On Tuesday, registered voters in Pace will have a decision to make at the ballot box about the future of their fire service.
The issue is whether Pace Fire Rescue District should be created as a special and independently funded district, meaning the money spent from the district would stay exclusively in Pace, according to Chief Robbie Whitfield.
Currently, Pace is one of nine departments in Santa Rosa County in an alliance dating to 1989 called the Fire Department Executive Group that shares a pot of funding. Pace, the largest of the nine, was allocated $1.4 million for Fiscal Year 2019.
"At that time, the bigger departments agreed to help the smaller departments," Whitfield said. "We've been experiencing so much growth, we can't do that anymore."
Special districts such as the one up for vote in Pace are in already in place in Avalon, Midway and Holley-Navarre.