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ZEBULON - The Pike County Board of Commissioners met on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 in a regularly scheduled meeting in the main courtroom of the Pike County Courthouse. There was standing room only as citizens came to participate in the final public hearing to decide the county’s millage rate.

Commissioners listened to citizens express concerns about a possible raise to the millage rate which would affect the amount of taxes that they would have to pay as well as hearing complaints about assessments to homes that have gone up by large amounts including one person who said that his property assessment has gone up $200,000 in three years. Other concerns included the 238 acre property bought by the county and the cost of impact fees.

After close to an hour of comments from everyone in the audience who wanted to speak, the commissioners discussed their choices and took a vote. The Board of Commissioners made three separate votes regarding taxes and millage rates.

Options for the County Millage Rate

Options were put together for commissioners to consider when looking at the budget for the county and choosing a millage rate. The links below give details which will be partially summarized here. Some terms that need to be defined will be pulled directly from the 2025 Millage Rate Information Sheet that is linked below and contains information given to commissioners prior to their decision on the millage rate.

“ROLLBACK RATE. The Rollback Rate is the levy that it would take to produce the same amount of general fund revenue that was in last year’s approved budget for FY2024/2025. The Rollback Rate does not reflect the amount of levy that it will take to raise the general fund revenue needed to meet the expenses of the approved budget for FY2025/2026.

CURRENT MILLAGE RATE. The Current Millage Rate is 9.639, which was set in 2024 in connection with last year’s budget. Accordingly, there may be some misunderstanding related to the setting of the Millage Rate for 2025 and the difference between the suggested Rollback Rate and the difference between the current Millage Rate. For clarification purposes, we are providing information related to both: the difference between the suggested Millage Rate for 2025 and the current Millage Rate of 9.639; and, the difference between the suggested Millage Rate for 2025 and the suggested Rollback Rate of 8.94.

MILLAGE RATE SUMMARY SHEET, ROLLBACK RATE CHART, AND OPTIONS 1-6. We are providing a FY 2025-2026 Budget Summary Sheet that identifies the amount of the budget general property tax revenue, that impact of adopting the Rollback Rate of 8.94 versus maintaining the current Millage of 9.639, or increasing the Millage Rate to 11.064, which is the rate needed to meet the budget expenditures with no budget cuts as well as eliminating the shortfall to the required fund balance.

FUND BALANCE. As stated above, our financial policies require that we maintain a three-month minimum fund balance, which is currently estimated at $4,260,735.00. As also indicated above, the FY 2024/2025 Budget was approved in May 2024 with the use of $1,500,000.00 in fund balance toward the general revenues to offset the approved expenditures. As we discussed during this year’s budget process, the use of fund balance to fund the budget should not be done except in emergencies or when there is sufficient fund balance to justify the use without causing a shortfall. Based on the prudent use of ARPA funds and other budgetary constraints and actions, we were able to reduce the amount of fund balance from the $1,500,00 budgets amount to a projected $350,000.00, which has greatly reduced the potential shortfall in our fund balance. Section any of the Options 2-4 will have a negative effect on our fund balance, potentially causing an increase in the current fund balance shortfall.” (Link is below.)

The total budgeted county property tax revenue is $10,649.035. Potential increases of revenue for the county include the sale of Public Works Paving Equipment which could bring in an estimated $500,000. Suggested expenditure cuts include the possibility of cutting contingency by $100,000, cutting part of the Public Works’ maintenance and repair of roads line item, a hiring freeze including salary and benefits, cutting part of the request for Sheriff’s Patrol Cars this year, and use of the fund balance which is already below the three month minimum for running the county.

Please note that none of those options are written in stone can be changed by the Board as they choose. Last year, the county was able to use its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for some budget items in order to keep the millage rate at 9.6390, but those funds are encumbered and have to be used according to specific guidelines. ARPA funds were used as a stimulus for recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The suggestions made by staff in the 2025 Millage Rate Information Sheet are as follows and were changed from the original meeting package.

“…We are recommending your consideration of three (3) options, which are listed in preferential order as follows: Option 1, the setting of a 11.064 Millage Rate that will result in sufficient revenues to meet all budget expenditures without budget cuts and will also eliminate the shortfall in our required fund balance (a three-month threshold-which would be approximately ($4,260,735); Option 5, the setting of a 10.639 Millage Rate that will result in sufficient revenues to meet all budget expenditures without budget cuts, provides for the sale of paving equipment, and provides for a net increase in fund balance by $106,123.00 which does not eliminate the short fall from the required three-month fund balance threshold, but does start reducing the shortfall; and Option 6, the setting of a 10.520 Millage Rate that will result in sufficient revenues to meet the budget expenditures without budget cuts but will not change the shortfall in the fund balance. In short, the recommended priority is Option 1, then Option 5, and at a minimum Option 6.”

