Leon County Fire Services: The Decision Behind the Numbers

Measured on the county’s own street network, 10,678 unincorporated dwelling units — address points placed individually, not parcels expanded by a use code — sit within five road miles of a responding fire station today and beyond it in the station set the County is left with on October 1st, 2028 if no successor agreement or automatic-aid arrangement replaces the interlocal — the condition this whole study is about, and the reason a costed successor path sits in Table 4 beside the rest. They are not homes that were always far from help: they are the ones the City’s ring of stations covers now and the County’s six county-facing stations and seven volunteer sites will not. With them go 9,648 parcels, $2.73 billion in market value and $27.3 million a year in property tax; the median affected home is worth $245,167.

They are pressed against the city line: 96.9% are within one mile of the city limit and 74.4% within half a mile. Three City stations hold most of them — Station 16 on Easterwood Drive (2,224), Station 3 on South Monroe (2,074) and Station 4 on West Pensacola (1,612). After separation the median crossing home is 6.54 road miles from the nearest station that still responds, p90 7.73. 149 of the 10,678 are run today by Stations 12 or 15, which stay; they cross because the station within five road miles of them today is a different one. Each of them is a dot on the board and a record in the living map.

Source: FIGURE_BASIS_CANONICAL §1–§2c; TLCGIS address points, parcels and street centrelines; Property Appraiser class codes. Road miles, never response time. · In my report: Finding 1 · in the County’s report: §4.1 · Figure 1.

The County collects the fire assessment as a flat charge per dwelling unit — $223 in Zone 2, $245.39 in Zone 1. Because a flat charge ignores value, the share of a household’s wealth it takes falls as the house gets dearer: $2.03 per $1,000 of home value in District 1 against 52¢ in District 4. Districts 1 and 2 together hold 11.9% of the taxable value on the unincorporated roll and pay 29.3% of a flat bill.

That is the definition of a regressive charge, and it is a measured fact about the roll, not a modelled one. What is modelled is the alternative: a square-foot tier ($149 up to 1,600 sq ft, then $0.13 a foot) that raises the same money moves Districts 1 and 2 to 24.2% of the bill and a District 1 household from $223 to $182, inside assessment law — no MSTU, no TRIM notice. Levied on value outright the share would be 11.9%. How the County raises the money is a second decision from how much (Finding 8).

Source: Leon County FY2026 assessment roll; Property Appraiser roll of September 3rd, 2026 (46,768 units); paper_disparity_2026-09-06. · In my report: Finding 2 · in the County’s report: §4.10 · Figure 10.

One in eight of the crossing homes is a mobile home: 1,444 of the 10,678, 13.5% by count and 2.1% of the $2.73B by value. Their median market value is $38,016 against $273,855 for a single-family home. A flat per-dwelling charge takes the same dollars from both.

They are not spread across the county. 930 sit behind Station 3 on South Monroe and 443 behind Station 4 on West Pensacola — 1,373 of the 1,444, in the Woodville, Lake Munson and Fort Braden zones. A two-corridor problem, not a countywide one. And District 1’s structure-fire incidence is 1.97× District 4’s (95% CI 1.15–3.37) — the one incidence claim this study will make.

Source: FIGURE_BASIS_CANONICAL §2b; paper_disparity_2026-09-06 (incidence, calendar 2021–22, n=141). · In my report: Finding 3 · in the County’s report: §4.1 · Figure 2.

Standing alone at today’s service level costs about $30M a year against $11.8M under the contract; the lean version, three-person crews, $23.5M. On the unincorporated billed basis that is $234 → $597 a household a year, or $467 lean. Over FY2029–33 the paths cost $76.5M (successor agreement), $137.5M (lean standalone), $170M (same service) and $217–249M — the only path that restores the five-mile reach.

Against that, Fund 145 carries $12,598,661 for FY2029; five years at that level is about $63M. The cheaper way of standing alone is the expensive one: lean saves a household $130 on the assessment, and at Class 10 a frame home on a private ISO-table carrier pays $1,450–1,830 more in premium, a masonry home $440–550, a Citizens policyholder nothing. ISO-table differences, not quotes; no figure here predicts any household’s premium.

Netting the two moves: lean saves a household $130 on the assessment, and at Class 10 a frame home on a private carrier pays $1,450–1,830 more in premium — net, that household is $1,320–1,700 worse off than under same service, for a three-person crew instead of four. That net is for a frame home on a private carrier; the same household insured through Citizens sees the assessment saving and no premium change at all, and is about $130 a year better off. That is what “the cheaper way of standing alone is the expensive one” means as arithmetic, and who it means it for. It is an ISO-table difference and not a prediction about any household’s premium.

