Pensacola Mayor takes overseas trip...on tax dollars?

Looks like another site seeing vacation on the taxpayers dime.


http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_23324.shtml

Pensacola Mayor takes overseas trip...on tax dollars?

Report by: Will Kennedy
wrkennedy@weartv.com

Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward is mixing business with pleasure during a trip across the Atlantic.

The working vacation has some citizens asking who is picking up the tab?

Travel costs are a prime area for wasteful government spending so when Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward announced plans for a three-week European trip this summer. We decided to take a look at the cost, and the potential benefit for the city.

The mayor's office is calling it a diplomatic and trade mission to Spain, Belgium and England.

Mayor Hayward's wife and son are also traveling to visit family in Belgium with the Hayward's paying for their expenses.

According to the mayor's office the city is picking up the mayor's airfare to and from Europe and his meals and lodging while he visits Pensacola's sister city in Spain, then meets with Florida Governor Rick Scott at an aerospace trade show in England. Totals from the mayor's office are:

AIRFARE: $2,274
LODGING & MEALS: $3,795
TOTAL: $6,069

Frederick Burnett, a concerned citizen said, "Me, personally, as a tax payer, I don't think that my tax money should have went towards no trip for the mayor to go to another country."

Former Mayor Mike Wiggins disagrees. He made a trip to a sister city in Japan during his time in office. "It's all about selling the city," said Wiggins. "You've got to let people know where you are and who you are, and develop some of these personal relationships that could pay off big time in the future."

Scott Luth with the Greater Pensacola Chamber said, "We think there's a great opportunity to turn that also into a business opportunity, and try to meet with companies that, maybe not now, but sometime in the future may have an interest in moving to the U.S."

Mike Cordle, a concerned citizen said, "When he comes back we'll see what kind of profit he brings in. But if it all just turns out to be a bunch of BS, and it's just let's get out of Pensacola for a little bit then you know first time shame on you, second time shame on me in a sense."

We won't know immediately the success of Mayor Hayward's trip for the city of Pensacola but we'll be keeping an eye on the progress of the projects the mayor is addressing while in Europe.

If you see an example of government waste, let us know. Give us a call or click on Waste Watch.

News Journal Moderator wrote:Looks like another site seeing vacation on the taxpayers dime.


http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_23324.shtml

Pensacola Mayor takes overseas trip...on tax dollars?

Report by: Will Kennedy
wrkennedy@weartv.com

Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward is mixing business with pleasure during a trip across the Atlantic.

The working vacation has some citizens asking who is picking up the tab?

Travel costs are a prime area for wasteful government spending so when Pensacola Mayor Ashton Hayward announced plans for a three-week European trip this summer. We decided to take a look at the cost, and the potential benefit for the city.

The mayor's office is calling it a diplomatic and trade mission to Spain, Belgium and England.

Mayor Hayward's wife and son are also traveling to visit family in Belgium with the Hayward's paying for their expenses.

According to the mayor's office the city is picking up the mayor's airfare to and from Europe and his meals and lodging while he visits Pensacola's sister city in Spain, then meets with Florida Governor Rick Scott at an aerospace trade show in England. Totals from the mayor's office are:

AIRFARE: $2,274
LODGING & MEALS: $3,795
TOTAL: $6,069

Frederick Burnett, a concerned citizen said, "Me, personally, as a tax payer, I don't think that my tax money should have went towards no trip for the mayor to go to another country."

Former Mayor Mike Wiggins disagrees. He made a trip to a sister city in Japan during his time in office. "It's all about selling the city," said Wiggins. "You've got to let people know where you are and who you are, and develop some of these personal relationships that could pay off big time in the future."

Scott Luth with the Greater Pensacola Chamber said, "We think there's a great opportunity to turn that also into a business opportunity, and try to meet with companies that, maybe not now, but sometime in the future may have an interest in moving to the U.S."

Mike Cordle, a concerned citizen said, "When he comes back we'll see what kind of profit he brings in. But if it all just turns out to be a bunch of BS, and it's just let's get out of Pensacola for a little bit then you know first time shame on you, second time shame on me in a sense."

We won't know immediately the success of Mayor Hayward's trip for the city of Pensacola but we'll be keeping an eye on the progress of the projects the mayor is addressing while in Europe.

If you see an example of government waste, let us know. Give us a call or click on Waste Watch.

Hate to be a naysayer here but I guarantee you these cute little jaunts to Europe won't do SHIT for our city. It continues to crumble like a cookie.
The Haywards can take a flying leap as far as I am concerned. I live in the city and am tired of paying for these jaunts to Europe. It infuriates me. It's wasteful.

AZADEH is a wonderful example why Alabama has four full fledged foreign automobile manufacturing plants, an advanced diesel engine manufacturing plant and soon to get a European aircraft manufacturing plant. Meanwhile we get a 200 sum foot Ferris wheel, and a ballpark for a team named the BLUE WAHOOS. Wow, aren't we special!

Slicef18 wrote:AZADEH is a wonderful example why Alabama has four full fledged foreign automobile manufacturing plants, an advanced diesel engine manufacturing plant and soon to get a European aircraft manufacturing plant. Meanwhile we get a 200 sum foot Ferris wheel, and a ballpark for a team named the BLUE WAHOOS. Wow, aren't we special!

I'm with ya on that, slice.

Do not you think the folks in those countrys they visit laugh their asses off when these crackers come crawling up begging for a handout?. Private citizens build 2 million dollars houses on the beach. We invest 100 mil in a ball Park but yet we can not figure out how to make any thing beside a bushwhacker. We have to run around all over the world begging for help. What Bull shit. We have some of the smartest and best people in the world right here in Pensacola. We just need leadership and honest people to make things happen. I almost puke when I read stories like this.
Dont get me wrong we need to court big corporations like Airbus and others but we have to have something to offer. You forgot the big Billion dollar German steel mill north of Mobile. One look at our dysfunctional leaders, poor schools and permitting systems is enough to send even those the best of intentions running for the state line.

Hey! He's a Good Ol' Boy. He does this kind of stuff because he can.

He wanted the Mayor job for what he could get, not for what he could give or accomplish.

There is no way anyone spends three weeks in Europe and only pays $3,795 for lodging and meals. Even in euros it would cost at least twice that. By the time you convert to dollars...

Why don't you all blockade the airport in protest and keep him from leaving?

I doubt that he's reading your objectional posts here that would surely change his mind.

Looks like Spain has plenty of cash and jobs they will loan us.......Spain Economy Watch....What is obviously true is that Spain is in trouble, and needs help. Five years after the Global Financial Crisis broke out unemployment is at 25% of the labour force (and rising), house prices continue to fall, non performing loans continue to rise in the banking sector, bank credit to the private sector is falling, and, as Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro said two weeks ago, the sovereign is having increasing difficult financing itself. Hence the bank bailout. On top of which Spain's economy is once more in recession, a recession which will last at least to the middle of 2013, even on the most optimistic forecasts, and is in danger of falling into the dynamic which has so clearly gripped Greece, whereby one austerity measure is piled onto another in such a way that the economy falls onto an unstable downward path, as austerity feeds yet more austerity. Spains citizens are naturally nervous, anxious and increasingly afraid. Hardly a dynamic which is likely to generate the kind of confidence which is needed for recovery to take root.

Hayward has a long way to go to impress me. We'd better see results!!!!