- Leon County residents outside city limits are seeing a fire services fee added to their property tax bills.
- The change moves the fee from a monthly utility bill to a lump-sum payment on the annual tax statement.
- Some residents and business owners are concerned the large, one-time payment could put their properties at risk.
Tacking the fire services fee onto already rising property taxes is causing sticker shock and confusion for Leon County residents’ living outside city limits as their annual statement from the tax collector hits their mailboxes.
Amid a raging fight between the county and the city over firefighting costs, Leon County commissioners voted in September to streamline how all unincorporated county residents are billed for the fire services fee. They opted to remove the option for county residents to pay the fee monthly on their city utility bill and rather add it as a lump sum to the property tax bill.
Commissioners said the move would ensure that Leon County residents couldn’t have their utilities shut off by the city if they didn’t pay the fire services fee. But Christopher Godwin, the landlord of the property that houses Summers Smokehouse, said the repercussions of this change is “100% way worse” than having utilities shut off.
“Now it’s putting people’s property on the line,” Godwin said.
If property taxes go unpaid, someone’s property could be auctioned off, he said. At least with the fee being included on utility bills, there isn’t a fear of losing the property.
The fee has been a highly contentious topic for years, but tension escalated after the city voted to raise the rates this year without the county’s approval. The legality of the fee has been questioned before, and talks of a lawsuit are surfacing again.
Residents in sticker shock after seeing property tax bill
The fire services fee on Godwin’s property is roughly $290 a month, meaning he now has to make a one-time payment of $3,500. Commercial properties are really taking a hit, he said.
“We’re limping already,” he said. “That extra money being divided by 12 months makes it kind of possible.”
The lease between Godwin and the barbecue restaurant owners includes a clause that says the tenants are responsible for the utilities, which by default includes the fire services fee. But now, the onus is on Godwin.
The county’s move comes as state lawmakers and the governor are looking to drastically cut or eliminate property taxes outright. While Gov. Ron DeSantis has railed against the taxes as fueling bloated county and city budgets, local government leaders have been sounding the alarm that eliminating them could undermine local parks or even public safety.
Godwin maintains adding the fire service fee to property taxes isn’t helping the situation. “Now, it seems to me that people are going to have to increase rent prices,” he said.
The owner of a mobile home park noted that her tax bill last year was $3,915 and doubled to $8,246 because she has 18 homes on her property. Previously her tenants paid a $20 utility fee a month. Now she must hike the rent on her tenants to pay off the much higher lump-sum, but that won’t help her with the current bill.
“They changed the way that this fee is collected with virtually no notice and it is a HUGE expense to people who have more than one house on their property,” she wrote on Facebook. “Why weren’t more people present at the meeting to try to fight this change?”
Godwin was recently at the property appraiser’s office and said he witnessed an elderly man on a fixed income cry, wondering how he was going to come up with the lump sum that increased his overall property tax asseessment.
While the total amount of fees is the same, it’s a lot for some people to have to pay all at once instead of breaking it up over 12 months, he said.
The tax collector’s office said it “most definitely” has had a lot of people coming in confused about their higher bills, but Leon County Tax Collector Doris Maloy said it’s not totally unusual as they often field a lot of calls after the statements go out.
“A lot of people don’t understand the ad valorem assessment,” Maloy said.
She said the average homeowner’s fire services fee is around $240. But commercial property owners like Godwin could pay far higher depending on the amount of space they own.
Paying through the tax bill, however, does provide a bit of a break as there are discounts applied if the bill is paid in certain months, whereas the utility bill method of payment doesn’t have this option.
If the bill is paid in November, property owners receive a 4% discount, a 3% discount if paid in December, a 2% discount if paid in January and a 1% discount if paid in February, Maloy said.
County also hearing from concerned residents
The county also has been fielding calls about property taxes, with many asking about “double billing.”
Starting Oct.1, unincorporated county residents stopped seeing the fire services fee on their utility bill and it appeared on their property taxes, charging them for the remainder of 2025 through Sept. 30, 2026 — the new fiscal year.
The county is assuring people they are not being double billed: “For utility billing periods that include portions of September and October, the City is prorating the fire services assessment through Sept. 30,” Assistant County Administrator Ken Morris wrote in an email to County Administrator Vince Long. “As a reminder, residents within the city limits will continue to be billed monthly through their utility accounts.
While there have been some questions, the county said there hasn’t been any significant increase in call volume or call times since people have received their property tax bills.
Around the time bills started hitting mailboxes, County Commissioner Christian Caban rolled out a social media reminder that the county voted against raising customers’ rates.
County Commissioner Brian Welch also hopped in the online conversation to reiterate this and clarify for taxpayers that they will not be billed for the fee again until next November’s annual assessment.
Welch doubled down on the commission’s reasoning for moving the fire fee from the utility bill to the property tax bill and said he hopes this eliminates “the confusion caused by seeing the fire fee on your tax bill for those outside of City limits.”
‘Just crazy’: Some have threatened lawsuits over the fire fee
The new addition to the property tax bill came after a tense back-and-forth between the city and county over the fire services fee.
County commissioners vehemently opposed the increase the city said was necessary to patch over a gaping budget hole in the fund that supports fire operations.
The county’s pushback launched an arbitration process to smooth over the two government’s contract, but shortly after the county voted the fee off the utility bill, the city put the county on notice, saying it was terminating its fire service agreement after the three-year contract ended.
The county is now working to create its own means to provide fire services to its residents.
But some residents, and even commissioners, have raised questions about whether the city and county can even charge a fee. Many have pointed to a lawsuit in Ocala in which the city was forced to pay back millions of dollars after a court ruled a fire fee was an illegal tax.
An accountability group headed by former mayor Dot Inman-Johnson has floated the idea of suing on the same grounds, and now, Godwin has raised the idea too.
He posted the idea on social media on the Living Tallahassee Facebook Group after his trip to the property appraiser’s office and said people seem to be interested.
“I’m going to try to take it as far as I can,” Godwin said.
The high fees are a “giant issue,” he said. Even if the fee remains in place, he’d like to see it be more equitable and thinks the fee should be based on property value and not square footage.
“These larger corporations are paying less than me but make way more money,” Godwin said. “They’re paying $100,000 a year in property taxes but paying less than me on the fire services fee.”
“And that’s just crazy,” he added.
Local government watchdog reporter Elena Barrera can be reached at ebarrera@tallahassee.com. Follow her on X: @elenabarreraaa.
