Residents may voice their concerns on how the city’s proposed budget of $336 million now exceeds its projected income of just $322 million and will require $14 million from reserves while simultaneously garnering $10 million more in property taxes by contacting their respective city council members.
COLUMBUS, Ga. — City councilors have moved in unison to purposefully delay their votes on both the city’s proposed property tax increase and the city’s proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
The proposed budget is currently unbalanced and carries a deficit of nearly $14 million being drawn from the city’s reserves, all while the proposed property tax increase was projected to pick $10 million from the pockets of residents.
In a rare display of diligence and responsibility, city council members chose to not merely bend with the wind but to instead delay their votes on both items until the end of the month. The purposeful delay now allows councilors the absolute maximum amount of time to further research the topics and gain the insights needed to make what they believe will be the best decision for the city.
Whether those decisions will alleviate the tax burdens placed on residents has yet to be seen.
Should council choose not to roll back the property tax millage rate, thousands throughout the city will likely have their rents increased as a result of their landlord’s skyrocketing tax bills. Despite many landlords speaking at length during the three required public hearings held by city council on the topic, city council has yet to come to a consensus.
During the city council meeting held on June 20, city councilors probed department heads in a heated debate that revealed many admissions about how the city’s reassessment of property values were conducted.
When asked about the timeframe of when property values are assessed for current taxation, Chief Assessor Suzanne Widenhouse openly stated that the property assessments were based on market conditions from between one and three years ago.
To place that into context, this means that the value of properties used to calculate current tax bills are based on what properties were worth during the peak inflationary period of the pandemic. Those heavily-inflated property values are now being used to create so-called property valuations based on extreme market conditions that no longer exist. As a result, property owners have now received highly-inflated property valuation notices from the Tax Assessor’s office during the exact opposite market conditions during the onset of a recession; they are being forced to pay taxes on the booming values of two years ago even though they are now in the worst economic conditions this country has seen since the great depression.
As a result, those property owners will have no choice but to pass that tax increase along to their tenants, resulting in steep increases in rent — all because the Tax Assessor’s office decided to assess the value of properties from two years ago during the peak of the pandemic’s inflated market.
City councilors were not happy with that response.
Councilors also pointed out that the proposed millage rate was being placed before them for a vote after the council’s Budget Review Committee had already prepared the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Conveniently, the city manager’s office has placed councilors in a pickle by doing so, since voting to roll back the property tax rate would in fact undue the budget they have already derived; the city would see a decrease in its projected revenue from no longer having the additional $10 million that the property tax increase would bring in.
When push came to shove during the council meeting on June 20 — in what was truly a rare sight to be seen — city councilors moved in lock-stepped unison to very diligently delay their votes on both the property tax increase and the city’s proposed budget.
Councilors are now expected to vote on both items during the upcoming city council meeting on Tuesday, June 27 at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Should council not approve a budget for the upcoming fiscal year before June 30, the City Charter dictates that the previous-year’s budgetary spending plan will become the de facto budget on a month-to-month basis until council approves an operating budget for the new fiscal year.
The 2024 fiscal year begins on July 1, 2023.
THE PROPERTY TAX INCREASE
The Muscogee County property tax increase seeks to bring in an additional $10 million in potential revenue for the city, despite the millage rate remaining the same.
The additional revenue is projected to be generated from the alleged ‘reassessment’ of taxable properties in the county, though there has been much controversy surrounding the methodologies used to conduct the reassessments.
Some residents have been slammed with their properties jumping in value by as much as 300%.
When the total value of all taxable property in the county increases — known as an increase in the tax digest — Georgia state law requires municipalities to calculate what is known as a rollback millage rate.
The rollback rate is the lower tax rate that the county could use to produce the same tax revenue as the year before, since property values have now increased. In short: more valuable property, lower tax rate, same revenue.
Instead, the Columbus Consolidated Government is seeking to keep the property tax millage rate just as high as it’s ever been, which would cause the allegedly ‘more valuable’ property to generate more tax revenue — even though the millage rate hasn’t increased. This year, that revenue is projected to be around $10 million from the pockets of local residents.
As a result of the tremendous increases in the alleged ‘fair market values’ of many properties throughout the city, landlords have seen increases in their tax bills in the tens of thousands of dollars per property.
If city council chooses to keep the millage rate high instead of rolling it back to the lower rollback rate, the increased tax bills will result in higher rents for tenants.
THE UNBALANCED BUDGET
Prior to hearings held by city council throughout the month of May, the city had planned to bring in an estimated $322 million in revenue. With a budgetary need of $332 million, that number alone left a deficit of roughly $10 million that the city planned to pull from its reserves to fund the upcoming fiscal year.
Now, after adding additional funding for things like pickleball courts and video games — which by themselves will cost taxpayers $1.8 million from the city’s reserve funds — the total budget proposal from the city now sits at a staggeringly-high total of $336 million.
That’s $14 million more than it projects to bring in.
For context: this is the same exact thing as a household planning to spend — on purpose — nearly 5% more than its total household income.
Each year, the city manager’s office is responsible for preparing a diligent budget capable of responsibly managing the city’s revenue vs. its expenses. Traditionally, though not legally required, the mayor works closely with the city manager to prepare that budget — though it is the city manager’s sole responsibility to prepare and manage it; hence the name city manager.
When the city’s original budget was presented to the Budget Review Committee by finance director Angelica Alexander on May 2 of this year, the city manager’s budget proposal projected the following deficit to already exist:
- Revenues: $322,297,849
- Expenditures: $332, 818,834
- Use of Fund Balance: $10,520,985
As shown above — from the very beginning — the city manager had purposefully planned to spend roughly $10.5 million more than what the city planned to bring in.
On May 16, city council members voted for additional items to be added to the budget through what is known as the “add/delete list,” which is a mechanism through which city departments can request additional funds directly from city council. Through that process, city officials added another $1.5 million to the already-bloated budget to provide our city’s law enforcement, courts, and district attorney with the funds they need to fight the city’s outrageously-unmanageable rise in crime.
These additional crime-fighting funds brought the city’s budget to an even higher total of $334 million.
Despite his own incompetent budget proposal that guzzled $10.5 million from the city’s reserves, Hugley would go on to scold city council for approving funds for our city’s law enforcement, courts, and district attorney — all while his own projected budget failed to appropriate those funds to address the city’s rampant crime in the first place.
After the city’s add/delete list process was already complete and finalized on May 16, city council decided to add millions more to the already-bloated budget.
During the recent city council meeting on June 13, council members voted for and approved an additional $1.8 million to be added to the budget for — and we couldn’t make this up if we tried — pickleball courts and video game systems.
The city’s enormous budget now sits at a total of roughly $336 million, which is $14 million more than its projected revenue.
With precision, the Columbus Consolidated Government’s current FY2024 Budget Proposal is as follows:
- Revenues: $322,297,849
- Expenditures: $336,183,384
- General Fund Reserve Days: 69.05
- OLOST Reserve Days: 40.70
- Total Reserve Days: 109.75
- General Fund Reserve Usage: $9,176,580
- Total Reserve Usage: $13,885,336
Don’t forget that this is all occurring while the city just-so-happened to ‘find’ property reassessments that magically are projected to bring in $10 million more from your pockets.
What a coincidence.
Residents may voice their concerns on how the city’s proposed budget of $336 million now exceeds its projected income of just $322 million and will require $14 million from reserves while simultaneously garnering $10 million more in property taxes by contacting their respective city council members.
Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.
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