Looking again at the Bulloch County government’s tentative fiscal year 2026 budget during a Thursday, May 15 work session, county commissioners and key staff members commented that a full rollback of the millage rate to offset property value inflation would come at too high a cost to county services and personnel.

But they heard that dipping too far into the carried-over balance – which serves as a rainy-day fund – could also be risky in a county sometimes affected by more than one hurricane in a year and where heavy rain frequently damages Georgia’s largest network of unpaved roads. To some apparent relief, the conservative-leaning commissioners also heard from a tax appraiser that a rollback may not matter that much this year to homeowners, since a new state exemption that pegs increases in assessed values to the lower national inflation rate will provide as much relief. (That law, however, won’t provide relief on commercial, rental or agricultural real estate.)

Opening the 10 a.m. work session, Commissioners Chairman David Bennett reported that he had met with interim County Manager Randy Tillman and Chief Financial Officer Kristie King the previous day and gone over the tentative budget almost line-by-line. He also revealed that, after the previous budget work session on April 29 indicated the full extent of spending increases from departmental requests, proposed raises and expected inflation, he had asked King to show him a budget with major reductions.

“About two weeks ago, after our last budget meeting, I sat down and had a conversation with Kristie and I asked her to do something. Based off of the projected deficit that we had in our budget of about $7.8 million, which roughly equates to about 10 percent, I asked her to go through … and  cut our budget by 10 percent,” Bennett said.  “And then yesterday when we sat  down and we talked, there’s some things that I looked at and she presented to me, and I’m just not comfortable doing them. …

“Quite frankly, the majority of our budget in this county goes to fund four essential functions: law enforcement, fire and EMS and public works, and I am not comfortable with the idea of cutting any of those services and compromising the safety of the people of this county,” he continued.

As an example, he noted that county officials are looking to expand the Emergency Medical Service with more ambulance locations, specifically with a plan to open an EMS station at Stilson this year.

“It’s badly needed,” Bennett said. “If you live out that way, you know how long it takes to get an ambulance to your house. Sometimes it could be 20 minutes; sometimes more. … And depending on where you live in the county, it may take longer. So, we need that.”

A staff member told him EMS response time in the Stilson area is 22 minutes on average.

Not much ‘fluff’

But asking the EMS staff to cut 10% from their operational budget in order to fund the expansion would be “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Bennett remarked. Similarly, he added, asking the sheriff to cut in other areas to fund hiring more road deputies or jail staff for a growing population similarly wouldn’t make sense.

“I know people talk about we need to cut the fluff, and I’m happy to sit down and talk with anybody individually, and we can talk about ‘fluff,’ but I’m going to tell you there ain’t a whole lot of ‘fluff’ there,” Bennett said.

King began her presentation Thursday with a sheet listing proposed changes in the fiscal year 2026 budget, as compared to current, fiscal 2025 budget, in two columns. The first column listed changes proposed as of the April 29 session, while the second column showed corrections and changes as of May 15. The net result was a slightly more than $2.4 million reduction in proposed spending. The largest portion of this resulted from the correction of a software calculation error, she explained, that caused the increase in health insurance costs to show up as almost $4.84 million, when the actual increase should be a little less than $3.1 million, as a consultant had estimated. So that fix subtracted almost $1.76 million.

However, the overall reduction in proposed spending, from $74,355,683 on April 29 down to $71,917,870 this week, also included some real changes in proposed personnel costs. An originally suggested 3% across-the-board pay increase had been reduced to a 2% raise, making the cost $535,605, which is $267,803 less than the cost of the larger raise.

Cost estimates for added personnel were cut back $289,517, to about $1.5 million. But King added back $143,900 to account for one-time costs related to new positions, such as purchases of uniforms and computers for the additional personnel. Four requested full-time new positions had been removed, including one each for Bulloch County Correctional Institution, the Emergency Management Agency, the county engineering staff and the tax commissioner’s office, she said.

Remaining added positions include a part-time constable for Magistrate Court, six EMT/paramedic positions for the Stilson EMS station, a full-time administrative assistant for the coroner’s office, two solid waste service equipment operators for Public Works, four jail officers and one patrol deputy, plus one additional school resource officer for schools outside Statesboro and eight SROs to work in schools in Statesboro, for the Sheriff’s Office.

“There comes funding from the Board of Education with those positions,” King noted of the SROs.

With general fund expenditures now projected at $71.9 million, King also presented three possible options for rollbacks of the property tax millage rate. A mill is 1/1000th the assessed value of property, and in Georgia, most property is assessed at 40% of market value. Without a full rollback, the commissioners will be required to hold three “tax increase” hearings by this fall, even if the millage rate is kept the same.

Robert Fisher, deputy chief appraiser for the Bulloch County Board of Tax Assessors, told the commissioners that a full rollback would be a reduction of about 0.7 mill, at the currently projected value of the tax digest.

Spending from reserve

King estimated that a full rollback would result in revenues of $66.59 million, and thus a $4.5 million shortfall of revenues compared to expenditures. With some one-time costs and a $500,000 contingency also taken from the fund balance, a $5.3 million reduction in fund balance would be needed to balance the budget with the full rollback, she estimated.

Bennett had also asked about the possibility of a rollback of just one-fourth the full statutory amount, which Fisher described as a 0.175-mill rollback. With that amount of reduction in new revenue, King estimated, the county would have to draw down its fund balance about $3.4 million to balance the budget. Even with no rollback, just maintaining the current rate, which is 11.35 mills, the county would generate about $69.4 million in revenue, and with the $71.9 million in projected operating expenses, would still need about $2.49 million from its fund balance, she estimated.

“So either way … I am recommending that we use some fund balance to balance the budget,” King said. “We have been doing pretty well with that, we have had a healthy fund balance, and I feel pretty confident that we would be OK using that number out of fund balance.”

However, she also presented a list of line items the county would have to cut additional money from to allow a full rollback, and said she is recommending against it.

Fisher, from the Board of Assessors’ office, again talked to the commissioners about Georgia House Bill 581, which has created a floating homestead exemption based on the Consumer Price Index. For most homeowners who are signed for up for exemptions, the new law will counteract the results of this year’s property inflation, he told the commissioners.

“Unlike in the prior years when the rollback was very crucial in stabilizing the property tax rate for homeowners, this year keeping the same millage rate is not going to cause a tax increase for our homesteaded property owners,” Fisher said.

Bennett noted that no votes were taken at the work session and said commissioners still have a very difficult decision to make.

But after hearing comments from several commissioners, King said near the end of the session, “It sounds like everyone’s pretty much OK with moving forward with the assumption there will not be a rollback, so I am planning to produce a line-item tentative budget to release on Tuesday.”