Hayward wants to build on Pensacola's momentum
- December 6, 2014
- / Shannon Nickinson
- / government
The theme of Ashton J. Hayward’s second term in office may be in the power of conversation.
Hayward, 45, believes that the momentum Pensacola has built in recent years can be maintained — and built upon — one conversation at a time.
— “I had a great conversation with a guy in Seattle whose sister lives here. The majority of his business is on the Eastern seaboard. He’s looking to put a manufacturing facility somewhere out this way. That’s a conversation we need to have.”
— On the Transmontaigne facility on the downtown waterfront. “George Pound owns it, and I asked George to move that in 2011. He lives in Atlanta, he’s a good guy, and we had a good conversation. I think we can work with them to jazz that area up and make it more attractive, but he said, ‘Ashton, I invested a lot of money in this after Hurricane Ivan, I don’t think you have the money to buy me out.’ I said, ‘I can try to find it.’”
— On a recent SoGo Saturday during the Foo Foo Festival, Hayward says he was just watching people when two couples from Destin recognized him.
“They said, ‘Mayor, we’re loving coming over here now. We never came over to Pensacola.’ When I would always hear, ‘we’re going Fairhope or we’re going to Daphne or we’re going to Destin.’ We’re where it’s at. We’re talking about it, from the government levels to the private sector. We’re selling the investment that people have made in Pensacola.”
Hayward was re-elected with 65 percent of the vote on Nov. 4. A couple of days before he was officially sworn in for his second term, Hayward talked about his plans for the second term and some of the lessons he learned in the first.
[sidebar]
On the Escambia Treating Site: We pushed that envelope extremely hard to get that to where that will be a site that is near interstate and airport and the state is almost ready to deed the property to the city and we’re working on who will maintain leachate monitoring in perpetuity, because that will cost money, but that’s a great site.
On Bruce Beach: There is a public meeting coming up in December or January where we will get public input and we’ll get into the design phase. I’m hoping that facility’s going to be built by late 2015 or early 2016, but I would like to see Florida Fish and WIldlife move their offices down there. I’d like to see their boats down there, and put more of a focus on the water.
The CMPA did pass building the breakwater, so you’ll have a marina down there and that will be exciting for what’s going on down there.
On the Community Maritime Park: The CMPA was set up because of the bond structure. The public understands it as another layer of bureaucracy, which the city’s the backstop and it’s challenging, and I don’t want anyone to forget I got into the CMPA early on because there’s a vision out there was set for the community and that’s what the community wants us to do. We were fortunate to hire CBRE to help the CMPA along, but we’ve had a lot of help from private sector. Mr. Studer’s been a change agent for Pensacola. There’s always been a private philanthropic and business leader that’s helped change the community partnering with good leaders and that’s important. I think we’re moving in the right direction out there. There’s a lot of heart and soul and sweat equity that went into this deal. We can’t afford to fail.”
On Navy Federal Credit Union’s investment in the area: Navy Federal is key to what we’re doing because it attracts other blue-chip companies to say wow, if they’re going to have a $1 billion investment in Pensacola and Escambia County, there’s something we’re missing, maybe we need to come check it out.
On his sometimes strained relationship with City Council: Let’s face it hasn’t always gone easily, but I stuck to my guns on how I wanted to do certain things. The city council is the legislative body. I’m the executive body, like the governor or the President. You’d don’t see the president hanging out with Congress. I felt like it was important for them to have their time and space to work on legislative issues. It was difficult to stick to that, but I think the success speaks for itself. I think now more than ever we’re really clicking. We’re having frank conversations. I don’t think my door has ever been closed, I just think they decided to go one way for a while, and I respected that. I think it works out. At the end, they knew cared deeply about the city. I think they saw how hard we were all working. I think it’s great now. I look forward to working with them. We’re not always going to agree but that’s good. I think our council knows how important it is to the citizens that we continue down this path of creating value and success and they want to be part of it now, and I think that’s important.
Will he go to more council meetings? I think you’ll probably see me at more meetings. I like being with them. I’ve never not liked being with them. They’re smart, I like to hear what they have to say. I just think a lot of them now have figured out how busy the job of the mayor is. I was out doing the business of the city on many occasions and couldn’t be at council. That’s what the public expects and I think they finally figured out the expectations that would be on any mayor to deliver.
