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Now that the November elections are behind us, the downtown crowd is returning to their drums and pounding out their consolidation of the county under one leadership beat. They are paying for studies to determine the best way for the residents of the county to benefit under their leadership. The City of Pensacola has a declining population of about 55 thousand. Escambia County has approximately 190 thousand, including the City of Pensacola residents. This means that there are about 3 citizens living outside the City of Pensacola for every 1 citizen living inside the city. In years gone by Pensacola was the economic engine for Northwest Florida. Residents of Warrington, Ferry Pass, Perdido Key, Cantonment, as well as Milton, Foley, Gulf Breeze, Ft. Walton Beach, and the area around the city for fifty miles would travel to Pensacola to shop and be entertained. As time passed the above mentioned communities grew and developed to where they are now smaller economic engines on their own. Some are incorporated cities and some have decided to remain unincorporated communities in the area. The city council of Pensacola collects taxes and pays for police and fire protection. They pay for city streets, sidewalks, and neighborhood parks like any other local governmental agency. They make plans for future economic growth of a city in population decline, including plans well over their wildest dreams for a waterfront park. Escambia County has continued to grow in population outside the city limits of Pensacola. Residents of the county have a county commission made up of five county commissioners for their governmental body. These county commissioners have provided for the funding of county roads, sheriff and fire services, construction standards, health services to the poor, and all the other service that the county residents have said they wanted. Now we come back to the present. The decision makers of the City of Pensacola think that they can make better decisions for Escambia County than the current majority of county residents outside the city limits. The downtown crowd says that the county residents will be substantially better off with their guidance and decisions than an uninformed group of county residents. A good example is the way the downtown crowd managed to get the county to pay to move the sewer plant to provide for the betterment of the Pensacola water front. At the current rate the Maritime park will continue to be a wildlife area for the foreseeable future. Let me suggest how the Pensacola City Council could easily establish a single county government with a very simple action. Simply dissolve the City of Pensacola. If the City were dissolved then all the assets and governmental authority would revert back to the Escambia County Commission and the county would be under one governmental agency. The only flaw with this idea would be that each of the five districts in the county would have an equal voice in their government and that is something the downtown crowd will not accept because it would be a sacrilege for decisions to be made in local communities by local residents. Dr. Wallace |
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