City of South Fulton officials told residents at a special called millage-rate public hearing that the city is proposing to keep its millage rate unchanged at 12.399 mills for the 2025 tax year. City Manager Sharon D. Subudan said at the hearing, “we are proposing no change in our millage rate.”

The hearing explained how the millage rate and taxable value are calculated and why many homeowners should not see an increase in the city portion of their tax bill in 2025. Chief Financial Officer Althea Filard Bradley described House Bill 581 and the city’s existing homestead exemptions: “House Bill 581... limits the annual increase in assessed value for homesteaded properties at the rate of inflation based on the consumer price index,” and, she said, South Fulton’s local homestead float has capped increases at the lower of 3% or CPI for several years.

Why it matters: the state law and the city’s local exemptions together will freeze many homesteaded properties’ assessed values for 2025, reducing the likelihood of higher city tax bills for owners who did not make major improvements. Bradley said that for the 2025 tax year more than 45,377 parcels claimed exemptions, representing about $2,600,000,000 in assessed value and an estimated release of roughly $32,300,000 in property-tax revenue.

City staff walked through the arithmetic used to translate market value into a city tax bill: assessed value is set at 40 percent of market (appraised) value, exemptions are subtracted from assessed value to determine taxable value, and the millage (dollars per $1,000 of taxable value) produces the city portion of the bill. Bradley gave a worked example of a $175,000 home: after the 40% assessment and a $30,000 local homestead exemption, the taxable value would be about $40,000; applying the current millage and the rollback rate produced an annual city tax difference of about $3.36 in the examples shown.

Officials also explained the rollback rate and why state advertising rules require the city to publish the measure as an increase even while the council proposes to hold the millage flat. Finance staff said the calculated rollback rate for 2025 is 12.315 mills; the city’s proposed rate remains 12.399 mills. Using the city’s stated net digest, staff estimated city property-tax revenue under the current millage at about $67,000,000 versus roughly $66,000,000 under the rollback-rate calculation — a difference staff estimated at approximately $455,000.

Council members and the finance director emphasized that the county, state and other jurisdictions separately set their rates and that South Fulton’s presentation addressed the city portion only. Bradley directed residents with questions about exemption eligibility to the Fulton County Tax Assessor’s Office and the county website for details on age-, income- and veteran-related exemptions.

No change in the millage rate was proposed at the hearing; council members said the public will have further opportunities to ask questions at later advertised meetings and that a fuller presentation on the related millage-rate cap question will be scheduled at a future council meeting.