The looming change giving the Bulloch County Fire Department primary responsibility for responding to fires everywhere in the county outside Statesboro’s city limits effective July 1 flared up as one concern of constituents when the county commissioners held a “town hall” conversation with the public the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 25.

This forum began at 6 p.m. in the Jones-Love Cultural Center at Luetta Moore Park. Chairman David Bennett and five of the six district-elected county commissioners – only Commissioner Timmy Rushing missed it – sat at a long table for the county forum. About 50 other citizens attended.

However, except for commissioners’ Communications Director Dal Cannady who videoed the event, key county staffers did not attend.

“I’ll tell you right now that we intentionally asked the staff to stay home,” Bennett told attendees in his opening remarks. “This is supposed to be your opportunity to dialogue with the  commissioners.  If you start trying to ask us a bunch of questions about facts and figures, you’re probably not going to get them tonight. .. We’ll give you general answers, and if you want things like that, we’re probably going to have to get them to you at a later date. But we want to give you honest answers, we want to be transparent with you about what you want to know.”

At first only two citizens had signed up to speak at the public microphone. The second was Bill Emley, whose home is in a subdivision outside the Statesboro city limits, in the “five-mile zone” currently served by the Statesboro Fire Department. In December, the Board of Commissioners voted to allow the most recent five-year intergovernmental fire services agreement to expire on June 30, providing the required six-month notice to Statesboro’s city officials.

Under the expiring agreement and previous ones, the county collected a special fire service property tax, currently 2.7 mills, in the district and provided the revenue to the city for fire protection. A similar fire service tax collected in the rest of the county funds the Bulloch County Fire Department.

But when a meeting for negotiations convened on Jan. 30, county officials, particularly BCFD Chief Ben Tapley, presented a plan to have the county take over primary fire service responsibility for roughly half of the five-mile district July 1, 2025, receiving approximately half of the revenue while also raising the tax to 3 mills. The county then proposed to take on primary responsibility for the remainder of the district July 1, 2026.

However, City Manager Charles Penny said rather than except this plan and give up half of the revenue, he would recommend that City Council let the agreement end, as the county had served notice. He also recommended that the city not have an automatic aid agreement with the county after this July 1.

The current automatic aid agreement requires that both departments respond to structure fires in Statesboro and across the county. However, both departments will continue to support each other through a mutual aid agreement, responding when the other requests.

The ISO ratings

Emley is one of the homeowners wondering how the rapid change in fire service will affect their insurance premiums. This involves fire protection ratings determined by the Insurance Services Office, or ISO, a private company that supplies information to insurance companies.

“When I spoke to my insurance company, I was asking how this decision might or will impact myself, since I live in the five-mile district,” Emley said. “What I’m trying to understand is I believe the commissioners voted in December and approved the non-extension. …. The city of Statesboro Fire Department, to my understanding, has an ISO rating of ‘2,’ but my understanding is the Bulloch County Fire Department has an ISO rating of ‘4’ or ‘4Y.’ So I contacted my insurance company … and they told me I could expect anywhere from maybe a 28 to 45 percent increase in my fire insurance.”

While the effect could be more or less with different locations and insurers, as other speakers noted, his basic statement about ISO ratings was correct. After working with private water system operators to improve the water supply, the SFD in 2019 attained an ISO fire protection rating of “2” that extends through the five-mile district.

ISO ratings are on a scale of 1 to 10, with “1” representing the best available fire response, and “10” no recognized public fire protection.

The Bulloch County Fire Department’s ISO rating within five miles of its stations is 4/4Y, the split indicating that service is better where there is a better water supply.

But as Bennett also acknowledged, there are still areas on ends of the county more than five miles from a recognized station that have a rating of “10.”

Emley’s questions

“What I don’t understand is how do we go forward in December talking about eliminating the fire protection that we do have in the five-mile district and we don’t, as a county, have an equal fire protection system in place before the agreement is terminated,” Emley said.

Then he also asked about a couple of other, unrelated topics, and Bennett replied on those first, before Emley, by then seated in the audience, asked about the December vote again.

“Before that vote was taken, were the commissioners fully aware of the ISO rating of the county fire service in comparison to the city ISO fire service rating and that voting to terminate the agreement was going to be a cost burden on the citizens living in the five-mile district if the county did not come up to the ISO rating of the city?” he asked.

Commissioner Ray Davis responded first.

“Mr. Chairman, I knew the five-mile fire was going to be an issue,” he said. “I got my insurance company, Auto-Owners, to pull up a house that’s in the five miles, that’s going from a ‘2’ to a ‘4.’ Now, you’ve got to take into consideration that his renewal comes in in November, so that cuts his premium in half. The difference between a ‘2’ and a ‘4,’ on this house, which is a $350,000 house, is $94.”

“You cannot guarantee that,” objected a woman in the audience.  “That’s one quote, one house.”

When Emley again mentioned the December vote, Bennett said he was going to take time to give the story of what had happened regarding the fire service agreement.

‘Nothing  to do with ISO’

“The intention of this when they cancelled the agreement had nothing to do with the ISO,” Bennett said.

He talked about what the five-mile district’s millage rate was decades ago, about 1.6 mills, he said. It’s 2.7 mills now, although a slightly different number was stated during the forum. This is projected to bring in at least $2.6 million in the next fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the automatic aid agreement has been working “both ways,” Bennett said.

“Every structural fire response call response that was there, Bulloch County still responds to those calls,” he continued. “That’s an additional cost that  goes with that. So when we started looking at that, it becomes very expensive and very cost-prohibitive to continue this fire agreement.”

But when the county sent notice to the city that the contract would end, the intent was to negotiate a new one, he said.

“Then we presented a middle-of-the road to the city and we said, this is what we would like to do,” Bennett said, referring to the proposal to take on half the district one year and the rest the next.

‘The bigger picture’

“The bigger picture: We need to grow our fire infrastructure, and this isn’t just about the five-mile fire district,” he said. “The bigger picture is, in 2025, we have areas of this county that still have no fire protection, none, zero, ISO 10. Those people, just like the people of the five-mile district, pay fire taxes. … We have people in the county who have been paying fire taxes  for decades and get literally no fire protection.”

So the county’s intention is to add equipment and more career firefighters to the BCFD – which has been developed into a combination career and professional service – to serve all of the county, he said.

“We’re going to put an engine company at … the EMS station at Grady Street, which is right next to the Statesboro fire station, so whenever they say that you’re not going to have fire coverage, you will,” he said. “ our response time is going to be the same from there or from the Statesboro  Fire Department.”

A ladder truck the county has ordered “is sitting in Ocala, Florida, right now,” Bennett continued. “It’s going through final inspections. We’ll pick it up before the end of the month.”

It will be based at the Clito fire station, and the county is trying to acquire land to build another staffed fire station in the five-mile district, he noted.

With three 24-hour stations currently, in Brooklet, Portal and Register, the county department now employs 30 career firefighters.

Tapley, when proposing the two-year phased turnover of the five-mile district, said he wanted to hire 27 more this year. But the agenda for the Board of Commissioners’ 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 4, meeting includes an amendment to the “position control schedule” of the current-year budget to allow for hiring 37 firefighters.