Financial Management and Investment Services will relocate from Meridian, Miss., to Pensacola.
The company bought the old Knights of Columbus building on North Palafox. Photo credit: Shannon Nickinson

It’s a new year, but in Tallahassee it’s the same old song.

On Jan. 4, Enterprise Florida released projects completed in 2015 by targeted industry. The projects come in nine industry clusters: aviation/aerospace; clean technology; corporate headquarters; financial and professional services; defense and homeland security; information technology; life sciences; logistics and distribution; and manufacturing.

One Escambia project made the list: Financial Management & Investment Corporation, which created 15 jobs and invested $1.3 million in the move. The company was based in Meridian, Miss., and has more than 40 branches in Mississippi and Louisiana.

Owner Tag Purvis, whose father was a Pensacola native, bought the old Knights of Columbus building on North Palafox Street in North Hill. The average salary of the jobs created is tagged at $74,720, well above the median wage in Escambia County of $43,918.

Suncoast Converters in Okaloosa County, made the list under manufacturing, with six jobs and a $1.6 million investment. So did Bay State Cable Ties, with 100 jobs and a $2 million investment. See the full list here.

The timing is not to go unnoticed.

Gov. Rick Scott has sought $250 million for Enterprise Florida, which funds incentives for companies to locate in the state. The Tampa Bay Times reported last month that the Legislature rejected Scott’s request for $85 million in funding for the Enterprise Florida and the fund is a contentious issue among Scott and state lawmakers.

to win support for his $250 million request.

But when you look at the full list, you’ll see the biggest numbers are for other parts of the state: 649 jobs for Duval County. 1,578 for Hillsborough County. Polk, Broward, Pinellas all saw significant tallies on the list.

You could look at it in a glass-half-empty way.

That because Northwest Florida so reliable votes Republican, a GOP-led administration may not see the need to sweeten the pot for this part of the state.

And the influence we may have accumulated in the halls of the Capitol is likely to dissipate with the departure of State Sen. Don Gaetz later this year.

Which will put us in a sadly familiar place politically — at the back of the line. Consistently ranked among the poorest metropolitan areas in the state.

With a kindergarten readiness rate and high school graduation rate that mean one-third of our children are not ready for school when they get there and the same percentage don’t earn a diploma at the end of their school career.

But it’s a new year, so let’s try a more glass-half-full view.

Dr. Judy Bense, who also is nearing the end of her tenure in public life as president of the University of West Florida, has said this is a do-it-yourself area — by necessity and by design.

Because help from the Great Fathers in Tallahassee — be it political influence or state funding — often goes elsewhere, to places where there are more swing voters.

Navy Federal Credit Union didn’t come here with the promise of bringing 10,000 jobs. They came here as one of several “call center” type job announcements. But they liked what the saw, so they stayed. And grew.

And now are poised to create a virtual community of their own in the once sleepy spot of Beulah.

The progress Pensacola makes — that we make — will have to be made by our hands. By the impressions we make on young college students who may be inspired to start their own business or business owners who come to visit and decide they like us well enough to stay.

Maybe the steps we make forward will be sweeter that way. Because we will have had to earn them the hard way.