City welcomes new Inspections Services Administrator

The City of Pensacola has brought on Jonathan Bilby to head Inspection Services. He starts with the City on Monday, August 20.

Inspection Services is responsible for permitting and inspecting buildings to ensure public safety and welfare, code enforcement of the Land Development Code, and issuance of occupational licenses.

Born and raised on the Emerald Coast, Bilby has been involved in the construction industry for 25 years. He most recently was with the City of Crestview as their Building Official and Floodplain Manager. Before that, he worked for Walton County as a Plans Examiner, Inspector, and Floodplain Manager. Bilby holds 12 Florida licenses in building code administration and holds a total of 33 certifications with the International Code Council, including the Master Code Professional certification.

Bilby will be taking over for Bill Weeks, who is retiring at the end of the month. Weeks joined the City as a building Inspector in 1997. He was promoted to assistant Inspection Services Administrator in 2001 and became the building official in May 2006.

We want to thank Weeks for all his hard work serving the citizens of Pensacola and wish him a very happy and restful retirement!

PPD will soon have new public safety tool thanks to recent partnership

Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward and IHMC announced Monday an innovative partnership between IHMC and the City of Pensacola Police Department in the development of a comprehensive police drone program.

The program will incorporate specialized drones in police operations such as search and rescue, disaster response, fugitive evasion, threat situations and monitoring outdoor events.

“This is a wonderful program that is going make Pensacola a safer community,” said Hayward. “And because we have the expertise of IHMC here in our community, we also are going to be in a leadership role in terms of the use of these specialized drones in fighting crime and in helping to make our community a safer place.”

You can learn more about the drone program by reading our official joint press release.

Fire Department begins training with new resource to help fight fires

This week, Pensacola firefighters began training with new, better performance nozzles. These new nozzles are lighter, more maneuverable and have the ability to flow more gallons per minute with less friction loss.

Second survey available online for Port’s Vision Plan and Reinvestment Strategy

Citizens attend an open house workshop at City Hall on Monday, August 13 for the Port Vision Plan and Reinvestment Strategy

This week, consulting firm Moffatt and Nichol presented several concepts for the Port’s future based on feedback from workshops and a survey.

Moffatt and Nichol was retained by the City in June to come up with the Port's Vision Plan and Reinvestment Strategy.

They have launched a second survey to narrow down what option the community likes best as a whole. It will be presented to the council for recommendation at the regular meeting October 11.

The survey is broken into three parts. Part One asks that you review the draft Mission Statement for the project and help refine it to better guide all future planning and decision making tasks. Part Two offers three preliminary project concepts for consideration. The final part of the survey asks a small number of simple demographic questions

The survey will be available on portsidepensacola.com until September 2.

Thanks to everyone who participated in National #CityHallSelfie Day!

Mayor Ashton Hayward takes selfie with staff in front of Pensacola City Hall

Win a natural gas grill courtesy of Pensacola Energy!

Pensacola Energy will have a booth at the 2018 Home and Product Expo at the Pensacola Bay Center this weekend. Stop by the booth and enter for your chance to win a natural gas grill. The Home and Product Expo runs:

Friday, August 17th 1:00 – 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, August 18th 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 19th 12:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Get your groove on! Parks and Recreation is holding a Dance Open House

Put on your dancin’ shoes and meet us at our Open House at the Vickrey Resource Center Friday, August 17.

From 5-7 p.m., you can meet staff and instructors, tour the facility and learn about our classes. Refreshments will also be provided.

Vickrey Resource Center will be hosting the Gull Point 2018-19 Dance Program through October while Gull Point undergoes renovations.

Dance classes are offered in a variety of disciplines for youth and adults. We offer dance lessons in ballet, tap, jazz, pointe, hip-hop, lyrical, modern, Irish, belly dance, line dancing, tumbling and more. We also offer a variety of fitness and enrichment courses such as Tai Chi, Yoga, Chair Aerobics, Zumba, and martial arts.

Can’t make it out? That’s okay. Learn about our dance programs on our website.

Craving some free live music? We have you covered

The Truth ft. Cat Rhodes

Double the music, double the fun. This Sunday, August 19, we have two bands taking the stage at Hunter Amphitheater at Community Maritime Park for our Blues on the Bay concert series.

The Truth featuring Cat Rhodes will treat us to their R&B/Motown vibes beginning at 6 p.m.

Crosstown Band takes over at 7 p.m. and will finish the evening playing Classic Rock favorites.

Crosstown

Bring your lawn chairs and cooler and come and enjoy some music to wrap up the weekend.

The concert is presented by City of Pensacola Parks and Recreation Department, Blues Angel Music, Audi Pensacola, Soft Rock 94.1 and Jet 100.7.

INSTAGRAM: Photo of the Week

Be sure to tag us using @cityofpensacola or #upsideofflorida so we see your pic!

Photo Credit: @ _alexandernicholas