Constitutional Officers Return an Additional $1,040,086.71 to the BCC at End of FY

By state law, the constitutional offices of Escambia County must return excess, unexpended funds back to the BCC at the end of the Fiscal Year. On Monday, the Escambia County Clerk of the Court returned nearly One Million dollars.

Today, we received another $1,040,086.71 from the Tax Collector, the Property Appraiser, and the County Sheriff.

The amounts returned to the county are indicated on the checks above.

In speaking to staff--although the precise amounts to be returned were not known in advance--the BCC was aware that money would be coming back and had a general idea of what this amount would be.

Escambia County Clerk returns Nearly $1,000,000.00 to BCC!

Escambia County Clerk of the Court Pam Childers returned $914,107.81 to the BCC yesterday.

Escambia County Clerk and Comptroller Pam Childers returned $914,107.81 dollars to the BCC yesterday--excess revenue that by statute must be returned at the end of each fiscal year by her office.  It is important to note that although the board does frequently receive money back from the constitutional offices at the end of October yearly (Clerk's office returned $723,000.00 last year) the exact amount of this revenue was neither known nor anticipated by the board prior to the BCC finalizing the FY2018 budget last month so far as I understand this situation...

In a letter that accompanied the check (above), Mrs. Childers described the revenue, explaining that it came from two sources--Finance and Official Records.  From the letter:

"The first is the savings of the finance budget, and the second is the effect of additional revenues generated in the official records function..the savings in the Finance department totals $429,042..the Official Records department has excess funds of $485,065 which is predominately the impact of an upward turn in the economy."

The board, in conjunction with recommendations from the Administrator and the staff, will ultimately decide where these excess funds will be spent.

An AM 1620 this Morning Discussing the Beulah Beltway Meeting and Pensacola Beach Fee-Simple Legislation

Andrew McKay, host of AM 1620's Pensacola Morning News, had me on his show this morning.

The thrust of the discussion centered on last night's very successful public meeting on the Beulah Beltway project. (The entire meeting was live-streamed by our office and can be found by going to our facebook page  )

We talked about the reasons why the meeting went well, some specifics on the project, and we even segued into the very complex long-running matter of the fee-simple federal legislation that affects beach property owners.

I appreciated the opportunity to speak on the radio, and the brief podcast can be heard here

On 1370 WCOA this Morning

I was a featured guest this morning on Pensacola's top-rated morning show, Good Morning Pensacola with Jim Sanborn and Don Parker.

I was sandwiched in between a medical segment on what a "Hospitalist" is and a discussion of why this year's flu -mist vaccine may not protect one from the flu...kind of a different pairing but I went with it anyway..

When it was my turn to be up, though,  the discussion moved very quickly from medical issues like gout and chronic pain and centered solely on the County's Response to the Sheriff's budget appeal, and most importantly, the salient reasons why the BCC's recent shade meeting to discuss strategy to defeat the appeal was 100% legal and 100% appropriate.  In the brief segment of about 4 minutes, I was also able to discuss the reasons why questioning the Sheriff's expenditures from the Law Enforcement Trust Fund is also an appropriate discussion topic in the BCC's response to the Sheriff's appeal.

You can listen to the very brief audio of this interview here

Equivocation is Easy....

In a classic scene from the 1981 comedy "Vacation" --Rusty is being attacked viciously by his cousin's dog, and Rusty's mom glibly states "Rusty, stop playing with the dog"--insinuating Rusty is somehow to blame for the mauling while simultaneously downplaying the dog's role in the attack and the seriousness of the attack....the scene was so patently absurd that it produced bellicose laughter among the audience--because it was so ridiculous!

Sunday’s PNJ editorial encourages the Sheriff and the BOCC, as it relates to this year’s budget and subsequent appeal and response, to “Grow Up and Get Over It!” imploring us to solve the issue like “leaders.”

