COVINGTON, Ga. — Newton County Board of Education members Tuesday voted to lower the school district's part of the property tax bill by 7.6%.
Members voted 3-2 to decrease the property tax rate to 18.288 mills — a 7.6% decrease from the current 19.788 mills.
Board members Trey Bailey of District 1, Shakila Henderson-Baker of District 3 and Abigail Coggin of District 5 voted for the new rate. Eddie Johnson of District 2 and Anderson Bailey of District 4 voted against it.
Superintendent Samantha Fuhrey recommended a rate of 18.5 mills, but Trey Bailey responded that he wanted Fuhrey to consider the rollback rate of 17.737 mills.
State law requires that a rollback rate be calculated that would produce the same amount of revenue as the previous year if reassessments had not been done. It defines any rate above the rollback as a tax increase.
Trey Bailey said the purpose of the law is to prevent "indirect tax increases" for property owners when values increase "due to inflation."
"We should do our part to roll that rate back," he said. "For us not to (roll it back) would be for us to miss the opportunity to relieve our tax base."
He noted that since 2009 the tax digest has doubled in value but the student population has remained roughly the same.
Total enrollment was 18,710 in March of this year, compared to 19,637 in the 2009-2010 school year, according to the Georgia Department of Education.
Meanwhile, this year's tax digest — the total of assessed values of all real property in the county — is 60% higher than 2016.
"For us not to pull the rate back is not proportional to the increase we've seen over the years," he said.
Henderson-Baker made the motion for the 18.288-mill rate. She said a property tax rate higher than the full rollback rate of 17.737 was needed to produce enough revenue to cover future funding needs.
"To go all the way down (to the rollback rate), you take a chance of having to turn around and disappoint the taxpayers and say, 'You know what? Now we've got to increase it back up,'" Henderson-Baker said.
She said the district is competing with neighboring school districts that offer higher pay for teachers, and the private sector that offers higher pay for bus drivers, she said.
Those who ask why the school system is not approving a decrease as sharp as the 14% the county commission approved may not be aware NCSS has higher funding needs associated with being Newton County's largest employer.
"There's no comparison," she said.
Johnson urged board members to choose a rate higher than 18.288 mills to allow the school district to gain enough extra funding to avoid asking for money if needed in the future.
"You've got to speak up with what revenue we're going to produce. We need more revenue than your recommendation," he told Henderson-Baker.
"We can't risk the performance of the schools on the low rate that we're talking about," Johnson said.
He said lack of funding could affect everything from the graduation rate to the school district's competition for teachers and bus drivers.
"We can't do this on 'nickel and dime.' It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it — that's the principle we should be going on," Johnson said.
However, a motion to approve a rate of 18.788 mills failed on a 3-2 vote.
Property taxes fund about 29% of the school board's General Fund budget, which is tentatively set at $233.8 million in the 2022 fiscal year — up more than $14 million from 2021.
Board members in June tentatively approved a tax rate of 19.788 mills — the same property tax rate approved for Newton schools the previous three budget years.
If approved, it would have produced significantly more revenue than last year because this year's county net tax digest is $3.47 billion — a 14.5% increase from $3.02 billion last year.
The net tax digest is the total of assessed values of all real property in the county after all exemptions are removed. Real property is generally defined as land and buildings.
Newton County's tax digest has increased 60% in five years since the 2016 digest totaled $2.16 billion.
