MillageRate.com

Over 99% of Georgia’s City Councils, County Commissions and School Boards fail to simply do the math.

Atlanta City Schools will operate on a 2005-2006 budget of $526,781,768. Of that amount, $363,400,000 will be funded by property tax dollars and the system will draw $8,094,768 from reserves to balance the budget.

The School Board adopted an operations millage rate of 20.423.

The mathematically-correct millage rate is 19.454, 0.969 mills lower.

The arbitrarily high rate proposed by the School Board will overtax Atlanta city property owners by at least $18 million more than is necessary to fully fund this year’s budget.

The owner of a $150,000 home in the city of Atlanta will pay $1,225.38 in property taxes for schools, about $58.11 more than what would be required under a mathematically-correct millage rate.

Even if the Atlanta school system had fully funded the budget with property tax dollars rather than draw on reserves, the adopted millage would have still been too high. The budget would have required $371,494,768 in tax dollars; a millage rate of 19.888 would have fully funded the budget without a draw on reserves.

In other words, the school system could have preserved its cash and still adopted a millage rate 1/2-mill lower than it did.

See the math

You’ve heard the stories, I am sure– in counties across Georgia and especially in areas with overheated development economies like Gwinnett, rising assessments for property tax purposes are literally taxing some people off of their land. Each county Tax Commissioner is required to value property at “fair market value” for tax purposes. Individual property values climb, whether or not the property owner has any intent to sell.

For the rest of this overview by our founder, Bob Griggs, visit his personal blog.

At a time when it seems the price of everything is going up, the Gordon County Board of Education is giving taxpayers a break in the form of a rollback.

During a special called meeting Tuesday, the board voted to set the 2005 millage rate to meet the 2006 budget at 16.584, which is down .226 mills from last year and almost a full mill over a five-year period.

“I was very pleased to be able to recommend that to the board,” Supt. Mike Stanton said. “This is a credit to the board’s leadership.”

Stanton explained that part of this budget is the result of the board’s foresight.

“When planning the new high school we adjusted the millage rate in anticipation of hiring the new staff,” he said. “But beyond that, all of our schools and departments were very aware of revenue shortfalls in the state of Georgia in the past few years.”

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Coweta County will have a hearing tonight on the first proposed millage increases in 12 years.

The rate for residents of unincorporated Coweta would increase from 3.91 to 5.15. The owner of a $200,000 home would pay about $99 more in county taxes.

Residents of the municipalities would see their millage increase from 5.12 to 6.31. That’s about a $95 tax increase on a $200,000 home, said county finance director Rick Smoot.

Taxes are going up because of increased demands for services from a growing population, said Tom Corker, the county’s administrative and operations director.

Tonight’s hearing begins at 6 in the County Commission meeting room, 37 Perry St. in Newnan. Another hearing will be 6 p.m. Tuesday.

[Source: AJC]

With a barrage of short, to-the-point questions, a small group of Screven County taxpayers made it clear Aug. 18: They do not want to pay higher property taxes.

Meanwhile, commissioners attending the first of three public hearings on the proposed tax hike explained and defended the need for the increase.

Commissioners will occupy the hot seat twice today, Aug. 25, at public hearings set for 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. The board is scheduled to set Screven County’s total 2005 millage rate shortly after tonight’s public hearing

The hearings in the commission meeting room at the Screven County Courthouse are expected to bring more tough questions like last week’s irate taxpayers posed.

“How many of you have gotten a 30 percent raise this year?” property owner Rod Parrott said.

But commission chairman J.C. Warren said the increase the average taxpayer will see will be less than that.

Read more here.