On the federal grand jury investigation into contracts, expenses and other matters at City Hall: "We respect the process of the grand jury. We have not been asked to provide more information."
[/sidebar]
To keep the city’s momentum moving, he wants to continue the aesthetic rehabilitation of the city’s core and continue to focus on making City Hall feel welcoming to citizens, businesses and would-be investors alike.
He says he wants the theme of the next term to be “to grow our city, focus on issues that have plagued us that are not fun.
“No one wants to talk about generational poverty, about what we can do better in education, about how can we really get the folks that are suffering in our community to believe that we care,” Hayward says.
“That’s one thing I think about a lot. I spent a lot of time with the community that really struggles as much as I could in my first term. I don’t know if they really believe that we care.”
He points to the federal re-entry program led by U.S. District Judge Casey Rogers as one rung on that ladder. The city has hired a couple of graduates of that program with Pensacola Energy.
“As a leader, you have to let these people know that we want them to be part of the community. It’s real simple: They can have a positive or a negative impact on the community when they come out. And public safety is everything.
“I can talk jobs all day and how pretty everything looks, but the number one thing that they’re going to ask me at the town hall meeting is public safety. We all want to feel safe.”
Hayward notes that “the outside world doesn’t say Escambia County, they say Pensacola. Let’s just accept it. Let’s grow the brand and talk about Pensacola. The bottom line is we have to all contribute to the win.
“Egos have gotten many people in trouble from the beginning of time and it hasn’t changed in the 21st century. We have to remember we’re getting paid by the taxpayers, it’s their money. They expect their leaders to bring the best to the table. They want to see tangible wins, assets designed and built for their dollars.”
Q: Some recent announcements, such as Offshore Inland and DeepFlex at the port, have been good news. There is research about developing smaller businesses that already are grounded in the community, the idea of encouraging 10 businesses to hire 10 people, which leads to 100 jobs. What is on the horizon for helping that level of business?
A: I grew up in a family where both sides of my family were small-business owners. Looking at those small jobs, if you look at the number of people who worked for my dad or my grandfather, it’s unique because they looked at it like their employees depended on them. They had families, and kids that they had to send to college. Of course they were focused on their own families, but they had other people to take care of, too. We’ve had a lot of risk takers come out of the ground. The psychology is a lot better. When people feel good, they want to do other things…. It’s important to have government in there and saying what can we do to help you be successful.
Q: What first-term accomplishments are you most pleased with?
A: We had plenty of battles, but I think I was ready for those more than people thought I was. However, we’ve achieved so many great things. We said we were going to go after dollars. We’ve gotten an incredible amount of federal and state grants that will impact our community. A lot of stormwater projects, Project Greenshores, the hatchery, the ferry service.
I had to raise stormwater fees because I felt like stormwater was a big issue. We’ve gotten two grants from the National Fish and WIldlife Foundation (for Admiral Mason Park and Corrine Jones project), DEP and DOT gave us a big grant…. I’ve built a good relationship with our governor and that’s paid dividends…. Private companies are putting skin in the game: VT-MAE has $7 million in the deal, DeepFlex will have $7 million in the deal.
We’re talking to FedEx, trying to get them over here.
We built the natural gas fueling stations. It was important that people on the outside know that we are a smart city.
The pension was a big deal for me. That alone was one of the biggest things we’ve been able to do to get people to understand that we can’t run government the way we were.
Looking at the westside of Pensacola was very important to me and working with council to move LOST dollars up to build the Theophalis May Center. I think it’s unique to have a library in there. And building Woodland Heights. The neighborhood said they wanted a theater aspect to it, so we built a great stage there.
Doing Common Sense Pensacola to try to educate the lower socioeconomic class that we want you to be educated on how you deal with your finances. We don’t want you using payday loans or check cashing places. It’s OK to walk into a bank and feel confident opening up a savings account or a checking account. Those are little things, but they are big things.
Taking down structures that had been sitting in neighborhoods for 20 years, like the Blount School that was blocks from City Hall, that’s unacceptable. Now you have two city blocks that is able to be developed.
