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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCalled Commission Meeting July 13, 2009 CALLED MEETING COMMISSION CHAMBER July 13, 2009 Augusta Richmond County Commission convened at 11:45 a.m., Monday, July 13, 2009, the Honorable Deke Copenhaver, Mayor, presiding. PRESENT: Hons. Holland, Smith, Mason, Grantham, Beard, Johnson, Bowles and Brigham, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission. ABSENT: Hons. Jackson and Hatney, members of Augusta Richmond County Commission. Mayor Copenhaver called the meeting to order. Mayor Pro Tem Mason gave the invocation. The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America was recited. 1. Set the 2009 millage rate. Mr. Russell: We appreciate you indulging us in a special meeting today. As you know the millage process is driven by time frames and requirements for advertising and stuff. What we’ve got here in the initial page is a little budget and mill rate timelines to let you know where we are and why we are here today. As you remember in November you set a budget for this current fiscal year that sets a level of expenditures and identified revenue sources that support them. One component of the revenue stream is taxes. The amount of taxes to be collected is a simple mathematical equation. It’s the digest times the mill rate equals the amount of taxes collected. Unfortunately to formulate that, we have to make some assumptions at that particular point in time. We have to assume a number for the digest and we do not know that until later and we have to assume a millage rate that will help get us the amount of dollars we need to operate. On January 1our fiscal year began and we began operating under that current budget. The first week in July the digest totals arrived from our Chief Appraiser and are given to myself and the Finance Department. This gives us an opportunity to make adjustments and at that point it becomes assumptions versus reality. So we began looking at the assumptions we made in November and applying them to the reality of the situation we’re currently at at this particular point in time. At this point, the second week in July, we’ll be making a mill rate recommendation to the Commission. The Commission adopts a proposed mill rate at this particular point in time which the second proposed mill rate that you’ve adopted. The state mandates a two week approval process and begins with a required advertisement in the paper. We have a blank space awaiting us in the paper as we speak and we have to give them the information today that will move that blank space into an advertisement that you’ll see later. A minimum of two weeks after that advertisement which will be July 28 at 12:00 noon we meet again and adopt the final millage rate for the current fiscal year. In August the first week the Chief Appraiser presents the digest and mill rate to the state for approval and in August the Tax Commissioner will then prepare the tax bills to be mailed. September through November we begin collecting those taxes to operate the year that we’ve almost completed at that particular point in time. The tax fact sheet, which is page 2 of your handout, the state formula allows for roll back calculations is designed to limit the amount of increased tax collections due to reassessed valuations of the property. That’s the tax cap; it was adopted here and it’s mainly to keep us from taxing too much or getting too much money for government operations. In recent years when reassessments add value to the digest the current year’s computer rollback is typically less than the previous year’s levy and mill rate. In this particular case the value of reassessments causes the digest to decrease. The computer rollback is higher than that of the previous year. The taxing jurisdiction may adopt the computer rollback rate by holding one public hearing prior to its adoption by publishing the five-year history. If the computer rollback rate of the current year is greater than the previous year and the mill rate is not adjusted, the taxing jurisdiction may collect less tax revenue than in the prior year. If the higher rollback mill rate of the current year is not adopted and the digest increases the following year, the taxing jurisdiction may have to advertise an increase just to collect the same amount of taxes as the year before the decrease. So what we’re looking at at this particular point in time is trying to make sure we take care of two or three pieces of business. We need to do this today to take care of our budget for this year but we also need to be aware that the actions we take today will have some impact on what we do not only in November but next year this time. In this year the digest decreased by about 1.4% overall which if you look at the numbers nationwide, we’ve done pretty good I believe. But there was a decrease which puts us in a little bit different situation. Page 3 is the ad that will be in the paper and our job today is to fill in the columns at the bottom right side of that. The digest itself in 2008 was $5,106,000,000. It’s down to $5,088,000,000 at this particular point in time and that was about a 1.4% decrease. Page 4 is what we need to talk about today. The adopted 2008 millage rates are in the first column. When you do the rollback formula as prepared by the state, it gives you the numbers in the second column. The difference is the number in the third column. What this means is that we could go to the rollback rate in the second column without the state considering this a tax increase based on their formula. Let me assure you that your constituents would consider it a tax increase because they would have to pay more money. But according to the state formula we would not have to call this a tax increase. Page 5 tells you what this actually means to us. In the county general fund that difference if we adopt the 2008 number versus the rollback formula in column two, we would lost approximately $362,000. In the urban service district we would lose approximately $80,000, the capital outlay fund we would lose approximately $32, fire protection we’d lost approximately $51,000 and the Blythe fire district M and O we’d lose approximately $26. We have no county bonds nor any urban service bonds so those are not there. We also have the urban service districts 5 and 6 and if you look at the rollback at the bottom of that, countywide, if you went with the 2009 rollback rate it would be an increase of approximately $3.43 per $100,000 house. The urban rate would be an increase of about $5.85 per $100,000 house. We continue to do fairly well. Rough numbers from our audit show about a $13.6 million dollar (inaudible) in our fund balance for next year. Ten million of that will be replaced as soon as we bond those dollars for the Gilbert Manor program. $2.2 million of that are dollars that we did not receive in the proper time frame to take advantage of for the homeowners assistance grant when the state took that money away. We anticipated about a $5.2 million dollar hit when we looked at not raising taxes last year and we did not want to transfer that to our taxpayers. We’ve been able to recover a good portion of that by managing our dollars, tightening the belt and continue to be lucky in some things we’ve done. We benefited from lower gas prices and no increase in our healthcare. Based on all of that, it would be my recommendation that we continue using the proposed rate that we adopted in November which would be no increase on our taxes at this point in time. We’ve been able to do this well. Services have been impacted but not to the point that I think it has created a great deal of hardship on our citizens or our employees. So my recommendation would be that we accept my recommendation of the 2008 numbers as described on page 4, column 1 and advertise those and come back on July 28 to ratify that. It would be my recommendation that the motion would be to adopt the 2008 as on page 6. There is one change and that is the urban service bid district 5 in which the rollback rate would be 7.033 as opposed to the 7.250 that was proposed for 2009. Ms. Beard: So move. Mr. Johnson: Second. Motion carries 8-0. Mr. Grantham: Based on the tax notices you have sent out, what type of response have you received as far as people petitioning for a hearing as far as talking about rolling their taxes back? I’ve encountered a good bit of conversation in the last several months with properties reduced based on resale now. Will that affect us in the next six months and would it have some impact on Mr. Russell’s budget proposal? Mr. Hicks: I think it already has. The digest numbers incorporate a deflationary value estimate of approximately $53 million dollars. That covers about 12,000 notices that went out that had the effect of reducing the value of those properties or an average of about 15% on those properties. Mr. Brigham: I was looking at the mobile home digest and noticed that the 2009 total digest is less than the 2004 total digest and I was curious as to what was going on with that. Mr. Hicks: Essentially it continues to go down. The personal property component of that has depreciated and it will gradually go down. We also have a loss of the mobile home digest that has been picked up on the real property because on mobile homes, a person can elect that it be carried as real property by barring their title. Once that’s done, it’s no longer carried under the mobile home digest. We actually move it to the normal digest so you could conceivably have a reduction in that digest but you’re picking up part of that value as it’s placed on the real property. ADJOURNMENT: There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned. Lena J. Bonner Clerk of Commission nwm