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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes - CC - 08/09/2021 - Special Called MeetingSpecial Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 1 of 11 CALL TO ORDER Mayor PT Jamison: I would like to call the special called meeting of the Milton City Council for Monday, August 0, 2021 to order. If the City Clerk will please call roll and make general announcements. ROLL CALL City Clerk: Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. I will be happy to call roll for the August 9th, 2021 special called meeting. I would like to remind those in attendance to please silence all cellphones at this time. Those attending the meeting who would like to make a public comment, you are required to complete a public comment card prior to speaking on the item. Your comment card must be presented to the City Clerk prior to the agenda item being called. All speakers, please identify yourself by name, address and organization before beginning your comment. If you are representing an organization, an affidavit is required stating you have the authority to speak on behalf of that organization. Please review tonight's agenda and if you would like to make a comment, please bring your comment card to me now. Demonstration of any sort within the chamber is prohibited. Please refrain from any applause, cheering, booing, outburst or dialogue with any person speaking. Anyone in violation will be asked to leave. As I call roll this evening, please confirm your attendance. Mayor Pro Tem Jamison. Mayor PT Jamison: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Paul Moore. Mr. Moore: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Bentley. Ms. Bentley: Here. City Clerk: Councilmember Cookerly. Ms. Cookerly: Here. City Clerk: And Councilmember Longoria. Mr. Longoria: Here. 1 1 1 Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 2 of 11 City Clerk: For the record, Mayor Lockwood and Councilmember Mohrig are absent. Would everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Mayor: Mayor Joe Lockwood was absent. Councilmembers Present: Mayor Pro Tem Peyton Jamison, Councilmember Paul Moore, Councilmember Laura Bentley, Councilmember Carol Cookerly, and Councilmember Joe Longoria. Councilmember(s) Absent: Councilmember Rick Mohrig PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE City Clerk: Would everyone please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Chamber: I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. APPROVAL OF MEETING AGENDA Mayor PT Jamison: Will the City Clerk please sound the next item. City Clerk: That next item is Approval of Meeting Agenda, Agenda Item No. 21-232. Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, is there a motion? (inaudible) Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, I have a motion from Councilmember Bentley with a second from Councilmember Moore. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. PUBLIC COMMENT Mayor PT Jamison: Opposed? Okay, that's unanimous. The next item is Public Comment. Do we have any Public Comment? City Clerk: We do on an item going forward, but not on General. Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 3 of 11 Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, so nothing on General. Okay. So I'll waive the reading of the rules cause there is no Public Comment. And I'll move onto our Consent Agenda. Will the City Clerk please sound the items. City Clerk: Mayor Pro Tem, that item is Approval of a Professional Services Agreement between the City of Milton and Ridgeline Realty Services, LLC for Greenspace and Park Land Acquisition. It's Agenda Item No. 21-233. Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, I'll open it for a motion. (inaudible) Ms. Bentley: the Consent Agenda. Mr. Moore: Second. Mayor PT Jamison: All right, I have a motion from Councilmember Bentley and a second from Councilmember Moore. If's there's any discussion? (inaudible) say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. PUBLIC HEARING Mayor PT Jamison: Opposed. That's unanimous. Okay, so there's no Reports and Presentations. Moving on to the Public Hearing. Will the City Clerk please sound the item. City Clerk: It's Consideration of an Ordinance of the Mayor and Council of the City of Milton, Georgia, to Establish the Ad Valorem Tax Rate of the City of Milton for Fiscal Year 2022; and Other Purposes. It is Agenda Item No. 21-227. Ms. Bernadette Harvill. Ms. Harvill: Good evening again. We have had this presentation twice before so we will kind of go through it at a more condensed version. We are here tonight to set the Millage Rate for Property Tax Year 2021 which will fund our fiscal year 2022 services. Again, we have the agenda for tonight, the important definitions so everyone understands what we are talking about. The open meetings and advertising requirements. We'll discuss the millage rate options before you. (inaudible) more detail in the budget presentation. And ways to reduce your property tax liability as a property owner D 1 �I Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 4 of 11 in the City of Milton. How to calculate your tax bill. The value of your tax dollar and then finally that rationale for that capped millage rate and service levels. Here we have our definitions, telling you again what a mill is. That's the tax rate in which we utilize to tax property. One dollar per 1,000 of assessed property value or .001 times that assessed value. The fair market value set by Fulton County. The assessed or taxable value is taking that 40% and multiplying it by the millage rate to get your, um reducing it by your exemptions that your taxable value and multiplying it by your millage rate to get your tax owed. We have our rollback rate which is the previous year's millage rate minus the millage equivalent to the total net assessed value added by reassessments. That is a calculation we have to do every year in order to determine the rollback rate. And also the millage equivalent which is the equation where reassessments of existing real property are divided by the current year's net digest and then multiplied by the prior year's millage rate. Whenever the proposed millage rate exceeds the rollback rate, we have to, sorry, does not exceed the rollback rate, (inaudible) we have to have three open hearings. This year's rollback rate was 4.460 mills and with the proposed millage rate of 4.731 or the cap, we have to have these three hearings. We had the first one on August 2nd at nine o'clock in the morning and the second one on August 2nd at six o'clock in the evening and tonight is our third and final required public hearing for the millage rate and after this presentation, we'll have Unfinished Business where you'll vote on the actual millage rate. Again, you can vote for anything up to that cap. We advertise for the cap for full transparency of what the maximum could be as well as not requiring an additional public hearing if you were to change your mind if we were to advertise at a lower rate. Here are the ads that went in the paper. They're also online at the City's website per requirement by the State. Here is that snippet of the calculation we have to do that shows our year -over -year comparisons. Again, just to remind you, our exemptions are based on projections at this time of year and they don't get trued up by Fulton County so those are different than what you might see in other places. Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 5 of 11 I have the math here for full transparency so everyone can see how the snippet goes to create the percentages that we are advertising. And again, here are the proposals. Our current year millage rate is also happens to be our capped millage rate of 4.731 mills and the rollback rate 4.460. And that separately calculated Greenspace Bond millage rate that we're asking for 0.487 mills to cover debt service owed in FY22. Here is a breakdown of the digest The M&O net digest after taking away those exemptions is 2,931,249,184 dollars. At 100% collection rate, the total M&O levied under 4.731 millage rate would be 13.9 million dollars and under 4.460 would be 13.1 million. Again, we do not budget at 100% typically, historically we see that about 97% is collected in year one. So here's where you'll see that 97% in real property. 65% typically collected on personal property and 55% we've seen on motor vehicles, in the past that was 50, we have that up to 55. Again, same exact math to show you where we got to those numbers in the budget document 13,334,400 dollars under 4.731 and just for reference you can see here the amended budget for 21 at 12.5 million and our current collections that were as of July 30'' at 12.4 million. We do have some options for savings for our property owners. We have our basic homestead exemption; you apply with Fulton County and that takes $15,000 off your tax liability or your taxable value. Then you have senior exemptions, the City offers 65 and older with no income requirements an additional $15,000 and then if you meet the income requirement an additional 10,000 on top of that for a total of 25,000. And those who are aged 70 and older and meet our income qualifications, get a full value exemption. Those income qualifications are based on Social Security Administration rates and they're around 72,000 dollars last year. Those who meet those same income rates and have a full disability qualified by a licensed physician will also be eligible for that full value exemption so they pay zero dollars in City taxes. Then we have our floating homestead exemption that was passed just a few years ago. This is where everyone sees their assessments potentially going up, but this is the exemption that maintains their taxable value at no more than 3% year over year. This year it is 1.2 percent. And that is just a calculation for transparency to show how that works when your value changes, u 1 1 Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 6 of 11 but your exemptions will count for that rate of taxable value only staying at that 1.2 percent rate. Another opportunity for savings in the City of Milton