Millage rate decreases in Monroe

The Monroe City Council unanimously approved a historically low property tax millage rate at its regular scheduled August 2026 meeting.

The millage rate approved by the council, one of the factors used in calculating property tax bills, is 6.465 mills, a 0.469-mill drop from the 2025 rate of 6.934 mills, and a slight decrease from the previous 25-year low of 6.467 mills, set in 2023.

As he dropped the gavel on the special called meeting to set the millage rate, Mayor John Howard billed the purpose of the session as being “to cut taxes.”

Which is true enough, as far as it goes, although the millage rate is just one factor in the calculation of a property tax bill.

The other factor is the assessed value of a piece of property, which is 40% of its fair market value, as determined by the Walton County Tax Assessor’s Office. It’s possible that, in some instances, the fair market value of a property may have increased over the previous year, potentially by enough to negate any savings that would have been realized at the lower millage rate.

However, in the estimation of City Administrator Logan Propes, responding to a council question on the impact of the lower millage rate on property owners within the city limits, “you’re going to see a fair decrease. It’s not going to be huge – it’s not going to cut your bill in half or anything, but … .”

Here’s how it works: For a home with a fair market value of $400,000, the taxable value is $160,000. At a rate of 6.465 mills (with 1 mill equal to $1 for every $1,000 in taxable value), the municipal property tax bill is $905.10. At the previous 6.934-mill rate, the municipal property tax bill for that same $400,000 residence would have been $970.76. Thus, the lower millage rate produces a municipal property tax bill that is $65.66 less than the previous year’s tax bill.

Of course, municipal taxes are just one part of a property tax bill. In addition to the city, both Walton County and the county’s public school system levy property taxes, each based on their own millage rate.

That fact was noted at the Aug. 4 meeting by Councilman Ross Bradley, who went on to say, “Anytime we can reduce it (the millage rate), it’s great, and I appreciate all the work that went into it.”

As part of the meeting, City Administrator Logan Propes presented the council with a graph outlining the history of the municipal millage rate since 2001. In that year, the rate was 7.557 mills, and the rate dropped steadily through 2008, when it stood at 6.622 mills. From there, the rate climbed steadily to its highest level in the 25-year history, when it was set at 8.47 mills in 2013. The rate landed at 7.277 mills in 2018, climbed to 7.802 mills in the next year, and dropped steadily to 6.467 mills in 2023 before climbing to last year’s 6.934 and dropping to the current 6.465-mill rate.

Across Walton County, governments thus far have fared well with their property tax millage rates this year. In Walnut Grove, the city council set a 3.85-mill rate at an Aug. 3 meeting, 0.25-mill lower than the 4.1-mill rate for the fiscal year that closed out on June 30.

The Walton County Board of Commissioners recently set the county millage rate at 12.278 mills, unchanged from the last fiscal year, and the Walton County Board of Education met in July to set a rate of 15.367 mills, a drop of 0.598-mill from the last fiscal year’s 15.965-mill rate.

The 15.367-mill rate is the “rollback rate” for the school system, marking the sixth consecutive year the board has been able to adopt the rollback rate to help fund school system operations. Briefly, the rollback rate is the millage rate at which the school system will collect the same amount in property taxes as it did for the previous fiscal year.

The cities of Social Circle and Loganville will be setting their respective millage rates later this month.

After a called City Council meeting, and by unanimous vote, the City of Monroe Millage Rate will be DECREASED to its lowest rate this century! The rate will drop to 6.465 for the 2026 tax collection season. This is a decrease of 6.8% from 2025, and a decrease of 23.7% from the highest point in 2013.

As a note, property tax collections are used to fund the following services in the City of Monroe: Police, Fire, Streets, Code Enforcement, Parks, Grounds, Public Facilities, Main Street, Planning/Development, Municipal Court, Human Resources, General Fund Finance, and Airport. Services that are not covered by property tax collections are Water, Sewer, Gas, Electric, Telecom, Utility Finance, and Solid Waste (Sanitation).