Oconee County Charges Property Owners In Four Cities More For Services It Provides Than It Charges Property Owners Elsewhere In County

When the Oconee County Board of Commissioners releases the county’s budget on May 26, it also will release two millage or property tax rates–one for property in the county’s four cities and another for property in the unincorporated parts of the county.

Those rates are likely to be different--as they have been for at least the last six years--with property owners in Bishop, Bogart, North High Shoals and Watkinsville paying the county more in taxes for a comparable piece of property than do owners of property elsewhere in the county.

The higher taxes the county charges property owners in the cities are on top of the property taxes the four cities levy themselves, and the county’s higher tax rate for cities produces money for the county’s coffer, not for the budgets of the cities.

The services the county provides the property owners in the cities are the same as the services it provides to property owners in the unincorporated parts of the county.

Property owners in the cities simply pay more for those services.

For more on the story, go to Oconee County Observations.