recertify its status as the exclusive bargaining unit for members of the instructional staff of a school district,” the lawsuit said.
STORY OF THE WEEK: Florida teachers and unions filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the constitutionality of a new law that requires local unions to represent 50 percent or more of instructional personnel.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I’m sure I’m one of a long list of people who feels they’re being screwed by the Department of Health. Yeah, that thought has crossed my mind.” — David Vukelja, one of the owners of a Tampa-based orchid grower challenging a proposed health department rule dealing with a citrus industry preference for a medical marijuana license.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida