Cities attempt to budget fire district
By MARY HUNT
Article published on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005  |
INDIAN ROCKS BEACH – Representatives of the four municipalities that banded together to successfully defeat the Pinellas Suncoast Fire and Rescue District referendum on the November ballot are mulling over funding issues for the fire district.
At issue at the Jan. 5 meeting was a request to the Pinellas County Commission for the establishment of a budget oversight committee. The four municipalities which, along with unincorporated areas served by the PSF&RD, have been requesting such oversight authority from the county since last July.
Representatives of Belleair Shore, Belleair Beach, Indian Rocks Beach and Indian Shores, Assistant County Administrator Gay Lancaster, County Commissioner Karen Seel and newly elected PSF&RD Commissioner John Todia met at the Indian Rocks Beach Civic Auditorium.
In response to what Indian Rocks Beach Vice Mayor Bill Ockunzzi termed “the County Commission’s apparent lack of concern and action with regard to the … establishment of an oversight review board,” Lancaster said the county has done as much as “we are empowered to do.”
“We cannot tell any city how to run its government, but we have been very present and very involved,” Lancaster said.
The county presented it suggestion for an independent oversight review that would require a contract with an independent consultant and auditor and apportion the cost among the affected municipalities.
Two suggestions were made about apportionment, one based on population and one on occupied residences; the most noticeable difference between the two is the amount to be shouldered by the unincorporated areas, which account for 55 percent of the population of the fire district but only 37.4 percent of the residences. The estimated cost of such a contracted study, said Lancaster, would be about $50,000. The county would bear half that cost.
Ockunzzi led the vocal opposition to the proposal.
“What good is it hiring another consultant? Ockunzzi asked. “Why not have each entity appoint one person and have the county as well as the fire district do the same to study the situation?”
Seel explained the county’s position as being a way to ensure that the Legislature would not find the findings biased. A draft interlocal agreement for the funding of the study was sent back to the individual towns for discussion and review.
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Article published on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005
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