The Salt Line, Vol. 97: Traffic Lights That Learn to Yield, School Buses Waiting on Drivers, and a Library Closed on Account of Its Floor
MINUTES of the Perdido Key & Orange Beach Board of Unsolicited Review, regular session, convened at a picnic table within sight of the state line. Present: the chair; the recording secretary, who is also the chair; and one pelican, counted toward the quorum without objection. The Board has no authority, no budget and no bylaws, which the chair observes places it on equal footing with several bodies that have all three.
Item 1: The Green Light, Considered as a Public Service
The Board took up Pensacola’s plan to upgrade traffic signals at 25 intersections, the stated purpose being faster emergency response. The report advises that drivers “will soon see upgrades at dozens of traffic signals.” The Board did the arithmetic, found two dozen and a spare, and allowed the plural to stand.
Finding: this is what competent government looks like, which is why it will receive almost no attention. Nobody cuts a ribbon on a traffic light. No official has ever posed with the ceremonial scissors in front of an intersection that now behaves somewhat better than it used to. The whole benefit of the project is measured in seconds, and those seconds are collected by strangers on the worst day of their year, from the back of a vehicle none of us plan to ride in. A thing like that does not photograph. It merely works.
The Board wishes to be on record in favor anyway, and with some force. This coast is gifted at the visible spend: the gateway sign, the rebranded district, the rendering with the suspiciously tall palm trees. It has been shyer about the kind of upgrade whose triumph is that nothing happened. The promise here is plain enough: public money converted into time, the one commodity an emergency is always short of. Anyone who has watched an ambulance pick its way through a season’s worth of out-of-state plates understands the exchange rate.
The Board notes, for the benefit of visitors, that the signals are only half the system. The other half is the driver at the front of the line in the rental minivan, who must still perform the ancient maneuver: pull right, and stop. No upgrade to that component has been announced.
Ruling: approved, the pelican abstaining. The Board asks only that the city come back in a year with response times, before and after. Not out of doubt. A government that has done something measurable ought to be made to enjoy measuring it.
Item 2: A Vacancy Is a Price 🚌
Escambia County Public Schools is short on bus drivers, with 18 positions open, and parents have been describing the delays to reporters. The Board declines to fault anyone currently driving a bus, those being the people who showed up. It does take issue with “shortage,” a word on loan from meteorology, as though drivers were rainfall and the district were having a dry year. A job that stays open is an offer the market has read carefully and set back down. Every restaurant owner between the Key and the Pass learned that lesson some summers ago. A city can order signal hardware by the intersection; there is no catalog for people.
Ruling: referred back to the district, with instructions to examine the offer rather than the applicants.
Item 3: In the Matter of a Floor 📚
The county announced that the Molino Library and Community Center will close for more than a week for floor repairs. The summary before the Board does not say what befell the floor. The Board elects the flattering theory: it was walked on. Most public buildings fail from neglect, quietly, behind a locked door. A library and community center that goes through its flooring is being worn out in the honorable way, by people arriving in numbers to use it. There are worse things for a county to have to fix than evidence that something it built is wanted.
Ruling: repairs approved. Whether a book can come due at a building that is closed is a philosophical question the Board is not competent to answer.
Item 4: A Word That Belongs to Daphne
The Jubilee Festival of Arts returns to Lott Park on October 17 and 18 for its 38th year, with more than 140 artists and vendors. Most towns name a festival after something they wish they had. Daphne named hers after a thing that actually happens on its shore: the jubilee, those warm nights on the eastern side of Mobile Bay when crab, shrimp and flounder crowd into the shallows of their own accord and the neighbors go down with buckets. It is one of the few words on this coast that could not be shipped to another town and keep its meaning, which is more than can be said for “village,” “landing,” or “commons.”
Ruling: commended to the calendar. The Board envies any town whose local miracle is dinner.
Item 5: A Motion Regarding Representation 🐕
Danetoberfest, the Northwest Florida Great Dane Rescue’s downtown Pensacola gathering, is back for its 10th year. The chair moves that the dogs be seated as voting members of this Board. They are taller than the current quorum, they have attended ten years running without a single recorded recusal, and their position on any agenda item can be read from across the street. The pelican objected. The motion is tabled pending a larger table.
New business: none. Before adjourning, the Board observes that the docket sorted itself without help. The things a government can buy, signals and flooring, got bought. The thing it has to persuade, a person willing to drive a school bus at dawn, remains open. That is most of the difficulty of running a coast growing this fast: hardware ships, and people have to be convinced. Adjourned, the pelican dissenting on principle.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side, no Board approval required: /submit/
