Thursday night, the Dade County Board of Education began the first of three required public hearings on the decision to decline from participating in Georgia’s recently enacted state law known as HB 581.
Approved statewide by voters in November, the new law would introduce a floating homestead exemption that limits increases in taxable home values to the inflation rate.
The law also allows a local taxing authority to choose whether to opt-out of the law’s adoption.
Dade Superintendent Josh Ingle says the property tax exemption may have been the headline seen by voters, but when reading the small print of the legislation, it doesn’t add up to benefiting Dade County Schools in the long run.
Ingle says analyzing the HB 581’s property tax model compared against the past five years of Dade County revenue would equate to more than a loss of $3.5 million to education coffers.
The Superintendent added a recent survey of North Georgia school systems suggested 16 of the 17 districts queried are opting out of participating as well.
Among the reasons cited are protecting the financial stability of the school system and protecting local control of public education funding.
In the public input segment, Lisa Cagle disagreed with the board’s stated position in opposing HB 581. Cagle says many local homeowners like the tax safeguards the new law would provide, citing quickly rising property valuations to higher tax liability.
Cagle suggested the most recently elected board members should have an even greater respect to the wishes of voters, by responding to Ingle’s small print commentary.
” I feel confident that most people; 72% of Dade County, voted based on large print, they didn’t vote for House Bill 581 for the school board to turn around and just disallow it,” said Cagle.