Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Call for Comments

The Gulf Breeze News, a worthy weekly that often covers Pensacola Beach issues and events more thoroughly than any other local media outlet, "would like to know what you think about the prospect of fee simple title ownership to property at Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach."

The invitation comes at the end of reporter Pam Brannon's superior article ["Escambia, Santa Rosa Petition for Fee Simple Title"] about the recent joint meeting of the two county commissions:
Send email comments of 200 words or less to: joe@gulfbreezenews.com. Letters to the editor (e-mail and regular mail) must be signed and include a phone number for verification.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Pam Brannon's article might have been close to "superior" had she not been woefully misinformed by SRIA chairman Thomas Campanella when he stated, "Escambia County is really the master leaseholder of Navarre Beach, under the supervision of the real master leaseholder, the federal government."

There is no such thing as a master federal lease here, "real" or otherwise.

Pam then goes on to say,

"The federal government holds the 99-year leases to all property on both Navarre Beach and Pensacola Beach."

Sorry, Pam, this is entirely incorrect, and I hope you give Thomas a little razzing. The federal government has nothing to do with the leases on either beach. It doesn't hold the leases; there is no federal master lease. Escambia County owns all the land and holds all the leases, including the lease of Navarre Beach to Santa Rosa County, who then leases out individual properties on Navarre Beach. Want to call that one a master lease? That's about as close as it comes -but there is no federal hand in the leases, and I'm really flabbergasted that Campanella doesn't understand this.

On the other hand, he's not alone. Two other local luminaries who should've known better made the very same error at around the same time this article was published, only in that case they misinformed a PNJ reporter, who published a correction as soon as he was set straight by Earle Bowden and others.