Tuesday, July 23, 2024–8:17 p.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
The Floyd County Commission voted Tuesday to raise the millage rate, but the increase was less than what had been advertised.
The advertised rate for county maintenance and operations was 9.414 mills.
However, Commissioner Scotty Hancock made the motion to set the property tax rate at 9.164 mills.
In 2023, the county cut the rate from 9.414 to 8.6 mills.
“I thought we could find ways to cut the budget, and we did,” Hancock said. “We either froze or cut 30 positions to the tune of up to $900,000. When I hear people say we need to cut the budget, we’ve worked hard and our administrative team has worked hard to do that.”
According to Hancock, the need for an increase in salaries for law enforcement also played into his decision.
“At the last meeting I was provided information from a public safety study and it showed that our police officers are getting paid an average of $43,000 a year,” he said. “The average in our 16 county area is about $47,000. The City of Rome is going up to $52,000 in September. Mandate training is being extended to 20 weeks, so you are only going to be able to run two classes a year. That’s going to cause a problem because instead of people going to mandate, they are just going to pluck our officers out of here.”
The vote to raise the tax rate was not unanimous with Commissioners Wright Bagby and Larry Maxey voting “no.”
County Commissioner Rhonda Wallace voted in favor.
“With us increasing this year, we are still less than we were in 2022,” she said. “We’ve made sacrifices, we’ve cut positions, and I feel like we’ve done our due diligence.”
In addition to the M&O rate of 9.164, the commission set the fire protection rate at 1.65 and solid waste at 0.656.
The Floyd County Board of Education has set their millage rate at 17.141 mills.