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 wouldn’t be billed unconstitutionally and 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…