Something like a divorce of the rest of Bulloch County outside Statesboro from the Statesboro Fire Department took another step forward when City Council voted Tuesday to end the automatic aid agreement between the SFD and the Bulloch County Fire Department, effective July 1.

County officials had taken the first step in early December after County Attorney Jeff Akins informed the county Board of Commissioners that the five-year intergovernmental agreement on the five-mile Statesboro Fire Tax District would automatically renew July 1, 2025 unless the county gave the city six months’ notice of termination. After county Fire Chief Ben Tapley expressed the opinion that the agreement was “not Bulloch County-friendly” and presented information on the expansion of the county Fire Department, or BCFD, commissioners voted 5-0 on Dec. 3 to notify the city of a June 30 termination.

This was done with county officials expressing hope of negotiating a new fire service agreement for the district. At the time, Tapley also voiced a desire to maintain the separate automatic aid agreement, under which the two departments have automatically responded with a limited amount of apparatus to each other’s structure fires without having to receive a special request.

“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 Dec. 3. “We still want to have a great working relationship with them.”

Negotiations toward a new fire service agreement were supposed to begin with a Jan. 30 meeting of the joint city-county Statesboro Fire Tax District Committee. But at that county-hosted meeting, Tapley set out at proposal to have the Bulloch County Fire Department take over roughly half of the district and half of its expected $3 million annual fire service tax revenue on July 1, 2025, for one year. Then the BCFD would have received the rest of the district and its revenue beginning July 1, 2026.

City staff members said they had been given no inkling of this plan before it was unveiled in public at the Jan. 30 meeting. Statesboro City Manager Charles Penny complained of a lack of professional courtesy both in that and the sudden notice of the Dec. 3 vote, but he acknowledged that the county government was in a time of transition, after the departure of longtime County Manager Tom Couch and with commission seats passing from long-term incumbents to challengers who had beat them in last year’s elections.

Before leaving the Jan. 30 meeting, Penny said he would advise City Council to let the fire district agreement expire June 30 as the county had initiated rather than have the city accept the sudden decrease in funding. He also said that the county’s proposal had relied on a mistaken assumption that automatic aid would necessarily continue and that he would advise the mayor and council to end the automatic aid agreement.

More recently, he said this had been negotiable and emphasized that the decision was the elected council’s to make.

 

Automatic vs. mutual

All parties to the separation have said that mutual aid will continue between the Bulloch County Fire Department and the Statesboro Fire Department. But mutual aid is different from automatic aid. In mutual aid, fire departments send available trucks and firefighters to help other departments when requested, such as for major fires or for multiple fires occurring at the same time.

No request was needed under the automatic aid agreement. The SFD dispatched one fire engine and crew for confirmed structure fires anywhere in the county, not only in the five-mile district, but throughout the rural areas or in Brooklet, Portal and Register. In return, the BCFD automatically dispatched an apparatus such as a tanker truck to assist the SFD for structure fires in Statesboro and the five-mile district.

 

90-day notice

Actually ending the automatic aid agreement, which has been in effect since April 2020, requires 90 days notice from either the city or the county to the other. With the county now taking steps to more than double the BCFD’s number of full-time firefighters, add apparatus and site a couple more stations to respond to fires after June 30 in what has been the five-mile district, Statesboro city officials discussed automatic aid during the mayor and council’s Friday, March 14-Saturday, March 15 annual planning retreat in Augusta.

Penny then made his recommendation on automatic aid during “city manager comments” in the regular March 18 council meeting at Statesboro City Hall.

“What would happen if we don’t give notice and we don’t get that 90-day window, come July 1st 2025, we will no longer protect the fire district,” Penny said. “However, we would then be responsible for responding in the fire district or throughout the county as a part of automatic aid, and so this evening I’m asking you to approve us giving notice to Bulloch County of the intention to terminate the automatic aid agreement, effective July 1.”

As background here, the county collects tax on property within Statesboro for other county services but is prohibited from using that revenue to fund the county fire department, since the city has its own, longer-established fire department. Under the longstanding Fire District Agreement, the SFD has provided the primary response to fires and similar emergencies out into the county’s unincorporated area up to five road miles from the city’s two current fire stations, while the county levies a special fire service property tax in the district and sends the revenue to the city. The county government also collects a fire service property tax outside of the Statesboro district and has used it to fund the Bulloch County Fire Department.

With the end of the district agreement, the county will use the fire tax millage from everywhere outside Statesboro’s city limits to fund the BCFD.

 

Door left open

During their recent retreat, Penny and at least some of the city’s elected officials talked about leaving the door open for a restoration of automatic aid if the county makes a new offer of some kind, as he acknowledged Tuesday.

“And mayor, when I say that, I’m gonna put it this way,” Penny continued, “taking this action in no way prevents the city of Statesboro from working with Bulloch County if they would like to work with us. We talked about it at the retreat. If they wanted for us to continue to protect the fire district, they have between now and July 1st, or even after July 1st, if they decide they need to come back.”

District 5 Councilmember Shari Barr agreed.

“I just want to echo what Mr. Penny said about, that we’re till open to trying to work something out,” Barr said. “At this point the county has said they’re taking it over and we’re out and that’s how it is, but I certainly hope we can still work something out. I know it’s not fair for the city of Statesboro taxpayers to subsidize fire service out into the county beyond the city limits. So I understand the need, legally, for us to take this step, but I just want to be clear, I really regret it and still hope that we can work something out.”

Councilmember Tangie Johnson made the motion to notify the county of the automatic aid agreement’s termination. Councilmember John Riggs seconded the motion, and the vote was 5-0.

Earlier that same day, the Bulloch County commissioners approved a revised pay plan for the BCFD, with raises for firefighters of various ranks, as the county department seeks to recruit and hire 37 firefighters, which would more than double its full-time workforce from a previous 30 career firefighters.