Ernest Ward Middle Splits Basketball Games With Pollard-McCall
December 12, 2014
The Ernest Ward Middle School Eagles split games with the Pollard-Mcall Junior High School Wolves Thursday night in Pollard to end their season.
The Ernest Ward boys defeated Pollard-McCall 45-34, while the Wolves downed the Eagles girls 26-18.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Century Chamber Holds Christmas Open House Event
December 12, 2014
The Century Chamber of Commerce held its annual Christmas Open House Thursday afternoon. Chamber members, prospective members and area residents had the opportunity to network and learn more about what the Century Chamber offers, all while enjoying light refreshments.
NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Tate Wins Again; Jay Drops Game At Freeport; Northview Beat Baker
December 12, 2014
Tate 69, Milton 53
The Tate High School Aggies beat Milton Thursday night 69-53 at Milton. Zachary Phalen led the Aggies with 24 points, while Jack Henry added 10. Justin Baker, Reggie Payne and Daniel Cafarella contributed nine each. Also scoring for the Aggies were Cortez Jackson and Quintin McGhee with three, and Michael Roberts with two.
With the win, the Aggies improved to 7-1, while Milton fell to 0-9.
The Aggies will host Crestview Friday night, with the JV playing at 5:30 and the varsity tip off set for 7 p.m.
Northview 59, Baker 51
Northview 35, Baker 12 (JV)
The Northview Chiefs beat the Baker Gators Thursday night in Bratt. The Chiefs varsity team downed Baker 59-51, and the junior varsity Chiefs beat Baker 35-12. Northview will host T.R. Miller on Monday.
Freeport 53, Jay 39
The Jay Royals lost Thursday on the road at Freeport, 53-39. For the Royals Eric Trevino scored 15, Thomas Fischer had 10, Taylor Kelly contributed eight, Victor Mishoe six, Justice Garcia two, and Austin Sapp one.
The Jay Royals varsity will be at Northview on Monday at 7 p.m.
Three Dead Due To Improperly Used Propane Heater
December 11, 2014
Three people are dead due apparently due to an improperly used propane heater at a Pensacola home Thursday morning.
Police were dispatched to 1217 North Sixth Avenue shortly after 6 a.m. after 29-year Jimmy Sunday was awakened by fumes inside the house and called for help.
A propane tank with a portable heater affixed to the top (similar to the pictured example) was being used inside to heat the house, said Pensacola Police Department Sgt. Kevin Christman.
The victims were identified as 52-year old Bridget Sunday; her boyfriend, 54-year Clarence Nettles; and her grandson, four-year old Tony D. Taylor, Jr.
Jaylen Sunday, age nine, was also inside the house and transported to Sacred Heart Hospital where he remained in critical condition. Bridget Sunday was was the mother of Jaylen Sunday and Jimmie Sunday.
“We are saddened to report this tragedy and even more saddened that families would suffer this unthinkable tragedy 14 days before Christmas,” said Chief Chip W. Simmons. “Any deaths are tragic, but especially those that could be avoided.”
Autopsies have been done but the reports are not yet available and could take several weeks or more to complete. Christman also said the autopsies did not indicate any signs
of foul play.
Nativity Scene Removed From Jay Town Hall After Lawyer Claims It’s Illegal
December 11, 2014
For the first time in nearly 40 years, there’s no longer a Nativity scene on display this Christmas at the Jay City Hall after an attorney for a Wisconsin group that represents agnostics and atheists sent a letter to the town claiming that a nativity display on public property is illegal.
“It is our understanding that the town of Jay owns and erects a nativity in front of Jay City Hall. We understand that the nativity is the lone holiday display,”Andrew Seidel, a staff attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote in a letter to Jay Mayor Kurvin Qualls last week.
“It is unlawful for the town to maintain, erect, or host a holiday display that consists solely of a nativity scene, thus singling out, showing preference for, and endorsing one religion. The Supreme Court has ruled it is impermissible to place a nativity scene as the sole focus of a display on government property,” Seidel’s letter continued. He said his letter was in response to a complaint his foundation received from a Jay resident.
“Putting up a nativity scene, especially at Jay City Hall, tells nonbelievers and non-Christians that they are outsiders in their community, that they are excluded…Once the town enters into the religion business, conferring endorsement and preference for one religion over others, it strikes a blow at religious liberty, forcing taxpayers of all faiths and of no religion to support a particular expression of worship,” Siedel wrote.
