Intentions and perceptions

The decision by Port St. Joe commissioners last week not to stand in the way of the creation of the Gulf Coast Hope Center was soundly based.

The application for a business license to operate the center from an office on the property of 5 Star Paint and Collision was cut and dried.

The folks behind the Gulf Coast Hope Center had jumped through all the requisite hoops.

The office was moved from the downtown business district.

The folks behind the effort had, as was stated last week, done everything asked by city officials.

There was no foundation for commissioners to deny or in any way impede awarding the license.

And Rev. Billy Fox of the Panama City Rescue Mission had every right to wonder why the Hope Center was being “singled out” as it were, and asked that commissioners put aside many of their perceptions in their consideration of the facility.

Meanwhile, Mayor Mel Magidson said he believed he understood the intentions of the folks behind the center and therefore saw no reason to interfere.

All of which sounds fine on its face, but where intentions bleed into perceptions is what the opposition to the center is about and to pretend that space does not exist is to pretend in the Tooth Fairy.

Good intentions are behind the Panama City Rescue Mission, real-life, heart-melting good intentions.

That does not change the perception that the mission is also a magnet for those who have no interest in taking an extended hand up, or using the Rescue Mission as anything but a haven for mischief.

A drive along the section of Highway 98 in front of the Rescue Mission is an eye-opener.

No matter what Fox or any other individual connected to the Rescue Mission proclaims about its intentions to weed out those seeking help from those who are not, it does erase the blight of folks slumped in doorways and loitering downtown.

Good intentions are what led some local individuals to envision the founding of an outreach center and to invite Fox and officials from the Rescue Mission to provide some insight on challenges.

The perception of many of those same original local organizers, however, is that the idea was subsumed by a broader vision etched by Fox, et al.

Good intentions may have fueled the establishment of an office in the downtown business district, but the perception that the office had little business smack in the middle of the city’s retail center hardly seemed to register on the folks in charge of the Hope Center.

There is disconnect borne of intentions and fed by perceptions.

The intention provided is to offer an outreach office for the homeless of Gulf County, even though there seems no documented homeless population in Gulf County.

Folks in need are already being placed with the nearest services, according to local law enforcement officials, who direct their ranks to put the down-on-their-luck on the path to services when the need arises, quantified as several times a year, one every couple of months or so.

Those services are, in general, found in Panama City, not Port St. Joe or Gulf County.

So if those in need, those without a roof over their heads and a warm meal to sit down to are already being put in touch with the Panama City Rescue Mission, Hope Center organizers leave open the perception that there is more to this outreach office than meets the eye.

Also left open to question, and therefore another dose of perception about this outreach office, is where those in need of services will be coming from if there is not a documented homeless population in Gulf County to warrant an outreach office.

Does the office, as many perceive, become a magnet for a problem that Gulf County, given its size and level of resources, is certainly ill-equipped to take on by attracting the homeless from elsewhere.

Further, while the stated intent is not to provide food or shelter at the Hope Center, there is nothing in the business license process – other than a stating of intent at last week’s City Commission meeting – to prohibit or constrain such operations in the future.

The perception that opponents of the Rescue Mission are somehow taking a hard-hearted approach is belied by the community in which that opposition arises.

This is a community, like so many small communities around the country, that takes great pride in taking care of its own, embodied in organizations such as the Christian Community Development Fund or the dozens who gather each Thanksgiving and Christmas to provide warm meals to hundreds who might otherwise do without.

That community is symbolized in the Bikes for Boys and Girls Christmas campaign, the Sheriff’s Office Christmas for Kids and Families program, the Kiwanis Club and Lions Club Christmas outreach programs – and that is a mere sampling.

And the perception those opponents of the Gulf Coast Hope Center are most troubled by is that of the Panama City Rescue Mission as a magnet for all forms of mischief and crime of which the community wants no part.

The name on the business license for the Gulf Coast Hope Center is the Panama City Rescue Mission.

So it is incumbent on Fox and city officials to delineate between intentions and perceptions.

Fox, local businessman Matt Scoggins and organizers of the Gulf Coast Hope Center must demonstrate their intentions of providing outreach services, and nothing more, to those in need who are directed to the office.

That is a worthy effort.

But those organizers must join and work with city officials to vigilantly ensure that the Gulf Coast Hope Center does not become a Panama City Rescue Mission satellite that reinforces the ugly perceptions about the ills such a facility can visit upon the community.