Milton Plans To Hold Millage Rate Steady

MILTON, GA — The city of Milton will soon publish a legal notice for its plans to maintain its millage rate at the same level it's been in the last 11 years, and residents will be allowed to provide their input on this plan.

The city has scheduled three public hearings on its proposal to hold its millage rate at 4.731 mills. Hearings will be held at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Aug. 6 and 5:45 p.m. Aug. 13 at Milton City Hall.

Each year, the board of tax assessors is required to review the assessed value for property tax purposes of taxable property in the city. When the trend of prices on properties that have recently sold in the city shows there's been an increase in the fair market value of any specific property, the board of tax assessors is required by law to re-determine the value of such property and adjust the assessment. This is called a reassessment.

When the total digest of taxable property is prepared, Georgia law requires that a rollback millage rate must be computed that will produce the same total revenue on the current year's digest that last year's millage rate would have produced had no reassessments occurred.

Milton's millage rate is 4.731 mills, the same it has been since its incorporation. However, with the expected increase in property values, not rolling back the millage rate to a revenue neutral level will mean an increase in taxes for property owners who saw their assessments rise.

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In a message distributed Wednesday, the city is reassuring its residents that it "takes a fiscally conservative approach to its revenues and expenditures," and it never operates with the intent of adding money to the city's pocketbooks.

"Our focus has always been to ensure the city has adequate revenues to provide the mandated city services required by our City Charter, and to provide those services at a level our residents have come to expect from their city government over the last 11 years," the city said.

Milton goes on to outline why it should keep its millage rate at the same level since its incorporation. The city notes that since it does not have a certified tax digest for 2017 due to the Georgia Department of Revenue rejecting the county's digest, it had to change how it accounts for property tax revenues from the current fiscal year to the next. In order to do that, Milton said it had to defer several 2017 capital improvement projects to makeup for the changes in the 2017 budget.

Since the millage rate has been locked at 4.731 due to the city's charter, Milton also states this is challenging because "we have a limited commercial footprint for increasing our tax base, and our overall community vision is focused on controlled growth and the desire to retain our rural character."

The city also said it doesn't know how the homestead exemption referendum would impact property tax revenue if it's given voter approval when it goes on the ballot in November. Milton contends that since the Fulton County Tax Assessor's Office said it did not keep up with rising assessments during the Great Recession, the exemptions outlined in the enabling legislation, House Bill 70, "could lead to artificially lower assessed values which could impart Milton's long-term revenue collections."

"That’s why we believe it is important to maintain the millage rate for this year, until our finance department can see the actual homestead exemption’s financial impact (if passed)," it said. "Based on that real-time data, we are better positioned to modify the millage rate accordingly in 2019."

Milton goes on to state that holding the rate at the current level will allow it to move forward with a conservative approach.

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