City Schools of Decatur’s Senior Homestead Exemption Commission will deliver an update and discussion on a potential new Senior Homestead Exemption during an Oct. 27 school board work session, 6:30 pm-8:30 pm. The virtual meeting can be accessed at https://csdecatur.zoom.us/j/91242530790.
In September the nine-person committee, meeting regularly since April, recommended two new exemptions from school taxes for seniors, one for residents 65-69 and another for those 70 and over.
But that recommendation, given to the school board which has the final vote on any exemption plan, lacked specific data, particularly a breakdown on how much each exemption will cost. The board has remained steadfast in not wanting the new exemption to cost more than $1.2 million, or at least $1.2 million not counting three other school-related exemptions that have come out of CSD’s general fund for years.
If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is.
Simply put, the most recent exemption, which took effect Jan. 2017, offers seniors 65 and over full exemption of all school taxes. But that exemption expires Dec. 31, 2021, meaning CSD needs its new exemption—the one the committee’s currently working on—passed by the 2021 legislature (it will ultimately have to pass voter scrutiny in Nov. 2021).
One thing for certain the new exemption won’t be as generous as the current one. By the end of this year it’s anticipated the current exemption costing CSD about $5 million more than originally anticipated.
“What I think we can give is a large needs-based exemption to those 70 and over,” said Committee Chair James Herndon, who’s also a school board member. “However, it won’t be a [total exemption is it currently stands for 65 and over]. For those 65 to 69 it will be strictly needs based. Bottom line, we want to protect our most vulnerable population.”
Herndon is somewhat vague because he and his committee are still waiting for more detailed metrics from Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School Center for State & Local Finance. He’s hoping those numbers are available for Tuesday’s work session.
“It’s kind of a two-step process,” said Superintendent David Dude. "The first step is getting the data [from Georgia State] on what are the costs involved for a specific exemption . . . It will help us understand where to set any values for, like, do we need income limitations, do we need a base value of exemption per homestead.
“The second step,” he added, “is gathering the stakeholder feedback from the tax payers within the city of Decatur to figure out their level of support for that.”
As mentioned, there are three other tax exemptions that come out of CSD’s budget, not counting the most recent 65 and over exemption. These all weirdly overlap: There are smaller exemptions for 62 and over and 70 and over, and a total exemption from all school taxes for those 80 and over and with a household income of $40,000 or less.
Those three, for which a resident has to apply for, are not expiring. The current exemption which expires at the end of next year, is automatically taken out of a resident’s tax bill when they turn 65.
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