Statesboro's mayor and council are proposing an increase in the city's property tax rate stated as producing an almost 34% tax increase, with three public hearings to be held Sept. 8 and Sept. 15. City Manager Charles Penny says the increase is needed to fund the Statesboro Fire Department after the loss of other sources.

All three hearings will be held in the council chambers at City Hall. The first two are scheduled for noon and 6 p.m. on Sept. 8. The last hearing is set for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15, also the start time of the regular meeting at which council can act to set the millage rate.

In the city government's explanations, the main reason for the tax increase was last year's split with the county over funding the fire service. Since July 1, 2025, the county government has used the revenue from its own fire service property tax exclusively to fund the Bulloch County Fire Department, expanded to serve the entire county outside Statesboro. So the county no longer pays a share to the city, whose SFD previously provided primary response into the unincorporated area for five miles from the two long-established Statesboro fire stations.

"All of that is because of the cost of fire. …," Penny said in a phone interview Monday. "We added no new employees (in any department), and the cost of the fire (service) was almost $3 million."

As shown in Penny's budget presentation in May, the loss of the rural fire tax district funding alone was estimated at $2,755,000. Meanwhile, a three-year federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, or SAFER, grant that the city was awarded in 2023 to hire an additional 12 full-time firefighters expired last month. This results in the loss of another $703,000 in annual funding, since the grant totaled $2.1 million over three years.

But the city leadership has made no cuts to the Fire Department's staffing, and the department in April achieved an Insurance Services Office fire safety Class 1 rating — the best available — announced then but taking effect this week, Sept. 1, for the department's remaining service area, to the city limits. That's up from a previous Class 2 for the city and former fire district. The city is also completing, and soon to dedicate, SFD Station 3.

The fiscal year 2027 budget, in effect since July 1, also includes a 2% across-the-board raise for city employees, Penny acknowledged. Additionally, with the end of a different grant and the recent approval of a new contract with Flock Safety for providing license plate-reader cameras to the Statesboro Police Department, the city is picking up about $200,000 annually in that expense. But the Fire Department funding shift remains the largest factor.

Up from real rate and 'rollback rate'

If property values had remained the same, the proposed not quite 1-mill (0.975-mill) increase in the city's tax rate to 9.6 mills from the 2024 and 2025 rate of 8.625 mills would be an 11.3% hike. But under the Georgia law known as the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, local governments must reduce their millage to counteract inflation in assessed property values or advertise any resulting increase as the full difference between the new rate and the potential "rollback rate."

Three public hearings are then required before the governing board, in this case City Council, adopts a tax increase. Statesboro's city rollback rate this year, as determined by the Bulloch County Board of Tax Assessors staff, would have been 7.165 mills. So, the net increase based on the rollback rate as advertised in the city's "notice of property tax increase," on page 8A of the Aug. 27 Statesboro Herald, is 33.98%.

A mill is $1 tax on each $1,000 worth of property as assessed for taxes, and most property in Georgia is assessed at 40% of its county-appraised market value.

Based on supposedly average-value properties, the following examples for the cost of the tax increase were cited in the city notices. The tax on an owner-occupied home with a fair market value of $255,000 and the standard homestead exemption will be approximately $243.50 higher with the proposed 9.6-mill rate than it would have been at the rollback rate. The tax for a non-homestead property with a $375,000 fair market value will be approximately $365.25 higher than it would have been if the city adopted the rollback rate, according to the notices.

But these are average values, as are the percentages, and actual increases vary by property type and location.

Still, the not-quite 1-mill basic rate increase is much lower than Penny, city Finance Director Cindy West and the council originally discussed last spring during their budgeting work. Penny at one point suggested a 3.8-mill hike, but then a change in state law made the first five months revenue from the new 1% Floating Local Option Sales Tax, or FLOST, available in the current fiscal year.

FLOST & growth help

FLOST supplied roughly $1.4 million, and the city staff reduced the predicted property tax rate increase to 2.129 mills. Then the amount of growth in the tax digest — such as from construction of new businesses and homes and building improvements in the past year — came in at about 13% instead of the 8% prediction used in the original budgeting.

So, at 9.6 mills, the city's final, proposed millage rate is slightly less than 1 mill higher than last year's rate, but it's 2.435 mills above this year's rollback rate.

In planning the budget for the next fiscal year, which will begin July 1, 2027, the city can anticipate a full year's worth of FLOST revenue, which "should be just shy of $3.5 million," and allow for a large rollback of the property tax rate, said Penny, who is set to retire Jan. 1.

"That will cover that increased cost, and they should be able to roll the taxes back, that $3.5 million," he said. "Now, that doesn't account for any increased expenditures, just maintaining things as they are, but I would hope we would experience some growth next year as well."

These figures are all different from those you might see for the county and its tax base. In 2025, the city benefited more from a concentration of new construction than the county, Penny noted. The county's tax base also contains the city values, but he had heard from county officials that "growth was pretty flat" last year in the rural area, he said.

However, the county's overall property tax base is larger, and it is also receiving a larger share from FLOST.

The county commissioners adopted a reduced millage rate but not a full rollback, while the Board of Education adopted a full rollback.