Dodging a budgetary bullet, the City of Walthourville will soon set a rate for its first-ever property tax. The move comes after a new fire fee arrives on property owners’ water bills.
The city will hold three millage rate meetings at the Walthourville Fire Department over the next month. Two public meetings are scheduled for 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on March 14, with the final public meeting at 5 p.m. on March 22.
Previous town-hall-style millage rate meetings were not the official ones required to pass a millage rate. The council has not yet set the exact amount of the millage rate, which it said it would do after gathering more information.
Once the millage rate is passed into law, the county would be responsible for collecting it each year.
The city would not see any funds from the millage rate until 2025.
“We’re making sure we have all the information we need,” Mayor Sarah B. Hayes said at the Feb. 13 council meeting, adding, “We will know by Feb. 26.”
What’s a millage rate?
A mil, also spelled mill, is equivalent to $1 per $1,000 of a property’s value. It is smaller than a percentage rate (which would be equivalent to $1 per $100). For example, a 3-percent millage rate would equal $3 of tax per $1,000 of property value. If a property is worth $100,000 and the millage rate were 3 percent, that would equal an annual tax of $300 on that property.
But until the city can meet with the county tax commissioner, it’s not exactly sure how much that rate should be.
The council has to set a rate for taxation before it can advertise the meetings, according to city attorney Luke Moses.
“We can’t just say, ‘We’re advertising to determine whether or not we’re gonna implement a millage rate’ or ‘we’re going to implement a millage rate but we’re going to tell you the number at the end of the three meetings,” Moses said. “We have to determine what the millage rate is and include that in the advertisements that go in the paper.”
Under Georgia law, governing bodies have to give proper notice for all citizens. It legally must place an advertisement public notices in the Coastal Courier, the county’s legal organ. The legal organ is the publication contracted with that government to publish legal advertisements, at least 7 days before each hearing and the meeting where the final millage rate is adopted. The ad also has to be published on the city’s website, and the city also is required to issue a separate press release explaining the government’s intent to increase taxes. This gives the public fair warning of any possible changes to the taxes they might have to pay.
Fire fee starts in March
The council also voted to set the fire fee at $31.60, which will appear on the March water bill.
Although the council previously had voted to pass a budget based on collecting a $25 fire fee, and the actual cost was calculated at $26.33 for 12 months, the city had no way to collect the fee for January and February.
Instead it voted to spread two months’ worth of those fees across the remaining 10 months of this year, hence the higher $31.60 figure from March through December.
Every cent of the fire fee will go to the city’s fire department. The fire fee will end, city officials say, at the end of this year.
“The fire fee is not something that anyone looks forward to doing,” Hayes said, adding that the fee was necessary in order to keep the general fund “from being overtaxed.”
Councilman Mitchell Boston said, “I think that we need a fire fee in order to get through this year, because at this point, we passed a budget with the fire fee. And right now, with us not having a fire fee, we’re not in budget.”
He added, “I do think it should be more equitable. I don’t necessarily agree with just a flat rate across the spectrum to everybody, because different properties have different circumstances. Different square footage, different fire risk, everything. But I do acknowledge the fact that we need to do something — now.”
Boston noted that Fire Chief Nicolas Maxwell had looked at how Garden City had handled its fire fee, “and it seems like they have a template as to how we can implement it more equitable, I will say that. And I would like for us to explore that option.”
Garden City sets its fee by the square footage of each property and charges separate fees for buildings and land.
“I think we need some kind of fee,” Councilwoman Bridgette Kelly said. “I guess right now, a fire fee, and we did say it was just for the year of 2024. So for 2024, I am for the fire fee.”
Mayor Pro Tem Luciria Lovette said, “I’m not for it. The reason for that is because we’re gonna confuse the citizens by starting off with a fire fee, which is only for the fire department. And then next year, we’re gonna bring a millage rate. And we’re gonna impose that on the citizens. So I’m not in agreement with imposing both of those at the same time on the citizens.”
Kelly replied, “But when our millage rate comes into effect, we’re disregarding the fire fee. We’re going to discontinue the fire fee. Right?”
Councilman Robert Dodd explained, “We won’t start collecting until 2025. We’ll be paying on it in 2024. Because if you own a house, your escrow is gonna go up.”
File homestead exemption by April 1 to save money
For homeowners who do not have a mortgage, those taxes are not held in escrow for safekeeping. That means if your house is already paid for, you would need to budget for any property taxes well before they are due. Once the city sets the millage rate, homeowners can estimate what their taxes would be based on their home’s fair market value recorded at the Liberty County Tax Assessor’s office.
All homeowners who live in their own houses can file for homestead exemption with the county before April 1. That won’t eliminate the new city property tax, but it will cut expenses on, or in some cases wipe out, your other county property taxes. Seniors, people with disabilities, and veterans also may qualify for certain tax exemptions. You can call the Liberty C0unty Tax Assessor’s office at 912-876-3568 for help deciding which exemption to file for.
