IT’S BUDGET TIME Catoosa lowering property tax rate in prep for 2018 county budget
Catoosa County commissioners unanimously approved a property tax rate decrease during its meeting Tuesday night, Aug. 1, the first step in approving the county’s 2018 budget.
During his presentation Tuesday night, Aug. 1, Chief Financial Officer Carl Henson explained that the county is looking at a millage (property tax) rate rollback of approximately 4.7 percent.
“Since the county does not operate any utilities, the county is forced to rely heavily on property tax and local option sales taxes (LOST) as its two major sources for funding operations,” Henson said.
Henson said last year’s 2016 millage rate of 7.295 will be rolled back to 6.95 for the budget year, which begins Oct. 1.
“Georgia law requires that a rollback millage rate be computed that would produce the same total revenue on the current year’s digest that last year’s millage rate
would have produced had their been no reassessment,” Henson said. “It’s a difference of 0.345 mills. The Catoosa County Board
of Commissioners proposes to establish a millage rate which would not exceed the calculated rollback, therefore, there will be no property tax increase (overall) for the public.”
“The budget includes collected input from all the department heads, elected officials, and outside agencies,” Henson said.
Henson added that the plan for the budget is to keep expenditures flat through the next fiscal year, and that the county is projected to take in approximately $225,000 in additional revenue.
The proposed budget is available to the public at the front desk of the Catoosa County Government building.
Henson said it’s also posted on the bulletin board at the facility and available online at catoosa.com.