Albany City Council, during a special called meeting last Thursday, October 19, finally took action on the city’s 2024 tax rates, actually setting the rates lower than the previous year’s rates.
The council, although taking the complicated state allowed 4 percent compensating rate, was able to lower the property and tangible tax rates while gaining about the same amount of tax revenue as in the past, due to higher property assessments.
During a very quick special meeting, Councilman Reed Sloan made a motion to set the city’s property tax rate at .178 cents per $100 assessed value and motor vehicle and watercraft at 0.1979 per $100 assessed value.
The rates compare to .18 and .20 cents per $100 value that had been kept for around three decades.
Council members had questions in previous weeks about the rates, in particular what the somewhat confusing compensating rates allowed by law would mean for both tax payers and city coffers.
Apparently over the past couple of weeks, the council had reviewed and studied the compensating rate and tax rate calculations and decided on lowering the actual rate city taxpayers will pay. However, it may not actually lower the amount of taxes they will pay, as it will depend on how much their real property is assessed at.
Whether or not the lowered rates, coupled with the higher assessment on real estate will mean additional revenue to the city is still unclear.
During discussion on city tax rates in 2022, some council members at the time indicated the rates were too low and not keeping the city in line with rising costs and inflation.
What it does mean, money wise for taxpayers, however, is that if the assessment of their property increased over the past year, even though their overall tax bill may increase, it will increase at a lower rate than it would have if the city had opted to keep their rate unchanged, or had raised the rate.
Prior to making the motion to approve the new lower rates, which was quickly seconded and unanimously passed, Sloan thanked Councilman Junior Gregory for the research on the tax issues that he indicated helped lower tax rates for city residents.
Following the vote on the tax rates, which was the only item of business on the agenda, the meeting was quickly adjourned.
The next regular meeting of Albany City Council is scheduled for Tuesday, November 7, at 5 p.m.