8:25 a.m., Wednesday, August 6, 2025: Correction: Jeff Ricketson is director of the Liberty County Planning Commission, not the Liberty County Development Authority.
Liberty County has offered developers the chance to build without paying impact fees. Now the county is asking them to pay their fair share for increased pressure on basic services like roads, fire, and public safety operations. But under state law, some developers may be able to avoid those fees altogether.
Citizens can comment on the proposed plan at one of two public hearings, the first of which is set for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 5, at the Board of Commissioners’ regular meeting. A second and final public hearing will take place Thursday, Aug. 17 at the 5 p.m. Board of Commissioners’ meeting. (Note the different days and times for BOC meetings on first Tuesdays and third Thursdays of each month.)
The proposed ordinance explains how the county would follow state law in collecting and managing the fees, as well as how much the fees would be for different types of residential and commercial buildings, including warehouses and industrial sites.
Existing single- or multi-family that are remodeled or replaced with the same or fewer number of units would not be charged the fee. This would, for example, allow a developer to remove several smaller homes and replace them with a few larger ones.
Existing projects, including major commercial sites like the warehouses in Tradeport East and Tradeport West, would be grandfathered in. As long as a construction project has a valid permit and has undergone its first inspection, the developer would not pay any impact fees.
The board could vote on passage of a final version of the 27-page draft ordinance as soon as immediately after the public hearing on Aug. 17.
Tuesday’s public hearing is the latest in a series of steps toward a county impact fee schedule, according to a presentation from the consultant published in the meeting packet.
The Georgia Department of Community Affairs has signed off on the plan’s Capital Improvements Element, or CIE. Under state law, the CIE “sets out projected needs for system improvements during a planning horizon established in the comprehensive plan, a schedule of capital improvements that will meet the anticipated need for system improvements, and a description of anticipated funding sources for each required improvement.” The CIE would be adopted at the same time as the ordinance.
A BOC-appointed committee, consisting of Liberty County Planning Commission Director Jeff Ricketson, Hinesville Councilman and mortgage lender Jason Floyd, Flemington Councilwoman and Realtor Leigh Smiley, builder Trevor Sikes of RTS Homes, and Liberty County Chief Building Official Troy Mullis, has met three times “for input on impact fees.”
That committee recommends the county not charge more than $2,000 to $2,500 per house, on the lower end of the possible fees it could impose. By comparison, Bloomingdale charges $4,700; Savannah charges $3,930.85; South Bryan County, $3,241; Long County, $3,143.53; North Bryan County is contemplating $2,946; the City of Flemington charges $2,011.72, and Camden County has the lowest nearby impact fee at $1,052.62 per new house built.
State law allows impact fees of up to $7,948.47 per single-family home. It also sets out fees for every kind of land use: everything from 2- and 3-story duplexes and townhomes to retail stores and restaurants, from nursing homes and doctor’s offices to fulfilment warehouses and specialty trade contractors, which come in at a whopping $8.87 per square foot maximum.
Those costs would likely be passed on to the homebuyer, which in turn would raise the new home’s taxable value when the county assesses property taxes.
Under the proposed ordinance, revenues from impact fees would go to Parks and Recreation, Animal Control, roads, Emergency Services, Liberty County Fire, EMS, and law enforcement, plus an administrative fee for the work of collecting, billing, and accounting for the money. With state and regional approval, the county could change those categories or add new ones.
Two possible approaches, each broken down into an A and B, will go before the board Tuesday evening. The proposed fee structures are based on a single-family home, a 9,000-square-foot dollar store, a 6,000-square-foot fast food restaurant, and a 100,000-square-foot warehouse.
Alternatives 1A and 1B would assess lower fees, while Alternatives 2A and 2B would be on the higher end of what the committee recommends that the county should charge.
But the ordinance, if passed, also offers plenty of wiggle room for developers who might be less inclined to pay impact fees.
It would include “mechanisms for reducing impact fees on a case-by-case basis.” It also would outline an appeals process, set “individual assessments” (which means a “proposed alternative fee with supporting back-up by applicant”), and offer developers credits “for developer contributions to approved system improvements.”
Such system improvements could include land, capital equipment, or money contributed by the developer, as long as the county approves it. If a developer pays the impact fee but abandons the project, the next owner will get credit for those fees.
For preexisting buildings where the approved use changes, the building’s owner would pay the difference in any increase in fees for that use.
The proposed ordinance also would create an exemption for major projects through “enabling language,” such as “‘extraordinary economic development and employment growth,’ or ‘affordable housing.’”
For example, if a major corporation were considering whether to open a distribution center in Liberty County, the company might ask for a break on the impact fee as an incentive for the company to choose that location because of the way Georgia legislators wrote the law. The county ordinance would determine the process by which individual developers can avoid paying impact fees.
The ordinance also provides for private agreements where groups of developers or owners can get credits for shared project improvement costs or the county can approve particular impact fee payment plans “appropriate to particular and unique circumstances of a project,” as long as the developer provides security like a bond.
You can see a copy of the slide presentation in the meeting packet, as well as watch the meeting live online. If you want to tell commissioners what you think of the plan, you have to show up in person at one of the two public hearings or write them a letter or e-mail