MCSD board OKs seeking loan, asking city to reduce tax collection fee

In successive votes Monday night, the Muscogee County School Board authorized the administration to seek a short-term loan that would plug the expected gap in delayed local revenue as the Columbus Consolidated Government deals with thousands of appeals from property owners upset about their assessments soaring by as much as tenfold, and then the school board passed a resolution requesting CCG to reduce the fee it charges MCSD for collecting property taxes by the dollar amount it will cost MCSD to borrow the money.

The delay is a bigger issue for the school board than Columbus Council because MCSD receives a larger percentage of the Columbus property tax revenue than CCG, approximately a 60-40 split, and 41 percent of MCSD’s fiscal year 2018 revenue is expected to come from local property taxes while the figure is 31 percent for CCG.

Although the school district previously announced it postponed nonessential expenditures while CCG deals with the property tax controversy, MCSD chief financial officer Theresa Thornton told the school board during its monthly work session last Monday evening the administration now recommends securing a Tax Anticipation Note.

Thornton also told the board during the work session the administration must decide by the September meeting whether to seek the loan through a request for proposals or an invitation to bid for the funds to be available by October and for MCSD to pay back the loan by the end of December.

The resolutions the board approved Monday night don’t mention the dollar amounts of the loan MCSD will seek or the anticipated borrowing cost, and Thornton hasn’t responded to the Ledger-Enquirer’s request for those figures.

The nine-member board voted 8-0 to approve seeking the loan. District 6 representative Mark Cantrell was absent. He is home after being hospitalized two weeks ago for difficulty breathing.

The resolution asking CCG to reduce the collection fee it charges MCSD passed 7-0-1, with board vice-chairwoman Kia Chambers abstaining. Chambers, the board’s lone countywide representative, thanked the board “for taking that first step” then explained why she abstained.

“It is unclear how much it’s going to cost the district,” Chambers said. “It’s unclear how much we’re asking them to give up, and I think they would need that information before they can actually vote on the resolution and give us an answer.”

Board chairwoman Pat Hugley Green of District 1 noted something else unclear about this issue: “Who do we ask for the reimbursement is still unclear because this whole thing arose out of the Tax Assessor’s Office, which is separate from the Columbus Consolidated Government and separate from the Tax Commissioner’s Office. So this is our action to ask someone to consider an option for us to be reimbursed. So we’ll just see what happens after this.”

District 4 representative Naomi Buckner called the resolution “an act of protest.”

District 2 representative John Thomas, who proposed the resolution during the work session, responded, “It’s not an act of protest. I just think it s a call for fairness. It’s not our fault we have to borrow money.”

District 8 representative Frank Myers read an email to the board from state Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, which says, “I understand you may consider requesting a change in the percentage you pay the city for tax collection. As you may know, we are the largest urban system in the state authorizing the maximum administrative fee allowed under Georgia law. I offered and the Senate passed (unanimously, by the way, Myers said) a bill this year to drop the fee from 2½ percent to 1 percent.”

Myers added, “If the House were to pass this and the governor were to sign this next year, it would go into effect and we wouldn’t have to ask the city for anything. We’d get a fare rate, which we’re not getting now. We’re paying, I think it’s $800,000 more than it costs to operate the entire Tax Assessor’s Office right now, and that is unconscionable.”

This story was originally published August 21, 2017 at 8:41 PM with the headline "MCSD board OKs seeking loan, asking city to reduce tax collection fee."