30-01-2025
Columbus City Council discusses House Bill 581
COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL) — In Georgia, House Bill 581 passed overwhelmingly last year. This created a statewide floating homestead exemption. For the city of Columbus, this new exemption poses some uncertainty as the city already has a tax freeze on residential property taxes.
House bill 581 allows counties, consolidated governments, municipalities, and local school districts to opt- in or out based on what they believe is best for their communities.
The Muscogee County School district has already begun holding public meetings to discuss opting out. As for the City, it must hold three public meetings to discuss potentially opting out.
On Tuesday, a presentation about House Bill 581 was given by the city's tax assessor Suzanne Widenhouse. She explains this bill created a floating homestead that would adjust the base year value by an inflationary index, both up or down.
Columbus has a property tax freeze, which means the taxpayer would receive whichever is most beneficial. Widenhouse says this can be very complex.
'Particularly when you consider the fact that our homestead tops out at two acres and these is no acreage limit on this particular homestead,' Widenhouse explains. 'So, while we have what we call 'H' accounts which are properties that exceed two acres that are homestead, they get the freeze on the two acres and then anything over than is subject to fair market. Under this, they would potentially have the floating homestead for the full acreage.'
According to the Columbus Elections and Registrations Office, 61.5% of active voters in Columbus voted for House Bill 581.
However, District 2 Councilor Glenn Davis explains why he supports opting out.
'If the economic downturn comes, that means you're going to have a housing crisis and not only that, but this city is also built on pennies. People are not going to be able to spend this much and you're not going to be able to collect sales tax revenue, 'Davis explains.
'You have to have revenue to run the city. In order to do that, the taxpayer or the property owner may get a valuation decrease, but nobody's telling that property owner that you can increase valuations, you can increase the millage to get that revenue, you need to run the city,' Davis says. 'Nobody's telling them you can expand the urban service districts all the way out in Midland. Nobody's telling them the taxes and the other fees that would have to go up to run the operations of this city.'
Other cities in Georgia can opt- in as they have access to a local option sales tax that is used to pay operations. However, Columbus does not have that option.
' We don't have access to that because a consolidated governments are only allowed two local option sales taxes and one of ours was a commitment made to the community to have 70% go towards public safety, 30% towards infrastructure. So that's off the table,' explains Columbus Mayor Skip Henderson.
Based on opinions from firms in Atlanta and the attorney general's office, Columbus City Attorney Clifton Fay says House Bill 581 does not adversely affect our local constitutional homestead freeze whether the city chooses to opt- in or out.
Columbus will begin holding public meetings to discuss opting out the first week of February.
Those proposed meeting dates are the following:
Monday, February 10th at 9 a.m.
Monday, February 10th at 6 p.m.
Tuesday, February 11th during a city council meeting at 9 a.m.
The decision to opt- out has to be completed by March 1st.
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