Now we are talking about the West Garden District. I think you’ll see a lot of things moving west of City Hall and see good things happening. We have to find more density and the density is going to be downtown.
Q: What about things that you wish had worked out differently?
A: I think, it was definitely a new experience, when you’re running an 800-employe organization. I’ve never done that, let’s face it. So I had to rely on people I trusted that didn’t have an axe to grind, people that had never depended on government for their livelihood. I needed people to trust. I think going forward I wish I would have trusted my gut more on certain things…. You get a lot of input as a politician, and a lot of people telling you what to do, which is nice, but at the same time, you make decisions that you wish you had back. There’s plenty I wish I had back.
Q: Like what?
A: You know, when you look at the scale of who’s on the team sometimes, you just wish you would have trusted your gut. And they’re quality people but when there’s a member on the team that just doesn’t fit, I think objectively, I have to ask myself questions like that going forward.
Q: Staff seems stable now.
A: We’ve got great people. People are always trying to do the right thing and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. I remember (St. Petersburg Mayor) Rick Baker told me it’s either going to work or not. It will be turbulent at times, however, it might be the first term before it starts to relax. And that was a good lesson he taught me. The last six months of my first term, things have calmed down. I think everybody wants to be part of the win and how you communicate that is important. You can get so busy and focused.
Q: What policy issues or projects that were announced that didn’t pan out the way you’d hoped that you learned from going forward?
A: I think messaging is very important and I think sometimes we could have done a better job of that. We could have gone the extra mile to bring people in. That’s important to me. I think it wasn’t done consciously. All of my successes in life are because I’ve been able to communicate and get buy-in from people. I think we were moving at such a fast pace, and going the extra mile, I think that’s what leaders do and sometimes I didn’t do that.
I love the question because we had so much success. You can’t have it all…. When you’re in the top job, everyone’s shooting at you. An old state senator, my college roommate’s father, told me that and it’s stayed with me…. So you had all this success when you put it on paper and then you had all this drama, unfortunately that the public saw, but the public spoke and said, ‘We don’t want to hear that. We want you all to focus on us and we want you all to push legislation that is going to be effective for the community and excite Pensacola.’ They wanted the mayor to go have these relationships.
Q: What’s next in the immediate future?
A: Aesthetics are paramount in attracting people to visit or move here or bring their business here.
We’ve got landscaping projects and beautification from Wright to Alcaniz that should start in December. It’s going to look amazing. We’ll keep working with DOT to find dollars.
I’d like to see us do something with Bayfront Parkway to make it more user friendly and walkable. Like a promenade, like you see in Savannah, where people can run, strollers can pass each other. We’re Florida, let’s take advantage of Pensacola Bay. It’s amazing.
We’ve been able to benefit from BP spill. I’m going to continue to go after those dollars and make our city look amazing. Main Street looks completely different. I want to continue that down to Barrancas Avenue and focus on the plan that was in place since long before I was mayor, that we spent dollars on, to create that value.
Infrastructure is very important. You have to have roads, and stormwater and you have to have the capacity to see how we can fix those issues. That’s what mayors really do. We pave roads, we take care of sidewalks, we pick up the garbage and we make sure the infrastructure functions.
Q: Stormwater is the big question after the April flood.
A: The bottom line is, we were focused on that before this happened in a big way. I was all excited as a politician is, “I got all this money!’ But as a salesman, you’re only as good as what you sold yesterday and boom the 29th happened and it was going to be tornadoes at 9 p.m. and at 11 p.m., it was where’s Noah.
In Northwest Florida, we’ve built stormwater facilities for 25, 50 years and I think you saw Dade County do a lot of things differently after Andrew and starting building stormwater for 100 years. We have to now look at how we develop and design our stormwater ponds. We have to look at what goes on upstream.
Across from the jail on Leonard Street, we have to look at what comes down Longhollow. There’s no secret the mayor’s been promoting downtown, so I can’t turn a blind eye to that and say oh, it just happened once. Solutions, benefits and values. if we stick top that we’re going to be successful.
We have to work with engineers. We’re doing three studies (on the April flooding), the downtown study is going to come out in December. We’re working with FEMA, we’re working with the state. It always comes back to money, so I’m going to be aggressively going after money for these kind of projects. It’s critical to the capacity when we’re trying to grow our city.
