Liberty County, Midway reach tentative deal for full city fire service

After months of negotiations, the Liberty County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to draft a contract with the City of Midway that would extend full fire coverage to the city over the next five years. 

Attorneys for both sides will work out details before the next commission meeting in January, with a vote on the contract itself coming sometime next month.

Commission Chairman Donald Lovette invited the City of Riceboro to join Midway and the county in developing the new station, which likely would go on U.S. 17 between the two cities.

After the vote, Midway Mayor Levern Clancy told The Current he had not spoken with Riceboro Mayor Chris Stacy about possibly joining the effort. Stacy has not responded to The Current’s previous requests for comment on whether Riceboro, which has a volunteer fire department, would be interested.

District 1 Commissioner Marion Stevens, who represents Midway and who himself served as a volunteer firefighter for many years in Liberty County, told Clancy, “I think you’re making a real good decision. Not that the county wanted it, but you need our help, and we’re there to work with you.”

Projected costs over 5 years

Costs for the first year are budgeted at $842,330.09, which includes $451,048.81 in salaries and benefits; $109,655 for operations; one-time start-up costs of $225,556; and indirect costs of $56,070.38. Midway would pay for the first year up front. After that, the city would ask for a fire district tax to cover the cost of operations. 

Midway would make quarterly payments to the county for service during the first year. Then, if the city’s proposed fire district tax passes, Midway property owners would see it in 2026 on their 2025 county tax bill and the county tax commissioner would collect it.

The tax would be calculated based on the following year’s local digest and budget, County Manager Joey Brown explained, adding that “because we know there’s going to be growth in that district,” existing property owners would not pay as much as they would have had the tax gone into effect right away. 

District 3 Commissioner Connie Thrift asked whether the county would still collect any money if Midway were to impose its own tax. Brown said the agreement would have to be updated “because that money would go directly from the tax commissioner to the city” and that “the city would then need to agree to remit proceeds to the county if they wanted the contract to continue.”

Getting up to speed

The annual cost would increase each year as firefighters and lieutenants are hired to cover shifts around the clock: $838,814.28 in 2026; $1,324,421.99 in 2027; $1,369168.19 in 2028; and $1,585,633.76 in 2029. At that point, the station should be fully staffed across the clock.

Darby also said that newer of two existing county fire trucks at the Midway Volunteer Fire Department could be repaired and reused for a while for about $10,000.

District 2 Commissioner Justin Frasier asked whether the fire department could cut some expenses by sending out SUVs instead of fire vehicles on medical calls. 

Darby told Frasier that running medical calls in SUVs would affect the whole county’s ISO (fire insurance rating), which in turn would force taxpayers to spend more on insurance. What’s more, a fire truck already has everything on it an EMT would need. 

After the meeting, Darby said another factor is that Georgia EMTs do not have to meet physical fitness requirements. That means firefighters may be needed on scene anyway, he said, to help with situations like lifting a large person who has fallen.

Liberty County Fire’s coverage area has gone from 58 square miles to more than 302 square miles since 2017, Darby said. “We’ve been able to maintain an ISO rating of a 4. Should that change? ” he asked. “You’re looking at changing insurance premiums to what homeowners pay.” 

Some Midway homeowners had complained on Facebook this week that their insurance policies had either been canceled or that their rates had gone up by hundreds of dollars.

Darby reiterated that an ISO rating “is not required for insurance” and that “there are insurance companies out there that do not use ISO.” 

ISO ratings by Verisk, a company that provides risk management data to insurance companies, ranks fire protection on a scale of 1 through 10, with 1 being the highest and 10 the lowest. The City of Midway has been ranked at 10 in recent years.

Location, location, location

The contract could be modified in 2027, Brown said, once a proposed new fire station is up and running on U.S. 17. Right now, “you have a couple of dead zones in the county that your fire plan does not cover. One of these is E. B. Cooper Highway,” where more wrecks are happening and housing developments are on the way. 

“We’re having to try to run out of that from Miller Station and/or get Walthourville (Fire Department) to respond to that area,” he said. Building a station between Midway and Riceboro, would serve both Midway and that dead zone.

Brown said that the fire district tax would only affect residents inside Midway’s city limits, “which is not uncommon. Clayton County does it. Fulton County does it. There are several that respond to smaller cities. So it’s not something new. Those would be the only people charged at this point, unless you decide to expand that later.”

Continuing to run Midway fire calls from the Miller Park Station on U.S. 84, he said, “is not economical….you don’t need to be running from Miller Park to the other side (of I-95) to Tradeport West.” The new station and county fire headquarters held a ribbon cutting Oct. 4.

District 2 Commissioner Justin Frasier said that Midway, Walthourville, and Riceboro chose a decade ago not to be part of the county’s strategic plan for placing fire stations. “Have we had discussions with the other municipalities again?” he asked. “If everyone was on the same page 10 years ago, we wouldn’t have built the fire station at Miller Park.”

But Brown said he couldn’t and didn’t want to force municipalities “into thinking the county is trying to take them over…. I think if the mayor had his druthers, he’d probably say, ‘We’d like the station to be in Midway,’ right? That’s really not where it needs to be for the efficiency of the taxpayers.”

Clancy said that he, Brown, and Chairman Donald Lovette had discussed putting a proposed fire district in place by early 2025, in order to give incoming Tax Commissioner Jamie Sharp time to “get it together” and so “the city would be out actually two, three months of billing.”

District 6 Commissioner Eddie Walden asked whether all the hydrants in the area had been tested and in good working order. 

Darby replied that the City of Midway would need to keep maintaining the hydrants and forward the information to the Coastal Regional Commission, which he says is compiling a map of all fire hydrants in Liberty County.

Liberty County Fire would continue to do static and residual pressure testing and flushing, Darby said, but notify both the county and Midway so that the city can plan for any needed service or repairs.