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

Updated Sept. 21, 2026: both rates have been adopted. On Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, the Macon-Bibb County Commission adopted 9.575 mills and the Bibb County Board of Education adopted 14.674 mills for the 2026 tax year — each the same rate as 2025, and each above its rollback rate. This explainer was first published Aug. 26, before either vote; it now describes what happened. The section How each body voted, below, has the details.

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 spent late August asking a version of the same question: how is this a tax increase if nobody voted to raise the rate?

A lot of that frustration was aimed at the mayor and the commissioners. What follows separates the part no elected official voted on from the part they did vote on, because 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 raised its millage rate. Both kept 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 landed 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 was a vote. Each body could have adopted the rollback rate and canceled the increase out, kept last year's rate and accepted it, or landed somewhere in between. Keeping a rate unchanged is still a decision with a revenue consequence, and on Sept. 9 both bodies made it: each kept its 2025 rate.

So the bigger digest was inherited. What to do about it was 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 landed:

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

The county's notice put 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 described its own gap as "an increase of 1.252 mills above the roll-back rate."

Why there were so many 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 started at the slightly odd time of 6:01 p.m. — it had to fall inside that window. The county ended up holding a fourth, which is how the total reached seven.

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 $60 more per year on a homesteaded home with a fair market value of $200,000 — about $65 on property of the same value without a homestead exemption — according to the county's public notice.
• Schools: about $103.92 more per year on a homesteaded home with a fair market value of $225,000 — about $112.68 without a homestead exemption — according to the district's own notice.

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

How each body voted

The county. The Commission's adoption was first advertised for Tuesday, Sept. 1. At that morning's hearing, Mayor Lester Miller announced a fourth public hearing and moved the vote to the following week. On Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, after a 9:00 a.m. hearing, the Commission met in a special called session and adopted the ordinance setting the rate at 9.575 mills "to be levied and assessed for the year 2026."

WGXA and The Macon Newsroom both reported the vote as 7–2, with Commissioners Stanley Stewart and Donice Bryant voting no. The clerk's official roll call, since posted, records it as 8–2: the same seven commissioners plus Mayor Lester Miller voting yes, and Stewart and Bryant voting no. It is on PeachTracker's page for that meeting.

Mayor Miller's FY27 budget, adopted by commissioners in June, had assumed the rate would hold at 9.575 mills. The Telegraph reported in August that holding it would be the county's first property tax increase in six years as Georgia law defines one.

One note on the record: the county's legal advertisement referred 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.

The school board. The 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. After hearings on Sept. 2 and Sept. 9, it took up final adoption at a called meeting the evening of Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, and adopted 14.674 mills. The district has not yet published minutes for that meeting, so PeachTracker is not reporting a vote count for it.

At 14.674, according to 41NBC's report on the district's Aug. 20 presentation, the district projected about $97.75 million in property tax revenue — roughly $8.34 million more than the rollback rate would produce — narrowing its projected FY27 operating deficit from about $16.63 million to $8.29 million.

What happens now

The 2026 rates are set. They are not something the November election reaches: a millage rate is fixed for its tax year the moment it is adopted, and the next one is not set until late summer 2027.

The other number in the multiplication is your own assessed value. An appeal of that value runs through the Board of Tax Assessors, not the Commission or the school board, and the deadline to file is printed on your assessment notice. Who handles property taxes? walks through which office does what.

And next summer, the same sequence repeats: a new digest, a new rollback rate, and — if either body proposes anything above it — another round of advertised hearings. How to speak at a commission meeting covers signing up and what the three minutes are actually like.

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
• The Sept. 9 special called meeting — the agenda, the ordinance, and the roll call once the clerk posts it

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)
• Macon-Bibb County Commission, special called meeting of Sept. 9, 2026 — agenda and ordinance text on the county's CivicClerk agenda portal
• Bibb County School District Board Brief for the Aug. 20, 2026 board meeting, the district's millage rate advertisement (bcsdk12.net), and the Sept. 9, 2026 called meeting for final adoption on the district's Simbli board portal
• Reporting on the votes: WGXA (Sept. 9, 2026) and The Macon Newsroom (Liz Fabian, Sept. 9, 2026) on the county's 7–2 vote; 41NBC/WMGT (Sept. 1, 2026) on the added hearing and (Sept. 10, 2026) on the school board's adoption
• Earlier reporting by The Macon Telegraph (Laura Corley, Aug. 25, 2026) and 41NBC/WMGT (Aug. 21, 2026)

First published Aug. 26, 2026, before either vote. Updated Sept. 21, 2026 with the adopted rates. Vote counts will be confirmed against the official minutes when each body publishes them.

Correction, Sept. 28, 2026: an earlier version gave the county's example as about $65 more per year on a $200,000 home. That is the county's figure for property without a homestead exemption; for a homesteaded home it is about $60. An earlier version also attributed a $7,000 homestead exemption to the school district's estimate, which its notice does not state.