There’s a lot of people that suffer. Nobody can afford it and it’s a challenge that we don’t need.
Q: County Engineer Joy Blackmon has said that the area where the jail is ideally suited to be a stormwater facility because it is a natural depression in that area. County Commissioners are going to have to decide where to rebuild the (Central Booking and Detention Facility) after the flood.
A: Joy Blackmon is very, very bright and I would listen to her on many things. I think they need to listen to Joy when it comes to that. I think she knows what she’s doing.
Q: There is a sense that the city and the metro area have momentum moving forward. How do you capitalize on that?
A: We need to use that momentum not just in the city, but in the county, and Santa Rosa County and even to the west and look to ways to work together. We’ve got to really talk with one voice. If we’re really going to create the value we want in our community, where young families can stay here and businesses can stay here, we have to be invested together to push the envelope. For far too long it was you against me and we weren’t growing.
Now more than ever you can’t let your foot off the accelerator. The competition is teeing up, going gosh what’s Pensacola doing.
On the Community Maritime Park: The CMPA was set up because of the bond structure. The public understands it as another layer of bureaucracy, which the city’s the backstop and it’s challenging, and I don’t want anyone to forget I got into the CMPA early on because there’s a vision out there was set for the community and that’s what the community wants us to do. We were fortunate to hire CBRE to help the CMPA along, but we’ve had a lot of help from private sector. Mr. Studer’s been a change agent for Pensacola. There’s always been a private philanthropic and business leader that’s helped change the community partnering with good leaders and that’s important. I think we’re moving in the right direction out there. There’s a lot of heart and soul and sweat equity that went into this deal. We can’t afford to fail.”
On Navy Federal Credit Union’s investment in the area: Navy Federal is key to what we’re doing because it attracts other blue-chip companies to say wow, if they’re going to have a $1 billion investment in Pensacola and Escambia County, there’s something we’re missing, maybe we need to come check it out.
On his sometimes strained relationship with City Council: Let’s face it hasn’t always gone easily, but I stuck to my guns on how I wanted to do certain things. The city council is the legislative body. I’m the executive body, like the governor or the President. You’d don’t see the president hanging out with Congress. I felt like it was important for them to have their time and space to work on legislative issues. It was difficult to stick to that, but I think the success speaks for itself. I think now more than ever we’re really clicking. We’re having frank conversations. I don’t think my door has ever been closed, I just think they decided to go one way for a while, and I respected that. I think it works out. At the end, they knew cared deeply about the city. I think they saw how hard we were all working. I think it’s great now. I look forward to working with them. We’re not always going to agree but that’s good. I think our council knows how important it is to the citizens that we continue down this path of creating value and success and they want to be part of it now, and I think that’s important.
Will he go to more council meetings? I think you’ll probably see me at more meetings. I like being with them. I’ve never not liked being with them. They’re smart, I like to hear what they have to say. I just think a lot of them now have figured out how busy the job of the mayor is. I was out doing the business of the city on many occasions and couldn’t be at council. That’s what the public expects and I think they finally figured out the expectations that would be on any mayor to deliver.
On the federal grand jury investigation into contracts, expenses and other matters at City Hall: "We respect the process of the grand jury. We have not been asked to provide more information."
[/sidebar]
To keep the city’s momentum moving, he wants to continue the aesthetic rehabilitation of the city’s core and continue to focus on making City Hall feel welcoming to citizens, businesses and would-be investors alike.
He says he wants the theme of the next term to be “to grow our city, focus on issues that have plagued us that are not fun.
“No one wants to talk about generational poverty, about what we can do better in education, about how can we really get the folks that are suffering in our community to believe that we care,” Hayward says.
“That’s one thing I think about a lot. I spent a lot of time with the community that really struggles as much as I could in my first term. I don’t know if they really believe that we care.”
He points to the federal re-entry program led by U.S. District Judge Casey Rogers as one rung on that ladder. The city has hired a couple of graduates of that program with Pensacola Energy.
“As a leader, you have to let these people know that we want them to be part of the community. It’s real simple: They can have a positive or a negative impact on the community when they come out. And public safety is everything.
