In a decision that may be unprecedented in Georgia government, the Whitfield County Board of Assessors voted unanimously Tuesday to “set aside” 2022 property reassessments, returning properties to their 2021 values.
Whitfield County property reassessments, sent out in July, had a 22% average increase. The County Commission has the ability to roll back millage rates to reduce the impact of increased values on property taxes, but that mechanism can’t account for the wide variety of property tax value increases or the gap between tremendous growth in housing and other properties.
“Whitfield County has so much commercial and industrial property on our digest, and that doesn’t grow at nearly as fast a rate as homes were growing, so it just throws the formula and the math off,” Jevin Jensen, chair of the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners, said in a phone interview. “So there would be no way mathematically for us to roll back everybody that got the 30 or 40 percent increases.”
A Whitfield County media statement, quoted from a letter to taxpayers from the Board of Assessors that will be sent out this week, said that “it’s appropriate and imperative to take action to lessen the impact of … dramatic increases in cost of living.”