Columbus Municipal School District is not backing down from its ad valorem tax request from the city.
Mayor Keith Gaskin, along with other city officials, met with the Columbus Municipal School District leadership on Friday to push them to lower its tax request, even though it is within the legal limits for being approved with a referendum.
By law, a public school district requests funding from the taxing authority — in this case the city — which in turn levies the taxes to fund the request. City documents show CMSD is requesting $14,559,626 from local ad valorem taxes, which would raise its tax rate by 4.17 mills compared to this fiscal year. Of that, $11,401,430 is for operations. The remainder covers general obligated debt and a 3-mill note for capital improvements.
Columbus Chief Financial Officer James Brigham told The Dispatch Tuesday afternoon that while the meeting did happen, the district did not change its request.
“We met with Interim Superintendent Dennis Dupree and CFO Holly Rogers, and we wanted to see if they would back off some of the increases,” Brigham said. “They couldn’t do it. Some of their projects are front-ended, where you pay for it and then you get reimbursed. They can’t do it if they don’t have the money up front.”
Last week the city claimed the district was asking for a nearly 7-percent tax increase, which is the level at which it would have to go to a direct referendum before it could be approved. That turned out not to be the case, however, as the law applies to the district’s operational levy, not to its total levy.
District officials said last week that the operations levy is 4 percent, which is the maximum it is allowed to ask for by law without a referendum of some kind. Increases between 4 and 7 percent can be subject to a reverse referendum, while 7 percent and above go to a direct referendum.
City officials had also counted a $120,000 fee for collections against the district’s total levy. Since the city does not have its own tax assessor, it contracts those duties to the county. The city then passes $120,000 of that cost on to CMSD.
“(Tax Assessor Greg Andrews) asked me to add in $120,000 as a tax collection fee,” Brigham said.
While the $120,000 is part of the tax levy, it does not count towards the district’s operations request for purposes of the law.
The city also is readvertising its proposed tax levy after the original announcement contained incorrect information, according to City Attorney Jeff Turnage.
The city is required by state law to advertise whether it will increase taxes in the upcoming fiscal year, as well as explaining what form the increase, if any, will take. Those advertisements ran Aug. 18 and Aug. 25, but were wrong, Turnage said.
“The original ad that ran included only the city’s millage levy, and not the school district’s,” Turnage said. “It also said the city was going to pass a 1 mill (tax) increase, and that’s not correct, either.”
The ad was also originally published in the Columbus Packet, which is a weekly paper, Turnage said.
“To be technical, the statute says we have to publish it in a paper that publishes five days a week,” he said. “We’re going to redo it in (The Dispatch).”
When the city held its first budget hearing on Aug. 30, it presented a budget that included a 1-mill tax increase that was intended to help pay for an ambitious plan to give a 4-percent across-the-board raise, as well as lifting up the lowest paid workers to at least $12.50 an hour.
At its second budget hearing, held two days later, the council backed off of that 1-mill increase but still plans to give the raises.
The new ad will run today and Sept. 14. The council will hold a special meeting at 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 15 to set the tax levy and approve the budget, which is the deadline for the city to do so.
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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