Because the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners proposes a millage-rate reduction but not a full rollback to the official “rollback rate,” the board was legally required to hold three public hearings for a tax increase. The first two were held Tuesday, Aug. 11, but the last will be held at 8:30 a.m. next Tuesday, Aug. 18.

Like the first two, that hearing will occur in the commissioners’ meeting room at the North Main Annex, 115 North Main Street. Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. is also the start time of the regular meeting in which commissioners may take a final vote to set the millage.

In keeping with their fiscal year 2027 budget, already in effect from July 1, the county manager and elected commissioners proposed a reduction in the rate for the county government portion of property taxes from last year’s 11.35 mills to a new rate of 10.26 mills.

However, the separate, appointed Board of Tax Assessors’ staff had determined that a “rollback rate” of 9.485 mills would be needed to fully offset inflation in assessed real estate values as reflected in the tax digest.

The 0.775-mill difference between the proposed rate and the full rollback rate results in a projected 8.17% tax increase, as seen in “notice of property tax increase” ads the county placed in the Statesboro Herald. But that is a projection of the overall, average increase, and actual increases may vary among property types and locations.

Not offset by FLOST

Elements of Chairman David Bennett’s presentation on the millage rate during the 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 11 hearings attempted to relate the property tax increase information to the county’s use of revenue from the new Floating Local Option Sales Tax, or FLOST, to also fund the budget.

For example, one slide in the presentation showed a fiscal year 2027 “net digest” (total value of taxable property) of more than $4.22 billion and, in that column, a “proposed county millage rate” of 11.826 mills. “This does not include adjustment for FLOST,” the slide stated.

However, as noted earlier in this story and advertised in the county’s Aug. 6 notice, published in the Herald as the county legal organ, the Board of Commissioners’ proposed millage rate, here in calendar year 2026 and applied to the FY 2027 budget, is 10.26 mills, not 11.826. One of the hearing presentation slides referred to 10.26 mills as the “potential 2026 tax levy,” but it is, in fact, the commissioners’ legally advertised, proposed property tax rate.

By the acronym “TABOR,” Bennett and the slideshow referred to the Georgia Taxpayers Bill of Rights, the 1999 state law that requires a series of three tax increase hearings in the absence of a rollback that fully compensates for inflation in assessed property values.

“FLOST provides an offset of property taxes that is not considered in TABOR,” stated one of the slides, beside a photo of two silos labeled “TABOR” and “FLOST.”

Whatever that may mean, the $6.6 million revenue the county received from the first five months of FLOST was already factored into the county’s current (July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2027) budget, as reported while the budget was being developed. That’s why the county’s proposed property tax millage rate is 10.26 mills and not higher.

Lack of rollback

But again, the 8.17% tax increase is the difference between the 10.26 rate the county government has proposed and the 9.485 mills rate it would have needed to adopt to avoid holding tax increase hearings and, theoretically at least, fully counteract an inflationary rise in taxes.

During the 6 p.m. hearing, Bennett also referred to the Taxpayers Bill of Rights as being intended to protect taxpayers from increases that are “either indirectly caused by inflation or the community growing, just having growth there that then increases the tax digest.”

However, the Georgia TABOR law differentiates between inflation and real growth, basing the rollback requirement on “the total net assessed value added to the certified tax digest as a result of revaluation of existing real property that has not been improved since the previous tax digest year.”

So local governments are not required to roll back for all of their community’s real growth, such as new construction and owners’ improvement to their property, and the county may also receive some increased revenue from growth, in addition to the 8.17% uncompensated inflation.

Example impacts

A mill is $1 tax on each $1,000 of assessed property value, and most property in Georgia is assessed at 40% of its county-appraised “fair market value.”

The marginal levy of 0.775-mills above the full rollback rate would result in $100.13 additional tax on a home with a fair market value of $325,000 and the standard homestead exemption, or $93 additional tax on a non-homestead property with a $300,000 fair market value, according to examples given in the county notices.

The first two hearings were lightly attended. About 10 citizens, other than county officials but including media, attended the 11 a.m. hearing, where just one citizen signed up and spoke to the commissioners after Bennett’s presentation.

More citizens attended the 6 p.m. hearing, but only two signed up to speak, and a third spoke up after Bennett asked if there were any further public comments.

That the commissioners should further control spending or should have achieved a full rollback as a result of voters’ passage of the FLOST referendum were repeated themes from some of the citizen speakers.

The same five commissioners, including Bennett and four of the district commissioners, attended both of the Aug. 11 hearings. Commissioners Toby Conner and Timmy Rushing, whose terms end Dec. 31, did not attend.