Commissioners consider rollback millage rate

HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — The Board continues their discussion on the millage rate.

On Aug. 15, at 9 a.m. at 200 Carl Vinson Parkway, the Houston County Board of Commissioners met for the second of three special called meetings regarding the millage rate.

Chairman Dan Perdue began by giving a presentation on how they arrived at the proposed 2023 millage rate. He rehashed the four options they had regarding the millage rate: to roll the millage rate back to 9.066 mills, hold the millage rate at 9.810 mills, increase the mills to the tax cap at 9.811 mills or some variation of the numbers presented above.

Also, some considerations went into their decision. This includes that property tax revenue is their most reliable source of income, collection percentages vary each year and there have been multiple property reevaluations this year causing property values to rise rapidly in the community.

“We are under state mandate to maintain appraised property values on our tax rolls within plus or minus 10% of the fair market value, and unfortunately we got some numbers in last week that say… properties values according to the tax appraisals are still undervalued in Houston County,” said Perdue.

The final consideration is that if they rolled back the millage rate, they would have to roll back the fire millage rate. If they rolled back the millage rate, the revenue for their fire budget is much tighter in the unincorporated areas of Houston County, so there would end up being a gap between the forecasted revenues and what was gained.

With that being said, the Board reached a decision to roll back the millage rate by .249 mills to 9.561.

“This is the lowest millage rate that we have had, will have, in more than six years. For several years, we were at a millage rate of 9.935,” said Perdue. He says this strikes a good balance between making sure Houston County has enough revenue and providing tax relief.

Then began the public hearing, with Larry Baxter the first to address the Board. He asked what the difference was between a contingency and reserves.

“We budget a contingency every year of about $1,000,000, and that is money we can use throughout the year as we get into unexpected costs… However, a general fund reserve could be seen like a long-term contingency… Mr. Dunbar shares a good example of the flood of ‘94. When that awful storm hit this area, we were able to go out and immediately hire people and get to work fixing the problems that had been created because we had significant reserves or contingency,” answered Perdue.

Baxter then asked how they determined how large their contingency should be, to which Perdue answered that $1,000,000 is the traditional number they made their contingency.

For his next question, Baxter asked asked how undervalued the properties in Houston County still were.

“You have your appraised value and your assessed value, your appraised value is supposed to be fair market value and then you are assessed taxes based on 40% of that value… The department of audits does an audit every year of our tax digest, and they pull every single sale that happened in the previous year, and they pull all of the assessed values of that sale… ideally when they look at what it sold for and what we had assessed for there’s 40% there because the assessment should be 40% of the market value… this year’s numbers took a dip and we came in at, I believe, at 34.8%,” replied Perdue.

If the county is under 36% or over 42% for more than three years, the state can essentially invalidate its tax digest. The ideal place to be is at around 38%.

Next to the podium was Yvette Brown. She recently got a notice from her mortgage company that her mortgage payments went up $300 per month, so she expressed her confusion at how the millage rate is at the lowest it has been in years, but her mortgage payments increased by the highest amount she has seen.

Perdue, while he could not offer a complete answer since he has not personally looked at her individual property, he said he was highly doubtful that the $300 increase to her mortgage payment came solely or even a majority from property tax. But he did discuss that even though the millage rate is going down, due to the reassessments, many people will end up paying more than they were paying in property tax.

“My other thing is when you start looking at funding for the county, at what point do you reconsider what the sales tax is for the county? Versus, basically it seems to me the majority of [funding] is coming from the property taxes,” asked Brown.

Perdue explained that all local option sales tax revenue in the county goes to the Board of Education, but the county gets 1% of the sales tax revenue generated in the county.

“Coming up in November, the County’s SPLOST will also be on the ballot for reapproval for the next six years. We get significant revenues from SPLOST. We get about $3,000,000 a month in revenue that’s divided between the county and the three municipalities… It has to be used only for capital projects,” added Perdue.

“When you were saying that there is possibly going to be another reevaluation, so how soon will we be looking for another increase?” asked Brown as her final question.

Firstly, Perdue clarified that there must be a reevaluation since the state has determined the county’s properties are undervalued. To try to assuage her worries, he said the Board is seeking to continue bringing down the millage rate next year as a reaction to the reevaluations.

After the commissioner’s comments, where they thanked attendees for their well-put-together questions and expressed their honest belief that rolling back the millage was the best option, the meeting was adjourned.

The third and final meeting on the millage rate was held on Aug. 15 at 6:00 p.m. Past meetings can be viewed on their website, www.houstoncountyga.org.

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