Board of Mayor & Commissioners - Regular Meeting

All good? All right. Okay, this is, hello? This is the City of Avondale State's Board of Mayor Commissioners special call meeting. This is public hearing number one on the millage rate. It's June 23rd, 2026. It's 630. I'd like to call the meeting to order. We have an agenda before us. Do I have a motion to adopt? That was a lie. Do I have a second?

Second. Second. Does Mike Oliver say aye?

Aye. Okay. So this is millage rate hearing number one. We're here to basically hear from you, the public. We are going to have an overall limit of 45 minutes, three minutes per speaker. And when everyone has spoken, we'll just call it even if it's before 45 minutes. That covers it. Did you have any Okay. All right. I'm opening up the public hearing.

I'll go. Okay.

I like it. And just for the record, for whatever reason, name and address.

Emily Fish, 61 Wiltshire. Okay. So everybody up here ran on a platform of affordability and keeping this place a platform of affordability. So... Not very happy about that and keeping property taxes low. We both worked for the government staying here. You know, we hadn't had raises in three years. So that's where we're at. So I'm very against this. We are also getting several hundred new residences. Why? You know, you're getting a new tax base. You shouldn't be raising on that. Also, the city of Avondale means quit spending money on things that the citizens will do, like a really ugly new logo that costs $100,000. There are 3,000 residents who are here who, many of them are graphic designers and local artists who would have happily done that and saved the city $100,000. So there are ways for us to save money. So there are other things that you could do, like, raising prices on the renovation permit or different permitting that's going on in town. There are other ways, you know, that are optional for people that are citizens who do have more flexibility in their budgets to continue living here. I have seen at least two things in the historic neighborhood that need fines on them over the past couple of months. So maybe continuing code enforcement and imposing fines on citizens who are not getting their permits is also another method to increase your income. So,

what i would say okay thank you thank you thank you hi uh neil de cruz 538 stratford green um i'm also against this increase in millage um i understand You know, the economy is big and it's affecting everybody, including the city. Costs are up for the city as well. But my particular area, there's a lot of people on fixed income. Like it's not even about reducing their jobs or anything like that. It's there on fixed income. this property tax increase as our property values have been increasing will affect a lot of the residents in my neighborhood greatly. And then for everybody, like the previous speaker, hasn't gotten raises, their income doesn't necessarily come from stock revenue, They can't afford a small increase. I think it's estimated about 10.12% more. That's well above inflation. If there are downstream costs, we need to know about them. If there are things that the city needs the money for, we need to know about them. And because budgets are done well ahead of time, it's very hard to understand that as the average citizen. So I'm very much against this. I think it'll affect a lot of people, especially You know, there are a lot, Avondale added more people and different types of homes, different types of residents. And that's a good thing, but not all of them have the same access to income. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Just one point of clarification. Well, actually no, I'll pass.

I'll go.

Dustin Ducote, 61 Wiltshire Drive. I don't know too much about millage rates. So maybe some sort of education to understand what the reasoning is. I looked at the attachments and it wasn't in layman's terms for me, at least. So just an explanation might provide context on understanding millage. I know everything's going up, inflation. I know y'all also got to keep staff. That's a huge part because if the staff aren't getting raises, then you're not going to be able to keep them because they're also having increased costs. The one thing I'm concerned about, looking at the last five years of the military increase, That's a cumulative impact analysis, just kind of like doing an environmental assessment, basically. I'm just worried that's going to be a continuing trend for the next five years, and that's not sustainable for us to live here. That's it.

Well, thank you. I will clarify that. Okay. The millage rate has not gone up. The millage rate has actually gone down. Not last year, but we've lowered it, I believe, four times in the last 10 years. But if the value of the homes goes up, I mean, it can effectively raise your taxes. But that's why I wanted to clarify that before. If the millage rate stays the same and your house value goes up, your taxes will go up. So you'd have to lower the millage rate as values go up to maintain the same budget. So there's three variables.

Okay.

You know, the home, the collective home, well, the total tax digest, all the properties. There's the budget we adopt, which we adopted last year. Well, December 31st. And then there's the millage rate. we choose to apply to that to meet the budget or even go over the budget okay and you can go under the budget not a good idea but that happens sometimes but just the manager will be explaining all of that in greater detail tomorrow evening but That's the shortest version I can think of.

Yeah, so it's based on your home value. So if your house value stays the same, if the millage stays the same, say we vote for it for no increase in the millage, if your house value stays the same, your taxes do not go up.

Okay, so it fluctuates. It's not cumulative. Well, it is cumulative, yes.

The net effect can be cumulative. Yes.

Okay.

