Role of the County Budget

View the Proposed 2021-2022 Budget Online

The county's budget serves as the primary tool in allocating financial resources to programs and services. The budget can serve as a policy making tool, a management tool, a financial tool and a communication tool.

Budgeting for a government is essentially the process of allocating resources to fund services and projects benefiting the community. The goal is to provide a balanced budget funding ongoing expenses with ongoing revenues.

The process is complex because unlike private business, Escambia County government serves the taxpayers and is expected to address funding needs for the community's social issues, protecting the citizens' interests, providing public safety and enforcing laws and regulations. For accountability purposes, decisions are made in an open public forum in an effort to achieve Escambia County’s mission to provide efficient, responsive services that enhance our quality of life, meet common needs and promote a safe and healthy community.

Each year, the authorized financial and operational plans of Escambia County are published in the Adopted Budget. The adopted budget books in the following links also contain performance measures for each department in Escambia County.

New – Escambia County is pleased to announce the first interactive Online Budget Book for the Fiscal Year 2022 Proposed Budget. 

The first budget public hearing will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021 at 5:31 p.m. at the Ernie Lee Magaha Government Building, 221 Palafox Place, BCC Chambers. The second budget public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 21 at 5:31 p.m. in the BCC Chambers.

Tips for Using the Online Budget Book 

OpenGov allows you to explore budget in a simple graphical user interface. The OpenGov Tool is best viewed using the Google Chrome browser. Download the latest version of Chrome here.

• You can access the Table of Contents by clicking the link at the bottom of the Online Budget Book or click here.
• You may access the interactive budget book throughout the links within the Table of Contents or by clicking here.
• You will notice the title of the report you are viewing in the top left corner.
• Click on "Saved" on the left-hand side to view a list of common or favorite views on each report.
• Select "Filter" to display key menus.
• You can use the "Show" drop-down menu to select the data that is of most interest to you.
• Use the "Broken Down By" drop-down menu to specify the category you would like the data organized by in your chart or graph.
• Select the "Filtered By" option to view the data filters. These filters will allow you to select exactly which data you want to include or exclude from your graph or chart.
• Use the "Search" function within each filter to find exactly what you are looking for.

Additional Tips for Using the Tool

• There are five different types of visual representations of the data - a percentage graph, a stacked graph, a line graph, a pie graph, and a bar graph. You can change your view at any time by simply clicking the desired type of representation at the top right of the page.
• You can share the data, in any view, on a social network or by email.
• You can also download the data into a .csv spreadsheet or a .png image.

MSBU

This office also manages the county's Municipal Services Benefit Unit programs, which include the county-wide fire protection MSBU, the Santa Rosa Island MSBU, and numerous others for street lighting, holding ponds and nuisance abatements.

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