Although city officials voiced no hope of changing county officials’ minds about ending the intergovernmental fire service agreement June 30, Statesboro Fire Chief Tim Grams spoke to City Council during Tuesday morning’s meeting to point out factual errors in statements made by county officials and to disagree with some  of the county’s conclusions.

One fact which emerged that was not previously part of the discussion is that the automatic aid agreement by which the Statesboro Fire Department, or SFD, and the Bulloch County Fire Department, or BCFD, automatically respond with at least one apparatus to each other’s structure fire calls is separate from the five-year Statesboro Fire District Agreement and is not expiring June 30. So to take City Manager Charles Penny’s advice that the city not provide automatic aid in the five-mile district after June 30, City Council and the mayor will need to make a decision and serve notice to the county.

They are to discuss that further with city staff members during the mayor and council’s annual planning retreat, March 14-15 at the Augusta Convention Center Marriott.

As he made clear, City Manager Charles Penny had authorized Grams to make Tuesday’s presentation.

Since the Jan. 30 public meeting of the county-city Fire District Committee, “there’s been quite a bit of information out there, and some of it has been misinformation, and some of it has just been flat wrong,” Penny said.

The Statesboro Fire Department’s 69 employees, “who work hard every day,” had heard some of the misconceptions, and Grams had asked Penny, he said, for an opportunity to clarify.

“We just want to be clear, we’re not trying to change the county commissioners’ mind about anything,” Penny said. “But what we do want, we want to make sure that the public has the correct information. So Chief Tim asked me for a way to share that.”

Penny said it was his preferred option for Grams to address a City Council meeting rather than ask to speak at a county Board of Commissioners meeting.

“I want to start by saying while the Statesboro Fire Department is disappointed that we will no longer be providing services within the fire district after June 30, 2025, the department respects the county’s  decision and we truly hope that they will be successful in their endeavor,” Grams said. “My intentions today are not to debate this decision or to persuade the commissioners to reconsider but rather to share the facts, provide information and correct some inaccurate information that has been circulated.”

He said he also wanted to assure Statesboro citizens that the county’s decision will not affect the level of service within the city.

Previous decisions

But the decision to end the Fire District Agreement was initiated by the county, as Grams reminded the council and public. Under the agreement, the SFD provides 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, and the county levies a special property tax to support this.

The Bulloch County commissioners on Dec. 3 voted unanimously to terminate the agreement, he noted. This was done, county officials said, to serve notice to the city that the county wanted to negotiate a new agreement.

“But, the city was not aware nor given any prior notice of the county’s intention to terminate this agreement,” Grams said, reading from his  slide. “No concerns regarding fire service delivery were communicated prior to terminating the agreement.”

During the Dec. 3 meeting, as Grams noted, Bulloch County Fire Chief Ben Tapley had commented that the current agreement was “not Bulloch County-friendly.”

But the millage rate in the five-mile Statesboro Fire District, from which the county has collected the resulting property tax revenue and annually supplied the funds to the city for the SFD’s service in the district, is 2.7 mills. The fire service millage the county government collects everywhere in the county beyond Statesboro and the five-mile district is 3 mills, Grams pointed out Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Statesboro Fire Department holds an ISO fire protection rating of 2, throughout the city and the five-mile district, and this is the second-best “flat” rating possible on the 1-10 scale. But the Bulloch County Rural Fire District’s ISO rating is a “split” 4/4Y, where the “Y” indicates a lower degree of service in locations not near a “creditable water source” such as a hydrant or pond. Also, in areas more than five miles from a county fire station, the rating is a “10,” for no recognized fire service.

So, the county’s assumption of service in the five-mile district will not in itself reduce the cost to the district’s property owners, and the district received a higher level of service, as indicated by the ISO, for a lower tax than the area beyond the district.

With the Bulloch County Fire Department’s ISO rating being worse than the SFD at the time of the changeover, homeowners’ insurance premiums in the former district may also increase, as county officials have acknowledged.

County Board of Commissioners Chairman David Bennett has said that, while he recognizes that the five-mile district receives excellent fire protection under the existing agreement, the county government’s goal is to provide better fire protection for the entire county outside of Statesboro, including those areas with a current ISO of 10.

County officials, including Tapley during his December presentation, objected that the existing agreement did not allow the county to build fire stations in the five-mile district. Grams said this was intended to prevent duplication of services, and  he and Penny suggested the city would have been amenable to changing this “if the county had communicated its intentions.”

“The County indicated on numerous occasions that they had no plans to assume responsibility for the Fire District when asked directly by the City …,” and “did not raise any concerns when asked if there were any issues and/or problems regarding fire service delivery within the Fire District,” one of the city’s slides asserted.

According to Penny, that reflected the situation before the departure of former County Manager Tom Couch, who resigned last fall when the county chairmanship and two district seats were set to go to new commissioners who had defeated longtime incumbents in the 2024 elections.

One of Grams’ slides quoted and  contradicted a statement by Bennett during last week’s, Feb. 25, county “town hall” meeting that there was “no clause in the agreement that allows us to renegotiate the terms” and that “the only way to renegotiate was to terminate the contract.” Grams noted that the agreement allows terms to be amended with written approval from both the city and county and that either party could terminate the agreement by 12 months written notice to the other.

Surprised twice

The city staff members said they were blindsided twice by the county officials’ actions, first with the Dec. 3 vote and then, after the new commissioners took office, by the county’s presentation at the Jan. 30 Fire District Committee meeting. During that meeting, Tapley  set out a plan for the BCFD to take over responsibility for approximately the northern half of the five-mile District July 1, 2025, and receive approximately half of the revenue. The revenue projections showed the county would get about 52%  and the city 48%, Grams noted.

But the BCFD would then have taken over the remaining half of the district and its revenue one year later, on July 1, 2026.

After the Jan. 30  meeting, Penny said he would recommend that City Council let the agreement end completely on June 30, as the county had initiated, rather than accept just half the revenue this year. He also said he would recommend that there be no automatic aid agreement between the city and county departments. Under the automatic aid agreement, the  city sends a fire engine to all structure fires in the county, and the county sends tanker trucks to city and five-mile district fires.

The SFD does have a tanker truck of its own, and the BCFD’s assistance is no longer as beneficial for the city as it once was, but automatic aid did benefit both the city and county, Grams said. He said he insists on having at least a mutual aid agreement – under which the departments will assist each other upon request for specific calls – and wants to maintain a good relationship with the county department.

Penny said the decision isn’t his to make, but he has not changed his recommendation.

“Well, first off I work for the mayor and council, and whatever I say is a recommendation, and again, I would recommend that we not continue automatic aid, but I’m not asking you today to do that. …,” he told the elected city officials.

In their proposal, county officials had assumed that automatic aid would be continued, but this could have been a negotiating point, he said.

“And if we’re not protecting the Fire District, what it means is the citizens of Statesboro are now subsidizing fire protection in the county,” Penny said.  “Is that right? Is that right? But again, that’s a discussion we would have at the council retreat, and at some point we would need to give (the county) notice if that is intended.”