DeKalb Announces Proposed Property Tax Increase

DECATUR, Ga – The DeKalb County Governing Authority today announces its intention to increase the 2017 property taxes it will levy this year by 10.76 percentage over the rollback millage rate, increasing from 9.500 to 9.983 mills.

DeKalb County has seven separate tax levies. Two of those levies are used in the required calculation for the rollback rate.

The other tax levies (police, fire, designated and two bond funds) when combined with general and hospital funds produce the benchmark tax rate. This rate is not proposed to increase, remaining at 20.810 mills. The method used to calculate the required rate does not consider offsets in those rates.

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 the previous year’s millage rate would have produced had no reassessments occurred.

The budget tentatively adopted by the DeKalb County Governing Authority requires a millage rate higher than the rollback millage rate. Therefore, before the DeKalb County Governing Authority may finalize the tentative budget and set a final millage rate, Georgia law requires three public hearings to be held to allow the public an opportunity to express their opinions on the proposed increase.

Concerned citizens are invited to attend public hearings on this proposed tax increase to be held at the Manual J. Maloof Auditorium, 1300 Commerce Dr., Decatur, on June 27 at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and on July 11 at 10 a.m.

###