“I can talk jobs all day and how pretty everything looks, but the number one thing that they’re going to ask me at the town hall meeting is public safety. We all want to feel safe.”
Hayward notes that “the outside world doesn’t say Escambia County, they say Pensacola. Let’s just accept it. Let’s grow the brand and talk about Pensacola. The bottom line is we have to all contribute to the win.
“Egos have gotten many people in trouble from the beginning of time and it hasn’t changed in the 21st century. We have to remember we’re getting paid by the taxpayers, it’s their money. They expect their leaders to bring the best to the table. They want to see tangible wins, assets designed and built for their dollars.”
Q: Some recent announcements, such as Offshore Inland and DeepFlex at the port, have been good news. There is research about developing smaller businesses that already are grounded in the community, the idea of encouraging 10 businesses to hire 10 people, which leads to 100 jobs. What is on the horizon for helping that level of business?
A: I grew up in a family where both sides of my family were small-business owners. Looking at those small jobs, if you look at the number of people who worked for my dad or my grandfather, it’s unique because they looked at it like their employees depended on them. They had families, and kids that they had to send to college. Of course they were focused on their own families, but they had other people to take care of, too. We’ve had a lot of risk takers come out of the ground. The psychology is a lot better. When people feel good, they want to do other things…. It’s important to have government in there and saying what can we do to help you be successful.
Q: What first-term accomplishments are you most pleased with?
A: We had plenty of battles, but I think I was ready for those more than people thought I was. However, we’ve achieved so many great things. We said we were going to go after dollars. We’ve gotten an incredible amount of federal and state grants that will impact our community. A lot of stormwater projects, Project Greenshores, the hatchery, the ferry service.
I had to raise stormwater fees because I felt like stormwater was a big issue. We’ve gotten two grants from the National Fish and WIldlife Foundation (for Admiral Mason Park and Corrine Jones project), DEP and DOT gave us a big grant…. I’ve built a good relationship with our governor and that’s paid dividends…. Private companies are putting skin in the game: VT-MAE has $7 million in the deal, DeepFlex will have $7 million in the deal.
We’re talking to FedEx, trying to get them over here.
We built the natural gas fueling stations. It was important that people on the outside know that we are a smart city.
The pension was a big deal for me. That alone was one of the biggest things we’ve been able to do to get people to understand that we can’t run government the way we were.
Looking at the westside of Pensacola was very important to me and working with council to move LOST dollars up to build the Theophalis May Center. I think it’s unique to have a library in there. And building Woodland Heights. The neighborhood said they wanted a theater aspect to it, so we built a great stage there.
Doing Common Sense Pensacola to try to educate the lower socioeconomic class that we want you to be educated on how you deal with your finances. We don’t want you using payday loans or check cashing places. It’s OK to walk into a bank and feel confident opening up a savings account or a checking account. Those are little things, but they are big things.
Taking down structures that had been sitting in neighborhoods for 20 years, like the Blount School that was blocks from City Hall, that’s unacceptable. Now you have two city blocks that is able to be developed.
Now we are talking about the West Garden District. I think you’ll see a lot of things moving west of City Hall and see good things happening. We have to find more density and the density is going to be downtown.
Q: What about things that you wish had worked out differently?
A: I think, it was definitely a new experience, when you’re running an 800-employe organization. I’ve never done that, let’s face it. So I had to rely on people I trusted that didn’t have an axe to grind, people that had never depended on government for their livelihood. I needed people to trust. I think going forward I wish I would have trusted my gut more on certain things…. You get a lot of input as a politician, and a lot of people telling you what to do, which is nice, but at the same time, you make decisions that you wish you had back. There’s plenty I wish I had back.
Q: Like what?
A: You know, when you look at the scale of who’s on the team sometimes, you just wish you would have trusted your gut. And they’re quality people but when there’s a member on the team that just doesn’t fit, I think objectively, I have to ask myself questions like that going forward.
Q: Staff seems stable now.
A: We’ve got great people. People are always trying to do the right thing and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. I remember (St. Petersburg Mayor) Rick Baker told me it’s either going to work or not. It will be turbulent at times, however, it might be the first term before it starts to relax. And that was a good lesson he taught me. The last six months of my first term, things have calmed down. I think everybody wants to be part of the win and how you communicate that is important. You can get so busy and focused.
