NAHUNTA — Brantley County’s Board of Education approved a tentative rollback rate of 15.136 for the 2026-27 millage rate during a called meeting Thursday morning.
While using the rollback number, the millage rate is higher than the 15.128 last year.
“Our millage rate doesn’t really affect the homeowner that much,” explained Blake Johns, Director of Finance and Federal Programs, to board members (Chairman) Mike Kersey, David Herrin, Kathy Hendrix, Teresa Lairsey, Teri Gibson and Superintendent Dr. Walker Todd during the September 17 meeting.
“It’s what their home is worth that affects them greater than what our millage is actually set at,” Johns continued. “That would just be 72 cents a year for the homeowner they would be saving if we held a 15.128. But in the grand scheme of things, the way the taxes work locally, we would lose out on about $8,000.
“Then with the equalization funding, that would be another $12,000 for a total of about $20,000 that we would not receive. It’s only saving a homeowner 72 cents on a $225,000 home.”
Herrin asked Johns why is the number just slightly higher at 15.136.
“There was a $232,000 net decrease in our existing and real personal property,” responded Johns. Because there was an overall decrease, they have to raise that millage up a little bit to get us to the same tax bill that we had in the previous year.”
Johns said the reassessment real personal property was $1.1 million, but exemptions reached $1.3 million creating an overall net digest of negative $232,000.
“Because of that, they have to roll up by 0.008 to give us the same exact amount of tax digest that we received in the previous year,” stated Johns. “So, the roll up is just because that net digest is negative.”
According to Johns, the rise in exemptions can be traced to more homestead exemptions and conservation exemptions.
“More folks over the past year have taken advantage of those exemptions,” Johns said. “People are just getting smarter. The more they take advantage of the exemptions, that rollback rate can increase over time.”
Johns said another reason for property assessment rises last year was the county was taxing out at just 30 percent instead of a 40 percent.
“The reason that happened is the sales ratio was at about 32, 33 percent,” he stated. “The state expects you should sit between 38 and 42 percent. When you start getting below that 38 mark, they (state officials) start kind of coming in and giving pressure on the assessors to get it back up.
“Those assessments went up. That’s why we saw a increase in our equalization this past year. We went from about $5.7 million to about $7.6 million. That’s almost a $2 million increase in our equalization funding because we got our sales ratio back in check.
“For every dollar we cut back locally, it’s another $1.62 the state gets. Dropping two mils triggers a loss of roughly $150,000 in equalization aid on top of our $99,400 that we would lose locally by cutting.” Johns gave an example of cutting two mills and four mils. A two mill reduction is about three teacher salaries and benefits while a four mill cut would eliminate six to seven teacher salaries and benefits.
“You can’t continue on that path forever,” said Johns. “That impacts classroom sizes and it impacts the resources those classrooms have access to. There’s 88-90 percent of our budget in salaries and benefits.
“Most of this money we are talking about goes to salaries and benefits for our classroom teachers, and parapros, custodians, bus drivers, and SNP (School Nutrition Program) employees and all that stuff. This just shows the value of a mill year over year.”
Hendrix made the motion to “tentatively accept the millage rate of 15.136 rollback millage rate proposed.” Lairsey gave the second. The motion unanimously passed.
Following the vote, board members entered into executive session to discuss personnel.
The board approved the recommendation of Dr. Todd to hire Corey Kaufman as SNP assistant at Nahunta Elementary School.
Board members also approved the athletic addendum for Bonnie Carter as Brantley County Middle School head coach for the girls’ 6th-7th grade basketball team.
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