Dodd added that he thought the fire fee was a moot point because “the previous council approved a $25 fire fee. Now, however you guys did that, came up with that in the previous council, that’s already done. I think the question now is, how do we collect it?”
Boston added, “And every month that we don’t collect, that’s $65,000, roughly, that we are in the red.”
Kelly asked Lovette what alternatives she might propose to the fire fee.
“That is why I am pushing for a forensic audit to be done for the city of Walthourville,” Lovette said. “Y’all keep bucking it, but we need to find out what’s going on within the city with our funding,”
Boston said he did not support a forensic audit because he felt the issue was one of “more going out than what’s coming in.” Lovette asked why that was. Boston pointed to solid waste costs, which the city has not collected enough to cover. He said the city sent 241 tons to the landfill in January, which cost about $11,700, but that the city had only collected about $7,000 to pay that bill.
Dodd added that city departments like fire and police, are growing and that the city needs to pay its employes enough to keep them from looking for work in other cities.
According to Hayes, the city’s fire coverage area also has grown: “Allenhurst, they have over 800 homes out there right now, and they did not have that many [before].”
Maxwell said Walthourville’s current number of fire customers are based on the number of city water customers. Although Wathourville does provide water service to a few customers outside the city, Maxwell said the fire fee had to be adjusted because the city was not able to send bills out for January and February. Otherwise, the fire department would have to absorb two months’ worth of budget cuts, which would equal 16.6 percent of its budget for this year.
“The biggest thing we need is the [Liberty County] Tax Assessor’s office to come and tell us what the exact dollar amount is going to be, based on the number of residents in the city limits,” Maxwell told the council. “We can’t bill anybody in Liberty County. They’re in our fire district, but we can’t bill them for that.”
He added that Walthourville faces a situation that Garden City has with “the ones that aren’t getting the bill. It’s not that they’re not paying it. [Garden City] doesn’t have a way to get the bill to them….My suggestion for the City of Allenhurst is to do the same thing with them, set the [intergovernmental agreement] amount based upon what the fire fee would be if we did bill them for fire.”
Dodd said, “That would be their [city] council to do that.”
Hayes and Kelly pointed out that, while the fire fee is based on the number of people who have water connections with the city, other customers are on well water and have sewer-only connections with Walthourville. Each one of those connections represents another home or business in the city’s fire district.
Maxwell said the fire fee would go to “everybody that gets a bill from the City of Walthourville for water utility and sewage that live in the city limits. Those are the only people we can bill this fire fee to.”
Maxwell added that he did not suggest billing vacant land “that has no structure” on it, but Moses said he wasn’t sure those properties could be exempt.
“At $25, I don’t even see how we’re going to come up with $65,000 [per month],” Boston said.
Fire fee “not a perfect solution”
The county lists 1,492 parcels in the Walthourville tax district at last check, not all of which had homes on them. If each of those parcel owners were to pay the prorated 2024 fire fee from March through December ($26.33 x 10 months x 1,492 parcels), that would bring in about $392,843.60 to run the fire department this year.
That rough estimate does not include additional parcels in Allenhurst and any other places Walthourville might provide water or sewer services outside the city limits.
Complicating matters, Maxwell said, is that Walthourville does not collect regulatory fees for things like fire inspections, and he said that needs to change soon.
“A business today in the City of Walthourville got a cease and desist [notice] from DPH [Georgia Department of Public Health],” he said. “We can’t do anything to assist them because I don’t have an inspector.”
Maxwell told the council the fire fee was not “a perfect solution” to the budget issue.
“We could sit here and legitimately poke holes in the fire fee all day,” he said. “But the reason we decided to go forward with the fire fee is because the fire department is a tremendous expense. And in order to fund that, you have to have a revenue source — whether it be dedicated to fire only or not — we had to find a revenue source to continue to provide fire services….We’re not trying to sell a fire fee to residents for, ‘you’ve gotten a service all these years for free; now you’re gonna pay for it and get the same service.’ We’ve made tremendous strides at the fire department in the past 6 to 8 months. Those things cost money.”
Maxwell said that, if the city collects and uses the fire fee “prudently,” the fire department would improve its capabilities, which would lead to a better ISO fire safety rating and thus lower homeowners’ insurance rates.
Fire fee not optional
What if someone refuses to pay the fire fee? Maxwell said the city could bill that property owner for the actual cost of an incident at their home, which could run into the tens of thousands of dollars in some cases.
“What’s likely to happen if you do that, and your insurance becomes aware that you chose not to pay $26 a month, now you have a $50,000 invoice from the city, they’re probably gonna cancel your policy,” Maxwell explained. “And they’re probably not going to repair any of the damage that occurred. We’re still waiting to hear back from some of the insurance adjusters that live in the area whether or not homeowners can expect to see a rollback in their premiums that are directly tied to the fire fee.”