The votes can be read in the next section of this article.

Here is additional information for those who want to dig into it.

Click here to read the 2025 Millage Rate Information Sheet:
pikecountytimes.com/secondary/2025_MILLAGE_RATE_INFORMATION.pdf

Click here to read the 6 Budget Options that were presented to commissioners:
pikecountytimes.com/secondary/_Mill_Rate_Presentation_Summary_Sheet_and_Options_1-6.pdf

Every dollar of that amount including revenues and expeditures is given in the 2025-2026 adopted budget that can be viewed by clicking here:
www.pikecoga.com/uploads/1/3/3/6/133643513/final_adopted_06112025_--_2025-2026_approved_budget.pdf

More information about the county's finances can be found at:
www.pikecoga.com/resources.html

The Georgia Department of Revenue has the millage rates for each taxing jurisdiction from 2019 through 2024 online at:
dor.georgia.gov/local-government-services/digest-compliance/property-tax-millage-rates

Voting on the Millage Rate

The vote on the millage rate was broken up into 3 individual votes.

First was the vote on funding the Development Authority that was brought about by a 2023 Resolution to allocate up to one mill per dollar through the state legislature. Last year, they were given .25 mill. OCGA 48-5-220 (20) allows the county to “provide for financial assistance to county or joint county and municipal development authorities for the purpose of developing trade.”

Commissioners Ken Pullin and Tim Guy made the motion and gave the second to reduce funding from .25 mill to 0 mill. The ending vote was 3-2 to not fund .25 mill for the Development Authority with commissioners James Jenkins, Ken Pullin, and Tim Guy supporting this measure with Commissioner Tim Daniel and Chairman Briar Johnson opposed.

The second vote was on the Board of Education’s millage rate. The Pike County Board of Education held their final public hearing and a regular meeting on August 20 in which a vote was taken on the budget and setting the millage rate for the school portion of our county taxes at 13.5 mills. This is a 9.05% increase from last year.

Pike County Times did a FB Live of the first public hearing for the school system that is written up here: pikecountytimes.com/secondary/BOE8.13.25.htm The video is on the Pike County Times FB page at this time.

The vote and some of the discussion was as follows. Commissioners Jenkins and Guy made the motion and gave the second to not approve the school’s millage rate after a discussion that included a warning to commissioners that this was just a procedural vote that was required by the state. The ending vote was 3-2 with Chairman Briar Johnson and Commissioner Tim Daniel opposed. More on this in the closing of this article.

The final vote was on the county millage rate. There was a lot of discussion after the motion and the second by Pullin and Jenkins about having public hearings for budgets for more transparency to the public, possibly removing members of the Tax Assessor Board or even replacing the entire Board in order to get better oversight on the Tax Assessor’s Office, and Jenkins passing along information to the public that legislators are going to be addressing issues with tax documents that are sent out to citizens regarding their assessments during the next legislative session.

Commissioners voted to go back to the rollback rate of 8.944 which is not an increase in the millage rate but is a net tax increase of 4.50%. The vote was 4-1 with Chairman Johnson opposed.

Closing

GA Code § 48-5-32 (d) begins, “The commissioner shall not accept for review the digest of any county which does not submit simultaneously a copy of such published reports for the county governing authority and the county board of education with such digest…” This is an issue that will be need to be dealt with at a special called meeting that is already scheduled because the rest of the requirements in this section of law have been met. law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-48/chapter-5/article-1/section-48-5-32/

The Board of Commissioners is holding a Special Called Meeting on Friday, August 29, 2025 at 9 a.m. in the Pike County Courthouse in Courtroom 2 (the small courtroom on the other side of the main courtroom down a small hallway) to hold a “discussion of the receipt and transmittal of the Pike County Board of Education millage rates, and authorization for the Chairman to sign the related documents.”

The digest is due by September 1 which is a federal holiday that gives Pike County’s Tax Commissioner until Tuesday, September 2 to transmit both the county’s portion of the millage rate along with the school millage rate after it is approved for transmission.

The public is invited to attend this public meeting. It will be broadcast live by Facebook Live on Pike County Times’ Facebook.

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