By Valerie Baldowski
vbaldowski@henryherald.com

McDonough property owners will be spared from any millage-rate hike for another year.

The McDonough City Council voted Wednesday to maintain the city’s millage rate of 3.45 mills. The vote came during a special called meeting. On hand to answer questions, was Henry County Tax Commissioner David Curry.

The council members had the option of setting the millage rate as high as 3.944 mills, but chose, instead, to avoid a tax hike, Curry said after the meeting. Even if the city had voted to raise the millage rate, the drop in property values could have resulted in a lower property tax bill than the previous year, he said.

“It’s called a rollback millage rate, because typically, year after year, your [property] values increase,” said Curry. “Your house might be worth $100,000 this year; next year, it’s worth $125,000. The past couple of years … the values have declined.

“Typically, your values go up, so to generate the same amount of revenue year in, year out, you would roll back your millage rate to produce the same amount of money,” he continued.

However, the rollback was reversed this year, said Curry. “This year, since the values went down … the computation used to formulate the new millage rate allowed for the city to raise [its] millage rate to 3.944, producing the same amount of tax revenue as McDonough did last year.”

Curry said the council’s decision to avoid a millage hike means less revenue coming in from property taxes. To make up the difference, he said, the city will continue to look at its budget and make cuts where it can.

The city’s tax digest for the fiscal year 2011 is smaller than the current year’s digest, said McDonough City Administrator Billy Beckett. “Neither the rollback rate, nor the current rate constitute a tax increase, due to the 12.5 percent overall decline in the digest,” Beckett said. “The amount we will collect this year is predicated on a net digest value of $724,176,422, down from last year's digest of $822,191,965.”

The amount of decrease in values varied from property to property, he said.

“...The 12.5 percent digest reduction is not, and cannot be, equally applied,” continued Beckett. “Some properties likely remained stable, some may have increased in value, and some may have declined even more than 12.5 percent. Nonetheless, for purposes of this calculation, I have used the 12.5 percent overall digest decline.”

McDonough will begin its 2011 fiscal year on Dec. 31, said Beckett.