Brevard County commissioners have agreed to bust their voter-approved budget-increase cap so Sheriff Wayne Ivey can hire all the deputies he needs and buy enough cars and equipment for them.
“We can’t have a bus with 200,000 miles be the only (inmate-transportation) bus in the fleet,” County Commission Vice Chair Bryan Lober said.
In a 4-1 vote, the County Commission agreed July 23 to declare Ivey’s needs as “critical,” justifying an increase beyond the county’s budget-increase cap.
Voters in 2008 approved limiting the commission to increasing the tax rate by 3 percent or the Consumer Price Index – currently 2.44 percent – whichever is lower. That is unless the commission voted by a “supermajority,” or 4-1, that a greater increase was needed to fund “critical needs.”
And Ivey’s $136.4 million budget request would require such an increase, County Manager Frank Abbate said.
Commissioner John Tobia dissented in the vote, chiding his colleagues for spending on unnecessary things in the past. “We need to sharpen our pencils a little bit more and make sure we don’t put the sheriff in this position again,” he said.
Tobia, of Grant-Valkaria, represents a district that includes the county’s barrier island, from Melbourne Beach south to the Sebastian Inlet.
In the current year, the county’s Law Enforcement Municipal Services Taxing Unit, which provides much of the sheriff’s needs, taxed residents of the county’s unincorporated areas at $1.09 per $1,000 of taxable value.
The rate approved for the budget starting Oct. 1 is $1.11 per $1,000, or a 2 percent increase. It is calculated to bring in $20.4 million, or $1.7 million more from taxpayers.
Commissioner Rita Pritchett, of Titusville, calculated that increase as less than $2.50 for a home appraised at $200,000 with a $50,000 homestead exemption. “And this is not coming to the County (Commission) so we can mess with it,” she said. “It’s going straight to law enforcement.”
Among Ivey’s needs, he cited, are enough deputies to keep up with the county’s explosive growth.
The Brevard County Comprehensive Plan calls for two deputies per 1,000 residents who live in county areas outside cities, Ivey said. That would mean 462 deputies per the current unincorporated population of 230,780.
And it will mean 480 deputies by 2020, when the same population is forecast to grow to 240,000.
But Ivey has only 402 deputies, he said. Bridging the gap under today’s salaries would cost $3.2 million. But Ivey would still want to retain them.
And from 2016 to 2018, he added, half his sworn deputies – or 122 who were authorized to make arrests – left for better-paying sheriffs’ offices.
And then there are the 586 Tasers and the 588 defibrillators, which are all out of warranty and need to be replaced, in addition to 280 cars.
Ivey’s budget, however, is a small part of Abbate’s $1.3 billion spending plan for the coming year. Thanks to $3 billion in tax revenue from $788 million worth of new construction, Abbate’s proposal is a 1.6 percent decrease from the current $1.33 billion budget.
In a 5-0 vote, commissioners agreed to Abbate’s overall request for a tax rate of $5.84 per $1,000 of taxable property value. That’s a decrease of 7.62 percent from the current rate of $6.33 per $1,000.
Residents have two chances to question Abbate’s proposal before commissioners take the final vote:
- A special hearing 5:30 p.m. Sept. 12 at the County Commission Chambers, 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, Bldg. C, Viera
- During the commission’s regular session at 5 p.m. Sept. 24 in the same location.
