Augusta homeowners can expect another year of sticker shock as property values continue their rise due to inflation.
“Our market in Augusta was very good last year,” said Scott Rountree, chief appraiser for the Richmond County Board of Tax Assessors. “Despite the efforts we made, our prices are still lower than the majority of sales that occurred in the prior year.”
Regulated by state laws, the office determines the assessed values of properties used to calculate property tax bills that go out in the fall. Arriving sooner will be notices sent to homeowners informing them their values have changed.
“They will be shocked,” Rountree told Augusta commissioners Tuesday.
The increases aren’t unique to Augusta but follow the panic felt last year by many homeowners in modest neighborhoods that saw their properties increase by as much as 81%. That year Rountree said approximately 74% of all Augusta real estate parcels increased in values, and some 1,186 homeowners across 110 neighborhoods filed appeals.
The office hopes to finalize valuations in the next few weeks but was delayed by the network outage, he said, estimating most will increase from 25% to 30%.
“I know in Sand Hills somebody had to pay an extra $400 and she was in her late 70s or early 80s and she was devastated,” Commissioner Jordan Johnson said of the historically Black community hit hard last year.
“Last year we got beat up real bad,” Commissioner Francine Scott said. “We need to do some kind of public information to let people know.”
Good advice is for senior homeowners to claim the homestead exemption which exempts them, if old enough, from paying school taxes, which comprise more than half of most property tax bills. The millage rate is applied against each thousand of a home’s assessed value, which is 40% of its taxable value.
Growth due to reassessments rather than new development under state law triggers the automatic calculation of a rollback millage rate, the tax rate that would raise the same amount of tax revenue if the value increases hadn’t occurred, Finance Director Donna Williams said.
Should the commission determine to lower the tax rate, homeowners won’t feel the impact on their property tax bills.
In other action Tuesday, the commission voted 9-0 with Commissioner Tony Lewis out to approve increasing Augusta Fire Chief Antonio Burden’s salary by $25,000 annually, retroactive to July 12, 2021, for his services as Emergency Management Agency director. Augusta’s mayor, who was Hardie Davis at the time Burden was hired, selects the EMA director.
The increase would raise Burden’s salary to around $170,000 and make him the government’s approximately seventh-highest paid, around the range of a state court judge or Sheriff Richard Roundtree.
In another matter, the Junior Achievement Discovery Center of the CSRA asked the commission Tuesday for a $50,000 contribution over five years to its new center being built in Evans.
The center is a joint undertaking by the Richmond and Columbia school districts to increase financial literacy. Middle-school participants from Richmond County public schools will be bused to the site, said Ashley Whitaker, development director for the CSRA for Junior Achievement of Georgia.
The commission contribution would go toward a local government “storefront” used to teach kids about working with local government. “Because this is built to your specifications, we really would need to know of your interest in the next 30 days,” Whitaker said.
The commission approved the appointments of four new members to the Augusta Development Authority: Small business owner and retired veteran Greg Hill, banker Collette D’Antignac, former mayor Deke Copenhaver and former commissioner Corey Johnson.
