City manager: BSO's demand to exceed contract caps led to termination notice; city analyzes fiscal impact

City Manager Rodney Brimlow told the Deerfield Beach City Commission on July 8 that the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO) recently notified contract cities it would terminate police and fire service contracts unless cities agreed to increases that exceed the contracts' annual 5% cap.

Brimlow said Deerfield Beach received its May 1 cost letters from BSO as required and performed a contract "cap analysis" that removes pass-through items (workers' compensation, pension contributions and health insurance). "Based on the letter that was received, the proposed fire rescue costs that BSO sent to us was an increase of 9.4% and it exceeded the contractual cap by $1,100,000," Brimlow told the commission. On the law-enforcement side, he said, the May 1 proposal demonstrated a net increase of 10.3%, about $1.2 million over the cap. Brimlow said the combined year-over-year increase proposed by BSO totaled about $7.25 million and that BSO later…