Why Macon-Bibb's Tax Rate Isn't Going Up - And It's Still a Tax Increase

Maybe you saw the legal advertisement. Maybe your assessment notice turned up, or you just caught the headline. However it reached you, people across Macon-Bibb are asking a version of the same question this week: how is this a tax increase if nobody voted to raise the rate?

A lot of that frustration is aimed at the mayor and the commissioners. What follows separates the part no elected official voted on from the part they are about to vote on, because this week those are two different things.

It is a fair question, and the answer is not a trick. Both statements are accurate. They are just measured from two different starting points, and Georgia law picks the one most people have never heard of.

The short answer

Neither Macon-Bibb County nor the Bibb County School District is proposing to raise its millage rate. Both are proposing to keep last year's rate exactly.

But property values across the county rose about 12% this year. When values rise and the rate stays put, the government collects more money. Georgia law says that if officials do not lower the rate enough to cancel out the value increase, they must advertise the difference as a property tax increase — and hold public hearings before they can adopt it.

That advertised difference is 9.28% for the county and 9.33% for the schools.

Your tax bill is two numbers, multiplied

This is the whole mechanism, and it takes about thirty seconds to learn.

1. The millage rate. Measured in mills. Set by people you elect — the Board of Commissioners for the county's share, the elected school board for the school's share. These are two separate governments levying two separate rates on the same bill.

2. Your property's taxable value. Set by the Board of Tax Assessors, a different office. Nobody votes on it. In Georgia, taxable value starts at 40% of fair market value, then exemptions come off — the local standard homestead exemption is $7,000 if you own and occupy the home.

Multiply the two and you get your bill. Move either number and the bill moves. Elected officials directly control only the first one.

If mills themselves are new to you, start with What Is a Millage Rate? — it walks the arithmetic on a real house.

What changed this year: the values, not the rate

The Board of Tax Assessors updated its cost tables — the schedule of what land and construction actually cost. State law requires assessors to keep those current so the digest reflects the real market rather than a frozen snapshot.

That refresh moved a lot of numbers at once. Across the county's roughly 70,600 properties, values rose about 12%.

Same rate. Bigger values. Bigger bills. That is the entire story, and it happens without a single vote to raise anything.

Who decided what

This is the part worth untangling, because the anger is landing in several directions at once.

The higher values were not a vote. The Board of Tax Assessors is a separate five-member board, and state law requires it to keep its cost tables current. No commissioner and no school board member cast a vote to raise your assessment.

The link is real, though, and it runs through appointments rather than through any vote on your property: under the county code, all five assessors are appointed by Macon-Bibb County to six-year terms, and can be removed mid-term only for cause. You elect the Commission, the Commission appoints the assessors, and the assessors set the value.

A third office sends the bill. The Tax Commissioner bills and collects, and sets neither the value nor the rate. If your question is about the amount, that is the rate and the value; if it is about the paperwork or paying it, that is the Tax Commissioner.

The rate is a vote, and it has not happened yet. Each body can adopt the rollback rate and cancel the increase out, keep last year's rate and accept it, or land somewhere in between. Keeping a rate unchanged is still a decision with a revenue consequence, and it is the decision in front of both bodies right now.

So the bigger digest was inherited. What to do about it is not.

The number that settles the argument: the rollback rate

Georgia anticipated exactly this situation. Every year, each taxing authority has to calculate a rollback rate: the lower millage rate that would bring in roughly the same total revenue as last year, given the new, higher digest. It is the cancel-it-out rate.

• Adopt the rollback rate, and the average bill roughly holds steady.
• Adopt anything above it, and the state counts the difference as a property tax increase — regardless of what last year's rate happened to be.

This is the part that surprises people: the comparison is not last year's rate. It is this year's rollback rate, recalculated from scratch every year. A rate can be identical to last year's, or even lower than last year's, and still sit above rollback.

Here is where the two bodies land:

Both rates are unchanged from 2025. Both sit above rollback. So both are advertised as increases.

