Why Does the School District's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax Outperform the County's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax?

 At a recent BCC meeting where we discussed my idea of funding the fire service with a consumption-style 1/2 cent sales tax to generate more revenue while simultaneously not adding more taxes to existing property owners--and instead providing a big tax break to Escambia County property-owning taxpayers-----a lowball figure of $24-$25 Million was thrown out as being "what the county's half penny generates yearly"

It seemed low, that figure.  

And I remembered as a school board member we were doing that amount 5-6 years ago when I served on that board.  Plus, the economy locally has gone straight up like a rocket since then--with the minor COVID recession of 2020-2021 (the economic pain of which was largely masked-over with unprecedented federal money printing and stimulus provision nationwide to).

So the natural question is this:  Why Does the School District's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax Outperform the County's 1/2 Cent Sales Tax?

Look at this chart, below, that will be provided to the members of the school district's 1/2 cent sales tax watchdog committee later this week.  This graph indicates the total revenue (quarterly and monthly reimbursements including interest/investment income on the funds)  received from the school district's 1/2 cent discretionary sales tax over several fiscal years.  Over the last 3 years the average revenue is what I thought the BCC's 1/2 sales tax should be--just under $30 million per year.

So I'm waiting for staff to clarify/explain--but it seems to me that their 1/2 penny is doing better than ours is.  So if so, I want to know why.  If not-----what is the real number the BCC's 1/2 penny is generating?  I think my statements at the last meeting were right--$30 Million yearly.

But we will see when staff answers my query on this topic later this morning.

The Urgency of our Billing Issues in EMS--Put into Stark Terms

As EMS reserve funds dwindle, the need to get our billing on track quickly takes on a greater urgency according to a memo from our Clerk of the Court and Comptroller Pam Childers

Thursday of this week we will vote to either bring aboard some temporary staff members or we will bring in an outside entity to help us get caught up on a nearly $9.6 Million dollar backlog of billing for accounts receivable in the EMS department.

At our last meeting when we discussed this subject (May 9th Committee of the whole)--I was under the impression that we would have this billing all caught up by the end of June--and by the end of the FY our collections from this billing would bring our revenue back in line with projections.

But then we received a concerning memo from our Clerk of the Court and Comptroller Pam Childers late last week.  From her memo to the Board:

"March 2019 the mid-year fund audit performed by Clerk staff, found that the billing was substantially behind by $9.6M. Recent inquiry indicated that November 24, 2018 to Current still needed to be coded/billed. Per conversations with EMS staff; Tamika Williams; billing was expected to be current by June 2019; however transitioning billing between two software systems caused further delay.  By mid-May 2019 the EMS cash has decreased to $1.3M. If this decline continues, EMS may temporarily require a solution to fund operations.

EMS billing has gone from 4 months behind to 6 months behind since September 2018.  The urgency to have billing current at September 30, 2019 is crucial.  Delayed billing has a negative impact on cash and collections, creating cash flow issues, loss of interest revenue, creating a material deficiency in operations and will delay the required financial audit.  Current staffing levels appear unable to catch up the backlog." 

We have got to get a handle on this ASAP.  At this point, I believe we must bring in outside contractors knowledgeable in this field, to get our billing and collections back on track.

further in her memo-the comptroller puts the danger of inaction or a slow response to this issue in