Independent Leon County Fire Services Separation & Disparity Report

Who pays, and who waits, when the City's fire contract ends in 2028

Max Epstein · MAXAI LLC · independent and unpaid · 15 September 2026 · all figures from public records, reproducible on request · max.epstein@gmail.com · 727-422-3389 · CC BY 4.0

Four things are here. The media brief — four pages: every headline finding with its source and its caveat, the disparity tables, what the County can do on its own, the ambulance levy, and the records nobody has seen; the leave-behind handed to the Board on 15 September. The living map — type any unincorporated Leon County address: which station answers it today, whether it is one of the 10,678, the nearest hydrant and who owns it, and what it would pay under each way of collecting the fee. Report 1 of 2, The twelve questions — what the County asked a $109,995 consultant to answer, and what the public record already answers, in the County's own order; ten can be answered, two cannot, and it says which. Report 2 of 2, Two Leon Counties — a regressive fire tax that lands nearly four times harder on the district with the least value, a fix that costs nothing, and no way to stand the same service up by October 1st, 2028; eleven findings, each opening with the fact in one sentence. Click a box to read it here, or open it in its own page.

Open the media brief (PDF, 4 pages) Open the living map — type your address Report 1 of 2 · The twelve questions Report 2 of 2 · Two Leon Counties

The media brief & executive summary — four pages, the leave-behind handed to the Board on 15 September. Open it in its own page ↗

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What went into it

Every figure in the reports is measured, modelled, a proxy, a range or documentary, and is labelled which. The sources, and when each was pulled:

The county's own street network and address points — Tallahassee–Leon County GIS centrelines, address points and the enhanced parcel layer, pulled August and 1 September 2026. Every address is routed on the network (multi-source shortest path), never drawn as a circle; the five-road-mile threshold is the ISO grading rule.
The Property Appraiser's roll — the whole unincorporated roll, 46,768 dwelling units and $7,809.4M of taxable value, pulled 3 September 2026, with use codes, building area and commission district; the 10,678 crossing homes are validated exactly against it.
The City's dispatch records — public-records production PRR 2026-877: computer-aided-dispatch records for 2021–22, 509 structure fires, first-unit arrival by station area, and the EMS response record (14,396 calls). First-unit arrival is measured from these; the second-unit wait after 2028 is modelled and always says so.
The 2022 ISO Public Protection Classification grading file — the County's Class 3 score (73.54 of 105.50), the hydrant flow tests, and the five-road-mile and 1,000-foot rules that decide Class 10 and 10W.
The 2009 interlocal agreement and its six amendments — executed copies, public-records production PRR 2026-869, including Exhibit D (the volunteer remittance and ALS payments) and Exhibit E (the station price caps).
The County's adopted budgets — FY2026 Budget by Fund (Fire Rescue Services Fund 145 reconciled to the cent; EMS Fund 135), the FY2027 tentative budget and millage resolutions of 15 September 2026, and the 2023 EMS levy record from the adopted minutes.
The Fitch & Associates contract file — production T26-0654: the agreement, Amendment 1, the RFP, the proposal, the purchase order and both invoice-and-payment packets, each retained with a SHA-256 hash.
The hydrant layer — 9,440 active hydrants by owner, TLCGIS, 2 September 2026.
The public record of both governments — Leon County Board minutes and agenda attachments from the County's own server; City Commission approved minutes and items from BoardDocs, including the transition item of 19 November 2025 with the City's published apparatus lead times; meeting recordings transcribed against their minutes.
Florida benchmarks — adopted budgets of comparable fire districts, and the published record of comparable separations.

The reports were built with an AI large language model working under the author's direction; every figure is gated against a published corrections register and can be re-run by anyone. Nothing here is a County or City publication, and none of it is the County's commissioned Fitch & Associates study.

Which build is which. The two reports are the 8 September builds, stamped to corrections-register entry 00aedb11. The register has moved since (current entry 0a062d309109c691) and the media brief carries it: the wording of the 14 July vote record, one caption on the ambulance-levy timing in the walk-through, and the author's preferred way of collecting the fee — the brief argues for the 50/50 blend (half by square foot, half by value), where the reports price the square-foot tier alone as Recommendation 1. The reports will be rebuilt against the current register; until then, where the brief and a report differ, the brief is the current statement and the register says why.