But if your house value goes down and it's all determined by the appraisals that the county does.

No one's house value is going down. I'm saying it. I'm saying it.

Well, some have actually. Yeah, there have been some. You can appeal and it goes down. If it does decrease, then your property taxes... would, in theory, go down. If your house value is appraised at a higher value, then even if the millage stays the same, your taxes can go up.

The residential values have gone up significantly in the past five years.

Now, are y'all affected if the county goes up?

Guys, we're not supposed to be. Well, it's pretty basic, but the digest generally goes up every year.

Okay.

And our costs go up every year. Insurance, salaries, cost of gas, cost of power, cost of everything goes up. So our budget will go up every year, usually. But we also have capital needs that we try to account for. But, yeah. So anyway, all right. Next person. Anyone online? If you'd like to raise your hand. The clerk can bring you into the conversation.

Can you hear me?

Okay. Yes, ma'am.

My name is Judy. I live at 2894. I guess my questions, maybe tomorrow's meeting would be. the cart before the horse to find out. But I did read that Tucker yesterday approved 2.9%. So Tucker has a brand new beautiful part. We have a beautiful part. What is Tucker doing that we cannot follow as far as a map? And understanding what this increase will do for us as a town in the next 24 months, I think would be very beneficial. And then I guess my third question is, is there any chance that this won't go through?

All I can say is we haven't voted on it yet.

Okay. So I guess my question is to encourage you all to super tuck with it because it's crazy, the difference and the disparity and basically the same, they're more commercial. Their value is one of them, tremendously, in a greater percentage than we have. We've always been more expensive than Tucker.

I think Tucker uses DeKalb Police for one thing. Is that right? That's right.

Tucker is not a full-service city. They lack several departments.

Well, and there's also other revenue sources that they have that we do not have. We rely primarily on property tax. We don't have a lot of hotels, gas stations, shopping centers, office parks, retail. We just – Tucker's a much bigger city with a much more diverse tax base, and they can draw from different revenue sources like hotel, motel tax.

Yeah, but is that an 8% difference?

It's very difficult in the state of Georgia to compare one city to the other because every city – may or may not purchase services from the county. They all have different geographic sizes, which affects things like franchise fees. They all have different tax bases. It's kind of the way Georgia is because cities in Georgia can pick and choose what they provide service-wise. So they still have to pay somebody to do it, but sometimes they pay the county, sometimes they do it themselves. I would say we're a little bit of a disadvantage because we're a small city. I think we could be 10 times our size and maybe have double the budget. It's just it's a scalar thing. We have to have a lot of police officers just to cover the bases. But we could cover all those bases with the same. We could cover a lot bigger geographic area with the same number of officers. It's just for this town to have three officers on duty at any given point or whatever they need. We have to have more officers per capita than a city much larger than we are. That's not a total excuse, but my point is it's very difficult to compare one city to the other. If there's another city in DeKalb County that's our size with our tax mix, that's a comparison.

And then I guess the other point was I also can echo what everyone else has said. There has been no raises. in my company for the last four years the other is as far as the health insurance our co-pays we had to stay flat and we had to pay more for health insurance and so i think those all need to come into the equation on what we're doing thank you thank you i would just like to say one thing about the digest is that

The 10% is really reassessment. We have grown almost 20% when you include growth. That's new construction. So if you look at us compared to other cities in DeKalb County, we have almost doubled the second closest as far as growth in our overall digest, including reassessments and new construction. So I think, you know, I understand y'all's concerns.

And we all do.

So tomorrow's going to be like just covering the military detail, like just going through a little bit of stuff.

Because we also have a regular meeting.

And a work session, right? We're going to discuss it at the work session, right? Okay. And you'll hear more about what we can. Okay.

Okay, I appreciate it. Still no one online. Okay. Okay. Any other comments from folks here tonight this evening? That's redundant. Going once. Going twice. All right. I would like to close the public hearing. And that is really it. Any comments up here?

Thanks to everybody coming out tonight. We appreciate y'all. This is the first of free stove meetings.

There will be another public hearing tomorrow night. Is the public hearing first? Okay, so that'll be at 5.30, and then we'll have our regular meeting, and then we'll have our work session, and there's a 10-minute break between those. And then the third hearing is June 30th at 6 o'clock, and then our final vote will be following that last hearing.

Did we not have the public hearing after we've had the work session so that people know what, you know, what we have to say about it before they make their comments?

I think it might. Sorry.

It's already advertised. It's advertised. All right. Motion to adjourn. That was Lida. Do I have a second? Second. That was Graham. All right. Again, thank you all for being here.

Thank you for holding all these meetings and inviting everyone.