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Santa Rosa County Administrator Dan Schebler did not resign and was not fired at Tuesday night s County Commission meeting, following a long night of debate in which several residents called for his termination after one of his employees missed a funding deadline back in March.
Schebler will instead receive a formal letter of reprimand in his personnel file, but the majority of the board didn t have an appetite for more severe disciplinary action. James Calkins was the lone commissioner who supported removing Schebler from his office, and he found support for his position from the two dozen or so people who stuck it out for the entirety of the seven-hour board meeting, which got rowdy and raucous at times.
Santa Rosa County missed out on critical infrastructure funding for the current fiscal year because county staff failed to meet a deadline from the Florida Department of Transportation, despite multiple meetings and reminders from the state agency.
The funding program, called Small County Outreach Program (SCOP), allots $20 million each year to counties in FDOT s District 3 that have fewer than 200,000 residents. The money is intended for critical road repaving and reconstruction projects.
Out of the 16 counties in FDOT s District 3, only three are not eligible for the program because of population size Escambia, Okaloosa and Leon. Of the 13 eligible counties, only Santa Rosa did not apply for SCOP funding this year.