USPS Publication Number 16300
T h is C o m mu n i t y N ewsp a p er is a pu bl ica t ion of E sca m bia-S a n t a Rosa B a r Assoc ia t ion
Se r v i ng t he Fi r st Jud icial Ci rcu it
Section A, Page 1
Vol. 19, No. 48
Visit The Summation Weekly Online: www.summationweekly.com
December 11, 2019
Putting in the Work
1 Section, 8 Pages
by Gina Castro
M
ayor Grover Robinson completed his first year as mayor as of November. Robinson is Pensacola’s second strong mayor. He also was a longtime Escambia County Commissioner. Business Climate sat down with the mayor to discuss his first year as mayor as well as the future of his term.
When we interviewed you after you were elected, you said a major focus during your time as mayor would be connecting with citizens. Do you feel you have accomplished that? I feel like we’re working to be better at that. That’s an ongoing process. We’ve been having town halls, engaging with our neighborhoods director and engaging with neighborhoods. We’re reaching out to be more connected. We have our weekly press conferences. We’re trying to be out there in more ways to connect with citizens. I think we have accomplished that. It’s one of those things I don’t think you can be totally done with. We’re going to work hard on it this year and continue to do the same thing. One of the initiatives you’ve been doing since you’ve been in office is Mondays with the Mayor press conferences. Do you think that has been effective? I think it’s been good. I think it’s allowed us to talk about things and to have a place to talk and answer questions. It has also allowed us to put out more information about the city and try to be there whenever we have challenges as well. I think it’s something we promised to do, and we’ve been consistent with doing it. It’s our feeling to continue to keep doing all the things we can do to try to be more connected with our citizens—to let them know what is happening here in city hall. You recently joined the National League of Cities Task Force, which has a membership of more than 2,000 cities. How does your being a part of this league benefit the city of Pensacola? That task force is dealing with the presidential election. The whole purpose of it is it’s bipartisan. The idea is to talk about things that happen in cities and the need for whoever is president to see the importance of what cities bring and commit to their organizations working with cities. As I have said before, we call it “purple solutions” they are not red or blue or democrat or republican. They are things that we do every day. We just try to get cities to function, and we want to make sure we get support from whoever is running for president and that they are supportive to helping
cities be the kind of places we need them to be, like great places to live, work and play. There are a few issues Pensacola has been dealing with before you became mayor, such as the growing homeless population. Do you have a plan of action to address that during your time as mayor? We’re trying to work on that. I think part of the challenge is that there is no silver bullet. It’s a continuous process. There are some things that I think will help us engage with that population, but also serve the general population. The challenge is they all take money, and we’re just trying to find ways to prioritize, but I have been happy about the discussions we’ve had. We had a meeting back in April Commissioner May and I met with several organizations that deal with homelessness. Some common themes came up in that, and I think we’re trying to address those. We will continue to talk about those things because this is not something that is unique to Pensacola. Homelesness and challenges around that are in every single city in the United States. We’re just trying to work on being better about it. It’s going to take cooperation with the city and county with other organizations, private organizations who are working in that field as well. The Pensacola Police Department has been experiencing some controversy since the Tymar Crawford incident. The Pensacola Dream Defenders have asked for a few demands from the city including creating a civilian oversight board. Will you be implementing any of their demands in place? I would say there are a lot of things that we are working to be better at. One of the things we focused on from the very beginning is how to be more oriented at the neighborhood level. All neighborhoods are a little bit different, and the way that we implement services is going to be a little bit different in each neighborhood. I think there has been something that came out of the event this summer that showed there are areas that we can always improve, but I think the men and women who work for the police department do a
“I think part of the
challenge is that there is no silver bullet. It’s a continuous process. There are some things that I think will help us engage with that population, but also serve the general population.” wonderful job. Even if there are a number of neighborhoods that aren’t having challenges, there cleary are some neighborhoods that are. From the very beginning, we said that we’re going to keep working to be a better police force and be a better city. So, toward that end, yes, I think you’re going to see something happening. I want to be clear that I think you’re going to see more of an advisory committee. I think that one of the challenges is that as far as oversight, we have a citizens’ oversight. They are called the city council. They are citizens that provide oversight. We’re not looking to duplicate that effort, but there are certain things we can do to improve that and improve it in a way that engages citizens’ input. I do believe that the police force has been working on that, but I do believe we can absolutely be better in everything we do. We can continually work to improve. I’m proud that every department that I’ve worked with in Pensacola is willing to look within themselves to find ways to become better. Even if they’re doing an excellent job, they always believe that they could be doing better and be delivering better services to the citizens. Pensacola has been experiencing an uptick in gun violence. You reached out to U.S. Attorney Lawrence Keefe about the issue. Has that benefitted you and your team’s ability to handle the issue? This is another issue that is not unique to Pensacola. This issue is happening all across the nation, so again, from our standpoint, any gun violence is something we need to be addressing. There has been a conceivable amount of energies that have taken place in the past six months in working together with the federal government and local government in trying to make our community safer, and I think we’ve seen at least in the last couple of months a curtailing of that gun
WE’RE SOCIAL
violence, and we just need to stay on it and keep moving forward. I think it also points to initiatives that we need to do within these neighborhoods to provide alternatives to things that introduce them to gun violence, and I think part of that is staying involved at the community level and at the neighborhood level, so I do think that we’re going to continue to do as much as we can to offer alternatives to our citizens and youth. I think that’s a big part of it as well. Another concern of many citizens of Pensacola is pedestrian safety. Do you plan to make strides to make the city more pedestrian friendly? We’ve hired a complete streets coordinator. We’ve been working to make ourselves more walkable in our community. We believe it’s essential here in downtown, but it’s not just downtown, we also have several walkability issues that are moving out of the downtown area across the entire city. It goes to the western end and to the northern end of our city. So, for me, it’s not just about downtown; being a more walkable city extends throughout the city. We have a number of initiatives that are in the works now: introducing bike lanes, switching some roads that are one-way to twoway and introducing more pedestrian accentuated cross walks. We have a host of projects going on right now where we are trying to find ways to make our community more walkable, safer to walk and easier for our citizens to walk. We’ve spoken about a lot of progress and projects you’ve accomplished within your year as mayor. What do you think has been your biggest success this year? I think our biggest success is really straightening out things here in city hall, developing a good relationship between council and mayor, investing in people to make sure we get the services administered correctly and investing in our employees and making sure they have training and proper compensation. Those things will help us be more effective when we are administering those services. I think out of this first year, we got ourselves internally focused, so now we’re ready to work externally. I think year two, three and four you will see us on a much more external focus, and I think we’ll be in a better position because we spent this year internally getting ourselves better prepared.
CONNECT WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA