The Atlanta Board of Education wants to take advantage of rising property values to collect more tax dollars this year without increasing the district’s tax rate.
That means owners whose property values rose this year would see higher tax bills. Owners who did not see increases in value would not see an increase in the part of their tax bills going to APS.
Under state law, taxing entities including school districts must calculate a "rollback" tax rate that would produce the same total revenue that last year's tax rate would have produced had no property reassessments occurred.
If APS wants to set its rate higher than that rollback rate, it must go through certain steps to notify the public, including holding public hearings.
On Thursday, the school board will hold the two public hearings on the adoption of the new tax rate. The meetings will be held at 11:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Thursday at the APS Center for Learning & Leadership, 130 Trinity Ave. SW.
The board will heard a third public hearing on June 19 at 6 p.m. at the APS Center for Learning & Leadership. The board is scheduled to vote on the tax rate during its June 19 meeting at 7 p.m. at the same location.
The district’s rollback rate would be $21.09 per $1,000 of value. The district wants to set its tax rate at $21.64 per $1,000 of assessed value, the same as its current tax rate.
Taxes for a home valued at $100,000 would be approximately $6 higher under the proposed rate than under the rollback rate, an increase of about 3 percent. The proposed tax increase for non-homestead property valued at $300,000 would be approximately $66, also an increase of about 3 percent.
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