WCBOE sets $200m budget

Board rolls back millage rate for sixth straight year

The Walton County Board of Education unanimously approved a general fund budget of slightly more than $200 million — 90% of which will cover salary and benefits for county school system employees — at their July 14 meeting.

The Walton County School District serves more than 14,000 students.

The new general fund budget of $200,255,993, covering school system operations as of July 1 through June 30 of next year, is $5 million less than the general fund budget for the recently completed fiscal year, Walton County Schools Superintendent Chip Underwood announced prior to the board’s vote on the 2026-27 spending plan.

In related July 14 action, the board unanimously approved a property tax millage rate of 15.367 mills for the new fiscal year, 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. In everyday terms, adopting the rollback rate means that, absent any increase in the assessed value of a residence or other taxable property, the tax bill for that property will remain unchanged from the previous year.

Here is a brief tutorial: A property tax bill is a calculation involving the assessed value of a piece of property and the millage rate, as set by the school board. (In addition to the school board, the county government and local municipal governments also set property tax millage rates as a means of helping to fund their operations.)

The assessed value of a piece of property is 40% of its fair market value, as determined by the Walton County Tax Assessor’s Office. By way of example, a home with a fair market value of $400,000, the current average home value in Walton County, has an assessed value of $160,000. To calculate the school portion of the property tax for that home, divide the assessed value by 1,000 and multiply the result by the millage rate.

Thus, for the $400,000 house, the school portion of the property tax bill at the 15.367 rate would be $2,458.72, without considering any applicable exemptions. That represents a savings of $95.68 in comparison with the previous rate of 15.965 mills — at which the property tax would be $2,554.40 (again, without considering any applicable exemptions) — provided the fair market value of the residence hasn’t increased since the last fiscal year.

According to Underwood, Walton County may be the only school system in the state that can claim establishing the rollback rate as its millage rate for the past six consecutive years.

“Nobody else in the state can say that, that I can find,” Underwood told the board.

Regardless of whether the Walton County School District is the only school district in the state that can claim six straight years of adopting the rollback millage rate to help cover general fund expenditures, the local feat was no less impressive to at least one school board member.

“Six years in a row is unheard of,” board member Tom Gibson told Underwood and his board colleagues. “Thank you to your staff … and all the departments across the whole system,” Gibson told Underwood as the board moved toward adopting the new budget and millage rate.

For the new fiscal year, property taxes are projected to fund almost $78 million of the school district’s operation and maintenance revenues, according to district figures — an increase of nearly $2.6 million over the just-closed fiscal year. Quality Basic Education revenue from the state of Georgia will provide slightly more than $103 million to the general operating budget, an increase of more than $2.5 million over the last fiscal year, district figures show.

Policy changes

coming

In other business at its July 15 meeting, the board placed two proposed policy changes on the table for 30 days, with final action expected next month. In both instances, the policy changes will bring the school district into compliance with new state laws.

One change will increase the number of accumulated sick leave days that can be used for personal or professional purposes from a maximum of three days to a maximum of five days, with prior approval.

A second change will move back the date by which an employee must notify their school system of their intent not to accept a new employment contract. The current deadline is June 15; the policy change needed to comply with new state law will move that date back to June 1.