SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — At its Tuesday meeting, the City of South Fulton Council approved a trimmed-down fiscal year 2024 budget of $204 million.
Homeowners in South Fulton will have more money in their wallets after the city council passed reducing the property tax millage rate by half a percent, but more money for homeowners means the city had to cut back somewhere.
City of South Fulton Mayor Pro Tem Natasha Williams-Brown said homeowners will receive property tax relief for one year.
“Most of the cuts happened by deferring some of the expenses that we had in the budget for this year," Williams-Brown said.
The city had to reduce $2.4 million from its budget and did that by reorganizing money in debt services and fire station management, as well as delaying EMS expansion.
Here's a breakdown of where the money came from:
- Debt services - $1.4 million
- Fire station maintenance - $615,000
- Reorganizing operations - $227,000
- EMS expansion - $115,000
- Clerk digitization - $81,000
“Even in rolling back the millage rate, we're still able to focus on things like identifying opportunities for us to build our city hall, to build our police headquarters, and the sidewalks for our national highway," Williams-Brown said.
Councilman Jaceey Sebastian has pushed to decrease property taxes for years.
“We're absolutely not having any cut in services. I just want to make that clear. No cuts in services and we're going to continue to invest in the projects that were outlined both for the future and some in the more immediate future," Sebastian said.
Another big part of this year's budget is increasing the minimum wage for all city employees to $20 an hour.