BROOKSVILLE — Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis told the City Council he is willing to help Brooksville walk away from its roughly $1 million law enforcement contract if voters approve a November measure that would cut property taxes and expand the homestead exemption.
Appearing before the council July 20, Nienhuis said that if the measure passes, he would treat the contract as though the city had moved to cancel it in July 2026, leaving Brooksville with the same end date it would get by voting to terminate the deal now.
“If the public passes that, then they’re saying they want less services,” he said. “That’s the only option.”
Passage could cost the city $750,000 in the first year the measure takes effect and more than $1 million the next, a prospect that has Brooksville, like many Florida municipalities, hunting for ways to trim expenses.
For the past couple of years, the city’s payment to the Sheriff’s Office has been a line item council members have said should be cut or eliminated, with the savings redirected to tax relief or city services.
Residents already pay for a baseline of Sheriff’s Office coverage through their county taxes. Even if the city ended its payment, deputies would still patrol Brooksville, enforce the law, make arrests, write tickets and investigate crimes. What would disappear are the extras, chief among them the guaranteed presence of deputies assigned to the city.
“I think we do a good job inside the city,” Nienhuis said. “I certainly want to work with the city. This is not an adversarial relationship; it never has been and never will be.”
There would simply be less service, he said, because the money the city has paid has bought more of it. The Sheriff’s Office also uses the old Brooksville Police Department building as a place for deputies to start shifts and receive briefings — giving the city a deputy presence coming and going — and pays the city rent for the space. If the payments end, those deputies would gather at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters outside the city, and Brooksville would have to find a new tenant.
City Council member Louis Hallal said he understands the sheriff’s argument that the agency must pay competitively to keep deputies from leaving for other departments. But he said the city faces the same pressure with its own employees.
“We need to keep our good people here also,” Hallal said.
Mayor Christa Tanner said that whatever the council decides, the city will always need some form of contract with the Sheriff’s Office to provide security during meetings and personnel matters.
Sheriff’s viewpoint
In a video posted recently on Facebook, Nienhuis said he wanted to clear the air about what city taxpayers actually receive for their payments to the Sheriff’s Office.
The question, he said, is not whether the city will have law enforcement, but what level of enhanced service it will get above the county baseline.
He offered a history lesson. The city disbanded its police department in 2018, when its police budget was about $2.6 million a year. Presented with three service options from the Sheriff’s Office, the city chose the least expensive: eight patrol deputies dedicated to Brooksville.
That was enough to keep two deputies on duty around the clock, as long as none ever got sick, took vacation, went to training or was hurt. When a deputy was absent, the contract called for the position to be “backfilled” at no extra cost.
In September 2025, the city trimmed the contract to six deputies, enough for one deputy on duty around the clock plus a second during the busiest call hours. The cost is a little less than $1 million.
The biggest driver is the rising cost of personnel, Nienhuis said. Counties and cities have to stay competitive on salary to attract and keep officers, and the state’s continued growth keeps pushing up demand for public safety workers.
While the city’s contract has risen about 26% since 2018, he said, the minimum wage has climbed almost 75% and starting pay for state law enforcement 64%. Much of the contract increase, he added, has come from inflation rather than growth.
Fewer deputies mean slower response times, the sheriff said. “Additional deputies help offset that trend; removing deputies accelerates it.” If the city changes or ends the contract, the two city patrol zones would be folded into the larger surrounding county zones.
The contract works out to about $8.30 per resident each month, Nienhuis said — “about 28 cents per day for each person who lives in the city of Brooksville.”
Always a cost
The council’s consensus was that Nienhuis will send the city a letter stating that if the November property tax and homestead measures pass, Brooksville could cancel the agreement as though it had given notice in July 2026. The matter could return to the council after further discussion of issues such as traffic tickets written in the city.
Tanner said some cost will remain no matter what.
“There will always be a cost, I believe, from the city to the Sheriff’s Office,” she said. “What that cost is and what that provides still needs to be negotiated.” Even after the current contract ends, whether the council terminates it now or lets it sunset, she said she expects the city will still need some agreement with the Sheriff’s Office for meeting security.