The Oglethorpe Echo
The Oglethorpe County Board of Education unanimously voted to opt out of House Bill 581 during its meeting on Tuesday.
“The reason that this board, along with about 86% of the other school boards in the state, have chosen to opt out of this bill is because the bill is very vague,” BOE chair Becky Soto said. “It is our opinion that the bill actually doesn’t fix the problem of property values.”
HB 581 provides a statewide “floating” homestead exemption, as previously reported by The Oglethorpe Echo, that would limit annual assessment increases on a homesteaded property to the rate of inflation. It doesn’t impact current homestead exemptions.
“In order to maintain the level of educational services, we would continue to raise the millage rate,” Superintendent Beverley Levine said in previous Echo reporting.
The BOE held three required public hearings throughout January about its decision. One resident attended Tuesday’s meeting.
“In lieu of letting somebody in Atlanta make decisions for us here, we’re gonna look into options about what we can do for ourselves here, for our community,” District 5 member Jake Willcox said.
In other business, the BOE approved funding to replace part of Oglethorpe County Middle School’s cafeteria roof.
At first, the board planned to replace the roof in its entirety, but after a recommendation from the roofing company, only a 70-by-9-foot section will be replaced, which reduces the cost from a projected $50,000 to $8,717.
“We feel that (the roofing company) inspected it very well and think it will work well for us for several years,” said Paul Thiel, the school system’s operations director.
The board also recommended the purchase of automated cleaning equipment, a robotic scrubber and a robotic vacuum sweeper, for Oglethorpe County Elementary School. Board members looked into leasing the items, but the high interest rate led them to take Levine’s suggestion and purchase the equipment.
“We explored the opportunity to lease the items, but it felt like coming in at this 12% interest rate on the lease, we didn’t get any benefit from doing that,” Thiel said.
The sweeper will cost $35,175 and the scrubber is $42,000. These prices include chargers and home base stations for the equipment. The equipment is expected to last about five years.