Dodd said of the fire fee, “I think if one pays, I think all should pay. Landowner or resident, you’re still paying property taxes here, so you should. It doesn’t matter. Prime example, on Griffin, if that catches on fire, there’s no structure there, but I live on Griffin, you’re expecting me to pay a fire fee…even if you don’t have a structure and you own land there, you should pay.”
Maxwell explained that the city fire department would respond to medical calls and put out structure fires and small grass fires, but that EMS runs medical calls and a major brush fire would be handled by Georgia Forestry firefighters.
“We’re trying to install a fee that will enhance the capabilities that only we provide,” he said. “No other fire department, no other entity is responding to a fire in a structure in the city of Walthourville, other than the Walthourville Fire Department and our neighbors that come to help us out.”
Councilman Patrick Underwood said he’d heard enough.
“I support the fire fee, and I really want to go ahead and do this, because it’s getting kind of aggravating to me, personally,” Underwood said. “Today’s probably my last day talking about this.” He suggested a flat $25 fee for the next 10 months. “It just keeps going on and on and on and on and on and on….As far as a forensic audit, I’m tired of talking about that, too.”
Kelly asked whether the city also planned to increase water rates this year. The mayor and council said that was a separate issue.
“I know we’re dealing with this but it’s going to be on our water bill,” Kelly said. “If we approve that $31 and then increase the rates in this same year? That’s gonna be a lot.”
“Right now, we’re going to tackle this,” Hayes said. “We’ll get all our information together and come together as a group, then discuss the water bill, if that’s what we need to do. But right now, we need to go ahead and vote on this $31.60.”
New computers, better cybersecurity for City Hall
The reason Walthourville was unable to collect the fire fee in January and February was because its computer operating system is over a decade old. To fix that problem, the council voted to reallocate $25,000 that had been earmarked for a forensic audit of city finances to bring City Hall’s computers up to date.
Dodd asked whether the city’s billing system could support adding the fire fee to the water bill and how much that change would cost.
Moss said City Hall was running Windows 8 (which came out in 2012). She said the city’s software company told them the existing computers don’t have enough space to handle the additional billing: “It will not allow us to collect this fee. We were instructed to get quotes on new computers for City Hall,” which came to $25,500 for everyone in City Hall. “Mayor Hayes told us to get just one computer in City Hall, and one person work with the fire fee to collect.”
Hayes said, “We can’t afford the $25,000 right now, and we have one person doing billing, one person doing collections. We have to pay attention to what we have and don’t have. I’m just being honest. We can’t afford all those computers right now. What I said was, this month we buy one computer this month, and maybe a month later, two months later, we’ll buy another one. But we have to get busy.”
Moss replied, “I want to beg you all, please. I know we can get the one, but is there any way you all could give us two?”
“Tell them the price of that one,” Hayes said.
“That one computer is $1,650,” Moss told the council.
Boston said, “I don’t think that is a tall order, especially if we stop talking about this forensic audit that we put aside $25,000 for, that hasn’t happened, that’s not gonna happen, we can utilize those funds to purchase City Hall the computers they need to do their job.”
Underwood said, “I agree.”
Moses asked whether that would allow the city to collect the fire fees starting in March. Moss said that it would, and that it would cover replacement of all 10 computers in City Hall.
Boston moved to approve the $31.60 fire fee. Underwood seconded.
Boston reiterated that the city was in debt, and that a “no” vote on a way to get the city out of debt would be “asinine.”
No forensic audit for Walthourville
Dodd then moved to reallocate the $25,000 for the computers, then to pass the fire fee, because “There is no sense in implementing a fire fee if you can’t collect it.” Underwood seconded the motion. Boston, Dodd, and Underwood voted yes, Lovette voted no, and Kelly did not raise her hand, saying she was for the fire fee but against the reallocation. Asked whether her vote was no or an abstention, Kelly said, “No, abstain, whatever.” Hayes called again for the vote, which was again 3-1 with Kelly abstaining again. The motion passed.
Boston moved and Underwood seconded the $31.60 fire fee. Again, the vote was Underwood, Boston, and Dodd in favor, Lovette against, and Kelly abstaining.
“Abstention or not voting?” Moss asked.
“I’m not voting because I already said what I had to say about it,” Kelly said. “Can I ask a question? One computer was one thousand and something, she [Moss] said. So, 10 computers should be roughly 10, 12 thousand? Why do we need the whole 25 for computers? If one is a thousand.”
At a previous council meeting, Boston had pointed out that $25,000 would not be enough to pay for a forensic audit of the city’s books. Lovette has alleged that the city cannot account for all its funds from previous years.
Hayes and Moss said the total included software and security measures to help ward off ransomware attacks and other hacking of private and municipal information.