City Officers with Guns in Courthouses

The only agency I see willowing to death is PCSO. I believe it is your agency that is suffering from layoffs and major budget cuts.

Yet we out number your agency 10 to 1 and are fully staffed.

If you can't take Kenneth City, what makes you think you can take Pinellas Park. The reality, you don't play well with others. Our political leadership doesn't like you. They only stomach you when they have to.

I'm not sure when Kenneth City was asking for a contract. And how can you speak for 3000 employees not "playing well with others"? I've never had any issues with anyone from PPPD.

If you ever get a Sheriff that wants to unify county law enforcement as opposed to forcibly take it over, then perhaps I will worry. Given that Sheriff's and their minnions have an ego problem, I think I will sleep well tonight.

Reality is that it wont be up to a Sheriff or you, it WILL be your city commission that votes you out someday. Like when Pennies for Pinellas goes away.

However, you may want to look behind you, I hear there are another round of layoffs likely in the 2010 budget.... If it wasn't for your county transport grant for this year, you would have been layoffs.

I heard predictions of more layoffs, but that did not happen either. In fact promotions are coming too. Theyd have to layoff hundreds beforwe I'd worry about my job. Transportation contracts are just another thread of PCSO into every agency.

One more thing, I heard today that Pasco County got 24 new deputies via stimulus money, St. Petersburg got 10, St. Pete Beach even got 1, and we got 5. You know, I didn't see your agency on the list....huh...

Hmm, lets see, grants for positions that those agencies may not be able to maintain after the grants expire. And, again, we are fully staffed. Cities will come into line, if not nopw some day. Keep up the great traffic control at Quaker Steak n Lube, its what you are good at.

The funny thing is, I have been a police officer in this county for over a decade, the same talk is occuring today that was taking place ten years ago. In reality, no significant PCSO takeover has happened since 1998. The simple reason, the county has little to offer cities. They can't afford to suplant the city budget with county tax payer dollars anymore, if you haven't noticed, the county has few if any taxpayer dollars to spend.

PCSO will likely continue to decrease in size and service until they reach the level that their budget can support. It is only logical that PCSO would have to cut since years and years of city growth has taken place, especially in south county. When cities grow...ie. St. Petersburg, Largo, Pinellas Park etc, the tax dollars shift from the city and away from the county. The city increases law enforcement service to cover the area but PCSO for the past decade just reassigned extra deputies to special units and did not reduce its force size despite a decrease in population coverage and square mile coverage. Now, simply put the county budget cannot support all the special units, cuts were required, special units were cut, as they should have been all along.

There is still plenty of county land to police so PCSO will be here long after all of us retire, however, the cities continue to annex property every two weeks which simply means PCSO patrol areas continue to shrink. Slowly, but shrink non the less.

However, a good politically minded sheriff who talks of consolidation instead of takeover could likely win some support in local government. However in the Park, it would require a 5-0 vote in favor of merging with the sheriff. It would be very difficult to get five local politicians to agree to something as controversial as that would be.

One final thing. In regards to the acceptance of stimulus funds. The last poster was correct, the cities will have to pay in year four of the grant to keep the officers. The very same thing the sheriff will have to do in two years to keep the transport vans running. Unless of course he can get the cities to voluntarily pay to keep deputies on the street as a taxi service for our prisoners. Given our close proximity to the county jail, I might be a little concerned about keeping Pinellas Park as a customer. It likely doesn't make financial sense for us to continue if we have to flip the bill.

Congratulations on being fully staffed, It was difficult I am sure slashing those jobs over the past few years to get to this point. Oh, we are fully staffed also. Just hired three new recruits out of the academy and are looking for five more thanks to the Prez...