and the State of Georgia is the Conservation Use Value Assessment or the CUVA. This is popular with our residents here in Milton. If you qualify the property value will be based on land use as opposed to market value. Fulton County is the one who administers this on behalf of the State and they have some paperwork that you can fill out. And if you have less than ten acres, they ask for additional paperwork or substantial information to see if you qualify. Again, under that use assessment the owner would agree to maintain the property at the bona fide qualifying use for a period of ten years and if you don't maintain it, there are some impacts that you will, financial impacts that you'll have. Here are we just have a snip of our assessments that everyone gets in Fulton County, just to show and clarify that this is indeed not a bill. I know that the County has started to put that estimate of your bill, I believe by State law they have to do that, but it is not a value of your bill. At the time that they send these out, we haven't even set a millage rate. We're here tonight to set our millage rate. So they're utilizing prior year's millage rate and they also do not have any of our parcel level data on exemptions so you won't be able to tell what your floating CPI exemption is or if you have a full value exemption. So it will show you owe a bill even though you don't pay taxes in the City of Milton. So we are just using this for the purposes of understanding the assessment and if you agree with it, wonderful. If you do not, there's ways to appeal that with Fulton County. Here is how to calculate your tax bill in the City of Milton. According to last year's digest the average fair market value of a home was 575,000 dollars. In order to show an easy example, we used the 15,000 dollar basic exemption and don't calculate in the floating since those can be particular to each property. You take that 40% of 575,000 which is 230 reduced by any exemptions you're eligible for which would be your taxable value or your subtotal. And then you multiply that by the millage rate and you can see here the difference it would be at 4.731 mills, 1,017 dollars and 17 cent tax bill and at 4.460 mills, a 958 dollars and 90 cent tax bill. That is the math that goes into the ad that you saw in the paper that shows the difference between the two tax rates. 1 Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 7 of 11 And finally we have here kind of our rationale for 4.731 capped millage rate. The ability to continue funding the City's capital improvement plan as, capital improvement projects plan, as planned. The timelines to implement our completed master plans. And then we have some challenges here in the City of Milton. We have a limited commercial tax base. Kind of how we looked at this earlier with the metrics, many cities with the different tax base maybe more commercial are able to collect more taxes on a lower millage rate than the City of Milton is able to with the current tax base that we have. We also have limited commercially zoned footprint so that is not indicative of increasing any time soon. Assessed property values were not kept up with the market and then when they did the CPI floating exemption, they capped them at those deflated rates so also 2016 is the base year for many of our properties. And then also our community has a vision to retain its rural character so density is also different than the typical North Fulton city. Again, the results of deferring some of our capital maintenance can lead to more costly repairs in the long run. And then not being able to attend to routine maintenance can cause those kinds of problems. As opposed to being able to just pave a road you may have to do a full -depth reclamation which will cost a lot more money. As you saw under our budgeting, our first priority is always to maintain (inaudible) those increased levels of service come in before you, separate sections of the budget document. Below is an example of that just so everyone understands. Current operations would be to repave a road as scheduled, the enhanced level of service may be to repave additional roads or do a full -depth reclamation that may be coming near a need that we didn't anticipate sooner. And finally, a new initiative would be to construct an entirely new road in order to ease congestion similar to what we have here at Heritage Walk. Again, those service level requests, all of the requests that our departments give are based on or have to tie back to our Strategic Plan or other planning documents that went through the community. The main things we see from our community are to consider adequate maintenance of newly acquired greenspace properties, to get rid of those hazard mitigations and open up the parks, improved debris management as well as the curb and gutter and the right of way, manicured landscaping around public areas, 1 1 Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 8 of 11 and a timely implementation of City plans. Staff has spent a lot of time focusing on these areas over the years, but these are mainly the areas of focus where you see many of our new initiatives. And just finishing that out, so right of way mowing frequency and things like our paving schedule. And that is basically the, we talked about it more in depth in the budget so we won't go over it and belabor it. But that is the presentation on our millage rate. I'm going to go back to the slide that kind of gives the options so you can discuss and choose where you'd like to go for FY2022. Mayor PT Jamison: Thanks. Questions for Bernadette? Do we have any public comment? City Clerk: We do. I'd like to call Mary Mayer to the podium. Mayor PT Jamison: Yes. City Clerk: Mayor Pro Tem, it appears she has left. Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, then I will close the public comment period. All right, any discussions or actually, we'll just close the public hearing and Council discussion on that item. All right, then we will move on to Unfinished Business. Will the City Clerk please sound the item? UNFINISHED BUSINESS City Clerk: That item Consideration of an Ordinance of the Mayor and Council of the City of Milton, Georgia, to Establish the Ad Valorem Tax Rate of the City of Milton for Fiscal Year 2022; and for Other Purposes, Agenda Item No. 21-227, Ms. Bernadette Harvill. Ms. Harvill: Present again, no I'm just kidding. I'll just leave it for you again, the current capped millage rate, which is also our current millage rate, as well as the rollback option. You have the legal authority to approve any millage rate up to that 4.731 mills under our current law. Mayor PT Jamison: All right. Any discussion? Ms. Bentley: I just have a quick comment cause we talked about this in the first hearing was the, trying to go forward with the senior exemption. Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 9 of 11 So just wanted to bring that back up again and I don't know what the timelines for that are, but we Ms. Harvill: I believe the City Attorney said it would have to go before the legislatures Mr. Krokoff: It would. Ms. Harvill: So we would be preparing that for the next year. Ms. Bentley: Okay. Mayor PT Jamison: Perfect, so that is like an item that in January, okay, perfect. Ms. Bentley: We'll see that again, thank you. Mayor PT Jamison: Perfect. I think we've had the same millage rate 14 out of 15 years, is that about right? Ms. Harvill: That's right. One year we a different one, 2018. Mayor PT Jamison: And I think a lot of cities are envious as our pay go option that we have so we appreciate it. Ms. Harvill: Wonderful. Mayor PT Jamison: Thank you for your stewardship. All right, any discussion? I'll open up for a motion. Ms. Cookerly: Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, I move that we approve Agenda Item No. 21- 227. Mayor PT Jamison: Does she need to add the millage rate? Ms. Harvill: And the Greenspace Bond as well so which ones. Ms. Cookerly: Oh. Approve Agenda Item No. 21-227 with a capped millage rate of 4.731, the current rate. Mr. Longoria: Second. Mayor Pro Tem: Okay. I have a motion from Councilmember Cookerly Ms. Harvill: Let me just add some 1 LJ 1 Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page 10 of 11 Mr. Krokoff: We need to include the bond Ms. Harvill: The bond, the Greenspace Bond. Mr. Krokoff: The bond millage rate. Mr. Moore: At the bottom of her presentation page. Mayor PT Jamison: All right. Ms. Cookerly: Oh. Ms. Harvill: We did the Maintenance & Operating millage rate and then plus the Greenspace Bond millage rate. Ms. Cookerly: Oh, down there. Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, so we need to remove her motion and then Mr. Longoria: I withdraw my second. Ms. Cookerly: Cause I botched it. Mayor PT Jamison: Okay, so Ms. Cookerly: Vall could be here awhile. All right, thank you. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem and Council, I move that we approve Agenda Item No. 21- 227 with the capped millage rate of 4.731 and the Greenspace Bond millage of 0.487. Mr. Longoria: Second. Mayor PT Jamison: Okay. I have a motion from Councilwoman Cookerly to approve Agenda Item 21-227 with a capped millage rate of 4.731 and the Greenspace Bond of 0.487. A second from Councilmember Longoria. Any discussion on that? Okay, all in favor please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Mayor PT Jamison: Opposed. That's unanimous. Ms. Harvill: Thank you very much. 1 1 Special Called Meeting of the Milton City Council Monday, August 9, 2021 at 6:00 pm Page I I of I I ADJOURNMENT Mayor PT Jamison: That concludes our special called meeting. Is there a motion that we adjourn? Mr. Moore: So moved. Mr. Longoria: Second. Mayor PT Jamison: All right. All in favor, please say aye. Councilmembers: Aye. Mayor PT Jamison: Opposed. That's it. Thank you. Motion and Vote: Councilmember Moore moved to adjourn the City Council special called meeting at 8:07pm. Councilmember Longoria seconded the motion. The motion passed (5-0). Mayor Lockwood and Councilmember Mohrig were absent from the meeting. Date Approved: August 16, 2021 C--7�-a—mmy L. Lo it, ity erk Joe Lock o d. Mavor