The Austell City Council is scheduled to vote next month on a property tax rate increase as the city deals with the same financial hardships as other jurisdictions, but also still slowly rebounds from a catastrophic flood event in 2009.
The tax hike is designed to help shore up the city’s finances that have seen revenue drops in its water system and tax collections, along with increases in its health care costs.
The rate increase — a 28 percent hike, from 3.12 mills to 4 mills — would mean the owner of a $100,000 home would pay about $35 more in property taxes. The rate hike already is assumed in the city’s fiscal 2013 budget that begins July 1, and the council approved the budget last week. That $5.72 million budget is about 6 percent less than last year’s budget.
“I don’t like taxes, never have, but we felt this was the only way this year,” said longtime Mayor Joe Jerkins. “Hopefully this is temporary.” It would be the first tax rate increase during Jerkins’ 23-year tenure, and Jerkins does not foresee any problems getting it approved.
Public hearings will be held before the millage vote, and thus far reaction to the likely increase has been mixed.
Lance Lamberton, president of the Cobb Taxpayers Association, has said the tax increase is unnecessary and that the city should cut its spending instead.
Like most cities and counties, Austell has felt the sting of the struggling economy, a depressed housing market and declining revenue.
Officials in Powder Springs, Austell’s neighbor to the north, have been hard hit by foreclosures, and are considering a budget that includes a few employee layoffs to balance its budget.
Acworth is considering a budget that is about 3.4 percent smaller than last year, reshuffles some county jobs to deal with lower property tax revenue and includes a sanitation rate increase.
But while struggling to fend off those financial difficulties, Austell also has dealt with a loss in residents and businesses that left town after the flooding of 2009. Before the floods, the city collected $605,000 in annual property taxes. By 2010, revenue fell to $489,000, and it dropped another $49,000 in 2011.
And the city’s main revenue source, the Austell Gas System, also saw a decline during the past year, with a mild winter contributing to more lost revenue for the city’s budget.
“We’re still kind of suffering from 2009, and there are a lot of things happening at once. It seems to be one thing after another,” said Denise Sosebee, the city’s finance manager. “I wouldn’t say we’re on the upswing.”
Jerkins has been at the helm of the city of about 6,500 residents for so long that one of the city’s main thoroughfares bears his name. He has become the face of Austell, acting as mayor and city manager handling most of the city’s business.
A retired business owner, Jerkins has prided himself on not raising property taxes during his tenure, as well as not laying off employees.
When he took office in 1990, he lowered the tax rate a half mill for 11 straight years. If finances improve, he hopes to lower the tax rate again.
“I always believed in providing residents with good services at a reasonable price, and I think I’ve done that,” he said. “We could have laid off employees and had no tax increase, but I didn’t think the small tax increase would hurt.”
But some residents are skeptical.
“I don’t understand the tax increase since our [home] values are so low. I think maybe they are trying to make the remaining taxpayers who didn’t leave after the flood make up for the ones who left,” said Deborah Cassidy, who has lived in the city since 1999.
As for the drop in gas system revenue, “that was Mother Nature. Why are they transferring those losses to taxpayers?” she asked.
But, despite any millage increase, Cassidy has been pleased with her city. She rebuilt her home that was destroyed after the flood, and is seeing a rise in her property value that had hit $45,000 a year ago.
“I love the small-town feel. When I first moved there, it was small and quaint, kind of like Mayberry R.F.D.,” she said. “I stayed here for that, and I will remain here. I think the city is turning around.”
AJC freelancer Carolyn Cunningham contributed to this article.
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