A non-profit “research and educational” organization called We Are Perdido wants voters to decide if more than 33 square miles of southwest Escambia County, including Perdido Key, should be incorporated and become a city.
We Are Perdido Chairman Steve Brendtro said they’ve been working on the proposed charter and feasibility study since January, and they plan to submit it to state representatives to place on the November 2024 ballot.
According to We Are Perdido’s website, the group points out that the Perdido area has just 7% of the county’s population with more than 20,000 residents, yet holds 16% of the taxable real estate value. The site includes a petition to support the cause as well as a link to donate to it.
“By incorporating our area as a municipality, we can directly address the local issues we face, make decisions ourselves, and return a more significant share of tax dollars to our local community,” the We Are Perdido website reads. “We can reduce the overall burden on our county by taking control of our own destiny. Citizens can have a local voice in their own city government. Together, we can improve the quality of life for us and our neighbors in the surrounding unincorporated county.”
The deadline is approaching to submit the initiative to state representatives to place on the ballot, however, state and county leaders question if the organization has done enough homework to hammer out an effective plan that is ready to go before voters and meets state requirements.
For example, Brendtro said that under the group’s “government lite” model the town or city would continue to pay for safety services like fire and police, as well as use county-maintained roads, parks and schools without raising taxes on residents or cutting into county revenue.
“The feasibility study, as it’s laid out, as it’s proposed, would require no additional tax revenue for the citizens of Perdido,” Brendtro told commissioners at their last meeting. “The losses to the county are offset by not having the responsibility to do those type of projects. Any transfer of revenue in that regard is awash.”
Escambia commissioners maintained they are ambivalent about the idea of incorporation but wanted to make sure people were voting on a plan that was feasible, and they told Brendtro based on what they’ve seen so far, there are still many questions and their math doesn’t add up.
“(The plan) says we would lose roughly $5 million of ad valorem taxes but recover the entire amount through the interlocal agreement,” said Commissioner Robert Bender. “It says we’d lose $2.89 million in SSR fees, $3.13 in communication and service tax and franchise fees for an annual loss of $6 million on the general fund.”
“That’s not going to get approved by this board,” said Commissioner Steven Barry. “Our board isn’t going to approve an interlocal agreement that has us collecting less revenue. That’s not the way our other municipalities exist. Other municipalities pay the same ad valorem rate that the county residents pay.”
Brendtro did not return a call for comment about the issue, but he spoke to commissioners about the group’s plan and the need to work with county staff as it evolves, which commissioners gave him the greenlight to do.
He insisted the county would not lose revenue, but he could not answer some of their funding-specific questions, adding he was the “researcher” on the project.
Brendtro told commissioners We Are Perdido has been working with people who live and work in the community to educate them on the process and get their input on the idea. He said they also hired BJM Consulting, a firm experienced with helping communities incorporate, to help with the process and are continuing to refine their plan.
“No roads, no schools, no fire, no parks, you’re not sure what services you’re going to do,” said Commissioner Jeff Bergosh, “you think there wouldn’t be utility taxes, but I don’t see how you get the revenue you need to get to the shared state revenue if you don’t hit utility taxes.”
“Our board is not going to put something on the ballot that affects us without knowing what that affect is going to be,” said Barry.
Opposition to Perdido incorporation
In response to We Are Perdido’s efforts to get the incorporation initiative on the ballot, local business owner and Southwest Escambia resident Jon-Michael Jones launched the grassroots organization Stop Perdido City.
Jones said he agrees the area could use more help from the county in dealing with some infrastructure issues like roads and flooding, but he said the county is slowly but surely making progress on some of those challenges and he’s concerned incorporation will only make it harder to get them addressed.
“Right now, (their plan) doesn’t meet the state requirements for citizens per acre, which is in place to protect people from when the city becomes incorporated,” said Jones. “You need that tax base. If you don’t have citizens per acre requirement, you put a very heavy burden on the limited tax base and they’re seeking a waiver for that.
“They’ve admitted that they still might not have their nailed down proposition yet and for this to be put up for a vote without all the information, I think if you’re going to propose something to the voters and to the state, to the county, you need to put forth a clear proposal.”
Carl Punyko, a retired government affairs consultant for Gulf Power, has joined the grassroots effort to protest the incorporation effort. Punyko said in his opinion, We Are Perdido’s plan is simply creating additional layers of expensive government bureaucracy without providing much in return.
“If it were to be voted in right now, we’d have a mess on our hands,” said Punyko. “There’s another little tidbit in their study that they’ve got to take out a $1 million loan just to get started and $2.6 million worth of administrative salaries. There are things in there that concern the heck out of me. For example, the mayor would be elected by the five City Council people, not by the people like every other municipality area in the two-county area, so they basically would create their own government, but they don’t have any kind of tax structure in place.”
Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, also has questions about We Are Perdido’s charter and feasibility study. He said he pushed the group’s organizers to go to the board and give Escambia commissioners an update on their plan because he knew they needed their input to make a feasibility study work and they had not pursued it yet. Andrade said he told them from the get-go he would file it as a local bill to get the initiative on the ballot, like he would to support any citizen effort that met state requirements, but he’s not sure they’ve fulfilled that task, yet.
Andrade and other local leaders will vote on the initiative Thursday at the state delegation meeting. He said he wants more information and clear answers from We Are Perdido, before filing the bill and pushing for the initiative to be on the ballot.
“I’m going to be adamant, because they have to acknowledge that their website’s very misleading, there’s absolutely no way for you to guarantee right now as you stand here, that taxes and fees will not be increased because the feasibility study says that like costs of municipal operations for the city will increase between 20 and 26%. In their feasibility study, they say that costs to run that area will increase 20 to 26% and yet they’re still claiming, ‘we’re not going to have to raise taxes and fees to do it.’
What they’re advocating for is a situation where there will be a new layer of government and that new layer of government will most likely come with added fees and costs and you’ve committed not to mislead anybody about that.”
In the meantime, both those for and against the idea of incorporating a large part of Southwest Escambia County are pushing their cause.
“For the past 10 months we’ve been focused on community education and research to ensure that the proposal is actually feasible,” Brendtro told commissioners.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Incorporate Perdido plan not ready for ballot opponents argue
