- June 22, 2026
Former Flagler County Sheriff James Manfre is a friend I respect. We don’t agree on this one.
Manfre's "My View" [June 18] opens by warning that a “potential huge shortfall in tax revenues” from Tallahassee should have us “demanding” consolidation talks now. We shouldn’t be demanding anything before we know whether that shortfall materializes. He states that “property tax revenue may be disastrously reduced by the state” but the state doesn’t get a thin dime of property tax revenue. The Legislature has finished its work and now it is up to the voters.
Building county policy around a hypothetical is how communities back themselves into decisions they can’t undo. The current ballot amendment, while the largest tax cut in Florida history, is nowhere near the original proposal that I have previously written about. It is also nowhere near guaranteed.
He’s right that some consolidation already happened here, and that he’s the one who built it. If I may say so, Manfre did it right. In 2001, Manfre and Palm Coast City Manager Dick Kelton struck the agreement where FCSO provides municipal level law enforcement to Palm Coast rather than the city standing up its own police department. That has held solid for 25 years. It was a smart move.
What Manfre doesn’t mention is why that’s worked when so many similar arrangements are now failing: Palm Coast kept its own fire department. It never surrendered every public-safety function to the county by keeping one essential service under direct municipal control as a check, and a point of comparison.
That distinction matters because Manfre’s example of Broward’s countywide sheriff’s model isn’t the success story he presents. Neither is the Duval/Jacksonville metro ideal.
In January 2026, Deerfield Beach voted to leave Broward SO’s contracted policing and fire service entirely, after a consultant’s report projected roughly half a billion dollars in savings over 20 years from going its own way.
Pembroke Park left in 2022 and stood up its own department.
Pompano Beach, Broward’s second-largest contract city, is now running its own feasibility study on doing the same.
If Broward is the proof of concept for combining municipal police, fire, and emergency management under one sheriff, the cities inside that experiment are voting with their feet to get out.
Palm Beach County, not mentioned by Manfre, tells the same story on fire-rescue. I wouldn’t have even known this but a friend of mine is a Jupiter deputy chief. Jupiter spent two years leaving Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, and its own department went into service this year, with the Town Council projecting $50 million to $70 million in savings over the 10-year term of the prior county agreement. Jupiter didn’t consolidate into the county system. It de-consolidated out of it, because the numbers favored local control.
Former Sheriff Manfre raises vehicle maintenance merger and Flagler’s existing trauma, SWAT and HAZMAT agreements with neighboring counties. I believe that interlocal mutual aid for specialized, low-frequency capabilities makes sense, and certainly that we should expand it, including Putnam alongside St. Johns and Volusia.
But there’s a real difference between sharing a SWAT team for major incidents and dissolving a city’s police or fire department into the Sheriff’s Office permanently. The first is what most of Florida has been doing. The second is what Broward’s largest contract cities are actively unwinding.
Palm Coast became a city on Dec. 31, 1999, for an incredibly important reason and a purpose: home rule and a promise that incorporation would deliver better service than the county offered even if paid for at a premium. Those who have been here for 30 years will attest that it was not a guaranteed outcome.
The Palm Coast Fire Department backs that up with its sharp and clean apparatus (fire trucks) that bear an ISO Class 2 rating, a standard most departments in this state will never reach.
Deerfield Beach, Pembroke Park, Pompano Beach and Jupiter didn’t need a hypothetical tax shortfall to make that call. They had years of bills, response times and budget hearings, and they decided the math worked better at the local level. Flagler doesn’t have to guess at this outcome.
The lesson of Manfre’s own 2001 agreement isn’t that Flagler should consolidate further. It’s that Flagler County and Palm Coast has already found the balance other counties are now scrambling to attain.
Roland Clee writes the American Peace Officer newsletter, speaks at public safety, recruiting and leadership conferences and helps local governments and public safety agencies through his business, CommandStaffConsulting.com
