The Bibb County Board of Education is set to approve a property tax increase next month.
The board tentatively approved maintaining its current millage rate of 14.674 mills in a 7-1 vote at a special meeting Monday evening, an action that would result in property owners paying a bit more in fiscal year 2025.
The owner of a $200,000 home without homestead exemption could expect to pay $63.04 more in taxes and $57.52 with homestead exemption, CFO Eric Bush said. The final adoption is set for Sept. 10.
Board member Daryl Morton was the lone ‘no’ vote.
“I had some concerns about the budgetary priorities,” Morton said in an interview after the meeting. “I didn’t feel enough money was being spent in the classroom. I think the focus was more the central office. I agree that our real issue is teachers and retaining them, I just don’t think the budget emphasized that enough.”
Board president James Freeman voiced concern in the meeting about the short time the board was afforded to review the superintendent’s proposal first presented Thursday evening.
He also shared concerns about losing teachers to Houston County schools, a district that is better funded in part because it was “grandfathered in” to an old law that allowed school districts to impose a 1% sales tax for operational expenses.
“We’re trying to compete with somebody who’s playing on a different field,” Freeman said, adding he heard over the weekend about 10 teachers who recently left the district for better-paying teaching jobs in Houston County.
Freeman said he would vote to approve the superintendent’s recommendation “if for no other reason than it provides for three more hearings to the public.”
The district expects to collect $4.3 million more in revenue by maintaining the millage rate, which would help shore up some of the $9.3 million deficit included in the budget the board approved in June. It also will allow the district to partially implement a salary study beyond the sizable raises for some central office employees included in the budget.
Certain administrators and central office positions received 10% raises upon being “deemed to be 30% undervalued,” Bush said, adding the budget did not address “a wide majority” of the salary study.
The district was apparently spared from what could have been a more dire financial position upon receiving a few months ago some $23 million in unexpected revenue from the Georgia Department of Education. Much of that money came in the form of an equalization grant by which the state awards to the poorest school districts to help them reach funding levels of the wealthiest school districts.
Bush said dropping the millage rate below a certain threshold could disqualify the district from being eligible for future equalization grants, posing “a significant risk I would try to steer clear of.”
The influx of cash through that grant also comes as millions in federal grants related to COVID expire next month. The district plans to absorb some of those costs using general fund money, Superintendent Dan Sims said.
Sims said he recommends maintaining the millage rate because more money will mean the district will have more opportunity and flexibility.
“In comparison to other districts, in terms of our tax revenue, you see less opportunity that we have in terms of procuring and maintaining resources for our students in addition to the human resource,” he said. “We want to set ourselves up to have the most available opportunities for innovation, for the fulfillment of the needs of our students and again to recruit and retain the best and brightest talent.”
The last time the school board raised property taxes was in 2016 when it increased the millage rate by 2 mills.
Public hearings are set for Sept. 3 at 11 a.m. and Sept. 6 at 6 p.m. in the Professional Learning Center at 2003 Riverside Drive. The final public hearing is set for Sept. 10 at 5 p.m. in the boardroom at 484 Mulberry St. followed by formal adoption at a 5:30 p.m. meeting also in the boardroom in the Mulberry Street office.
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, call 478-301-5777 or email [email protected].
