They don’t want bread brought to the table. She doesn’t like croutons on her salad. He likes extra croutons. They have been meeting at a steak place, but they usually order salads and sometimes soup and a sandwich, not steak.
Statesboro Mayor Jan Moore and Chairman Roy Thompson of the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners are both happily married to other individuals. So if one of their Wednesday lunches in any way resembles a date, it must be one between the city and county.
“It’s each one of us learning the other’s needs,” Thompson said. “For myself, I have shared with the other commissioners that I’m meeting with Jan, just doing history, I suppose.”
In other words, Moore and Thompson have been sharing background information on certain issues of concern to the city and county. Thompson is new in the chairmanship as of Jan. 1, but he represented a large portion of the county as Seat 2-C commissioner the previous 12 years. Moore, first elected in 2013, will be up for election later this year. They started meeting for lunch like this, more Wednesdays than not, in October.
“Citizens of the city pay county taxes, but sometimes they don’t feel a part of the county, and we need to feel that we’re part of the county, because we are,” Moore said. “If we’re not having a dialogue with our county counterparts, then I’m not doing the service that I need to be doing for our citizens.”
With 30,721 residents, Statesboro makes up 42 percent of Bulloch County’s population of 72,651, by 2015 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. But the county has three other towns, and Thompson, elected county-wide, made a point of mentioning them all.
“Listen. Statesboro, Register, Brooklet and Portal, they’re all in Bulloch County, and it’s just a matter of working together,” he said. “There’s a slogan that I normally use. It’s ‘Working together all things are possible.’ I use that quite frequently, and I guess that’s what we’re trying to do.”
The issues Moore and Thompson have been talking about include, but are not limited to, Tax Allocation Districts, industrial parks and fighting crime.
Two TADs
A Tax Allocation District, or TAD, is an area where any increase in property tax revenue resulting from construction or rising property values after a certain date goes into a special fund to pay for public improvements within that district. TAD funds can be used for things such as installing water and sewer pipelines, paving streets and roads and making preparations to bring in private investment in industry, business and housing, all directed at redevelopment of a blighted area.
Within the past few years, local voters in referendums empowered both the city and county to create TADs, and each has one.
Statesboro’s TAD is around the “Blue Mile” of South Main Street, also part of Highway 301, from Georgia Southern University to the Bulloch County Courthouse. This area is beginning to see some new development.
So far, only the growth in city taxes has been dedicated to the South Main TAD. Moore and other city officials would like to see the Board of Commissioners and Board of Education agree to devote growth in the county and school system taxes to the TAD. As is the case with city taxes, property tax revenue on values existing before the TAD adoption date would continue to go to each local government’s general fund.
“We would like the county and the school board to be partners with us in the TAD, and I think we’ve gotten to a point now that the county can consider that,” Moore said.
Two of the county commissioners are newly elected and have yet to receive information on the mayor’s plan, Thompson noted.
“I think I have to reserve any comments on that because other commissioners have not heard it, and I’m sure the city is going to come make a presentation,” he said.
Industrial park space
Bulloch County’s TAD surrounds the I-16 interchange on U.S. Highway 301. The county has created a 204-acre industrial park in the southeastern quadrant. Statesboro also played a role there, extending the city water, sewer and natural gas lines to the industrial park and the other three corners of the interchange. This has cost about $10 million, with the county paying the first $6 million with Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax funds, and the city spending about $4 million.
With Gateway Regional Industrial Park nearly full, Bulloch County will have very limited ready space for new industry even with the addition of the industrial park at the I-16 interchange, say Thompson and Moore. One or two relatively large industries, they said, could fill it.
“Honestly, we need more land now,” Thompson said. “Monetarily, it’s just not feasible for us at the present time.”
Crime near GSU
Both Moore and Thompson expressed alarm at recent shootings and other crime occurring in Zone 4, one of six zones patrolled by the Statesboro Police Department. Much of this activity has been in off-campus apartment complexes around Georgia Southern University and Veterans Memorial Parkway.
“We know our Zone 4 has been targeted,” Moore said. “It has been targeted by people coming from outside our county into our county trying to do illegal business in that zone. There is a lot of residential there that’s overbuilt that you can hide inside of, outside of, around. It’s an issue. We’ve got students and families that live in that zone, it’s very highly populated.”
The city wants to work with the university and the county, and wants the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office, Georgia Southern University Police and Statesboro Police Department involved, Moore said.
“We’ve got to do something to get crime under control if at all possible,” Thompson agreed. “We still want this to be a very, very safe place to live.”
The three law enforcement agencies have joint Crime Suppression Team, but leaders in both the Sheriff’s Office and the Statesboro Police Department have reported officer shortages.
Asked if new Sheriff Noel Brown will be part of this discussion, Moore and Thompson said that Brown and a police chief the city hopes to hire in the near future should be.
Other concerns
Fire protection, the recent Hurricane Matthew cleanup which was coordinated between the city and county, and recreational facilities are other issues Moore and Thompson have talked about
To be clear, the chairman and mayor talking over lunch does not constitute a public meeting. But if multiple commissioners or council members sat down with them to discuss any of these issues, that would probably violate the Georgia Open Meetings Act.
Thompson noted that, as chairman, he usually can’t vote on any issue before the board. The same is true of the mayor. Each has only a tiebreaker vote.
Moore and Thompson said they are working to build trust between the city and county and want to move forward to timely resolutions of important issues. Neither the city nor the county government will always get what it wants, Moore said.
“In our first meeting we agreed to disagree, but we’ve not had any disagreements that I can think of. We’re just sharing with each other at the present time,” Thompson said.
They have agreed on a couple of things. One is that they take turns picking up the check.
Another is that, after becoming Wednesday regulars at the LongHorn Steakhouse, they now will try other restaurants.
Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.