The Salt Line, Vol. 122: An Initial Estimate, in the Tradition of Initial Estimates
Escambia County has finished its first pass through the wreckage and reports roughly $64 million in costs for county-owned property and infrastructure. The figure covers public facilities, government buildings, equipment and parks. It is a large number, and it will be quoted all week as though it were a measurement.
It is not a measurement. It is an initial assessment, and the adjective is doing most of the work. An initial assessment is what a county produces when the public needs a number and the engineers have not yet been everywhere. It is honest, it is necessary, and it is the opening bid in a very long conversation with people who will want receipts. Anyone who has survived a kitchen renovation knows the first quote is a statement of hope, not a statement of cost.
Notice also what the number leaves out. It counts what the county owns. It does not count a homeowner’s roof, a condo association’s seawall, or a bar’s lost week of the last good season. Those costs are real, and they are carried by people who do not get a press release or a line item. A county can report its own damage in a day. The rest of us will be totting ours up into the spring.
The more useful figure arrived in a separate story: debris collection is expected to run as long as four months, in multiple rounds. That is the number a visitor should plan around. A hurricane lasts a night. The sentence that begins “once the debris is picked up” lasts a season, and the pile at the curb is the only honest calendar the county has.
There is one good detail, and it concerns water. ECUA has lifted the boil water notice for most of mainland Escambia County, including Perdido Key, while Pensacola Beach remains under it. If you are headed to the Key, the tap is back. If you are headed one beach over, check before you brush your teeth.
The Supreme Court of Alabama Has Parked the Golf Cart
The Alabama Supreme Court has denied Gulf Shores’ final appeal in its legal fight with Baldwin County Commissioner John Carl Harris III over a golf cart. A golf cart has now gone all the way up the state court system, a distinction most of us will never achieve and most litigants would prefer to avoid. One hopes the cart is at least getting its own parking space.
Summerdale Learns What a Permit Is Worth
Days before Baldwin County was bracing for what could have been a Category 3 storm, the county took over permit jurisdiction and Summerdale lost what its mayor called a “pretty penny” of annual revenue. The timing is the story: a jurisdiction changed hands while everyone’s attention was on the Gulf, and a town found out what its permits were worth the same week it found out how much it needed them.
The Wharf Books Its Own Reunion
Matchbox Twenty will play The Wharf Amphitheater in Orange Beach in August as part of a 30th anniversary tour. That puts a date on the calendar, which is the most reassuring thing printed in a Gulf Coast newspaper this month. A town can recover from a lot if it has something booked.
Disasters are measured in dollars and recovered in calendar entries. The county has its number, the curb has its four months, and the amphitheater has its August. Everything between now and then is just the work.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
