With the city manager advising caution and the city attorney warning of nearly certain legal challenges if Statesboro enacted a monthly fire service fee, City Council on Tuesday officially abandoned the idea, for now.

The city will have consultants with the engineering and planning firm Goodwyn Mills Cawood, or GMC, wrap up their work on the methodology but stop short of the implementation, officials said. With the fee having been proposed to make up for a $4.3 million "gap" in the Statesboro Fire Department's annual funding, the most obvious alternative would be a nearly 4-mill property tax rate increase unless the city government makes cuts to the department's staffing.

This issue wasn't an agenda item for Tuesday's 9 a.m. council meeting, but City Manager Charles Penny brought it up during "city manager's comments" time at the end of the meeting. He noted that staff and council members had discussed ita during their March 20–21 annual planning retreat, held in Augusta.

"The fire service fee, in and of itself, is a more equitable way to pay for fire protection, and in the future, it may provide the council an opportunity to cover those costs in a more equitable way," Penny said Tuesday. "However, … one of the things about the fire service fee, we have a number of cities throughout the state that are using it, but we also have a number of communities that have been challenged legally."

Three of those challenges were noted by Ed DiTommaso from Goodwyn Mills Cawood when he delivered a report on GMC's plan for the fire fee structure to the Statesboro council in January. 

Chatham County's fire fee, challenged as an "illegal tax" after previous changes, was overturned in Chatham County Superior Court in October. After collecting a separate fire service fee for a number of years, Garden City, which is within Chatham County, settled a class action lawsuit by agreeing to create a $1.4 million refund fund.

But McDuffie County, after 18 months of litigation, had its fire fee upheld in the McDuffie County Superior Court in 2023. The fee structure proposed for Statesboro was based on McDuffie County's and also somewhat like Garden City's previous fees, but different from Chatham's, DiTommaso said in January.

Statesboro's city staff members had heard more about some of these and other situations before Tuesday's meeting.

"One of the things that has me concerned is that if the council decided to proceed with the fire service fee this fiscal year, July 1, and then in October or November someone challenges the fire service fee, that we were enjoined from collecting funds, at that point our city would be in a pickle, because we have a $4 million hole we have to cover," Penny continued.

Funding 'gap' reasons

That hole or gap results from the city's loss of two major fire department funding sources last year and this.

First, after renewal negotiations broke down between the Statesboro city and Bulloch County governments at the beginning of 2025, the longstanding agreement under which the Statesboro Fire Department provided primary fire service to areas outside the city limits within five road miles of the city's two fire stations ended last June 30. So, the city no longer receives a share, which would have been about $2.7 million, of the county's fire service property tax millage.

Second, the three-year federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, or SAFER, grant totaling $2.1 million the city was awarded in February 2023 to hire an additional 12 full-time firefighters expires this summer. So, this is resulting in the loss of another $703,000 in annual funding, and the department has no plans to eliminate any firefighter jobs.

"So we either need to do a fire service fee, or we will need to look at our millage increasing," Penny reiterated.

He told the mayor and council he just wanted to see what their feeling was at this point about which way to proceed. But he also said the study — which has involved recent public input sessions — should proceed as far as completing the "methodology" for the fire fee.

Fire fee basics

In contrast to property taxes, the fire service fee would have been charged on all in-town properties that can be billed for city services, including tax-exempt buildings such as those owned by Georgia Southern University, churches, the county government and charitable nonprofit organizations.

The charges for lot and building square footage would have resulted in an average fee of $18.92 for a single-family house, capped at $20 a month.

For non-single-family-residential buildings, from businesses to churches and schools and also apartment buildings, the floor space charge would have been 2 cents per square foot, from a minimum $5 to a maximum of $300 a month. The average fee would have been $140 a month, according to GMC's February presentation.

Versus millage hikes

The Georgia Legislature, in the 2026 session that concluded last week, advanced proposals to cap the ability of city and county governing boards to increase property tax millage rates, Penny also noted. Last month the Statesboro council adopted a resolution asking area legislators to oppose one version of this legislation.

"If the Legislature should decide that they want to cap our ability to increase millage rate in the future, they would need to also provide protection to the cities to be able to use fire service fees and to say that it is a legitimate fee," he said.

By completing the study, Statesboro would then have a fee plan in hand, ready to adopt in the future, Penny suggested.

Attorney warns council

District 4 Councilman John Riggs asked about the lawsuits brought against cities and counties with fire fees. Amid this discussion, Statesboro City Attorney Cain Smith noted some additional information about the Chatham County case.

"Under the Refund Statute, which is state law, you have to refund everything collected, with interest," Smith said. "Chatham County, they're under a $30 million judgment right now, $27 million in refund and $3 million in pre-judgment interest."

Again, Chatham County officials have an appeal pending.

Riggs asked how likely a lawsuit would be if Statesboro enacted a fire service fee.

"It's a certainty, eventually," Smith said. "Because the Refund Statute goes back five years, they won't sue us anytime soon."

As he confirmed after the meeting, he was asserting that the strategy of plaintiff fee payers could be to wait until the time limit was nearly up and then sue for the full amount with interest. The Refund Statue doesn't specifically refer to fire service fees but is a state law generally requiring the refund of taxes "determined to have been erroneously or illegally assessed."

Mayor Jonathan McCollar then asked for staff confirmation on the city of Perry facing a lawsuit over a fire service fee that had been in effect for 10 years. That case is pending, and Perry had covered all of its fire department expenses with the fee, Penny said, instead of roughly half as Statesboro officials were considering.

"I mean, at this point there is really no option, to be honest with you," McCollar said. "But … I think it's important for us to get all of the information we can from the study that we're doing just in case … the state comes back and starts providing protection for cities."

He asked council members their opinion.

"I don't want to be sued," said District 2 Councilwoman Paulette Chavers. "We can't afford to be sued."

"That's how I feel," McCollar agreed.

"Based on what staff has told us, it would really be on council," said District 5 Councilwoman Shari Barr. "The prudent path is to finish this study but to put on hold any changes in how we fund our fire system, I think. So, I so move."

Chavers seconded, and the vote was 4-0, with District 3 Councilwoman Ginny Hendley absent.

The council had contracted GMC more than a year ago to conduct the fire fee feasibility study for $60,000. Another contract was later awarded the firm, for fees of up to $65,000, to develop the methodology, conduct stakeholder meetings and implement the fee.

"Obviously we will not go to implementation and we should not expend the full amount," Penny stated in a reply email later Tuesday. "The consultant was being very cautious about the expenditures with the legal challenges out there."