On its face, this editorial and it’s message seems reasonable and rational.  However, upon a more stringent, reasoned analysis—it seems like the author has taken the lazy, easy path—and equivocation in this instance is both convenient and expedient.  It is immediately apparent that whomever wrote this piece did not read the county’s response to the Sheriff’s budget appeal, because like a wrecking ball going through an abandoned building set for demolition, the BCC response cuts devastating swaths of destruction through the Sheriff’s argument(s).  Had the author read the response, he/she would have known this, and perhaps some intelligent themes could have been expounded upon/infused in the editorial, such as:

--The Sheriff has said on many occasions that his men “went7 years without a pay raise”..but wait---Attachment 13 of the ECSO’s own appeal clearly shows that ECSO employees have had raises in 7 of the last 11 years, and in 14 of the last 18 years!  Why the disconnect—in what 7-year period did the deputies not receive raises??

--The Sheriff has said our budgeting process this year has been “arbitrary and capricious”—but paragraph 1 of page 4 of our answer to his appeal succinctly vaporizes that claim.  Did PNJ read this paragraph and the case cited?

--The BCC’s public comments and statements, so far as the public record clearly indicates, have been professional, courteous, and respectful toward the sheriff and his officers.  The Sheriff, by contrast, has engaged in a summer of name calling, personal attacks, and ad hominem insults directed at individual commissioners and BCC staff. The sheriff has insinuated that the administrator is dishonest, he has referred to the BCC as out of touch, saying we “can’t read, can’t hear, can’t find the nose on our face.”  The Sheriff even called me a “Bullshit Artist” on WCOA radio. (he used a radio-

Logic, Reason, and Facts: A Review of the BCC's Answer to the Sheriff's Budget Appeal, Part I

If you listen carefully, you can hear the citizens of Escambia County reading the facts and saying, collectively, "oooohhhhhhh, now I see what is happening and why there are so many problems...."  (Note:  If you get a "knot in your shirt" and stuff this knotted shirt in your ear, though, you won't hear anything)

Yesterday afternoon, the Escambia BCC finalized its response to the Sheriff's appeal of his 2017-2018 budget allotment.

The staff did an excellent job of capturing the issues, documenting them, and putting these issues into a very easy to read, easy to understand response.  Kudos to Administrator Jack Brown, County Attorney Alison Rogers, Asst. Administrator Amy Lovoy, Asst. Administrator Matt Coughlin, Deputy County Attorney Charlie Peppler, and all the other staff that contributed to producing this response.

The cover letter is 29 pages that reads very easily and makes a very impactful statement on why the BCC's budget should be upheld by the Governor.  The BCC response is based on logic, reason, and facts.  It is noticeably barren of emotion.  Just the facts, laid out very plainly with nearly 600 pages of associated back-up documents.

The entire package can be viewed and downloaded by any citizen by going to this page.

Contrary to what some people have stated, I have never said that the Governor has only seen 3 responses to these sorts of appeals over the last 30 years.  What I have stated over and over like a broken record is that the Governor and his full Administration Committee have only had to make the final ruling on one of these appeals just 3 times in the last 30 years.  Of course I understand that many more have been filed, but what I have also stated on numerous occasions is that this process is designed to foster a compromise before the Governor has to make a ruling personally.  This is factual, and if some folks that appear to be tone-deaf would simply listen and not get their shirts in a knot (and then stuff the shirt in their ears) they would realize this!  Only 3 times all the way through the entire process in 30 years.  Listen.

So after spending three hours consuming every page of this document last night--several points bear further inspection/study/dissemination--starting with the following parts of the 29 page opening document/statement:

---Page 6. paragraph 2 and the table illustrate clearly that in the past 5 years, the Sheriff's personnel budget has increased an average of 5% yearly.  ( don't have any idea where the 1% budget increase claim that we have all seen in videos comes from.  Even if we only took the last 5 years' worth of increases and assumed no increases for the previous 5 years before that---you still have annual budget growth in the personnel budget of 2.07% per year over the last ten year period.  This is simple, factual arithmetic, folks)

-- Page 8.  Could the LETF have been used for more appropriate crime prevention initiatives?  Training?  Complex investigations costs?  equipment?  School Resource Officers?

P. 9.  Why no use of  a fixed percentage of total LETF yearly (how about 50%) to help pay for School Resource Officers?  Any savings achieved by utilization of LETF funds for a portion of these SRO costs would have freed-up money from the Sheriff's general fund to help with his pay issues.

