White County Commissioners discussed the possibility of adopting a property tax freeze during Monday night’s committee meetings.
A property freeze act would allow the county to freeze the property taxes to a specific base amount, primarily for low-income seniors and disabled individuals. County Executive Denny Wayne Robinson said he began looking into a property tax freeze after the county passed its fiscal year budget. Robinson said the county does not need to rush into adopting a property tax freeze, as it would not take effect until a year after implementation
“If we do this, we need to get it right cause this will be something that will be permanent, so we need to take our time,” Robinson said. “We’ve got a year to work on this, and I strongly suggest that we probably don’t start tackling this until after February.”
Robinson said some of the requirements for the property tax freeze are that seniors must be at least 65 years old and own no more than five acres of property. Robinson said a CTAS consultant told him that residents would not see any benefit from the property tax freeze unless the county increases the property tax rate.
“Of course, it’s up to you all, but I don’t see that happening anytime in the near future,” Robinson said. “So we have plenty of time to work through the kinks of this.”
Robinson said one thing the county will have to consider is how the property tax freeze would impact the property tax relief program.
“The sales ratio affects the property tax relief,” Robinson said.” So last year, when our sales ratio was around 69 percent, the tax relief program only paid 69 percent of the total relief. The two are tied together. The county is able to bridge that gap to make it up to 100 percent. You would be affecting the people that you are kind of targeting with this program.”
Robinson said it will be two years before the county has another sales ratio adjustment. Robinson said the county would not be responsible for going through applications for the property tax freeze program. Robinson said that the process would be handled by the comptroller’s office.
Robinson said the hardest part will be implementing and managing the program.
“You are going to have partial divided up, and the assessors are going to have to assess some at one price and some at the other, and then if somebody comes in and adds on to their home, we will have to come up with a policy on how we are going to address that.”
Robinson also said that if the county follows through with a property freeze tax, the trustee’s office will likely need an additional employee.
There are 27 counties and 35 cities in Tennessee that have a property tax freeze. DeKalb and Putnam counties are nearby counties to have a property tax freeze act.
Robinson suggested creating a sub-committee to explore what process the county would need to go through to implement a property tax freeze. The committee will revisit the discussion next month.
In other business, TK Austin was appointed Chairman, Roger Mason was appointed Vice-Chairman, and Kris Brewington was appointed Secretary of Committee A. Robert McCormick was appointed Chairman, Cain Rogers was appointed Vice-Chairman, and Derrick Hutchings was appointed Secretary of Committee B.
