A day after Escambia County Commissioner Lumon May sent his few additions to the city’s ambitious three-year street paving program, Mayor Ashton Hayward notified the Board of County Commissioners that he was appealing the Local Option Gas Tax issue to Gov. Rick Scott.
What the mayor is exactly appealing is uncertain. The BCC has not passed an inter-local agreement on the LOGT. The matter was tabled until today’s meeting.
The Pensacola City Council did not approve or reject the July 14 agreement proposed by the County Commission. The issue wasn’t placed on the council’s agenda for next week.
“They have appealed, that much is true,” Commissioner Doug Underhill told Inweekly. “I don’t think their books are clean enough to be able to justify their appeal so I think the county will prevail.”
The allocation of the latest extension of the Local Option Gas Tax is what is at stake. The BCC originally wanted to use the Department of Revenue allocation formula that bases the allocation on the transportation expenses shown in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for the past five years.
That formula would reduce the City of Pensacola’s share from 18.22 percent, or $1.5 million a year, to 5.45 percent, $463,600. That was the discussion that was held a year ago.
In September 2015, Mayor Ashton Hayward got the Pensacola City Council to approve another formula tied to population, similar to how sales taxes are allocated. That formula raised the city’s allocation to 15.62 percent.
Mayor Hayward said, “The city is 39 square miles, 52,000-plus–whatever the number is (people). The county has more people, more money. We can’t afford to be taking million-dollar hits.â€
For most of the past year, little has happened on the issue. The deadline on determining the allocation is Aug. 31.
This summer, Mayor Hayward “sweetened the pot” saying that he wanted to borrow $15 million and do 10-years’ worth of street paving in the next three years.
The County Commission was concerned that the city would not complete the work as presented. The vast majority of the streets listed were on the westside of Pensacola.
On July 14, the BCC agreed to allocate to the City of Pensacola nearly seven percent, $590,000 per year, according to a state formula based on the transportation expenditures in city’s audited financial reports. The commissioners voted to allocate an additional 8.6 percent out of its share if the city agreed to pave the streets on the west side of the city as listed in an attachment given to the BCC. If the city failed to pave the streets, the county could terminate the agreement.
Mayor Hayward did not deliver that agreement to the Pensacola City Council for a vote later that night. CFO Dick Barker proposed an agreement said the contract could only be terminated if both parties agreed to the termination.
When it became clear that the BCC didn’t support the revised agreement, County Attorney Alison Rogers recommended at the July 19 meeting only one change to the original agreement sent over to the city. If the city completed all the work listed in the exhibits, then the county would not terminate the agreement without mutual consent.
However, the vote was tabled until today so that Commissioner May could add a few streets to list.
“I am kind of surprised how poorly they gave handled us,” said Commissioner Underhill, speaking about city officials. “I was very surprised to see Barker change what the county sent over before putting it before the elected officials.”
Inweekly has been told that the governor’s office doesn’t get involved in local issues until all administrative remedies have been exhausted. We saw a similar case a few years ago when Sheriff David Morgan discussed taking his budget to the Florida Cabinet if the BCC didn’t approve it. At that time, the paper was told that administrative remedies needed to be pursued first.
With no final votes by the Board of County Commissioners and the Pensacola City Council on the inter-local agreement, it will be interesting to see if Gov. Rick Scott wants to get involved.
