Questions answered by Lamar Paris, County Commissioner
Property Taxes part I
Q. I don't think that the school should be raising our property taxes with the economy so bad. Why is this happening?
A. Many people are still confused thinking that the county government has something to do with the school system and their taxes, but we do not. The commissioner's office has absolutely nothing to do with the school property taxes. That is controlled by the Board of Education with input from the Superintendent. Having said that, these folks are elected as your representatives and like all governments, we are all dealing with the same issues of trying to do more with less money. It is not an easy or fun time to be in government of any kind. What is important is that your government officials are trying to do what is RIGHT for their constituents.
Q. Does the school system have the same property tax rate as the county?
A. Again, there is no relationship between ANY of the school finances and the county finances. Unlike the school system if county government gets in a bind, which is always a possibility, we can choose to pave and patch fewer roads, or reduce the number of employees and cut services, all of which would hurt but would not violate state law. However, the school system has so many more state mandated educational and employment requirements and expenses and they can not cut the number of students they are required to educate in order to lessen the tax burden. The school is also highly dependent on State of Georgia funding. When those funds are all of a sudden reduced, the school doesn't have many options of where to cut.
Q. Do you think the school system spends their money wisely?
A. I do not have any way to know that, but when you look at the statistics of per capita spending and test scores compared to other schools, it is obvious that a lot is happening that is good in our school system.
Union County has a great school system and a great county government. We have many fine school administrators, employees and teachers just as we have many fine county government employees that are working hard to make this one of the best counties in which to live. While I do not have any direct knowledge about the school finances, I do know that there are a lot of dedicated employees that give us a fine school system with one of the lowest tax rates in the state even with the recent advertised tax increase.
Q. How do our school and county property tax mil rates compare with other counties?
A. We had to acquire this data from different sources and this is for 2010, as many counties and schools have yet to set their new mil rates. You should find this interesting.
Union County government had the lowest mil rate, at 4.930, of any county in Georgia last year. Union County Schools mil rate was 4th lowest in the state at 9.453. When you combine the school and county mil rate last year, Union County was ranked 2nd lowest, beat only by Towns Co, who has a special sales tax for operation of the school, at 14.365 mils. You only have to move down to the 10th lowest in the state, which was Glynn Co. and combined school and county, their mil rate was 20.903 mils!!!! The rest go up from there. The state average is 26.66 mils. To put this in perspective, if our county and school mil rate was at the state average, we would generate another $15 million dollars in tax revenue. This only goes to demonstrate that in this economy, any tax seems high, but we are so fortunate in that our property tax rates are so much lower than most others in the state because we are all trained to be fiscally conservative and we have inherited those values from previous leaders.
Property taxes continued next week.