The county's notice puts it in mills rather than percent: the rate is "an increase of .813 mills," and "without this tentative tax increase, the millage rate will be no more than 8.762 mills." The school district's release describes its own gap as "an increase of 1.252 mills above the roll-back rate."

Why there are six public hearings

The hearings are not a courtesy. Under Georgia's Property Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-32.1), a government proposing a rate above rollback must advertise the increase and hold at least three public hearings, at least one of which must begin between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. on a weekday, so that people with day jobs can attend.

Two bodies, three hearings each, is six. It is also why the county's evening hearing starts at the slightly odd time of 6:01 p.m. — it has to fall inside that window.

What it looks like on a real house

Both figures below are the difference against the rollback rate — not your whole bill, and not your whole increase if your own assessment moved more or less than average.

• County: about $65 more per year on a home with a fair market value of $200,000, according to the county's public advertisement.
• Schools: about $103.92 more per year on a $225,000 home with a $7,000 homestead exemption, according to the district's own estimate.

Your bill depends on your assessed value and which exemptions you have, so treat these as illustrations rather than a forecast for your address.

What each body has actually done so far

The school board met on Aug. 20 and tentatively set its rate at 14.674 mills, rejecting a staff recommendation to add a full mill on top of that. At 14.674, the district projects about $97.75 million in property tax revenue — roughly $8.34 million more than the rollback rate would produce — which would narrow its projected FY27 operating deficit from about $16.63 million to $8.29 million. The rate is tentative until the board's final vote.

The county has not taken a tentative vote at all. Mayor Lester Miller's FY27 budget, adopted by commissioners in June, assumed the rate would hold at 9.575 mills. If commissioners adopt it, it would be the county's first property tax increase in six years.

One note on the record, because it will come up: the county's legal advertisement refers to a tentative adoption of the rate, but no such vote occurred — a meeting scheduled for Aug. 18 was canceled. County spokesperson Chris Floore told The Telegraph there was no first tentative vote.

When you can speak

Neither rate is final until the votes below — and this is not a decision the next election reaches. The 2026 rate is fixed the moment those votes are taken. What is still open is the stretch between now and then: the six public hearings, and a call or email to a commissioner or school board member before they vote.

All hearings are open to the public. If you have never done it before, how to speak at a commission meeting walks through signing up and what the three minutes are actually like.

Macon-Bibb County — Commission Chambers, 700 Poplar St. (the county's legal notice calls the building Macon City Hall; it is the same address as the Government Center.)

• Friday, Aug. 28, 12:00 p.m.
• Tuesday, Sept. 1, 9:00 a.m.
• Tuesday, Sept. 1, 6:01 p.m.
• Final vote: Tuesday, Sept. 1, 6:05 p.m.

Bibb County School District — Board of Education Central Office, 484 Mulberry St.

• Wednesday, Sept. 2, 5:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, Sept. 9, 11:00 a.m.
• Wednesday, Sept. 9, 6:00 p.m.
• Final vote: Wednesday, Sept. 9, 6:30 p.m.

Where to go next

• What Is a Millage Rate? — the arithmetic, on a real house
• The county budget — where the county's share actually goes
• Commission agendas and recorded votes — including the Sept. 1 vote once it is taken

Sources

• O.C.G.A. § 48-5-32.1, Georgia's Property Taxpayer's Bill of Rights — advertisement and three-hearing requirements
• Macon-Bibb County Code § 26-28 — composition, appointment, and terms of the Board of Tax Assessors
• Macon-Bibb County, "FY27 Notice of Property Tax Increase" and the published millage rate advertisement (maconbibb.us)
• Bibb County School District Board Brief for the Aug. 20, 2026 board meeting, and the district's millage rate advertisement (bcsdk12.net)
• Meeting listings on the district's Simbli board portal and the county's CivicClerk agenda portal
• Reporting by The Macon Telegraph (Laura Corley, Aug. 25, 2026) and 41NBC/WMGT (Aug. 21, 2026)

Rates, dates, and figures on this page reflect what had been published as of Aug. 25, 2026. Both rates were still tentative or unadopted at that point; check the hearing schedule above for the current status.