Amid urgent warnings from City Manager Rob Hernandez about the “unsustainable” state of City finances, Savannah City Council today approved considering the possibility of new Fire Service Fee to be assessed across the board.
However, today’s vote does not actually implement the fee at this time, it simply guarantees that it will remain on the table as an option.
Alderman Van Johnson and Alderwoman Estella Shabazz were the opposing votes.
Mayor Eddie DeLoach warned that either a Fire Service Fee or a tax increase would be necessary to balance the 2018 City budget, which is due to be finalized by the end of the year.
Today’s proposal includes a small two-mill rollback of the City property tax millage rate, though that is unlikely to cover the per capita cost of the new Fire Service Fee.
Hernandez said the Fire Service Fee would involve “treating the service provided by Savannah Fire and Emergency Service as more of a utility.”
Dozens of City employees are due to be laid off by December 31 as the budget explodes due to unforeseen costs of the decoupling of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department merger and other challenges.
Alderman Johnson cited the City layoffs as one reason to hold off on the proposed new Fire Service Fee.
“It’s regressive for a City with 23-26 percent poverty,” Johnson said, asking that the City Manager put more options on the table before “we make a monumental decision based on numbers I’m not convinced are real.”
In other City Council business, a four-year-plus preservation and redevelopment project at Trustees Garden was thrown for a loop by last-minute opposition from a small church on East Broughton Street.
Owner Charles H. Morris, who also owns Connect Savannah, agreed to change the new event facility’s alcohol license request to only beer and wine instead of also including liquor, to keep the application in line with City and state law about distance from churches.
However, the pastor of the New Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church still opposes the license.
Morris, speaking to Council, reminded them that the project isn’t reliant on taxpayer money and that alcohol revenue is key to making the project sustainable.
“We’ve been at this project for four years and four months now… my vision for this project was always, as opposed to the City [being responsible] for it, for me to find a way to make this financially sustainable,” Morris said.
Council voted to continue the license hearing two weeks to give time for Morris and church elders to meet to discuss the issue.
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2017.
A City horribly mismanaged for a dozen years raises taxes and fees in order to continue spending like a drunken sailor, paying two and three times for the same positions (two mayors, two city managers, three police chiefs), cutting jobs while adding more jobs, and greenlighting more than 350 construction projects that cannot be paid for…and STILL one of the worst managed cities in America…
Been crunching the numbers here and it appears to me that the Fire tax should be closer to $100 per household/business than $400 but that the higher amount has been proffered in order to get those who pay taxes to cover the cost of services for those who do not. And, once again, the taxpayer is getting screwed to the wall…
Why doesn’t someone try to get this ripoff in front of a judge? It is patently
illegal. And what if someone doesn’t pay? Do the firefighters do as they did in the 19th Century? Show up and ask to see proof of payment and if none is available, drive away and let the property burn.
Either way, this will open the city up to lawsuits (which the taxpayers will pay, of course.)
There’s another super boondoggle a-comin’ down the pike. Has anybody been out to see the area where the new civic center is about to be built? I’ll be kind and call it “isolated.” I wouldn’t leave my car parked there at night on a bet and I doubt any popular acts would care to venture out there in the dark either for a performance inside the planned building.
If any name performers do chance to go there, they won’t be back after they find their bus has been the target of a break-in and their roadies or other employees beaten up and robbed. That will be black hole of taxpayer money lost, both to build it and pay expenses and employees after it is built.