City Passes Resolution Asking For Temporary Return To 2023 Tax Assessments

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

At a special called meeting Tuesday morning, the Dalton Mayor and Council passed a resolution calling on a court to issue a temporary tax collection order that would allow collections based on the 2023 Whitfield County tax digest value plus ten percent. The resolution, which was passed by a unanimous vote of the council, comes after months of concern and confusion regarding anomalies in the 2024 property tax assessments in the county. 

RESOLUTION 24-14: Click here to read the text of the resolution passed by the Mayor and Council Tuesday morning

Earlier this year, many property owners in Dalton and Whitfield County were concerned when they received their tax assessment notices from the Whitfield County Office of Assessors. Many property owners saw the assessed value of their property increase, and in some cases decrease, substantially in comparison with 2023 values. While the City of Dalton has no role to play in the assessment of property, City leaders shared taxpayers’ concerns regarding the discrepancies and have worked with their Whitfield County counterparts and the Board of Assessors to encourage them to correct any known errors or issues. Tuesday's resolution from the City Council comes after the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners passed a similar resolution Monday night. The resolutions will create a petition for a judge to issue a temporary tax collection order.

"It is unprecedented to see... 800 parcels had declines in values of greater than $50,000 and some of those in the millions. That doesn’t happen, particularly in a thriving community like Dalton, Georgia, we don’t have values going down multimillion dollars," Mayor Annalee Sams said after Tuesday morning's meeting was adjourned. "Some of these are very well-known commercial parcels that have large retailers on them and how can it be explained that they went down in value several million? So we have a responsibility to all of our citizens, to property owners, that we get this right and if there’s going to be a delay in the acceptance of the 2024 digest – and it cannot and should not be accepted until it’s correct – we need to take this action to ask for this temporary collection order."

If a temporary tax collection order is issued, taxing authorities like the City of Dalton would be allowed to prepare property tax bills based on the 2023 assessed values of properties with a ten percent increase. This would allow the process for the final acceptance of the 2024 tax digest to play out without impacting tax collections.

"We’re doing that to ensure that we can have timely tax collections this year," Mayor Sams said. "And we’re doing that in an effort to make sure that we have an accurate digest to tax on and we have a lot of concerns about the accuracy of the 2024 proposed digest as it stands uncorrected today."

The State of Georgia requires counties to assess the fair market value of properties each year. To test whether property assessments are accurate, the state reviews the assessed value of properties that have been sold in the prior year against the sale price of those properties. State law requires that properties be assessed within 40% of actual sales prices. In recent years, the assessed value of Whitfield County properties have been too low, according to the test, which requires increasing the assessed values. City leaders issued a statement last month detailing the City's concerns about the way in which the new digest reassessment has been carried out.