CORNELIA — While the City of Cornelia is not raising its millage rate for 2018 property taxes, the city also is not adopting the rollback rate which is an increase of 3.04 percent over the rollback rate.
No members of the public attended Tuesday night’s city commission meeting, where the first of three public hearings on the proposed tax increase was held.
City Manager Donald Anderson said the city hasn’t received any negative comments on the proposed millage rate yet.
“We’ve had some people come in and question what their taxes would look like,” Anderson told AccessWDUN. “Most of them are not going to see an increase.”
Anderson said the actual millage rate is not changing.
“It is not technically a millage rate increase,” Anderson said. “It’s just that based on the inflationary digest it’s recommended that we roll our millage rate back 0.251 percent, but my recommendation is to leave it at 8.5 mills. Reason being is, and this was our goal all along, was to increase our tax revenue without increasing taxes. We saw a big increase in our property values — that’s from development.”
Anderson said he is hopeful this will allow the city to adopt a budget that doesn’t rely on the city’s reserve funding.
“Every year that I’ve been here, we have relied on prior fund balance to balance the general fund,” Anderson said. “Hopefully this will be the first year that we won’t have to do that. There’s no big plans for the $286,000 revenue increase other than to continue providing the same level of services. We’re not buying new vehicles, new equipment, adding new employees or anything. It’s just trying to get us back operating in the black We’ve been operating in the red for a decade.”
The tentative tax increase for a home with a fair market value of $80,000 would be $7.74, while a non-homestead property with a fair market value of $200,000 would be $19.36, according to figures released by the city, but Ward 1 Commissioner Wes Dodd pointed out that properties that saw no increase in valuation would see no increase in taxes over 2017.
Anderson said he is hopeful the new projects in town will increase the tax base again for 2019 property taxes.
“Remember that our taxes are based a year behind, so what we’re actually setting the millage rate for right now is 2018,” Anderson explained. “Next year, the new apartments on Level Grove Road will be calculated into our assessments that are not calculated this year.”
Additionally, a new strip shopping center is being constructed near AutoZone and LongHorn Steakhouse.
Building and development permits issued by the city during September were in excess of $6.5 million for new construction, Anderson said.
Additional public hearings on the proposed tax increase will be held at noon and at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9, in the Cornelia Municipal Building, 156 Foreacre St., Cornelia.
