After I realized that the Escambia Sheriff’s total budget was nearly $30 million more than the entire City of Pensacola budget, it became very apparent how unfair it is for Pensacola residents to pay for Escambia County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO).
City property owners should pay for the jail and for the court room security, but the ECSO provides few services that the Pensacola Police Department doesn’t already provide to city residents.
Since ECSO and county only provide the sheriff’s budget totals online, it’s difficult to breakout the jail and courtroom security budgets from the $79,700,000 that comes from the general fund to the sheriff. But it appears that historically that the ECSO alone is about 60% of the total – which would be $47,820,000 for 2007-08.Instead of funding the ECSO from the general fund that both city residents and those living in the unincorporated areas fund with property taxes, why not set up a MSTU to fund the ECSO budget. Only those living outside the city would pay it – the ones who use the ECSO.
There already is a small Law Enforcement MSTU of .685 – if we increase it to 4.19, we could have those who use the ECSO pay for it and reduce the overall county ad valorem by 1.763 from 8.012 to 6.249.
The beauty is if the ECSO wants more money then it needs to defend why the MSTU should be raised. It will have to show us the budget and not hide behind the county commissioners. It’s time the city residents quit subsidizing the county law enforcement.
BTW the proposed millage for the City of Pensacola is 4.598 for 2007-08.