County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

I wanted to first pass along a note we received at the courthouse this week regarding tax assessments.

The letter reads, “I don’t agree with the high tax adjustments.  Numerous other people have stated discontent with these new assessments.  I see no other option, but to submit to the assessments.  However, as stated by myself and numerous others, hopefully we can remedy these assessments in the upcoming elections.”

Q. How does the county handle these types of letters?
A. There are still some people complaining about their tax assessments and their property tax statements when they go to pay their bills at the Tax Commissioner’s office, which we totally understand. However, to the person who wrote this letter: While I sympathize with any assessment increase or tax increase you received, it is not the fault of the people at the courthouse.  The employees of the Tax Assessor’s office are only obeying the law, which requires the county to keep property values at or near market value. Because of such property and home value increases in the past five years, the property values on the books had fallen so low that the county was being financially penalized by the state to the tune of nearly $40,000.   

Q. What role does the Tax Commissioner’s office have in this process?  
A. The employees of the Tax Commissioner’s office only collect the taxes and distribute them to the county and the school board.  The county government portion of the tax increase this year was less than 5% county wide.  The school system increase was above 30%, but the school system has kept taxes so low for so many years, it finally caught up with them.  The school and county are probably both guilty of trying to prevent your taxes from increasing at all each year.  This effort, while noble, ends up causing a spike every few years.

The tax amount would end up being the same, but I think the school has realized that it is better to go ahead and make some increase each year instead of holding back and making a big jump at one time.

Q.  Why did our taxes increase so much?
A.  The State of Georgia has continued to cut funding to schools, while at the same time in counties like Union where there is a lot of growth in new students, there simply has not been enough money to keep up with the growth.  It all caught up with the school system this year.  However, remember that Union County Schools still has the 2nd lowest mil rate in the entire state out of 159 counties.  So while their tax increase was significant this year, they are still well below most of the state and lower than all surrounding counties in North Georgia except for Towns.  (Towns also has an additional 1 % sales tax that Union County schools do not have.)

Q.  Does the county commissioner have anything to do with the school tax?
A. NO !!!  No matter how many times I tell this or answer this question, some people still blame the county commissioner (me) who has absolutely no input in the school system or their tax rate.  The county only prints, sends out, and collects the tax bills, but the tax rate is set by the Board of Education and all funds collected from property taxes are sent directly to the school system. (except for a collection fee the county receives)

Q.  Did the county taxes increase significantly?
A. No, we did not.  We run a tight ship and although our published increase was under 5% county wide, the cost of operating government has increased much faster than inflation.  As we continue to grow our cost will increase.  As I said last week in my column, without an increase in commercial or industrial property tax base in this county, our property taxes will continue to increase in the future.

Q.  You mentioned in the paper a few weeks ago that the county was going to have Rep. Jenkins introduce local legislation to allow us to vote on applying a 3% cap on property tax assessments each year.  What is happening with this?
A.  The county, school and city all have to agree on this process.  We are trying to get numbers together to estimate the impact this will have on the future tax rate.  I am still in favor of getting this legislation on the ballot, but it will depend on the legislature and the amount of time remaining before the session ends and how soon we can have legislation drafted that the city, school and county can all agree to.

Q. Will we get to vote on the assessment cap this year?
A.  It is still possible, but it may have to wait until next year.  The Georgia Legislature is looking into completely redoing the state income tax and county property tax process next year.  If that happens, it could nullify any changes that we make to our assessment process in our county this year.

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