Slight property tax millage rollback expected for Lee County

LEESBURG — Because of a small increase in the county’s tax digest, the Lee County Board of Commissioners is expected to approve a millage rate of 14.121 mills later this month, which represents a slight rollback from the 2015-16 rate of 14.177 mills.

Commissioners briefly discussed the proposed rollback at their regular monthly work session Tuesday night after the board received word from the Lee County Board of Tax Assessors that the 2016 tax digest had been completed.

According to a letter from Chief Tax Appraiser Joe Wright, the rollback is required because of “some inflationary growth from some reassessments” in the county.

The letter goes on to state that because of reassessment work conducted in the county, there were net increases to the digest in real and personal property, with the real property digest increasing in assessed value by $10,552,314, or $26,380,785 in 100 percent value, and personal property increasing by $1,373,617 in assessed value, or $3,434,043 in 100 percent value. Overall, the 2016 gross digest for 2016 is $1,010,801,097, an increase of $1,836,970 over the 2015 digest of $1,008,964,127.

Because that increase came from property reassessments and not organic, new growth, Georgia law dictates that the county must either conduct three public hearings to realize the additional tax revenue generated by that inflationary growth or roll back the millage rate to compensate for that growth.

Even with that rollback, however, the five-year tax digest and levy history that must be advertised annually shows that the county is still seeing a 0.92 percent increase in this year’s tax levy, which is going from $12,527,292 in 2015 to $12,642,531 this year.

The reason for that, according to Wright, is a change in the annual exemptions taken by county residents and business owners.

“This was kind of an unusual year,” Wright said in an interview. “When I saw that, I had to look twice. The increase is because exemptions decreased … things like conservation use, homestead exemption, forest land exemptions, freeport exemptions. Off the top of my head, it I think it was around a $10 million difference.”

Although there is a rollback, Wright said it isn’t large enough to reduce individual tax bills enough to have much impact on the average taxpayer.

“The rollback is so minor that they probably won’t even notice,” he said.

Because the commission will not be realizing the tax increase from the inflationary growth, or raising the millage rate, it is not required to hold any public hearings on the matter.

The advertisement of the proposed rollback and the five-year digest and levy history is enough to satisfy state notification requirements, meaning that once the Lee County School System adopts its millage rate, which it is expected to do within the next 10 days, the commission can officially adopt its new rate of 14.212 mills.