Georgia state law — specifically, O.C.G.A. § 48-5-32.1 — requires
the governing body of every Georgia county to adopt, for each
fiscal year, a millage rate for ad valorem property taxation.
Adoption is subject to statutory notice requirements and to a public
hearing. The adoption must, per the statute, be completed within the
fiscal year's first quarter; for White County, whose fiscal year
aligns with the calendar year, this means the adoption must occur
on or before March 31, 2026.
The White County Board of Commissioners' December-2025-published
2026 meeting calendar identified the Wednesday, January 16, 2026
Board meeting as the session at which the Fiscal Year 2026 millage
adoption would occur. The agenda's Item 7 read, simply: "Adoption of
FY2026 Millage Rate."
At 5:47 p.m. on Tuesday, January 15 — approximately 25 hours before
the scheduled Wednesday-evening meeting — County Manager Wyatt
Coombs's office released, to the County's standard procedural-
memoranda distribution list, a three-page document titled
"Procedural Postponement Memo: FY2026 Millage Adoption Item 7." The
document, drafted by Commissioner Dale Henneman and signed by
County Manager Coombs, postpones the millage-adoption item to the
Board's February 18 meeting.
The justification
Page 1 of the memo, in its entirety, reads:
"The White County Board of Commissioners hereby postpones from
January 16, 2026 to February 18, 2026, the scheduled adoption of
the Fiscal Year 2026 Millage Rate, citing significant thermal
disincentives to meaningful Board deliberation during the ongoing
winter-weather window."
Page 2 elaborates, in three paragraphs totaling approximately 400
words, on the meaning of "significant thermal disincentives." The
operative passage reads:
"The upstairs community room of the White County Historic
Courthouse, the Board's customary meeting location, is heated by
a 1978-era oil-fired boiler system whose Wednesday-evening
performance, during the current extended cold snap, has been
suboptimal. At the Board's 7:00 p.m. meeting of Wednesday,
January 7, 2026, the community room's air temperature at the
dais was, per the Board secretary's recorded reading, 54°F.
Meaningful Board deliberation on matters of substantial fiscal
impact is not, in the Board's assessment, realistically
achievable at air temperatures below 60°F."
Page 3 contains the four-to-one-vote authorization (the vote was
taken at the Board's previous Wednesday meeting, buried on its
consent agenda as Item 11(f), where no member of the public or
press appeared to have noticed it at the time). Commissioners
Henneman, Burnside, Pettigrew, and McVey voted in favor.
Commissioner Kinnison dissented.
Commissioner Kinnison
Commissioner Reba Kinnison, reached by telephone Thursday afternoon,
confirmed her dissent. Asked to explain her reasoning, she paused
for approximately four seconds. She then said: "Wyatt's memo
describes it as 'significant thermal disincentives to meaningful
Board deliberation.' I want to be clear. This is because of the
cold. The cold is the entire reason."
She continued: "I accept that the community room is not, at present,
providing the Board with the most comfortable meeting environment.
I reject the proposition that the discomfort rises to the level that
delays the legal adoption of the county's millage rate."
Asked whether she had proposed, as an alternative to the
postponement, that the Board hold its January 16 meeting at a
different, warmer location, Commissioner Kinnison said: "I proposed
the Helen Welcome Center. The Welcome Center was willing to host.
The other Commissioners declined on the grounds that the Welcome
Center is located in Helen rather than in Cleveland, which is
technically the county seat. I accept this. I simply did not think
we should postpone."
Historical precedent
I researched, at the Clerk's office Thursday afternoon, the Board's
postponement history. The January 15 postponement is, per the
Clerk's logs, the fourth instance in the past seven years in which
the Board has invoked "significant thermal disincentives" as the
justification for delaying a regularly scheduled agenda item. The
preceding three instances occurred in February 2019 (a bridge-
funding matter), February 2020 (a public-hearing on a zoning
amendment), and February 2022 (a committee appointment).
The millage-rate-adoption item has not, to this publication's
review of the Clerk's records going back to 2001, previously been
postponed for thermal reasons.
The Board's February 18 meeting, at which the FY2026 millage
adoption is now scheduled to occur, is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. in
the same community room of the same 1978-oil-boiler-heated
courthouse. The National Weather Service's extended forecast for
that date's Cleveland high/low is 58°F/41°F.
Commissioner Kinnison has, in the meantime, indicated she plans to
bring a space heater.
Reader Comments
Leave a comment ↓