After extended debate and with a tiebreaker vote, Statesboro City Council and Mayor Jonathan McCollar arrived at a compromise on their property tax millage rate hike Tuesday evening. But city officials revealed Wednesday morning that they will redo the entire process, with three new tax increase hearings.

The first two will be held at noon and 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26. The final hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 3, also announced as the time of a specially called meeting during which council can vote – again – to set the millage rate.

After all of the things council members and the mayor said Tuesday in their tax rate discussion, the pivotal statements turned out to be some of the earlier comments from citizens during what was slated as the final tax hearing, embedded within the 5:30 p.m. regular council meeting.

The second citizen to speak, Ed Neubert, said he had not known about the previous two hearings until he saw a report of one on TV news, and found it “kind of embarrassing because it was a public meeting about such an important subject, and none of our council members were here.”

Then Tuesday’s third speaker, Bulloch Action Coalition co-founder Cassandra Mikell, said she was informing the mayor and council that they were “not in compliance with the protocols of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” because a quorum should have been present for those first two hearings.

Under the Georgia law known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, local  governing boards such as city councils, county commissions and school boards must roll back their millage rates to compensate fully for inflation in assessed real estate values or declare a tax increase and hold three hearings. To avoid the hearings, the city would have had to roll back its rate from this year’s 8.125 mills to 7.326 mills, the “rollback rate” determined by the Bulloch County Board of Tax Assessors staff as sufficient to offset inflation in the city’s tax digest. But City Manager Charles Penny had recommended increasing the rate to 9.125 mills, and the 12.3% rate increase plus nearly equal inflation amounted to the advertised 24.56% increase.

Previous ‘hearings’

When the first announced tax increase hearing was held at noon on Sept. 10, Penny led the presentation and other city staff members were there, but none of the elected officials. With McCollar out of town, only Mayor Pro Tem Shari Barr, the District 5 council member, represented the council during the second hearing at 6 p.m. that day. At that hearing, Penny referred to it as a meeting, and said “the hearing,” would be held with Tuesday’s council meeting.

A couple of citizens who spoke up Tuesday, including Don Armel, who was the first up during the formal hearing, supported the tax increase.

Threat of injunction

But it was Mikell’s comments, referring back to the Sept. 10 hearings, that signaled the need for a do-over.

“City Manager Charles Penny made statements that run contrary to Georgia law and the policies of the Georgia Department of Revenue when he stated that mayor and council are not required to be here and that the actual public hearing would be held ‘next Tuesday’ (now last Tuesday, Sept. 17) before the mayor and City Council at 5:30,” Mikell said. 

“Mr. Penny’s presentation for the proposed increase is necessary, but so is the presence of a quorum of the actual levying authority, the mayor and City Council at all meetings, the ones who actually vote on the millage rate,” she said. “Also important, like you did today, is calling the meeting and the hearing to order.

“The Department of Revenue has stated that there is requirement of a quorum of the levying authority present at all TABOR hearings,” Mikell said.

She then asserted that the city’s only option to get its tax rate set by a supposed Oct. 1 deadline was to adopt the full rollback rate of 7.326 mills.  Otherwise, Mikell said, she would file for a Superior Court injunction.

Mayor McCollar publicly asked City Attorney Cain Smith if he had any insight about whether there had been any error in the city’s procedure. Smith said he would need to look into it.

Council positions

During the council discussion, District 2 Councilmember Paulette Chavers argued for going ahead with the full 1-mill rate increase, noting that she originally argued for Penny’s full recommended increase before the council adopted a compromise increase in the rate last fall.

But District 3 Councilmember Ginny Hendley and District 4 Councilmember John Riggs said they believed the city could fund the already approved raises and other projected spending in the current budget without increasing the millage rate.

In fact, Penny acknowledged this all along, saying that a general fund balance roughly equal to 25% of projected spending – the city’s preferred minimum reserve – would be maintained even if the rate was rolled back and the city spent a projected $1.4 million from the reserve. But with the proposed increase to 9.125 mills, mills, the drawdown would be reduced to about $700,000 Penny said, and he favors increasing the reserve toward future years, with such future expected  expenses as the end of a federal grant that pays the base salaries of 12 added firefighters until fiscal year 2027.

So the range of the positions council members staked out was, in effect, between maintaining a 28% percent reserve and reducing it to about 25% for next year.

McCollar also argued at first for the full one-mill increase, linking it to the pay increases the council approved last December – in a new pay plan developed by a consulting firm – for all city employees. The emphasis had been on raises for firefighters and police, including a raise in Statesboro Police Department officer starting pay from about $46,000 to roughly $55,000, which Penny credited with a reduction from 18 vacancies on the force to only seven.

“I back the blue, and I think it’s time that we pay the blue,” McCollar said Tuesday.

But after some further remarks by the mayor about possible cuts in personnel, Riggs spoke emphasizing that all raises are funded and no layoffs planned with any of the millage rate options discussed. Penny confirmed this.

Indeed, none of the council members suggested adopting the rollback rate. The division was between the current 8.125 mills supported by Hendley and Riggs and the increase to 9.125 mills favored by Chavers. As was also the case in fall 2023, Barr sought a compromise, and this time suggested 8.625 mills. McCollar said if there had to be a compromise, he would prefer 8.725 mills.

Barr amended her motion to set the millage at 8.725, and Chavers seconded it. But with the District 1 seat currently vacant, a 2-2 tie occurred, with Barr and Chavers voting “yes,” and Hendley and Riggs “no.”

McCollar then voiced his tiebreaker vote in favor of the 8.725 rate.

BOE’s 2023 redo

However, City Clerk Leah Harden sent ads and a press release Wednesday morning to the Statesboro Herald, announcing the new round of tax increase hearings. This prompted a reporter’s email to Smith, the city attorney, asking if Mikell’s assertion had been correct and if an Oct. 3 decision will cause a delay in tax bills.

“It's our understanding, based on the Board of Education's recent experience, that the Department of Revenue will not certify the digest unless a quorum is present at all three tax hearings,” Smith wrote. “Accordingly we will have the hearings with quorum on the dates indicated in the referenced advertisement. There should be no issues with the tax bills being sent by the end of the third week of October as is customary.”

In August 2023, Mikell and Lawton Sack, now known as the Bulloch Action Coalition co-founders, filed a complaint in Superior Court seeking an injunction blocking the county Board of Education from adopting a millage increase after only staff members attended the board’s first hearings. A judge dismissed the request for being improperly filed, but board members postponed their decision and held a second round of hearings.

In a later email Tuesday, Harden stated that the rate adopted by the council Sept. 17 “will be reconsidered for formal adoption” during the Oct. 3 meeting. But the official ads are again for the increase to 9.125 mills.