Hart County Tax Assessment Notices for 2013 Go Out Today

It’s been a four-year process, but today the Hart County Tax Assessor’s office will begin mailing out property assessment notices for 2013 – the final notice reflecting the state-mandated revaluation.

Assistant chief tax appraiser Shane Hicks says what is going out today is not a bill.

“This one is just going to be the 2013, everything else is caught up,” Hicks said. “This is not a bill. This is a notice that lets property owners know what the value of their property is for the 2013 digest year.”

The assessments for 2009-2012 went out last fall.

For the past four years, the tax assessor’s office has been working under a consent order from the Department of Revenue to bring the county’s property assessments up to date. Over the last two years, new leadership in the Tax Assessor’s office has been able to complete the reval, which resulted in a litany of assessment notices and temporary property tax bills over the past year.

Now that the final assessments are going out, the final tax bills will soon be going out from the Hart County Tax Commissioner’s office sometime in the fall.

However, there is a concern among the board of commissioners that some property owners will experience sticker shock when they get their final tax property tax bills because they will cover the past four years.  Up until now, property owners have been receiving temporary tax bills, which were an estimate of what they might owe.

“We need to start getting the word out so people know about the timing of some of these bills because there are some people out there who will see some big increases (in their tax bills) and they need to start preparing,” Commissioner Joey Dorsey said in April when the board approved the 2010 millage rate.

Since then, the board has also approved the millage rates for 2011 and 2012.

At their meeting last week, county administrator Jon Caime said it will be difficult to estimate the county’s revenue for FY14 until the actual revenue from the final billing comes in.