The city may not be done talking about its ad valorem tax rate for Fiscal Year 2025.
Four council members confirmed they plan to discuss further lowering the tax rate at Thursday’s work session, after The Dispatch reported over the weekend that homeowners in the city could face a 21% increase in their property taxes next year. City officials invited Lowndes County Tax Assessor Greg Andrews to the work session, and he said he plans to attend.
“Hell yeah, we’ve got to revisit that,” Ward 4 Councilman Pierre Beard said Tuesday. “That’s a lot of money.”
The council last week adopted a FY 2025 millage rate of 118.5, which includes 53 mills for the city and 65.5 mills for the school district.
While that total rate is down 1.94 mills from the previous year — the city rate alone is dropping 1.11 mills — it will still generate an additional $600,000 for the city and $1 million more for CMSD.
Meanwhile, the county is looking at a 0.28-mill decrease that will still generate an additional $1.7 million for its coffers compared to the previous year.
Taken together, Andrews said, that spells a significant increase in property taxes for city residents because of higher appraisal values for structures.
A mill is used to measure real and personal property taxes. One mill typically generates $10 in taxes for every $100,000 in home value and $15 for every $100,000 of commercial property value.
For 2024, a Mississippi Department of Revenue reassessment raised home values an average of 18%, Andrews said. For example, the owner of a home valued at $100,000 last year paid $1,343 if they did not have a homestead exemption. That same home would be worth $118,000 this year and draw a likely tax bill of $1,627 unless rates are drawn down lower than currently projected.
Homeowners with a homestead exemption would see less of an increase in dollars, but their taxes would be up roughly the same percentage from last year’s bill.
Beard now supports lowering the city millage to 50.13, which would generate about the same amount of ad valorem revenue as this fiscal year.
That’s the position Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones held from the start, as he was the only vote opposing setting the millage at 53. His stance hasn’t changed.
“All I can say is we want to discuss all our options,” he said.
Jones also noted that, even as it stands, the city’s tax rate has the least impact of the three entities contributing to the tax increase for Columbus citizens.
“If the city (lowers its tax rate even further), I would challenge the county to do the same thing,” Jones said.
Logistical challenges
Changing the tax rate now may cause the city problems down the line. For one, it could push approval of the FY 2025 budget past the Sept. 15 statutory deadline.
The city is required to advertise the 53-mill proposal for two consecutive weeks and hold at least one public hearing before adopting that rate. If the council wants to change the rate, the city must restart that advertising process and hold another hearing, said Tom Chain, manager for the Technical Assistance Division of the state auditor’s office.
Once the council adopts the new millage, it must wait at least seven days before adopting the budget.
“They’ve got to do some squeezing if they want to get that done,” Chain said.
If the city doesn’t have a budget by Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year begins, city operations would effectively shut down until a budget was in place because it can’t legally spend unbudgeted money, Chain said.
If the budget is approved after Sept. 15 but before Oct. 1, the city would avoid a shutdown, but Chain said state law doesn’t spell out what the consequences would be. It would “almost certainly” be a written finding in the city’s audit for FY 2025, he said.
In any case, Chain said, the mill rate must be adopted by Sept. 15 to ensure the tax assessor can input the data for vehicle tags by the start of the new fiscal year.
Vice Mayor and Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens said if an audit finding is the worst consequence of having a late budget, he “can live with that.”
“I want all of us to put our heads together to see how we can move forward,” Mickens said. “But, for me, if we can save the citizens money, we may just need to lower (the tax rate).”
What to cut from the budget?
Jim Brigham, the city’s chief financial officer, said he believes the city could change the mill rate and still pass everything in time. He’s more concerned about what happens to the budget.
The city has already included raises that would increase the minimum full-time hourly wage to $15 for all 40-hour a week employees. It also includes 6% raises for hourly police officers and firefighters and 3% raises for everyone else.
In the draft budget, the city has more than $800,000 worth of outside appropriations — to organizations like the library, United Way, Chamber of Commerce and several others — and it still must grapple with almost $200,000 in increases to those requests. He believes cutting the millage further could put any or all of those appropriations in jeopardy.
Jones said he sees the planned raises as safe. The outside appropriations, not so much.
“We would definitely be looking not to increase any appropriations and to cut (the ones already in the budget) where possible,” he said.
He also would consider cutting three new positions now included in the FY 2025 budget draft — a city planner, public information officer/assistant to the chief operations officer and a part-time building inspector.
Ward 6 Councilwoman Jacqueline DiCicco confirmed her support for revisiting the tax rate in a text to The Dispatch. Neither Ethel Stewart nor Rusty Greene, who represent Ward 1 and 3, respectively, responded to calls or messages for comment by press time.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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