WARNER ROBINS, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) — The Houston County Board of Commissioners is announcing it’s intention to increase the 2022 property taxes.
The commissioners are saying they want to increase the taxes by 9.38% over the rollback millage rate.
Before being able to vote on the final millage rate, Georgia law requires 3 public hearings to be held in order to allow the public to express their opinions on the increase. The first 2 hearings are set to happen on Wednesday, July 20th– the first at 11 a.m., and the second at 6 p.m. The third hearing is scheduled to take place on July 28th, 2022 at 5 p.m. After that, the board will vote to adopt the 2022 digest. All of the hearings are being held at the Houston County Annex Building on Carl Vinson Parkway in Warner Robins
The board of commissions says that every year the board is required to review the assessed value of taxable property in the county, and that when the trend of prices of properties recently sold indicates there’s been an increase in the fair market value of any specific property, the board is required by law to re-determine the value of the property in what is called a reassessment.
The Board of Commissioners describe the details of the increase, as such:
“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. The 2022 rollback rate would be 8.969 mills. The budget adopted by the Houston County Board of Commissioners requires a millage rate higher than the rollback millage rate. The Commissioners must rollback the Maintenance and Operation (M&O) millage rate of 9.935 to 9.81 to operate under the mandated tax cap. By law, this must be advertised as a property tax increase.”