Following a vote Tuesday evening of the county commissioners, interim Bulloch County Manager Cindy Steinmann sent Statesboro City Manager Charles Penny a notice Wednesday that the agreement under which the Statesboro Fire Department serves an area outside the city limits within five miles of its stations will end June 30.

“I anticipate that a new agreement will need to be negotiated prior to July 1, 2025, and I look forward to working with you and others in that regard,” Steinmann concluded the letter.

Next June 30 was the original end date of the current intergovernmental fire service agreement from June 16, 2020. But without a termination notice from either the city or the county six months in advance, it would have renewed automatically, as County Attorney Jeff Akins explained Tuesday to the Board of Commissioners.

If allowed to renew, the agreement could still have been cancelled by either local government with a one-year notice, Akins noted. But he advised commissioners that a notice of termination was appropriate now if they wanted “to renegotiate aspects of the agreement or change the delivery of fire protection services in some way.”

 

Tapley’s request

It was Chief Ben Tapley of the Bulloch County Fire Department who then asked that the current agreement be terminated and a new one negotiated.

“The Fire Department’s, I guess, opinion is that the contract we’re in now is not Bulloch County-friendly,” Tapley said. “Right now, there are no fire stations in the five-mile district. As we know, the city has their city stations that respond out, but right now the contract reads that we as a county can’t put infrastructure in the five-mile district.”

 

Two tax districts

Under the current agreement, the county collects an added property tax for fire department service in two different “districts.” The “Statesboro district,” which he called the “five-mile district” begins at the city limits but extends into the county unincorporated area for five road miles from each of the two Statesboro Fire Department stations. The county levies the fire service tax there but sends the revenue to the city for the SFD’s primary response to fires and other calls in that area.

Beyond that district in all parts of the county except Statesboro, the county also levies a fire service tax but keeps it to fund the Bulloch County Fire Department, which has been developed from an originally all-volunteer service to a combined force of career firefighters and volunteers. It now has three full-time staffed stations – in Brooklet, Portal and Register – as well as 11 volunteer stations

Going forward, Tapley wants the county to have the ability to build fire stations within the five-mile city-served district as a step toward the BCFD providing the primary firefighting service to all of the county outside Statesboro’s city limits.

“It wouldn’t be something that happens immediately because it would take time to purchase the properties and build fire stations in the five-mile district,” Tapley said during a break in the meeting. “So that’s something we would have to negotiate. The interim county manager would have to sit down with the city folks and try to figure out the plan going forward.”

During the same meeting, Steinmann, whose regular job is assistant county manager, had been appointed to the interim role following the recent resignation of long-time County Manager Tom Couch.

The five-mile district served by the Statesboro Fire Department includes some of the relatively densely populated subdivision areas. After working with private water system operators to improve the water supply, the SFD in 2019 was able to obtain an improved Insurance Services Office, or ISO, fire protection rating of “2” that extends to these areas.

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.  Insurance companies generally provide lower premiums for lower ISO numbers, representing better 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 there are still areas on the edges of the county more than five miles from a recognized station that have a rating of “10,” Tapley acknowledges.

In earlier years, the fire service tax rate was higher in the district served by the SFD than in the “rural” district served by the BCFD. But after an increase to fund improvements to the county service, the 2023 fire service rates were 3 mills for the rural area served by the Bulloch County Fire Department and 2.7 mills for the five-mile district served by the Statesboro Fire Department, and these remain unchanged in 2024.

Tapley told the commissioners he would like to see a new contract that will allow  the county “to build out infrastructure in the five-mile district with a date set where we will take over the five-mile district and  provide fire protection.”

 

Commissioners’ action

Commissioner Jappy Stringer, who served for years as a volunteer firefighter, spoke for ending the current contract and negotiating a new one. He has also served on the fire service advisory committee but will conclude his tenure as commissioner this month after losing his bid for re-election.

“Our Fire Department has changed since this agreement was started five years ago so this does not suit, this does not fit, our Fire Department now,” Stringer said.

The fire service contract is not the same thing as an automatic aid agreement, under which the two departments respond to assist each other with calls.

“We propose, with whatever agreement going forward, that that automatic aid agreement would stay in effect, because we would send help to them, they would send help to us,” Tapley told commissioners. “We still want to have a great working relationship with them.”

 

Claimed cost advantage

But he also asserted that the county department, with additional firefighters, could provide primary service to the five-mile district at a lower cost per call than the city does.

Last year, Tapley said, the SFD reported running about 400 calls in the five-mile district, and received roughly $2.5 million from the county-levied fire tax, or about “$6,500 per call.”

Meanwhile the BCFD last year ran about 3,500 calls countywide on a budget of about $3.5 million, “so that’s $1,000 per call,” he figured. If the department started serving the five-mile district, it would begin running first-response medical calls there along with the Emergency Medical Service, he said, but estimated that his department could serve that area for about $1,300 per call.

“So we could offer, based on just the projected calls that we respond to, a cost savings to citizens,” Tapley said.

On a motion from Commissioner Timmy Rushing, seconded by Stringer, the county commissioners voted 5-0 to send the city the notice terminating the fire service agreement.

 

City officials aware

Two key city staff members phoned Thursday were reluctant to say much in reaction to the county’s notice or to speculate about negotiations.

“We’re going to stay committed to working with the county and see what their thoughts are. …,” said Statesboro Fire Chief Tim Grams. “The goal is to provide services to the communities as best we can. Again, we’re always going to be willing to sit down and discuss that best path forward.”

SFD chief since 2010, he noted that a city-county agreement was already in existence before that time. But earlier installments were for shorter periods than five years, and he believes the automatic renewal clause was new with the current agreement.

The city’s budgeted amount to its fire service fund from the county’s revenue for the five-mile district tax was about $2.38 million in fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, and remains about $2.38 million this year. If growth or inflation results in more revenue, it would remain in the fund for next year, said City Manager Charles Penny.

He noted that the city transferred $1 million from its general fund to the fire fund this year to keep it balanced.

Asked about Tapley’s desire to place county fire stations in the five-mile district, Penny said he wasn’t going to negotiate via news media.

“My relationship is with the county manager, and if the (county) fire chief has a concern, he should present that to the county manager, and that should be presented to the city manager and then we can present it to our governing bodies,” Penny said. “Ben Tapley was not the fire chief when we negotiated this, and the agreement is what the agreement is, and it’s the one that was negotiated five years ago.”

City officials have been working to secure a site within the city limits for a third SFD fire station, which Penny has said he hopes to see built in 2025.

Both the city and county have budgeted funds for public safety facilities, potentially including fire stations, in their agreement for a six-year Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax extension now slated for a March 18 referendum.