Setting the County's 2022 Millage Rate and COVID-19 RatesIncreasing

Please take a few minutes and review the County Manager's presentation from this week's Board of Commissioners (BOC) meeting, entitled Fulton County COVID-19 Response Update. It contains a lot of information about COVID but also more information on other important county issues.

Due to the increasing availability and usage of at-home testing, it is impossible to know the actual number of COVID cases in the county, but the percentage of known positive tests in Fulton has risen to 19.8%, which is quite high historically. Page 7 contains two maps, one showing that under the CDC's current risk matrix, Fulton has a low community risk, mostly due to minimal impact on hospital resources. The other map shows Fulton is a high community transmission area. There is much more information on COVID in Fulton and Georgia and the newest variant.

The report also contains an update on Project ORCA, the effort to address the backlog of court cases created when the court system shut down with the pandemic. While there is a lot of data there, you may note that the system is processing civil cases at a faster rate than criminal cases. The BOC cannot compel the separately elected officials in the county to take specific steps or to process certain types of cases. However, by providing relevant data on case processing, we can help our justice partners understand the impact of delaying criminal cases. The Fulton County Jail is severely overcrowded, resulting in dangerous conditions and increasing costs. While Project ORCA is funded by federal ARPA money received by the county, the jail is funded by your general fund tax dollars.

Also of interest at this week's BOC meeting was the beginning of the process to set the millage rate for the county's portion of your property tax bill. (The cities and school boards will separately set their millage rates for their portions of your bill.)  The action taken at this meeting was to set the rate for advertising public hearings, which rate would be a "cap" on the actual rate to be decided at the August 17 BOC meeting. The proposal by staff was to set the cap at the same rate we used in 2021 (9.33 mills), rather than the "rollback" rate calculated with respect to increases in the tax digest (8.87 mills). Under state law, a decision not to use the rollback rate must be advertised as a tax increase. A motion to set the cap at the rollback rate of 8.87 failed 3-3 (I voted yes), and then the BOC voted 4-3 to advertise the cap at the rate of 9.33 (I voted no). The BOC can adopt a lower rate on August 17. We will see how that goes.

While many people, myself included, have seen an increase in the proposed value of their property, the county has had a floating homestead exemption in place for many years such that your homestead exemption increases when your value increases, so that the net taxable value, and therefore net tax, will not go up more than about 3%. For my constituents in Sandy Springs, that is also true for the Sandy Springs tax and the Fulton County Schools tax. For my constituents in Atlanta, that is true for the Atlanta tax, but not the Atlanta Bonds tax nor the Atlanta Public Schools tax. Please see elsewhere herein information about property tax valuation appeals.

Stay well and safe.

- Lee  

By now, you should have received your property assessment notice in the mail. You may also find your notice on the Assessor's website. Remember that this assessment is not your actual tax bill, which you will receive later this year.

If you do not agree with your assessed value, you have until Monday, August 1, 2022 to submit a formal appeal and begin the process of contesting your property value. As of this week, the Assessor's office has received 2,800 appeals. We encourage homeowners who do choose to appeal to research comparable property sales in their neighborhoods and submit supporting documents along with their appeal. You may file your appeal online or manually - additional details and instructions are available HERE. Your appeal will be reviewed by staff and referred to the Board of Equalization to schedule a hearing. Keep in mind that this process may take a while due to a large number of appeals.

If your appeal has not been resolved when tax bills are mailed, you must pay the  temporary bill to avoid penalties and fees. Once your appeal is resolved, the tax bill will be recalculated based on the final value.

Visit www.fultonassessor.org for more information on assessment notices, filing appeals, and applying for homestead exemptions.

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