TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Leon County commissioners are weighing whether to form their own fire department as they continue talks with the city of Tallahassee about providing fire services, saying taxpayers are not getting their money\u2019s worth after two independent consultants identified up to $21 million in fire funding discrepancies.<\/p>\n
During a workshop, county leaders voted unanimously to continue negotiations with the city while also preparing for the possibility of providing fire service for the county themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city has failed to recover fees, it has failed to restore monies to account when their collection fell beneath ninety-five percent and they were supposed to follow the interlocal agreement,\u201d said Leon County Commissioner Bill Proctor of District One.<\/p>\n
Leon County and the city of Tallahassee have been in a partnership since 2009, but county leaders said they believe the city is not operating the partnership properly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city wanted to extract twenty-two percent increase on county residents. The county said no the county conceded to seventeen percent and the city said no and the city said we got to have twenty-two percent or not, all or nothing. So the city said that the county knew not anything about fire fees, fire rates, the business of fire,\u201d Proctor said.<\/p>\n
Commission Chair Christian Caban said the county is pursuing two tracks at once.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight Leon County Government too the position that we are going to pursue two simultaneous paths. One renegotiating with the new city Commission after the November elections while two we work on our plan to execute to have our own fire department,\u201d said Caban, the District Two commissioner.<\/p>\n
County leaders said they hope the independent consultants\u2019 reports will give them leverage in talks with the city. Caban said commissioners directed the county attorney to reengage with the county\u2019s consultant to identify damages the county believes it has sustained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe directed the county attorney to go back and reengage with our consultant to identify the damages that Leon County government has with stained through the city of Tallahassee\u2019s mismanagement of the fire fund. And that\u2019s very key because our county attorney clearly explained that we as a government have taken damages by the city of Tallahassee by mismanaging the fund. That means taxpayers are owed a potential funds, or via a refund from the city of Tallahassee,\u201d Caban said.<\/p>\n
Commissioners said they are looking forward to talking with Tallahassee leaders after the Nov. 3 election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Leon County commissioners are weighing whether to form their own fire department as they continue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-433691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}