Flagler Beach Cool To Contributing Money, Palm Coast-Style, For Schools’ Resource Deputies

When the Flagler Beach Commission last met, Commissioner Eric Cooley proposed that the city do what Palm Coast does to help pay for school resource deputies in schools: add a monetary appropriation of its own, over and above what the city contributes through county taxes.

Fellow commissioners, however, responded with the equivalent of a “yes, but,” with their qualifiers overwhelming their intimations of support. The city will not entertain the idea in the next few weeks but may at most consider it during budget time in late spring and summer, when it has invited a school official to pitch the idea.

That won’t help the school district as it plans and negotiates for deputies with the sheriff, a p[lan that must be finalized this month.

Palm Coast contributes about $100,000 a year toward school resource deputies in addition to what the school board and the sheriff pay. That’s the equivalent of a full-time school deputy, benefits and equipment included. The school district and the sheriff are finding themselves struggling somewhat to meet a new state requirement that there be at least one cop in every school. The sheriff’s plan for a total of 13 school deputies, including two supervisors (a net increase of seven deputies), will cost $1.8 million, split between the board and the sheriff, but the school board faces a shortfall of over $80,000.

The Palm Coast contribution takes care of one of those 13 deputies. But it leaves the school board still short. Sheriff Rick Staly said he’d be willing to further close the gap by working on controlling overtime costs.

With the difference being in the tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, an additional contribution, however modest, from Flagler Beach or Bunnell governments might have helped further close the gap. That’s where Colley was proposing at last Thursday’s commission meeting.

“There’s no particular amount,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s any appetite with this board to consider anything like that, I don’t know if the money is there or how much you’re all interested in doing. But I wanted to table it. I thought it was a good-faith move for Palm Coast to do that. It helps, because the way I figure, we can either contribute on the front side or the back side in the form of taxes. It’ll come from us no matter what.”

City Manager Larry Newsom said School Board attorney Kristy Gavin called him about the idea. “I’ll be happy to invite you during our budget, because it’s going to be a budgetary impact,” Newsom said he told Gavin. “I said I guess in a political way, well, you know we’re always looking for ways to be partners, but we’ve got to figure out what’s affordable and what’s not.” He also discussed the school board’s half-cent sales tax, or if the county was maximizing its gas tax or local option sales tax, which could pay for cop cars, for instance. (The school board’s sales tax supplement is earmarked strictly for technology.)

There was also discussion of involving one of Flagler Beach’s officers—an idea Staly is not keen on because he doesn’t not want his command structure fragmented by different types of policing authorities in the schools. Earlier this spring he was even pushing to be rid of the Palm Coast contract for the supplemental resource officer, but was dissuaded when Palm Coast council members strongly objected.

“I really don’t want to engage in that,” Newsom said. “I prefer we talk about all this during our budget cycle, which is slowly approaching, they said OK.”

Commissioner Jane Mealy said when Flagler Beach asked for help with its beach, it got $2,000 from Bunnell, “and that’s all.” She added: “It’s not that I’m not interested in child safety, but I don’t think—my initial thought is I would not want to consider that.” Commissioner Marshall Shupe agreed, citing the school board’s “discretionary fund” as the place to look.

“My understanding is, it’s sort of like a slush fund, and I know that’s probably the wrong terminology,” Marshall said, “however, I think it’s significant, and I don’t know what the total would be.” Commission Chairman Rick Belhumeur spoke of the drop in the school board’s tax rate last year, suggesting it will go back up this year.

The commissioners’ comments reflected the degree to which the school board’s budget is misunderstood, even by local officials: there is no such thing approaching a “slush fund,” and what “discretionary” money is in the district’s revenue is part of its operating expenses. The local board doesn’t set the tax rate: it’s set in Tallahassee and in effect imposed on local boards, who merely go through the motions of formally adopting the tax rates. Only local sales tax or property tax supplements are entirely within the local board’s discretion. There is no property tax supplement in effect currently: voters rejected it a few years ago—precisely when it was sold, in part, to pay for extra cops in schools.

“I think the delta is too big for a small city like us to even try to” contribute, Commissioner Kim Carney said, predicting that the school board will work it out. She said she was not “opposed to working out an assignment with a couple of police officers but I think it’s a massive difference.”

The Bunnell City Commission has not discussed the idea.