Q: What policy issues or projects that were announced that didn’t pan out the way you’d hoped that you learned from going forward?
A: I think messaging is very important and I think sometimes we could have done a better job of that. We could have gone the extra mile to bring people in. That’s important to me. I think it wasn’t done consciously. All of my successes in life are because I’ve been able to communicate and get buy-in from people. I think we were moving at such a fast pace, and going the extra mile, I think that’s what leaders do and sometimes I didn’t do that.
I love the question because we had so much success. You can’t have it all…. When you’re in the top job, everyone’s shooting at you. An old state senator, my college roommate’s father, told me that and it’s stayed with me…. So you had all this success when you put it on paper and then you had all this drama, unfortunately that the public saw, but the public spoke and said, ‘We don’t want to hear that. We want you all to focus on us and we want you all to push legislation that is going to be effective for the community and excite Pensacola.’ They wanted the mayor to go have these relationships.
Q: What’s next in the immediate future?
A: Aesthetics are paramount in attracting people to visit or move here or bring their business here.
We’ve got landscaping projects and beautification from Wright to Alcaniz that should start in December. It’s going to look amazing. We’ll keep working with DOT to find dollars.
I’d like to see us do something with Bayfront Parkway to make it more user friendly and walkable. Like a promenade, like you see in Savannah, where people can run, strollers can pass each other. We’re Florida, let’s take advantage of Pensacola Bay. It’s amazing.
We’ve been able to benefit from BP spill. I’m going to continue to go after those dollars and make our city look amazing. Main Street looks completely different. I want to continue that down to Barrancas Avenue and focus on the plan that was in place since long before I was mayor, that we spent dollars on, to create that value.
Infrastructure is very important. You have to have roads, and stormwater and you have to have the capacity to see how we can fix those issues. That’s what mayors really do. We pave roads, we take care of sidewalks, we pick up the garbage and we make sure the infrastructure functions.
Q: Stormwater is the big question after the April flood.
A: The bottom line is, we were focused on that before this happened in a big way. I was all excited as a politician is, “I got all this money!’ But as a salesman, you’re only as good as what you sold yesterday and boom the 29th happened and it was going to be tornadoes at 9 p.m. and at 11 p.m., it was where’s Noah.
In Northwest Florida, we’ve built stormwater facilities for 25, 50 years and I think you saw Dade County do a lot of things differently after Andrew and starting building stormwater for 100 years. We have to now look at how we develop and design our stormwater ponds. We have to look at what goes on upstream.
Across from the jail on Leonard Street, we have to look at what comes down Longhollow. There’s no secret the mayor’s been promoting downtown, so I can’t turn a blind eye to that and say oh, it just happened once. Solutions, benefits and values. if we stick top that we’re going to be successful.
We have to work with engineers. We’re doing three studies (on the April flooding), the downtown study is going to come out in December. We’re working with FEMA, we’re working with the state. It always comes back to money, so I’m going to be aggressively going after money for these kind of projects. It’s critical to the capacity when we’re trying to grow our city.
There’s a lot of people that suffer. Nobody can afford it and it’s a challenge that we don’t need.
Q: County Engineer Joy Blackmon has said that the area where the jail is ideally suited to be a stormwater facility because it is a natural depression in that area. County Commissioners are going to have to decide where to rebuild the (Central Booking and Detention Facility) after the flood.
A: Joy Blackmon is very, very bright and I would listen to her on many things. I think they need to listen to Joy when it comes to that. I think she knows what she’s doing.
Q: There is a sense that the city and the metro area have momentum moving forward. How do you capitalize on that?
A: We need to use that momentum not just in the city, but in the county, and Santa Rosa County and even to the west and look to ways to work together. We’ve got to really talk with one voice. If we’re really going to create the value we want in our community, where young families can stay here and businesses can stay here, we have to be invested together to push the envelope. For far too long it was you against me and we weren’t growing.
Now more than ever you can’t let your foot off the accelerator. The competition is teeing up, going gosh what’s Pensacola doing.
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