Last Friday, the City of Pensacola formally notified the Escambia Children’s Trust (Trust) to remit tax increment revenues (TIF) generated within the City’s Community Redevelopment Areas (CRAs), plus interest and late fees. I received the letter from City Attorney Adam Cobb to the Trust’s attorney Meredith Bush late yesterday. Total invoice: $2,448,905. CRA Calculations.
The invoice covers four years from FY 2022- FY 2025:
| Fiscal Year | |
| 2022 | $ 418,251 |
| 2023 | $ 423,284 |
| 2024 | $ 495,078 |
| 2025 | $ 519,809 |
| Plus: Interest | $ 499,663 |
| Plus: Late Fees | $ 92,821 |
| Grand Total | $ 2,448,906 |
BACKGROUND
Since last September, Escambia County has tried to get the Trust to remit its CRA funds for the same period. The Board of County Commissioners has been criticized for insisting on the funds while Mayor D.C. Reeves has sat on the sidelines, saying he would work out a Memorandum of Understanding to benefit school children within the city limits.
At his press conference on Sept. 11, Mayor Reeves said he was meeting with the principals of the city’s four Title 1 schools. “I got a lot of great ideas from them before, but my philosophy on the funding right now, which this is not finalized. We have to work through it, and there are three partners here. There’s the Trust, there’s the City, and there’s the School District because anything that we are going to prescribe is going to have to be administered by the school district.”
By February, the city had no MOU and hadn’t sent the Trust an invoice for what was reported to be $1.8 million. At the Trust’s board meeting, Director of Finance Tammy Abrams reported, “On our balance sheet, we have a contingent liability to the county for $690,684. That is due to the invoice they sent us for the 2021 and 2022 CRA taxes. We have not paid those due to them being so far behind invoicing us and looking at other legal issues.”
- She explained why the financial statements don’t list the past Pensacola CRA taxes. “The city never has sent us an invoice yet, so we don’t have an exact dollar amount that we would owe the city. So there was no contingent liability recorded for them. But they are in our current year budget for $500,000 and the county’s in our current year budget for $480,000.”
In May, while the Board of County Commissioners was haggling with the Trust in public meetings, I asked Mayor Reeves again about his position on the CRA funds. He said he wanted to chart a diplomatic path in his negotiations with ECT over CRA funding, prioritizing collaboration and children’s services over the confrontational approach taken by county officials.
- “Fighting over [the funds] is not something that I think is in the benefit of the citizens of the City of Pensacola or the Trust, and I don’t think it helps our kids,” Reeves stated. “I’m going to be looking for a collaborative solution to maximize the value and do it in a way that makes sense for all parties.”
According to City Attorney Adam Cobb’s letter, the payment of $2,448,905.58 is due by July 31. Read Letter re ECCT Increment Revenues.
If the Trust wishes to seek an exemption from this obligation, the City’s letter provides instructions detailing how to submit such a request, including a formal application to the Mayor and a public hearing before the City Council.
This is a developing story. I will have more details today after the mayor’s press conference.