- December 5, 2025
In September 2024, the city of Palm Coast and Flagler County funded a total of 12 new deputies for the Flagler County Sheriff's Office. As both governments begin to lay out their budgets for 2025-2026, Sheriff Rick Staly is seeking 12 more.
The addition of the new deputies is part of a five year public safety plan aimed at continuing to serve the county's growing population. Now in year 2 of the plan — which will add a total of 37 deputies — the Sheriff's Office is again asking the city to fund nine new deputies, and the county three.
Palm Coast is the biggest city served by the Sheriff's Office, accounting for 80% of the call volume. As there are new elected officials in both the City Council and County Commission, Staly said he wished to hold a workshop between all three bodies so all of them understand the plan. The workshop on Thursday, March 6, did just that.
"I think it's important that we know what the needs are and what the expectations, hopefully going forward, are so that nobody is caught by surprise," Staly said. "... It would be better if we just plan for the future and plan it out going forward."
The Sheriff's Office reported a slight decrease in total calls for service, going from 119,229 calls in 2022-2023, to 117,917 in 2023-2024. However, what did see a minor increase , according to data presented during the workshop, were the numbers of citizen initiated cals for service: Those increased from 49,631 in 2022-2023, to 49,844 in 2023-2024.
Staly attributed the Sheriff's Office crime reduction efforts for a part of that decrease.
"And we know that we have a reputation in the criminal world to not play around in Flagler County," he said.
Staly also spoke about future growth needs. Currently, the Sheriff's Office splits its service area into three districts. With significant growth in the pipeline in the west along North U.S. 1, Staly said the Sheriff's Office is in the beginning stages of creating a fourth service district model, to be implemented in January 2026.
"Now, that won't be a full district in the beginning, because it doesn't justify full service because it's still a lot of wooded area, but the growth is coming," Staly said.
The Sheriff's Office conducted a study in December 2022 that found the agency was 81 deputies short to maintain its current level of service amid future growth, Staly said. The plan to add 37 deputies over a five-year period doesn't improve the level of service, just maintains it.
For fiscal years 2028 and 2029, the plan calls for the city and county to fund five new deputies each. If calls of service remain the same, or decline, it's possible the addition of deputies in future years, the level of service will improve, or that the total number of deputies needed to be funded will decrease.
The Sheriff's Office has calculated it needs 1 deputy for every 308 calls for service, per shift.
County Commissioner Leann Pennington said she was grateful to hear that plans to split up the Sheriff's Office District 3 into a District 4 were in the works.
"While you get a very immediate call to service in Palm Coast, in District 3, just based on its size — there's proper staffing out there, but you could be working a call at Cody's Corner and have to head over to Andalusia, and it just takes the deputy, 20, 30, minutes just to get to that," Pennington said.
Staly said that service on the west side will not be equal to that in the city of Palm Coast based on the size of the district.
"There are sectors within that, that they are assigned to work, but they're still big sectors," he said. "Then when you look at the sectors in the city of Palm Coast, they're significantly smaller because of the population that's in that area. So it'll never be equal, and I don't think any taxpayer wants to pay to make it equal, because that would be very expensive."
City Councilman Ty Miller asked when was the last time a rate study was conducted for impact fees. The County Commission adopted new impact fees in December 2021.
Staly said impact fees are too low.
But, because of House Bill 337, local government impact fees can only be updated every four years, and with a maximum of a 50% increase, County Manager Heidi Petito said. If impact fees are increased by more than 25%, they must be phased over a four-year period. A study would be required for an increase of over 50%.
"We could," County Commission Chair Andy Dance said. "It's always helpful to pre-plan, so we need to probably bring that back soon, because that falls on us, on the county."
