Pensacola City Council wants the city to try to find someway to put at least some of the $5.8 million in Hurricane Sally federal disaster relief funds earmarked for home repair to use for their intended purpose—even though no one was optimistic that it would be possible with looming deadlines to spend the funds.
At the sometimes contentious Jan. 15 City Council meeting, the council rejected a transfer of the home repair funds to a port disaster relief project in a 4-3 vote, with council members Charles Bare, Jennifer Brahier, Allison Patton and Delarian Wiggins on the winning side.
The city was awarded the $5.8 million in 2023, but according to city staff they lost key personnel in the following years, which hampered their ability to administer the funds.
So instead, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves’ administration proposed shifting some of the funds to a project to repair Port of Pensacola infrastructure damaged by Hurricane Sally. The project has a top line price of $11.6 million, so the city—for now—won’t be able to fund a part of the project to repave the roads at the port.
The council wants to hold a special workshop to hear all of the options—what’s been and what can be done—to spend money as it was originally intended by the 2027 deadline, before transferring any of the $5.8 million to other Hurricane Sally relief projects.
“I would like this to be looked at and explored,” Council President Allison Patton said. “I, too, think it’s probably unlikely, but frankly, I think we’ve let folks down. And I feel like that’s what we owe them.”
Council members expressed frustration that the city had not executed the grant and had not sought a consultant to do so when the city lost key staff.
Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves at one point said council members were “politically grandstanding” and pointed out the city is on track to deploy $55 million of disaster relief funding on projects like the port, Hollice T. Williams Park, the Fricker Center, and commercial revitalization projects in Brownsville and the old Baptist Hospital campus.
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Bare noted that the city has had to commit $250,000 in other city funds meant for the city’s own home repair program as a match for the $5.8 million grant, and then quoted the mayor from the May 2024 council meeting, when the council voted to officially accept the grant.
“The mayor said, ‘$6.1 million to fix Sally damaged homes for people in our most vulnerable state is a huge, huge win for us,’” Bare said, quoting Reeves. “’Huge, huge’ not just one ‘huge’ and I agree with that. It was a huge win. He went on to say that ‘It’s going to take us a little bit of time to get this stood up. Doesn’t mean we’ll start working on houses tomorrow. There’s some work to be done before we can. We’re working on a proper rollout.’ Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s been 20 months since he said that, and we are still waiting for a proper rollout.”
Bare said that former Housing Director Meredith Reeves told the council at the meeting that they would start taking applications for the grant by August or September of 2024 and that they believed 50 homeowners could be assisted with the grant.
Brahier said that it was unfair for the City Council to be put in the situation of making these types of decisions with only a few days’ notice. She added that the optics alone should call for some kind of public deliberation about what to do before a contract to vote on the port was presented to the council.
“From the optics, the port is about now American Magic and a millionaire’s club,” Brahier said. “That’s what the comments are out there. That’s what everyone’s talking about. … Anyone who was there last week, that’s exactly what it felt like. It’s very high-end. I’m not saying that it won’t do us good. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it’s going from extremes. From helping the people at the New York Yacht Club to being able to finish up that port for something.”
Reeves pushed back strongly against Brahier’s statement, calling it “grandstanding,” and had port staff answer questions about what the project would support, which was the other industrial activities at the port.
Pensacola got $5.8 million in 2023 to repair homes damaged in Hurricane Sally
The city was awarded $5.8 million in 2023 as part of the Florida Commerce Department’s Rebuild Florida Housing Repair and Replacement Program (HRRP) in the wake of Hurricane Sally in 2020. The funds are administered by the state, but actually come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program, known as CDBG.
City officials say the city fell behind in getting the grant executed and have now run out of time to meet the 2027 deadline to spend the grant. The city was going to lose out on the $5.8 million completely until Florida Commerce said the funds could also be used on other approved CDBG disaster relief projects.
Pensacola Deputy City Administrator Amy Miller told the council that the Housing Department lost a key staff member with the expertise to execute the complex federal grant, and a few months after that, the former housing director left the city as well, leaving no one in the department able to set up the grant.
“That’s when CDBG and Department of Commerce contacted us and started saying, we have serious doubts whether you can start from that budget implementation plan requirement and get all the way through that to award of projects and completion of projects before the funding deadline expires,” Miller said.
The issue became worse recently when the Commerce Department informed the city that the federal government would not approve any timeline extensions on any Hurricane Sally grants.
Florida was awarded $187 million in disaster relief CBDG funds for Hurricane Sally, and HUD’s latest expenditure report labels the grant program a “slow spender,” which means the money is being spent a pace significantly below what was expected. Of that $187 million, approximately $110 million was awarded to local governments by the state in 2023, largely Escambia County and the city of Pensacola.
The city has about $55 million of disaster relief funding on projects like the port, Hollice T. Williams Park, the Fricker Center and commercial revitalization projects in Brownsville and the old Baptist Hospital campus. The citty expects to meet all grant deadlines on those projects.
Reeves defended the city and said that it hadn’t originally sought out the home repair funds because of the “onerous” federal requirements, but it had accepted them anyway when the state said the city was eligible.
During his weekly press conference on Jan. 15, Reeves said the requirements included things such as lengthy environmental reviews for each home project, requiring homeowners to use only contractors who’ve been selected by the city through a bidding process, and a requirement that the home not have been already repaired. Despite not applying for the grant, the Florida Commerce Department offered it anyway because the federal government had qualified Escambia County for the funds after Hurricane Sally.
“So it’s now 2026, for you to qualify for this money, you will have to have had that hole in your roof and not repaired it for that entire time,” Reeves said.
Reeves said while the city was not able to use the money for housing, he believes its still a win thanks to Florida Commerce.
“I certainly am proud of our team, that soup to nuts, we’re going to not only procure $55 million disaster recovery money, but all of it is going to get put in play,” Reeves said. “And that is not an easy thing to do. It’s a very hard thing to do, and that’s a big testament to our team.”
Reeves also pointed out that the city has other housing repair programs funded with both local and state dollars.
The Housing Department completed 18 home rehabilitation projects in the previous year, and three are currently underway.
Reeves said the Housing Department does complex and difficult work that is needed in the community. He pointed out that the department recently received a 96% rating from HUD for its management of all Section 8 public housing funds in Escambia County.
“Our work on houses in our city has not and does not stop,” Reeeves said. “This is just one particular bucket of money with one particular set of onerous rules that is significantly different than the day-to-day work that we’re doing in our community.”