Firefighters of the various ranks and job titles in the Bulloch County Fire Department will receive a boost in pay after the county commissioners last week unanimously approved the raises averaging a little over 5%. This is meant to propel the effort underway to double the department’s number of full-time firefighters.

That recruiting effort, along with some equipment purchases, is intended to prepare the BCFD to take over service to the area that has been the county’s five-mile Statesboro Fire Tax District – outside Statesboro’s city limits but until now served by the Statesboro Fire Department – when the city and county let their five-year fire service agreement expire June 30.

Before the current hiring push, the BCFD, which also calls on some volunteers, had 30 career firefighters.  The Board of Commissioners during an earlier meeting, on March 4, approved adding 37 full-time firefighter positions as an amendment of the “position control schedule” attached to the county’s fiscal year 2025 budget. But that action came without any specific cost projection or salary numbers. Instead, as interim County Manager Cindy Steinmann and Chief Financial Officer Kristie King informed the board, the county staff had asked the Archer Company, which performed the county’s last complete pay and job classification study back in 2018, to do an update of just the Fire Department part.

Steinmann then reported on the results at the March 18 meeting.

“I recommended that we take a quick look at firefighter pay so that we recruit and retain these firefighters,” she said. “As I mentioned to you several times, the last pay study was done in 2018, and we know that those ranges are probably not competitive anymore and it’s time for an overall pay study, but in the meantime, we did have the company that conducted our last pay study go back and look at just the fire pay.”

Commissioners were given a chart of Archer’s recommendations for new pay ranges for 11 Fire Department job titles, from firefighter trainee through fire chief. A chart of the existing pay rates for county jobs, among them the previous pay for the BCFD jobs, was also included in the commissioners’ folders for the meeting.

“I did a few comparisons, and it looks like it’s roughly maybe 5 percent changed,” Steinmann said.  “It’s really not as bad as we thought. It’s definite that we needed to adjust that, but it still falls pretty closely within the current pay ranges.”

She noted that numbers King had used for a rough estimate of the cost of the new hires were “at a higher pay” than the recommended new salary baselines.

“So I think we feel pretty confident that this new pay is feasible, and approval is recommended,” Steinmann said.

New & old pay

When hourly wages are cited, it’s important to realize that most firefighters do not work 40-hour weeks. They serve in 24-hour shifts, typically 10 shifts per month, so they average roughly 56 hours a week on-duty over the course of a year.

On the old pay scale, the hourly wage for a firefighter trainee (not yet certified) ranged from $14.04 to $20.35, with a midpoint of $17.55. On the new scale (recommended and adopted March 18), the firefighter trainee wage ranges from $14.84 to $21.52, with a midpoint of $18.55. But that works out to annual pay ranging from $43,332 to $62,831, with a midpoint of $54,165.

For a basic firefighter with certification, the previous hourly rate ranged from $15.19 to $22.03, with a midpoint of $18.99. On the new scale, the hourly pay for firefighters as such will range from $16.06 to $23.28, with a midpoint of $20.07. That works out to annual pay ranging from $46,881 to $67,978, with a midpoint of $58,601.

Salary ranges for fire apparatus operators, fire inspectors, fire lieutenants, fire training captains and the fire battalion chief, fire prevention chief, fire training chief and fire chief were also increased. The salary range for fire chief, the head of the department, is being increased from a previous minimum of $83,823 and maximum of $121,544 up to a new range that starts at $88,582 and tops out at $128,444 (annual rates rounded to nearest dollar).

Newkirk’s questions

Before the board acted on the new pay scale, Commissioner Nick Newkirk asked whether the staff had a budget figured out with the new pay. King, the county government’s chief financial officer, said she had “some very rough numbers” for the cost of the 37 new firefighter positions.

“With the new pay, the new positions would come out to around $2.1 million per year,” King said. “And then this is really very rough – we don’t know exactly when all of these people are going to start, but I projected maybe a little under $600,000 for the rest of this fiscal year, if we hired them all close to April 1.”

The remainder of FY 2025 means until June 30, so she’s projecting a cost a little under $600,000 for April 1-June 30, then potentially a full-year cost of $2.1 million for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.

Noting that the revenue the county government will keep by taking over the Statesboro Fire Tax District is projected at $2.5 million or more, Newkirk asked if the county will have enough to both pay and equip the new firefighters. King said she would recommend buying the equipment such as turnout gear – firefighters’ protective clothing and related items – “up front, out of SPLOST.”

She is working on a reallocation of some interest earned on deposits of Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue “which has to be used for one of the county’s SPLOST projects,” she said. Under past SPLOST referendums and the new one approved by voters in the March 18 election, firefighting equipment is one of the approved purposes. The old SPLOST, in effect until this fall, has also brought in more than originally projected, she noted.

“Do we have any vacancies in the Fire Department this year, to require a pay increase?” Newkirk then asked.

He said he had been hearing of as many as 13 vacancies in the Public Works Department, which includes road maintenance, for a year and noted that the county had not specifically increased pay for that department.

“I’m just concerned that we’re focusing on one department and not the people that really need it,” Newkirk said.

The staff could have a pay study done for Public Works if the commissioners requested one, Steinmann said.

Chief speaks up

Fire Chief Ben Tapley then came forward to speak to the Board of Commissioners.

“Yes sir, we’ve had vacancies throughout the year, and we’re short one firefighter right now,” Tapley said. “But obviously we’re going to do a huge class (for newly recruited firefighters) here in the next few weeks. When it goes back to pay, you know, the part about the people that deserve it, I believe my people deserve, you know, more pay.”

Under the old rate schedule, certified firefighters who were making $15.19 an hour working for the BCFD could go to Effingham County and “make $18.15 an hour starting out, certified,” he said, and also suggested that some of Bulloch County’s own agencies could lure away firefighters for higher pay.

“We’ve had comments, you know, that we don’t want to make the other people mad in the county because the Fire Department’s going to get a readjusted pay scale,” Tapley said. “Well, I could become an EMT and walk in the door and make $18.91 an hour, certified. I can become a deputy and be certified and make 19-something dollars an hour. So I’m just asking that our pay be adjusted where we can be competitive with those people around us and those people internally in public safety in Bulloch County.”
Newkirk joined in the 6-0 approval of a motion to adopt the new pay scale for firefighters.