If your house was reassessed this year — and most Fayette homes were — you’ll likely be paying more taxes to the Fayette County Board of Education this fall.

The Board of Education held its second public hearing Monday night on the proposed tax hike to a mostly-empty meeting room.

Comptroller Lee Davis explained the system was rolling back the millage rate for maintenance and operations and bond indebtedness, but could not roll back to the reassessment rate.

“It just would not produce enough revenues to fund the programs,” he said.

Overall, taxes will be going up 4.51 percent for maintenance and 3.83 percent for the school bond. The proposed millage rates are 18.60 for maintenance and 3.55 for the bond issue. Last year, the rates were 18.75 for maintenance and 3.60 for the bond.

Davis said he was happy the board could roll back the millage rate, after suffering through a considerable loss of state funding in the last few years.

“Over the past five years, the state of Georgia has made over $17.9 million in austerity reductions to the Fayette County Public School System due to the decline in the economy and the resulting downturn in tax receipts,” Davis explained in a press release.

If a $200,000 home did not go through reassessment this year, Davis said the school system’s millage rollback would save the homeowner $156 this year in school taxes. However, such a taxpayer will be in a very tiny minority, as most properties were revalued upwards for tax purposes.

The final public hearing on the tax increase is Monday morning at the board’s office at 8:30 a.m.

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