According to Jay Clerk Linda Carden, the town’s attorney advised against fighting the group in court due to legal costs that could easily top $100,000. Instead, Carden said, the town council declared the Nativity scene as surplus property.
The Nativity was then acquired by the Santa Rosa County Ministerial Association, which has now placed it on display at the corner of Commerce Street and Highway 4 — at the Jay’s main stoplight.
“More people probably will see it there,” Carden said.
(Scroll down for remainder of article below photo)
In 2012, the Freedom From Religion Foundation targeted a Nativity display at the Century Town Hall, with Seidel writing a letter that claimed a display consisting solely of a Nativity scene, “depicting the mythical birth of the Christian god [sic]“, endorses a single religion and is thus illegal according to the Supreme Court.
“There are ample private and church grounds were religious displays may be freely placed,” Seidel wrote in 2012 to the Town of Century. “Once the council enters into the religion business, conferring endorsement and preference for one religion over others, it strikes a blow at religious liberty, forcing taxpayers of all faiths and of no religion to support a particular expression of worship.”
Century declared their Nativity scene as surplus property, selling it to the highest bidder. The sale was not a response to the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s assertions, but was due solely to the aging condition of the manger scene set making it unsuitable for public display, town officials said at the time.
Century’s Nativity display was purchased by the Faith Bible Baptist Church. It was erected and lit by church volunteers in front of an abandoned building directly across Highway 29 from the Century Town Hall. The use of the property was donated by owner Don Grant of Century Marine. Electricity for the display was donated by the neighboring Abundant Life Assembly of God, while Tabernacle Baptist Church donated the wiring necessary to light the display.
Pictured top: A photo showing a Nativity display at the Jay Town Hall sent by an unnamed Jay resident to the Freedom From Religion Foundation prompting the group’s complaint. Pictured top inset and middle photo: The Nativity scene was acquired by a ministerial association and moved (Photos by Michele Gibbs for NorthEscambia.com). Pictured bottom inset: A Nativity display now across the highway from the Century Town Hall. NorthEscambia.com photos, click to enlarge.
Additional Details Released About $25,000 Century Business Challenge
December 11, 2014
A few additional details were released Wednesday on the upcoming $25,000 Century Business Challenge from Quint and Rishy Studer in which a winning business plan developer will be provided the cash and guidance needed to open their doors.
According to information from Debbie Nickles, Century town planner:
The Century Business Challenge will be open to any applicant wishing to start a new business in the Town of Century. Business relocations and expansions will be considered, but only for compelling need-based reasons.
The winner of the Century Business Challenge will receive a package of incentives to assist with the planning, location, and operational hurdles that often keep entrepreneurial plans from ever being realized.
The package will include:
- A three year lease of approximately 800 square feet of commercial space at substantially discounted rates;
- Up to $25,000 in build-out and startup capital funds to be used for equipment, building upgrades, or furniture; and
- Ongoing business mentorship by some of the best, brightest and most successful business leaders in our area.
Applicants will first need to submit an application, followed by a business plan that is based on the Challenge timeline and resources. Following the submission of the business plans, a Challenge panel of business experts will judge each business plan, and the top-scoring business plans will proceed to Round Two, which is a more intensive, elevator-pitch style interview with the Challenge panel. The Challenge panel will determine the winning business plan, and the winning company will immediately begin the process of working to start, relocate, or expand a business in Century.
Further details and applications have not yet been released. For an earlier story, click here.
Pictured top: Mollye Barrows announces the upcoming Century Business Challenge Monday night at a Century town council meeting as Brice Harris of the Haas Center for Business Research & Economic Development at the University of West Florida listens. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Florida Sees Surge In Holiday Gun Shopping
December 11, 2014
Florida gun dealers saw a sharp increase in sales as shoppers flooded stores the day after Thanksgiving.
With 8,300 background checks conducted Nov. 28, the traditional start of the holiday shopping period, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement recorded the third-busiest day ever for gun sales in the state, FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey said.
The Nov. 28 purchases trailed only the sales for two days in December 2012, which came after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Bailey said.
“We did roughly 23,000 sales Thanksgiving week,” Bailey said Tuesday after addressing the Florida Cabinet. “On a normal week, we do about 14,000 background investigations on those sales.”
The boost in sales followed the Nov 24 announcement that a grand jury would not indict Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown, a decision that touched off widespread protests. Also the increase came after Florida State University graduate Myron May opened fire Nov. 20 in the lobby of the school’s Strozier Library, wounding three people before being fatally shot by police.
