![](\"http:\/\/bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com\/valdostadailytimes.com\/content\/tncms\/assets\/v3\/editorial\/5\/9c\/59c5baaf-ebf9-5e44-b4f5-d3978231755a\/57b3a0d1631e7.image.jpg\")
<\/a>\r\n\r\nMichael Praats, Valdosta Daily Times<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\nAs County Manager Joe Pritchard reminded them July 25th,\r\nit’s time for the annual millage rate setting<\/a>.\r\nAs usual, their\r\n\r\nagenda<\/a> doesn’t say what they’re setting it to.\r\nThere’s a number in\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\na linked document<\/a>:\r\n \r\nThe Board of Commissioners is required to set the county-wide\r\nmillage for 2016. Three public hearings on the adoption have been\r\nheld prior to this adoption as required. The county-wide millage\r\nshould be set at 11.224 mills with the County receiving 8.974 mills,\r\nthe Industrial Authority receiving 1.00 mill and the Parks and\r\nRecreation Authority receiving 1.25 mills.\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nOPTIONS: Adoption of the county-wide millage at 11.224 mills\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nRECOMMENDED ACTION: Adoption of the county-wide millage at 11.224\r\nmills\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nDEPARTMENT: Finance Department Head: Stephanie Black\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nADMINISTRATIVE COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATION:\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\nActually, two public millage hearings have been held, according to\r\nthe county’s calendar<\/a>, both on August 16th 2016,\r\none at 8:30 AM and the other at 6PM.\r\nNo agenda and no further details were posted on the county’s website for either.\r\nIf they posted a public notice in the newspaper, I can’t find it online,\r\nand of course it’s not on \r\nFinance Department web page<\/a> either.\r\n \r\nIt’s no wonder nobody showed up for the first millage hearing,\r\n\r\nas reported by the VDT<\/a>.\r\n \r\nThat same day the County Commission also had a Special Called Meeting at 5:45 PM for\r\n\r\n“Approval of grant documents as requested by the Valdosta- Lowndes County Development Authority”<\/a>.\r\nNo agenda nor details for that meeting, either.\r\nWhich grant documents? For how much?\r\nAnd “approval” probably means, like previous county approvals of VLCIA grants,\r\nthat the county taxpayers are guaranteeing a VLCIA grant.\r\n \r\nAccording to the county’s calendar, the third millage hearing is\r\n5:00-5:30 PM Tuesday August 23rd 2016<\/a>,\r\njust before the Regular Session tomorrow.\r\n \r\nNo comparison to previous years was included anywhere on the county’s website that I can find.\r\nIn 2014 they raised the millage to 8.233 mills or 10.483 mills including VLCIA and VLPRA.\r\nSo this appears to be an increase of 0.741 mills.\r\n \r\nAccording to Michael Praats, VDT, 17 Aug 2016,\r\n\r\nTax hearing presented to empty room<\/a>,\r\n \r\nThe county proposes the millage be set at 8.974 mills, an increase\r\nof 11.37 percent, according to county officials.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\nActually, 8.974\/8.233 is 9%. So did they actually raise it to a different\r\nnumber in 2014, or did they decrease it in 2015, or what?\r\n \r\nAccording to the Georgia Department of Revenue’s\r\nTax Digest Millage Rates,\r\nLowndes County’s unincorporated area millage was\r\n\r\n7.804 in 2015<\/a>\r\nand\r\n\r\n8.310 in 2014<\/a>.\r\nSo apparenntly they raised it to a different number in 2014,\r\ndecreased it in 2015, and now they’re raising it again.\r\nThe proposed new rate of 8.974 isn’t 11% more than any of these numbers.\r\nIf the county posted Finance Director Stephanie Black’s presentation slides online,\r\nmaybe we’d know what she was talking about.\r\n \r\nHere’s\r\n\r\nthe agenda<\/a> for this morning’s Work Session and tomorrow’s Regular Session.\r\n \r\nLOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS\r\n \r\nDocuments:<\/strong>Adoption of Millage.pdf<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nDocuments:<\/strong>Declaration of Surplus- Computer Equipment.pdf<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nDocuments:<\/strong>Core Network Equipment Refresh.pdf<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n \r\nDocuments:<\/strong>Generator Service and Load Bank.pdf<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\nPROPOSED AGENDA\r\n
\r\nWORK SESSION, MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2016, 8:30 a.m.\r\n
\r\nREGULAR SESSION, TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2016, 5:30 p.m.\r\n
\r\n327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n
\r\n\t\t\tAdoption of the county-wide millage at 11.224 mills\t\t\r\n
\r\n\t\t\tDeclare the computer equipment surplus and authorize the sale on GovDeals.com\t\t\r\n
\r\n\t\t\tApproval of equipment refresh\t\t\r\n
\r\n\t\t\tProvide annual service and load bank test on 45 generators for the Lowndes County Utilities Department.\t\t\r\n
\r\nInvestigative reporting costs money, for open records requests, copying, web hosting, gasoline, and cameras, and with sufficient funds we can pay students to do further research. You can donate to LAKE today<\/a>!<\/blockquote>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning the county will discuss raising the millage rate, and they will vote on it Tuesday evening, with a third millage hearing half an hour before the voting session. Michael Praats, Valdosta Daily Times As County Manager Joe Pritchard reminded them July 25th, it’s time for the annual millage rate setting. As usual, their […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,88,3,178],"tags":[9342,9371,8701,8699,10,8702,91,12,7,8734,1247,8700,6,8749,90],"class_list":["post-17167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-lowndes-county-commission","category-transparency","category-vlcia","tag-9342","tag-august-22","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-lake","tag-lcc","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-lowndes-county-commission","tag-millage","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-vlcia","tag-work-session"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-4sT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17171,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17167\/revisions\/17171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}