For the third time in three years, the Georgia Department of Community Affairs recently declined to appoint an arbitration panel to settle an objection Bulloch County officials raised to a Statesboro land annexation, again citing a missed deadline. The county commissioners and school board had passed resolutions objecting to the impact a large new residential development would have on roads and schools.

Now, Statesboro officials intend to move ahead with a City Council vote to annex the adjoining tracts totaling 102 acres between U.S. Highway 301 South and Old Register Road into Statesboro at City Council’s second meeting in August. A closely related action, a zoning map change for a 138-acre tract that is part of the same proposed development but already in the city limits, is on the agenda for the council’s meeting this Tuesday, July 15.

As with all Statesboro city annexations in recent years, this latest was requested by a landowner or developer, in this case VSB Development LLC. VSB, whose registered agent in state incorporation records is Darin Van Tassell, has plans for more than 1,100 housing units within the mixed use development, including the portion already within the city as well as the tracts proposed for annexation. The plans show three commercial areas, in addition to 225 units of student housing “cottages,” a “garden-style apartments”  area for 500 units, and 202  townhome-style units and 246 lots for small single-family homes.

The Bulloch County Board of Education on May 29 by two 8-0 votes approved one resolution directly objecting to the annexation and another requesting that the Board of Commissioners object. A Georgia law requires city governments to notify the governing boards of the county and any affected school system within 30 days of acceptance of a petition for annexation. However, the law provides a more active role for the county commissioners, specifically allowing the county governing authority up to 45 days to file an objection.

So, the school board’s reasons were included along with the county government’s reasons in the objection resolution the county commissioners approved 6-0 on June 17.

The county then filed a detailed objection statement with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, sending copies also to all of Statesboro’s elected officials and key staff members, dated June 25. Local officials had all noted that 45 days since the city’s notice to the county would have passed on July 27, so the filing appeared to be a day ahead of the deadline.

Engineer’s statement

Signed, sworn affidavits from a consulting traffic engineer, Alex Simmons, and from county Superintendent of Schools Charles Wilson were Included in the county’s formal objection, compiled by attorney George H. Rountree.

Simmons noted that he had reviewed the proposed site plan and was “in the process of conducting a traffic impact study of the intersection identified therein.”

Generally, agencies use thresholds such as 100 peak-hour trips or more than 500-750 daily trips to gauge the need for a traffic study, he noted. According to Simmons, the development planned between U.S. 301 and Old Register Road south of Veterans Memorial Parkway “is expected to generate more than 800 trips” in the peak morning traffic hour, 1,500 trips in the afternoon peak hour, and more than 17,500 trips over the course of a day.

“While the magnitude of the impacts will remain unknown until the traffic impact study is conducted, it is expected that the development will impact the existing operations of the Old Register Road and Langston Chapel Road intersection,” Simmons stated. “It is possible that the added vehicles … could require improvement alternatives to be evaluated to maintain adequate operations and safety at nearby intersections. Such improvement alternatives reasonably could be expected to require Bulloch County to incur significant expense.”

Superintendent’s affidavit

Wilson in his affidavit noted that the Bulloch County school system has made construction of a new high school in the southeastern area of the county the priority for its capital projects fund through 2033, with that project alone estimated to cost around $165 million, including equipping as well as building the school. This and associated projects determined from the growth pattern of the past five years are expected to use up not only the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue but may also require shifting approximately $75 million from the school system’s general fund, according to his statement.

“Therefore, due to the established commitment of capital outlay resources to existing needs through 2033, the priority of the Bulloch County School System to allocate its funding toward instructional and support resources, and the professed commitment by the Bulloch County Board of Education to minimize property tax levies on the taxpayers of Bulloch County, it is  my opinion that the annexation of these tax parcels into the City of Statesboro for the purpose of developing said property, which will include a minimum of 450 housing units for traditional families, will lead to an unnecessary burden … particularly on the schools in the area of the development ….,” Wilson stated.

Either that, or it would divert “resources away from student learning” or result in “the levying of additional property taxes,” he concluded.

With current attendance zoning, public school students residing in the Old Register Road development would attend Langston Chapel Elementary, Langston Chapel Middle School and Statesboro High School, not the Southeast Bulloch area schools that are the focus of the school construction plans.

DCA declines – again

So, the objection filing gave county officials an outlet for stating these concerns. But once again, it did not result in a state-approved arbitration panel as the state law appears to mandate.

Georgia Department of Community Affairs principal planner Juli Yoder, in a July 1 email to Bulloch County Commissioners Chairman David Bennett and Statesboro Mayor Jonathan McCollar, stated that the DCA had received the county’s petition for annexation arbitration via FedEx on June 27 and acknowledged that this was the 45th calendar day after the city’s annexation notice to the county.

That in itself appears to have met the deadline, but Yoder stated that the DCA then “determined the petition for annexation arbitration was incomplete, and notified both parties on June 27, 2025, via email.”

“The department received additional information from the county on June 27, 2025, and from the city on June 30, 2025, per the email request,” Yoder wrote.  “On June 30, 2025, the petition for annexation arbitration was deemed complete by the department per the statute and rules, however, both June 27, 2025, and June 30, 2025, fall after the 45th and final day a complete objection and petition for annexation arbitration can be submitted.

“The untimely submission of a complete petition for annexation arbitration renders the request for arbitration void,” the email continued. “The Georgia Department of Community Affairs respectfully declines to appoint a panel in this matter.”

An allegedly missed deadline was also the DCA’s reason for declining to name a panel when Bulloch County filed an objection to Statesboro’s requested annexation of a 714-acre tract on Burkhalter Road for a 1,794-unit housing subdivision in summer 2024. However, the developer later postponed those plans indefinitely.

More complicated considerations went into the DCA’s cancellation of an arbitration process when the county objected to a smaller annexation for a 212-townhome subdivision on Beasley Road in June 2023. That annexation went forward, with the city agreeing to take over responsibility for the road.

Once again, this time with the Old Register Road development, the formal objection process appears to have ended with the DCA’s notice.

“There is no appeal process,” county Planning and Development Director James Pope said this week. “The DCA, if they tell you ‘no,’ you don’t get to appeal it to a board or anything, it’s just they’re not going to do it.”

About half of the property in the development is already in the city limits, and where the both sides of a road are in the city, the city already has responsibility for the roadway, he noted.

“Our concern was the Langston Chapel-Old Register Road intersection, but at this time we’ll have that responsibility to improve that intersection,” Pope said.

Statesboro City Manager Charles Penny confirmed that the city still plans to complete the annexation, but not this month.

“The annexation won’t be on the July 15 agenda,” he said. “We’ll have to move it to a meeting in August, the reason being that because of the objection, staff had not put the rezoning for the annexation (area) on (last week’s) Planning Board agenda. The part that was already on the city was on the agenda, but the part that was still in the county was left off, so we have to get that before the Planning Board.”

The city’s Planning Board does not rule on annexations, but its recommendation is needed on the developers’ request to rezone the property to Planned Unit Development, or PUD, zoning. Otherwise, the city’s default zoning for newly annexed property is R-40 residential.