NW Florida PBA Screening Board Unanimously Endorses Jeff Bergosh for Escambia County Commission District 1

This morning the screening board for the NW Florida Chapter of the Police Benevolent Association interviewed all the candidates for the District 1 Republican primary election for County Commissioner.

I was just notified by telephone that I was selected, unanimously, as the candidate they will be endorsing in this election.  

PBA representative Chase Horne called with the news.  "We will be making a formal announcement and putting out a press release on Monday indicating you have our endorsement---but in the meantime you are free to announce this however you would like" said Mr. Horne.

Thank you very much for this powerful, prestigious endorsement--I am very grateful and look forward to working collaboratively with PBA over the next four years to make our Sheriff's Office and our Corrections Division the envy of the region!

Escambia County and PBA Reach Agreement on Record Setting Starting Pay and Salary Increases for Corrections Officers!

The Board of County Commissioners and the PBA have agreed to a pay increase package that provides current officers a 16% pay increase--- and makes our starting certified officers the highest paid officers in our region.

We have issues in our jail.  Everyone knows it.

Staffing, morale, and facility issues.

So we are working as hard as we possibly can to correct all three of these issues.

And a HUGE part of the equation, we are told, has been the pay.

So our administrator, Wes Moreno, at the direction of the board, recently completed a review and a revision of the staffing grid and allocations for the corrections division, which resulted in the ability to take back thirty positions, or FTE's, (of the nearly 100 vacant positions) in order to utilize these unspent funds for the express purpose of raising  starting pay and providing record-setting salary increases for existing corrections employees to address some of our staffing issues (and hopefully morale issues) as well.

We are working the facility issues simultaneously, on a separate track.

So the increases the removal of the 30 positions yields is as follows:

Starting pay for certified corrections officers increases to $45,000.00 yearly

For existing corrections officers, raises equalling about 16% were offered as well.

Late Friday evening, the PBA membership voted, nearly unanimously, to accept the BCC's offer.

This is great news, and hopefully now that our starting pay is higher than any entity in the area--including the state---hopefully we will be able to fill the vacancies we have in this division in short order.

Thanks to Administrator Moreno and the PBA for getting this part done very quickly.