P. 12 .  Why were the reported entry deputy salaries LOWERED after 2013?

P. 13 Why the discrepency between what is reported as starting salaries and what the actual starting salary is?

P. 15.  The Evergreen Salary Study is not complete, has not been accepted by the BCC yet.  Let me repeat.  The Evergreen Salary Study is not complete, it has not been accepted by the BCC yet.

P. 16--last sentence on page....  Why has county staff had to wait three months (more than 90 days) for W-2's that were requested on July 20th from the Sheriff?  These documents were necessary to compare to what has been reported as "pay" for deputies on spreadsheets.  The county wishes to compare what is listed as "pay" to what was actually "paid" historically--however if we cannot get the documents to make this comparison---how can we make the comparison.  Why have we not received one (1) W-2 yet from the Sheriff after waiting more than 90 days?

P. 18--The BCC's budget has yet to reach the levels we were at in 2007....2007 BCC total Budget was $458 Million.    2017 Budget is $456 Million.  ( Sheriff's personnel budget is up 5% per year on average as illustrated on page 6).

P.22--This Graph clearly illustrates that it is simply not true that a better ratio of deputy per 1000 residents lowers crime.  Not true, not borne out by the facts on the page.

P. 25  Very LIBERAL sick-leave payout policy that is much more genereous than the policy for county employees is putting pressure on the Sheriff's budget

P.  28  Because the Sheriff subsidizes his employees' health insurance costs to such a generous degree, his budget is being pressured.  (BOCC employees' health premiums cost as much as 673% more in premium than do the Sheriff's employees)

There are many more examples of really stark issues with the Sheriff's appeal to be discussed.  This is simply the first pass.  I would encourage all citizens, and especially employees of the Sheriff's office, to look carefully at the BCC's response and the associated attachments.  Our response is based upon logic, reason, and facts.  We value law enforcement, public safety, and all of our citizens.  But this year, even as we compromised and provided raises once again (6th year in a row with a 3% raise for deputies)--this fair budget is being appealed.  I look forward to the upcoming 12-14 months as we work through this process........I stand behind our work and I believe the BCC will prevail in this process and that the Governor will not force us to raise tax rates on property owners in order to give the Sheriff an extra $2.7 Million.

Coffee With a Commissioner 10-24-2017

This morning we held our monthly coffee with a commissioner event, and we had a nice turnout for the session.

For this morning's event-we tried something new.  We live-streamed the beginning of the meeting on Facebook, so that other District 1 constituents who were not able to make the meeting could watch live if they so chose.

We had about a dozen folks show up, and I gave a brief introduction of the staff that were present, I introduced myself to the participants individually, and then we went around the room allowing everyone present to ask questions and generate discussion.

We had several folks that were interested in talking about the sheriff's budget and subsequent appeal, so we discussed that topic in depth.  We also had four individuals from the same neighborhood that wanted to talk about chronic storm-water issues in their community.  We will be turning this issue over to the public works department this morning.

Another attendee discussed the issues with security at the Pensacola Interstate Fair--and an "anonymous" complaint that led to the dismissal of a private security firm comprised of former police and military members due to a paperwork glitch.  We had a very interesting discussion on this topic--apparently there will be more information coming soon on how that whole evolution took place.

Then we got to the Pensacola Beach issue and the matter of the leases and taxes.  Most of those in attendance preferred to keep the situation the way it is rather than going with the bill that is currently in the U.S. Senate--however the main issue that most of the attendees wanted to keep in the forefront is the issue of accessibility to the beach by residents;  the fear is that if this bill passes, much of the areas set-aside for public use might be developed, leading to less access by the citizens.

One attendee that is/was very familiar with government contracts and contracting had significant reservations about the proposed project to replace the Bay Center with a new development...He and I had a thorough discussion on this topic.

Other topics discussed included the following:

---Triumph Gulf Coast Projects
---Restore Act Projects
---Beulah Beltway Project
---OLF8/OLFX Land Swap

We also had several folks come by that simply wanted to observe and listen to the meeting, without asking any questions in particular.

As is becoming the usual, this meeting produced good information for me and a great discussion for all in attendance--and I can't wait for next month's coffee--which we will live-stream in it's entirety (now that we know how to do it  :)  ).

Stay tuned!