A fire service fee proposed to supply half of the Statesboro Fire Department’s funding would amount to $20 or less each month for single-family homes and duplexes on individual lots. But the fee would be higher on all other types or property, to a $300 monthly limit on places such as retail businesses and apartment buildings.

In contrast to property taxes — which would still supply most of the other half of the department’s annual operating budget — the fire service fee would be 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.

Those were some of the facts that emerged from the city’s first public information session on the fee proposal. Although held in the council chambers at City Hall, the session that started at 6 p.m. Monday was not a council meeting. The consultant, journalists and city staff members constituted about half of the approximately two dozen people who attended.

The Statesboro Fire Department, established in 1905 and first employing full-time firefighters in 1960, had 27 full-time firefighters in the first decade of the 2000s but grew to have 75 full-time employees (69 firefighters and six staff) by 2024. That remains the current staffing, as Fire Chief Tim Grams shared in a brief background history with charts on a screen.

One chart showed that the department’s budget doubled within the last six years, from $3.34 million in city fiscal year 2021 to almost $6.7 million in 2024, then $7.6 million for 2025 and $7.97 million for fiscal 2026, which ends June 30.

2 lost funding sources

Meanwhile, the city lost two major fire department funding sources last year and this.

First, negotiations broke down between the Statesboro city and Bulloch County governments at the beginning of 2025, resulting in the end, effective June 30, 2025, of a longstanding agreement under which the SFD had provided primary fire service to areas outside the city limits within five road miles of the city’s two fire stations. So, the city no longer receives a share of the county’s fire service property tax millage. That share was previously about $2.5 million, while the city government in the final year or the agreement also transferred about $1 million of its own property tax revenue to its fire fund.

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 year. So, this is resulting in the loss of $703,000 in annual funding, and the department has no plans to eliminate any firefighter jobs.

Chief’s reasoning

When city staff members took questions, submitted on index cards or asked aloud by citizens later in Monday’s session, as least one asked why the department doesn’t reduce staffing or otherwise cut costs since it no longer serves the county district.

“Our services were based on what was needed in the city,” Grams said. “We run three engines and a truck because that is what is needed in the city of Statesboro. The folks in the fire district were able to receive the benefits of our ISO classification and our services, and we certainly responded and provided the same level of service. But, just because we’re no longer covering that area does not mean that the need does not still exist in Statesboro.”

Last May, City Manager Charles Penny and Finance Director Cindy West unveiled a plan to cover the Fire Department’s shortfall for one year with one-time loans totaling almost $3.2 million from the city’s water-sewer fund, natural gas fund and solid waste collection fund. These in-house loans are to be repaid by the now city-only fire fund or general fund over the next 10 years.

But that type of stopgap funding cannot be continued, so for fiscal year 2027, beginning this July 1, the Fire Department will face a $4.3 million funding “gap,” officials have said. One year ago, City Council approved a $60,000 contract with the engineering and planning consultant firm Goodwyn Mills Cawood, or GMC, to conduct a feasibility study for implementing a fire service fee.

Ed DiTommaso from GMC first presented the current “combination” plan – to fill the gap to at least $4 million with a fee and continue to supply the other half of the SFD’s now almost $8 million budget from property tax – to City Council during its Jan. 20 work session. He presented much of the same information, with some added background and a few different details, during the Tuesday, Feb. 9, public info meeting.

“As a result of different circumstances that created this funding gap – they lost the SAFER grant, they lost that special service district – so there’s a need to make up that money,” DiTommaso said. “It’s not something the city has taken lightly, which is part of the reason they hired us to come in and do a study.”

Basis of fees

GMC’s proposal for a Statesboro fire fee structure is also a “hybrid” plan in the way the rates will be calculated, a combination of property type and square footage, he explained. 

The three classifications of land and structures used are called “residential,” “non-residential” and “undeveloped.” But this can be somewhat confusing, since the consultants have classed only single-family homes and duplexes (two-family homes that occupy an individual lot) as “residential” for purposes of the fire fee.

All other properties – including not only commercial buildings, schools, churches and motels but also apartment complexes, dormitories and nursing homes – are being categorized as “non-single-family-residential.” In portions of the presentation, this was shortened to “non-residential,” but in Statesboro, a large portion of the buildings in this category are actually multi-unit residences.

For the single-family and duplex category, the charge applied to the house area would be $0.01, in other words one cent, per square foot, from a minimum of monthly charge of $5 to a maximum of $15. Additionally, there would be a $5 fee for the land area of the property.

So, the fee for a single-family house would be capped at $20 a month. 

This would result in an average fire fee of $18.92 for single-family residential properties, with 63% of Statesboro’s single-family homes being charged the maximum $20 fee, and 37% of single-family homes being charged less than $20 a month, DiTommaso reported.

For non-single-family-residential buildings, from businesses to churches and schools and also apartment buildings, the floor space charge would be $0.02, or 2 cents, per square foot, from a minimum of $5 to a maximum of $300 a month. The average fee would be $140 a month, with just 18% of those properties capped at the maximum $300 a month, and the rest paying less, according to his report.

Fire fee discounts

If Statesboro’s council adopts GMC’s plan for a fire fee, the consultants propose making several discounts available to various classifications of property owners. These would include a discount for structures with annually inspected sprinkler systems, and a separate discount for homes and small businesses with devices such as smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers and hood suppression systems.

For larger properties or areas, there could be a “standing fire brigade” discount, and for non-single-family residential, non-industrial properties, an emergency operation plan discount. The Fire Department also could offer a Praise and Preparedness program with training for churches and student fire safety training for schools, both leading to discounts.

City officials are planning on some additional information meetings on the proposed fire service fee, before it might be adopted by the mayor and council.

Penny, the city manager, has advised the elected officials that they will need to adopt either the fire fee or a sufficient increase in the property tax millage rate to cover the Fire Department’s funding shortfall.

He observed that if the city instead adopted a millage rate increase to fund the fire service in fiscal 2027, the millage could be rolled back again after one year when revenue becomes available from the Floating Local Option Sales Tax, or FLOST, which has been approved by Bulloch County voters and which by law must be used by the county and cities for millage rollbacks.

This story will be refreshed with some new information for the Thursday, Feb. 12, print edition.