High Springs Weighs Future of Its Police and Fire Departments, A Test Case for Small Florida Cities
An Alachua County city's budget standoff over whether to keep its own police and fire departments offers a preview of pressures facing small municipalities across north central Florida, including those near Levy County.
A Budget Fight With Statewide Echoes
High Springs, a city of roughly 6,500 people in Alachua County, has kept its police and fire departments for now. But city commissioners have not closed the door on eliminating them and contracting with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office instead, a decision that, while local to High Springs, mirrors budget pressures building in small cities and counties across north central Florida, including those closer to the Nature Coast.
According to WUFT News, the High Springs City Commission approved a $21 million budget on Sept. 21 that keeps funding for both the police and fire departments intact, after more than 15 residents spoke against disbanding the services. The city’s police department alone accounts for about $3.2 million of that budget, a figure Commissioner Tristan Grunder said has grown in recent years amid what he called years of “gross mismanagement” and inaccurate financial information.
The debate is not new. It first surfaced in summer 2025, when officials cited a growing budget deficit as grounds for cutting or eliminating the departments. Public opposition at the time stalled the plan, but commissioners have continued discussing it in the months since.
Why Cutting Police Budgets Isn’t Simple
Florida law complicates any move to slash law enforcement funding. A state attorney or a member of a city’s own governing body can challenge a law enforcement budget cut of more than 5% through an administrative hearing. City officials said that protection makes a straightforward cut difficult, and, in High Springs’ case, not even enough to matter. A 5% reduction would save only about $168,000, according to an official identified in the WUFT report as Howell, a sum he said would not meaningfully address the city’s financial strain.
By contrast, city officials have estimated that contracting with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office, similar to an arrangement the city of Newberry entered in a three-year deal with the sheriff’s office, could save High Springs as much as $11 million over five years. No formal proposal has been made, but commissioners say they are open to exploring it.
What Residents Stand to Lose or Gain
More than 30 residents packed High Springs City Hall for the Sept. 21 meeting, with some waiting downstairs for a turn to speak. About a third of speakers raised the city’s history of independent policing dating to 1892, arguing that local officers’ familiarity with streets and neighborhoods can’t be replicated by outside deputies.
Alachua County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lisa Sacaccio pushed back on that concern, saying many deputies who serve smaller communities also live in them, with children in local schools, and that the office maintains substations, the nearest to High Springs in Newberry, to stay accessible. Resident Leah Eland countered that reversing course after a contract failed would not be simple: “If we sign this contract and realize that six months later our streets are less safe and response times have skyrocketed, we cannot simply flip a switch,” she said. “We would be permanently stranded.”
A Pressure Test Beyond Alachua County
The High Springs budget fight is unfolding as a statewide property tax ballot measure, opposed by labor groups including Florida Professional Firefighters, threatens to squeeze municipal and county budgets further if it passes with 60% voter approval. The Florida Policy Institute, a research nonprofit, has estimated that by the 2029 budget year, law enforcement and public safety funding in Alachua County alone could fall by about $28 million under the measure.
For Nature Coast communities watching from Levy County and beyond, High Springs’ predicament is a preview: a small city squeezed between rising public safety costs, legal protections for law enforcement budgets and a possible statewide tax change that could tighten revenue further. High Springs’ next step is a financial audit expected to begin in October, after which the debate over outside contracting may resurface.