The Coweta County Board of Education for 2016 will maintain its long-held property tax rate of 18.59 mills. Doing so will amount to a tax increase due to rising property values.
School system spokesperson Dean Jackson said the school board announced its intention to keep the millage rate for maintenance and operations at 18.59 mills where it has been since 2004. By maintaining the current 18.59 mills, the Coweta County School System Board of Education will increase the property taxes it will levy this year by 4 percent over the rollback millage rate, Jackson said.
“Each year, the board of tax assessors is required to review the assessed value for property tax purposes of taxable property in the county,” Jackson said. “When the trend of prices on properties that have recently sold in the county indicate there has been an increase in the fair market value of any specific property, the board of tax assessors is required by law to re-determine the value of such property and increase the assessment. This is called a reassessment.”
When the total digest of taxable property is prepared, Georgia law requires that a rollback millage rate must be computed that will produce the same total revenue on the current year’s digest that last year’s millage rate would have produced had no reassessments occurred, Jackson explained.
Georgia law requires that three public hearings be held to allow the public an opportunity to express their opinions on the increase.
Interested citizens are invited to the public hearings on this tax increase to be held at the school board office, located at 237 Jackson Street in Newnan on Aug. 1 at 7:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. and on Aug. 8 at 6 p.m.