Bailey called the spurt in sales a product of the traditionally busy shopping day.
“I can tell you Newtown had a dramatic increase,” Bailey said. “It’s too early for me to say if Ferguson has had an increase or not.”
National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer deferred comment when asked about the reasons for the boost in sales.
“The American people strongly believe in their God given right to self defense and know that they are responsible for their own safety and security,” Hammer said in an email.
Mark Folmar, owner of Folmar’s Gun and Pawn in Tallahassee, said Wednesday that he hasn’t heard any of his customers say they were buying guns due to Ferguson or the Florida State University shooting.
Folmar added that his customers typically buy guns at the holiday season and at the start of hunting season.
“The majority of our gun sales are to people who already own guns,” Folmar said. “They are the biggest market because they like them. The person who owns three is just as likely to buy a fourth as the person who is going to buy a first one.”
About 3 percent of people applying for gun purchases in Florida are initially denied while at the retailer, Bailey said. However, many of those individuals are eventually able to purchase weapons after providing additional information, he said.
Bailey’s comments came as the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence released a report that said background checks on gun purchases have blocked 2.4 million sales to dangerous people since the inception of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.
“Brady background checks save lives. Brady estimates that they have blocked some 358 purchases every day to dangerous people,” Brian Malte, Senior national policy director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a release. “Unfortunately, in the majority of states, criminals and other people not allowed to own or buy guns legally are still able to avoid background checks by making purchases online or at gun shows.”
Bailey said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been able to cut the time to conduct background checks.
The on-hold time was about 10 minutes in the days after Sandy Hook. For the Nov. 28 sales, the background check time was down to about 1 minute due to legislatively approved staffing increases and the introduction of an online system for retailers to file applications, Bailey said.
As of Nov. 30, there were 1.337 million concealed-weapon or firearm licenses issued in Florida, according to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The state went over the 1 million mark in December 2012, becoming the first state in the nation to surpass that figure.
by Jim Turner and Tom Urban, The News Service of Florida
Garbage Rates Rising In Century
December 11, 2014
Century residents will soon see a slight increase on their garbage bills.
The rate for residential service will increase 34 cents, from $16.11 to $16.45 per month for household waste. The town is passing along a 2.6 percent rate increase from Allied Waste, the town’s service provider. Under their contract with Century, Allied is allowed to periodically adjust rates based upon increases in the Consumer Price Index.
With the hike, the residential garbage rate in Century will have increased $1.40 per month since 2011.
Citizens Insurance on Target To Drop Below 650,000 Policies
December 11, 2014
The effort to move customers into the private market will slow at Citizens Property Insurance Corp. now that the state-backed insurer has cut its number of policies in half over the past two years.
Still, about 100,000 more policies could be pushed into the private market during the next year, Citizens President and CEO Barry Gilway told members of the insurer’s Board of Governors on Wednesday.
“While depopulation will be slowing, as we begin to look more like the market of last resort we were created to be, we’re still forecasting to be well below 650,000 next year,” Gilway said.
Citizens, which peaked at 1.5 million policies in August 2012, was down to 727,122 policies as of November 30. The insurer this year set up an electronic clearinghouse aimed at moving property owners to the private market.
Also, in January, more than 182,000 policies now in Citizens will be available to be picked up by nine private carriers in a process known as “takeouts.” For February, five companies have been approved to receive up to 132,941 residential policies. In both cases, the overall number of policies eventually shifted is not expected to reach the approved maximum, as private companies cherry-pick the least-risky policies and often go after many of the same customers.
On Tuesday, Citizens executives announced they are rewriting a letter sent to customers selected for “takeout” regarding policyholders’ rights in the process. Also, the letter will be sent earlier in the process.
Julie Jones Named New Florida Department Of Corrections Boss
December 11, 2014
Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday tapped Julie Jones, a public-safety veteran who retired earlier this year, to head the beleaguered Department of Corrections, an agency under state and federal scrutiny for inmate abuse, corruption and retaliation against whistleblowers.
Jones, the first woman to lead the corrections agency overseeing more than 100,000 inmates, retired this spring after a five-year stint as chief of the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Prior to that, Jones served more than two decades at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, where she worked her way up to director of law enforcement before taking the highway-safety position in 2009.
Jones had been the subject of longstanding rumors as Scott’s pick for the troubled corrections agency but said she was not contacted by Scott’s office until last week. Jones, 57, is Scott’s fourth corrections chief in four years. The most recent secretary, Mike Crews, retired late last month.