Source: paper_allin_2026-09-06 (FY2029–33, the study’s own components; the $122,000 loaded cost is the declared weak link); Leon County FY2027 adopted budget, Fund 145. · In my report: Finding 4 · in the County’s report: §4.8 · Figure 8.

Two clocks, never mixed. The first is measured: the first unit reaches a structure fire in a median of 5:06 in the core city and 6:24 in the rural station areas (p90 7:56 against 11:02, n=509). The second is modelled: lawful interior attack needs four firefighters on scene (29 CFR 1910.134(g)(4), two in, two out), three ride the first engine, and the fourth arrives on the second.

That interval runs 10–14 minutes today and about 24 after separation in the worst-hit zones — Lake Jackson 3.7 → 18.0 minutes, Woodville 7.7 → 18.3. A fourth firefighter aboard every county-facing engine puts lawful entry at about 7 minutes — the one intervention on any list that changes what happens at a working fire before the deadline, and it costs $2.80M a year.

Source: PRR2026-877 (the City’s dispatch production, structure fires); the second-unit interval is modelled on the road network — FIGURE_BASIS §2p. · In my report: Finding 5 · in the County’s report: §4.3 · Figure 4.

The buildings everyone is fighting over — the six county-facing stations — cover 1.4% of the crossing homes. The other 98.6% (10,529) sit behind City stations inside the city that will stay City property on any outcome. Buying the six outright is about $2.3M; building four new County stations is $28–40M ($7–10M each), and none opens before 2030.

Four County-feasible stations recover 88.1% of the cohort; all of it takes 9 ($63–90M), and an unconstrained optimiser puts its first four sites inside the city limits — the shortest road to these homes runs through stations the City already has. Purchased aid from the City is the only remedy in the years before anything opens.

Source: DATA_stations_2026-09-07 (CC BY 4.0) — the station-coverage dataset nobody had published; paper_siting_2026-09-05. · In my report: Finding 6 · in the County’s report: §4.7 · Figure 7.

93.8% of the crossing homes already have a hydrant within 1,000 feet, and for 94.8% the nearest hydrant is City-owned. Water is not what they lose. The 2022 ISO survey scored the City 73.54 of 105.5; Class 2 begins at 80. Distance to a staffed engine is the failure mode: 6,779 of the 10,678 (63.5%) land in Class 10W because the water stays, and 3,899 in Class 10.

The boundary that produces the split is worth stating, because it is why the hydrants matter at all. Between five and seven road miles with a creditable hydrant within 1,000 feet, a property lands in Class 10W — a real class that exists because those homes demonstrably burn better than homes with no water. Beyond seven road miles, or with no creditable water, it is Class 10. That is the whole of the 63.5% / 36.5% split.

Of the county’s 9,440 active hydrants, 7,660 are the City’s, 948 Talquin’s and 612 private; of 90 tested, 39 did not meet needed fire flow — and today nobody is testing. A flow-testing programme ($0.15–0.25M a year) is the cheapest grading point on the board. Whether ISO credits the six volunteer departments is unanswered — one letter to Verisk settles a $12.0–16.9M band.

Source: The 2022 ISO PPC submission (paper_iso_build_2026-08-27); TLCGIS hydrant layer of September 2nd, 2026; ISO-table premium differences, not quotes. · In my report: Finding 7 · in the County’s report: §4.4 · Figure 5.

Holding the total constant on the whole unincorporated roll (46,768 units), four instruments: the flat charge as today (29.3% on Districts 1 and 2, a District 1 household $223); a square-foot tier (24.2%, $182); half flat and half on value (20.6%, $154, no district rising by more than about $73); and pure ad valorem (11.9%, $84 — with TRIM notice, hearings, a millage cap, and a base Amendment 3 will move unevenly).

The square-foot tier is the free fix: it stays inside assessment law, collects the same total, and under it four of the five districts pay less. It is a separate decision from any rate, and it belongs on its own agenda item before a rate is set.

Source: paper_disparity_2026-09-06; paper_whopays_2026-09-05 (read its errata first); the roll of September 3rd, 2026. · In my report: Finding 8 · in the County’s report: §4.10 · Figure 10.

The County awarded RFP BC-2026-003 to Fitch & Associates for $109,995 on December 9th, 2025; its proposal promised a draft in May 2026 and finals in June 2026. Two milestone payments of $27,498.75 — $54,997.50, half the fee — were made in January and February 2026. On June 5th, 2026 the contract was extended 210 days to December 31st, 2026, two months past the workshop it informs. The County’s own records production (T26-0654) contains no deliverable, no Notice to Proceed and no evaluation scoring. No impropriety is alleged; the consequence is on the record.

§3 of the agreement gives the consultant 180 days from a Notice to Proceed and prices lateness at $100 a day. Across the 210-day extension that rate would come to $21,000 — about a fifth of the fee. Nothing is owed: the extension was granted, and a granted extension is not lateness, so no damages accrued and none could be collected. The figure is not a debt; it is what the contract itself says that much time is worth. No impropriety is alleged — extensions are ordinary and delegated authority is lawful — and the consequence is the one the record shows: the Board sees the work for the first time on the day it is asked to act.

On the other side of the line the City has a real answer. Unincorporated households pay $11.8M for a service the County would have to spend about $30M to replace — about 39 cents on the dollar of the replacement cost. That is not the same as a subsidy, and the difference matters: the City’s marginal cost of covering the unincorporated area from an existing sixteen-station system is lower than building the service from nothing, and the City has never published what that marginal cost is — which is the other half of why nobody has costed the separation. In January 2025 the City proposed 22% carrying one costed element, $8.5M toward moving the ISO rating from 3 to 2, and County staff recorded that there was no data behind the insurance saving. The County offered 17% excluding all ISO-related costs, 4–3, and was refused. It then held unincorporated rates flat while the City raised its own residents’ rates instead — so by FY2028 city households will have paid about 13.3% and 11.9% more than in FY2025 while the unincorporated rate did not move. On July 14th, 2026 the County moved to terminate with cause. Nobody, on either side, has published the arithmetic of the separation itself.

Source: Leon County records production T26-0654; contract B-26-069; County and City minutes, January 2025 – July 2026. · In my report: Finding 9 · in the County’s report: §5.1 · Figure 15.

There is a third emergency-services levy. For FY2024 the County raised its EMS millage from 0.500 to 0.750 mills, a 50% increase, in a hearing that ran 13 minutes; 3 years have now been collected at the higher rate and the fund balance it feeds more than doubled, from $7.0M to $15.5M, funding an ambulance fleet. No response-time series is published against which the stated justification can be tested.

Where it went is published, and it is lawful: the balance rose $5,339,787 in the first year at the higher rate and more than doubled in two, from $6,995,592 to $15,524,853, funding an ambulance fleet replacement programme — $5.33M of EMS capital in FY2024, $7.74M in FY2025. Accumulating a balance to buy a fleet without borrowing is good practice. It is also money that has not been argued about in public.

And the fire deadline is not the only thing that ends that day. The City’s consent to the EMS tax on city property is keyed to the same Current Term of the same 2009 agreement: it remains in effect “until the last day” of that term and is then “deemed revoked without further action” (Ordinance 23-O-22 §3(D)) — September 30th, 2028, the day before separation, taking about $13M of a $19.5M levy with it unless the City has consented afresh first. One date, two funds; only the fire half is on an agenda. On the 2023 precedent the County gave the City sixty days’ notice before it legislated, which puts the real decision in the first half of 2028.

The medical half is the larger half. In the grading year the six outlying zones generated 2,984 medical calls against 67 structure fires; county-wide, 14,396 calls. The system is $41.1M a year, of which the levy is $19.5M — $41.1M is the fund, not the service. It has not been back on an agenda since.

Source: paper_ems_2026-09-05 (released with its note); County budgets FY2023–FY2027; CDA call records. · In my report: Finding 10 · in the County’s report: §4.10 · Figure 11.

From the fire services workshop, proposed for October 27th, 2026, to separation is 23.1 months. On the City’s own published lead times — more than 28 months for an engine, about 24 for a tanker, up to 32 for a ladder — the apparatus window has already closed: the last engine order date was about June 2026, and an engine ordered at the fire services workshop arrives about February 2029. Nothing has been ordered. The academy gate, late 2027, is the one still in front of the Board: a class seated after it does not put firefighters on a truck by October 1st, 2028.

The statutory windows are unforgiving — resolution of intent by early 2028, roll certified September 15th, 2028 — and nothing begun now opens a station before 2030. Same service on October 1st, 2028 is therefore not available at any price. That is a claim about the date, not about the budget. Both constraints are real and they bind at different times: no amount of money buys the service on October 1st, 2028, and from that day forward it is money that decides how much of it comes back — $23.5–30M a year to stand alone and $43.4–49.8M to restore the reach, against $12.6M in Fund 145 (Finding 4). The workshop does not choose a future; it funds what is right in every branch and puts the one near-term improvement money can buy on the table.

Source: The City’s own transition report (apparatus lead times); §197.3632; FIGURE_BASIS §2r (the apparatus correction of September 8th, 2026). · In my report: Finding 11 · in the County’s report: §4.9 · Figure 9.