MOULTRIE, Ga. — The Colquitt County Board of Commissioners will hold public hearings next month about a potential tax increase … except they aren’t really raising tax rates. They’re just not cutting them enough.

The situation arises from a massive growth in the county’s digest, the total taxable value of property throughout the county. The county Board of Tax Assessors re-valued commercial property throughout the county for the first time in 30 years, Chief Appraiser JimMac Booth told The Observer last month. That resulted in a huge increase in the values of many of those properties. Some values doubled.

The impact on the digest was about $128 million, Colquitt County Administrator Chas Cannon said Friday. The taxable value of property is 40% of its appraised value, so the digest is 40% of the total value of property in the county. Last year’s digest was $950.6 million. This year’s is almost $1.08 billion, he said.

But this year’s digest is still subject to change, maybe by a lot.

Many of those commercial property owners have appealed their property’s new values, and those appeals haven’t been heard yet, Cannon said. If even half of the owners win their appeals, it would cut the digest dramatically.

“It’s pretty difficult for us to get a concrete figure with that many appeals still out there,” he said.

But the county can’t wait for everything to get sorted out. Commissioners have to set millage rates in September so the tax commissioner can mail property tax bills out on time. Tax payments will be due Dec. 10.

The county commission passed its budget in June, calling for about $22.7 million to operate for the fiscal year that started July 1. Of that, about $13.5 million comes from property tax, and the rest from a variety of other revenue, such as licensing fees, permits, court fines, etc.

The commission plans to set a millage rate Sept. 22 that, when applied to the digest, will result in property tax revenue of $13.5 million, Cannon said. It’s hard to figure that rate without knowing pretty accurately what the digest will be.

The goal of state property tax laws and regulations is that a government should take in the same property tax revenue as it did the previous year — or it must hold public hearings to explain to its constituents why it’s bringing in more and to receive their feedback.

With the current digest, Colquitt County would have to reduce this year’s millage rate by 2.6 mills to take in the same amount of money it received last year, Cannon said. But reducing millage by that much then having the digest shrink as a result of successful appeals would leave the county with less money than it needs to operate for the current fiscal year.

So commissioners are expected to split the difference. Cannon said the proposal under consideration is a reduction of a little more than 1 mill. 

“We feel pretty good about going back a mill,” Cannon said, “but any more than that is speculative.”

Since that is less than the “rollback rate” of 2.6 mills, the county must hold three public hearings on the “tax increase.” The hearings will be held 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, and 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, all in Room 201, the Commissioners Meeting Room, at the Courthouse Annex.

Cannon said he’ll provide commissioners with more information about the digest and tax calculations at the commission’s monthly meeting Tuesday. A work session will begin at 5 p.m. and the meeting itself at 7 p.m., both at the Courthouse Annex.