Millage Rate

In today's Sentinel...


Tax hike vote scheduled August 17
By Winston Jones

The Douglas County Board of Commissioners (BOC) has scheduled a Thursday, Aug. 17, called meeting to adopt a 2006 property tax millage rate with a proposed .907 mill increase. The meeting will be held at 10 a.m. in Citizens Hall at the county courthouse. A public hearing will precede the BOC vote. Similar public hearings were held at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday.
The BOC is proposing a hike of 12.4 percent over the rollback rate. The rollback rate is the gross tax millage rate less the rate to compensate for the increase in the total tax digest and property reassessments.

The proposed net tax millage rate will be 8.240 mills. This will result in a total levy of about $30 million in taxes, a $5.7 million increase over last year. At an Aug. 1 BOC meeting, Bob Harshbarger, county finance director, cited several 2006 budget increases as reasons for the requested millage rate increase.

`There are salary and benefits increases of more than $2 million, with 32 new positions,` Harshbarger said. `Sixty-five percent are in public safety and 16 percent in the courts.`
Harshbarger also noted the county must purchase 46 new vehicles, at a cost of $1.3 million and make capital improvements of $1.2 million. `The average county tax millage in Georgia is 11.520 mills, compared to Douglas’ proposed 8.240 mills,` Harshbarger told the meeting.
`Counties with populations over 100,000 have an average millage rate of 9.90 mills. Metro Atlanta counties average 10.65 mills.`
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If this is approved, everyone's property taxes will go up at least $40, maybe more. It depends, I guess, on how much your property is worth. If you oppose this, or support it (but I'm not sure why you would) please go to the meeting on August 17 at 10 a.m. to voice your opinions during the public hearing. I'm sure part of this is because they want money for the jail--it has to be. Can we be guaranteed that this money will not be used for the jail? Can it legally be used for a jail? That I'm not sure of. Someone could ask at the public hearing. But the county is determined, I am sure, to get that new jail because every other county, in their mind, probably has a better county jail than we do. The city doesn't want them to build it--that's why they were so opposed to the SPLOST passing. And someone emailed me that the county can get a judge to approve the building of a jail. I searched on Google to see how many federal judges have actually approved jail mandates but only found a few. And I couldn't find any statistics for it, so I emailed the research department of the Federal Judicial Center. So we'll see if I get a response in the coming days.