In the primary election that will conclude Tuesday, May 21, one of the top races in Bulloch County is that between incumbent Roy Thompson and challenger David Bennett for chair of the county Board of Commissioners.
Both are Republicans, so it will be decided by voters who choose the Republican ballot, which is also where the district attorney and sheriff races are being decided. The Democratic ballot also offers some choices, for county coroner and a congressional nominee. Just two of Bulloch County’s eight Board of Education districts have contested races for their seats, which are on the nonpartisan ballot, accompanying both parties’ ballots.
Early voting continues 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, May 16 and 17, at the Board of Elections and Registration office in the County Annex, 113 N. Main St., Statesboro Then for voters who haven’t voted early or absentee, Bulloch’s 16 traditional precincts will be open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday.
In separate interviews, the Statesboro Herald asked Bennett and Thompson a few very open-ended questions.
What is one thing that you’d like to say to voters at this point?
Thompson: “Well, I guess it’s going to be personal. I’ve lived In Bulloch County for 78 years, actually all of my life. The next four years are going to be difficult for making decisions that will benefit most, if not all, the county, and if elected for another term, I will continue to strive to make Bulloch County a great place in which to live and raise a family.”
Bennett: “The biggest thing I’d like to say is, I just want folks to get out and vote. For the first time in well over a decade, all of our county commissioners that are up for re-election have opposition, and it’s good to have a choice. That’s what makes us a true democracy. So whether they want to support the incumbent or the challenger doesn’t make a difference to me so much as that they make their choice known by exercising their right to vote.”
Who are they?
Bennett, 49, originally from Jesup, first came to Bulloch County as a student at Georgia Southern, where he participated in the ROTC and was commissioned as an Army officer upon graduation.
He served in the Army Nurse Corps, including a tour of duty in Iraq and another with an air evacuation unit in the Middle East, and later attained a master’s degree and post-master’s certificate from the University of Virginia as an acute-care nurse practitioner and critical care specialist.
In 2020, he retired from the Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and he and his wife, Jessica, a teacher, made their home in the southeastern part of Bulloch County. They have two teenage daughters, and he volunteers with the Southeast Bulloch High School FFA.
For about three years, Bennett is again serving as a flight nurse, now with civilian Air Evac Lifeteam 95, based in Statesboro.
Thompson, as he said, is a lifelong Bulloch resident. He is currently in his second term, and eighth year, as of the Board of Commissioners after 12 years as a district commissioner.
He and his wife Deborah own and operate Statesboro Floorcovering. Their family’s TMT Farms annual drive-through Christmas lights display is a major visitor attraction, and they direct the donations collected there of food, toys and cash to people in need through local charities.
In January 2023, the Statesboro Bulloch Chamber of Commerce presented Roy Thompsom with its Bruce Yawn Lifetime Achievement Award, four years after Statesboro’s Two Rotary Clubs named the Thompsons, together, as Citizens of the Year.
Bennett: “I want to be chairman for the people. You know, I’ve been a servant all my life. I’ve worked to serve other people, and I truly believe that I have a servant’s heart, and that’s why I’ve spent my life working in the military and as a nurse …
“I truly believe that Bulloch County is at a crossroads, and we’re going to have to make up our minds this election cycle as to whether we’re going to choose leaders that will continue to allow taxes to increase and growth to continue uncontrolled or if we’re going to have people that are willing to be transparent with the public and be true representatives of everyone in the county, not just a core group of folks that serve their needs.”
Thompson: “At the end of this current term, I will have been on the board 20 years serving as a commissioner or the chairman, and there have been many, many decisions that we as leaders and the voters as our fellow citizens have made together to make Bulloch County a better place to live.”
What about taxes and budgeting?
Thompson: “You know, I feel that we’ve done everything possible to keep from raising taxes in the past and will in the future. Even this year, even with our increases, we have lower taxes than any other county that touches us other than Jenkins County, and I think that’s quite an accomplishment.”
Bryan County, he acknowledged, has a lower property tax millage rate for county government operations.
“They do. They’ve got a lower millage rate, but overall, if you take into account their fees – and this is based on purchasing like a $250,000 house, with their fees and everything – we have lower taxes than they do.”
(As of 2023, Bryan County’s government operations and school system property tax rates, combined, totaled 23.23 mills, but that county also collected a $240 flat-rate fire service fee outside of its cities. Bulloch County’s combined school and county government operations millage rate was 21.328 mills, but outside Statesboro, Bulloch has additional millage rates for fire service, currently 2.7 mills for the area served by the Statesboro Fire Department and 3.0 mills for the area served by the Bulloch County Fire Department.
Adding the lower fire millage makes a Bulloch County total rate of 24.028 mills, and the tax on a $250,000 property at that rate that would be $2,403. Bryan County’s 23.23-mill rate makes the tax on a $250,000 place $2,323, but tacking on the fire fee there brings the total to $2,563. Bryan County also has a garbage collection fee, but Bulloch has neither any such fee nor rural curbside collection.)
With the Bulloch County commissioners now looking at the fiscal year 2025 budget, County Manager Tom Couch has said he expects at least a “statutory” millage rollback this year, one sufficient to offset annual inflation in property values.
“Yes, there will be a rollback,” Thompson said, but wouldn’t predict the amount.
Bennett: “Well, first of all I think that raising taxes should be the option of last resort. But you have to understand that taxes get raised for two different reasons within the county. …”
One way taxes increase, which is not controlled by the commissioners, is through annual property assessments, reflecting inflation in property values as seen in real estate transactions. The other way is a millage rate increase, controlled by the commissioners. It was last fall’s millage increase, after value inflation, that Bennett said prompted him to announce as a candidate.
He notes that a state constitutional amendment proposed for the November ballot would limit annual increases in the taxable value of homes.
“And I think that’s a good idea,” Bennett said. “It would help to limit these rapid increases through tax assessments. But as far as raising the millage rate, that should be the option of last resort. We should always look internally at our own budget first, just like we do at home, and figure out what we could cut and where could we move money around to meet our needs. ….
“At the same time, there are things we could do to reduce the tax burden on the property owners in the county. Things such as impact fees (charged to developers and industries) would greatly help to ease that burden. Then as growth comes in and people start building … impact fees would help to offset the capital expense the county has to put in to pay for the roads, all the other infrastructure, the fire, the police, the EMS. …”
What about growth?
Thompson: “Because of the port in Savannah, Hyundai in Bryan County, and other related industries in Bulloch County, the county is going to grow, period. The only way to slow it down is in the hands of you, the landowners.
“I’ve come up with a simple formula: ‘Don’t anyone sell their land’ equals ‘no growth.’ If you sell, the growth will come. You know, we have not called anyone and asked them to sell their property. But people are taking advantage of the high prices that other people are paying for properties. That’s where all this growth is coming from. You know, if nobody was selling their land, these industries would be going somewhere else, even Hyundai would have gone somewhere else.
“Growth is here. We’ve just got to try to manage it as best we can.”
Bennett: “Again, you have to have a plan, and it’s frustrating that our county has developed a master plan for growth, but as soon as they adopted that plan, they immediately went out and started to rezone property that did not fit within that plan, and it does no good to have a plan if you’re not going to follow it.
“I think that we can control growth and we can manage growth; growth is going to come regardless of what we do. …
“It’s a fool’s errand, in my mind, to start putting high-density housing in rural areas. … It would probably be very effective around Statesboro, but to start putting little pockets of high-density housing in the rural parts of the county, particularly in the southeastern part of the county, to me does not make sense … and I think that it destroys a lot of natural resources that we will never get back.”