The Columbia County Board of Education voted to set its estimated millage rollback to 16.5, Tuesday evening during its regular session in observance of Georgia House Bill (HB) 92.
Formerly, the annual notice of assessment (NOA) sent by the tax assessor to homeowners would include the previous year’s millage rate for each authority (the county, the school district and, if one lives in an incorporated city, the municipality), along with an estimated tax liability based on that millage rate.
In February the school district voted to opt out of the floating exemption outlined in HB 581. HB 92, passed and signed this year to amend HB 581, added deadlines and fallback provisions. The bill also requires local governments to provide a certified estimated rollback rate for the current year no later than 15 days before the NOA is postmarked.
The estimated rollback is calculated by taking the current year’s millage rate and subtracting the millage equivalent of the total net assessed value added by reassessments of property. If a local government does not certify its estimated rollback rate before NOAs are issued, then previous year’s millage rate will appear on the notice.
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“The estimated rollback rate is hard for us to determine without information from the tax assessor’s office,” said Alex Casado, the school district’s chief financial officer, to the board members. “We have received information from them and what the value of the digest increase is due to reassessment versus growth of new properties in the county.”
Casado recommended that the district set an estimated rollback rate of 16.5 mills, from the current rate of 17.1 mills. If the district selects that number as the actual millage rate in the coming weeks, he said, it would reduce property tax revenue by about $1.6 million from what was budgeted, and would be absorbed by reducing the district’s fund balance. However, the district will still be able to set any millage rate they choose up to the 20 mill cap.
The board members would vote 3 to 1 in favor of adapting the estimated rollback rate, with only District 4 board member Katie Allen opposing (Kristi Baker of District 2 was not present at the meeting).
“I just want to point out that our budget that we approved has about a $3.6 million deficit, and if we’re looking at another $1.6 million decrease in revenue, that makes a $5.2 million deficit,” said Allen during the board’s discussion of the item. “So I just want us to start thinking in advance of what we can do from an operation standpoint, because I really I like that we have a large fund balance, but I really don’t like the idea of us using that fund balance for operations expenses.”
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Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
