MillageRate.com

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

Three Peach County Board of Education members’ apparent inability to manage their schedules will result in Peach County tax bills being mailed a month late:

Board members Virginia Dixon, Jamie Johnson and Kay Whitley were out of town Thursday and could not make either a third public hearing on a proposed millage rate increase or a special called meeting to approve the millage rate.

Dixon was en route from Rhode Island, Johnson called in a half-hour before the meeting and said he was in Atlanta and Whitley was on vacation, said Denise Carmichael, executive assistant to Superintendent Susan Clark. “They’ve known about the public hearing schedule since June 3,” a flustered Carmichael said. “People knew it was going on. This makes us look bad.”

Tax bills in Peach County will be tardy – The Sun News – Macon

Reported in the Walton Tribune:

In 1999, the millage rate was at 8 and had steadily declined to the 2008 rate of 6.6. However with property values slipping and assessments dropping, council members were told by city number crunchers during a July 12 retreat in Amelia Island, Fla., a millage rate hike is advised.

The Walton Tribune

Bad legislation like Rep. Edward Lindsey’s property assessment freeze will force local governments to temper millage rollbacks or even increase rates when they might normally remain stable:

The next several years could be lean ones for Morgan County as actions by state legislators come home to roost.
County Finance Director Mia Wilson and County Manager Michael Lamar painted a potentially grim picture for the county at the commissioners’ regular meeting Tuesday, telling elected officials that revenues from ad valorem taxes after this year will be frozen. At the same time, the state of Georgia has not specified in its budget when and from where county reimbursement funds for the new Forest Land Protection Act (FLPA)-an estimated $900,000 the county was expecting to receive from the state-will appear.

County struggles to balance budget | Morgan County Citizen Online

Read the story:

The proposed school spending plan would mean a millage rate increase of 1.538 mills, bringing the total to 17 mills.

Peach BOE OKs tax increase – The Sun News – Macon

If you want to know about effective property tax reform, don’t ask a politician. Check with a professional:

“Every state that has implemented this — California, Colorado, and Florida — has ended up with higher property taxes,” he said. “The perception behind this is crazy. Tax bills are dictated by budgets. You start freezing values and only updating recent sells or new construction and rates will go up.”

Dobbs said especially in a year when the state is cutting back allocations to counties for road paving, the idea of freezing values was poorly thought out. He said they are virtually guaranteeing that local government will be forced to raise tax rates to cover the loss from frozen values and fewer state grants.

Pickens County Progress – Pickens Chief Tax Appraiser predicts confusion and frustration with property tax value freeze