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."
There will be a "significant" increase in property values in the near future, the statement from the board said, and setting aside the 2022 reassessment was done to give local leaders more time to find a way to reduce the impact.
Michael Brumlow, Board of Assessors chairman, and the other members of the panel could not be reached for comment.
"I'm really excited for our taxpayers, especially," Jensen said. "The full (property assessment) rollback will ensure everyone -- regardless of what your preliminary assessment earlier this summer looked like -- everyone will be able to pay the 2021 taxes."
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All the county entities that set property tax rates -- the city of Dalton, county school board and County Commission -- have gone "on record," Jensen said, that they will maintain the current millage rate. This assures Whitfield property taxpayers will pay what they paid in 2021, he said, unless they decide to lower the millage rate slightly.
The county will have its three legally required millage rate hearings in early October, after the amended property value assessments go out.
Jensen said he and state and county officials are working on a long-term fix: a cap on the percentage increase that would be allowed for a property value reassessment. The legislation first needs to be approved by the Georgia General Assembly, which begins its session in January, before it can be placed on the ballot in March.
The planned cap will only apply to homestead properties, so commercial real estate and investment homes won't qualify, Jensen said.
Immediately after the Board of Assessors approved the decision, Chief Appraiser Ashley O'Donald said he and his staff began going through the database and reversing values back to the 2021 levels. That task will likely be done by the end of the week, he said, and the amended assessment notices will most likely go out Oct. 1.
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He said in a phone interview that he's never heard of a county setting aside property value reassessments, but in 2017 there was a similar situation in Fulton County.
"The County Commission used a local statute that dated back to the late 1800s as their authority to go in and change assessments," O'Donald said. "That's a little different than the Board of Assessors making the decision themselves to amend the current year's assessments."
The Board of Assessors is an independent body, and O'Donald said he reports to them. He said he did not offer an opinion on the decision, and he and "the staff and are going to carry out the instructions of the Board of Assessors to the best of our ability," he said.
O'Donald said counties are required to send assessment notices to every taxable property every year and required to review properties every three years.
"There's no actual requirement (for) how often you're required to revalue property," he said. "We do look at all sales data every year and make decisions based on the current market."
Contact Andrew Wilkins at awilkins@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659. Follow him on Twitter @tweetatwilkins.