Jones takes over as the agency is grappling with investigations into inmate deaths at the hands of prison guards, lawsuits from whistleblowers who claim they faced retaliation for exposing cover-ups of inmate abuse and questions about inmate health care after the state’s privatization of health services began more than a year ago.
Known for her direct manner, Jones is highly regarded among lawmakers and lobbyists for her ability to reach consensus among entities that often have competing agendas.
Although she lacks experience in the prison arena, Jones said the department has plenty of experts on whom she can rely when she takes over the helm Jan. 5.
“My fresh perspective will enable me to look for different ways to do things. I don’t have to be an expert in order to implement change management. I’m good at the people part, and I’m good at the budget part. Hence on getting the current employees that are working as hard as they can the resources to do their job, I can do that. And I think that’s going to be the key to this,” Jones said.
Crews spent months trying to resuscitate the department’s image by purging rogue officers and imposing a “zero tolerance” policy for corruption and abuse before he stepped down in November. Crews’ reforms began this summer after reports of inmate abuse by prison guards that sometimes led to horrific deaths. He fired dozens of prison workers, initiated new standards for conduct and asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate more than 100 unresolved inmate deaths.
Black leaders are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to expand an investigation into wrongdoing at several Florida prisons, already under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Meanwhile, a group of corrections investigators filed a lawsuit against Scott and other officials earlier this year, alleging they were retaliated against for exposing the death of an inmate that opened a floodgate of questions about prisoner abuse.
Crews, who repeatedly said he intended to “change the culture” within the corrections agency, was “on the right track” with some of the reforms he implemented, Jones said.
“The cultural change, though, you can tell people that you want them to act differently but if you don’t set standards and hold them accountable, it’s hard. That’s why the HR (human resources) piece and analyzing what their job is, being very specific about what is expected of them so there’s no gray area, that’s important and that will lead directly into the ethics piece that Mike has been working on,” Jones said.
Jones said her first order of business will be analyzing prison workers’ job tasks and staffing levels.
“I need to know what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and are they doing it appropriately. What’s their job? What can we automate? What do we need a corrections officer to be doing? Do we need additional technology? How do we make their job better? So we need to go in and do a complete assessment of what the job is,” Jones said Wednesday morning in an interview with The News Service of Florida.
The corrections agency has a $2 billion budget and has run a deficit in excess of $100 million over the past few years. One of Crews’ main complaints before he left the agency was that corrections workers, who have gone without raises for at least six years, are underpaid and overworked.
Jones said she could advocate for pay hikes with the Legislature and the governor’s office but only after her analysis is complete.
“The problem is we want to throw money at a problem. I need to understand what the problem is before we ask for money. Corrections officers have a really bad rap right now. So cleaning up the image, getting them the respect that they’re due is all part of then turning around and asking for compensation and everything that they have to work with,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you I’m going to go in and ask for a raise. … If we need to hire different people or better people and we can’t hire them at $32,000, then we’re going to have to do something about it. But the expectations are (to) get some good accountability measures associated with that job description. Then you can go to the Legislature very easily and say these people are underpaid. … Nobody’s done that. You can’t just keep asking for money without expressing what the problem is.”
Whistleblowers who have filed lawsuits against the state for retaliation after exposing wrongdoing have complained that many higher-level corrections workers involved in prisoner abuse or corruption get promoted while low-level staff lose their jobs.
“Nobody in this system is going to get a free pass,” Jones said. “I will also maintain that zero tolerance for corruption, for just basic human rights and how we treat people. A lot of the intimidation in the system is because they can get away with it. That’s not right.”
The “service piece” needs to “permeate throughout the corrections community,” Jones said.
“We have a responsibility to the people who are incarcerated to keep them safe and get them out of the system as quickly and judiciously as we can,” she said. “I can talk until I’m blue in the face that I want you to be kind and considerate, but if I don’t tell you exactly what my expectations are, there’s always that gray area that someone wants to interpret, ‘Well, she said this, but she really meant that.’ That’s why clear and concise messaging on what’s acceptable and what’s not is going to be critical. Mike was well on the way to doing that. I intend to build on the momentum that he’s created.”
Jones paused when asked why, after retiring, she would want to tackle an embattled agency with a laundry list of headaches.
“I think prisons are an integral part of the judicial system. As the end of the line once you go through the judicial system, it is very important for our communities that we get it right. I care about the people. I care about the people that work in our prisons. I care about the communities that these prisoners are released to. And I care about Florida. I think this is important,” she said.
by Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida