Fulton County is proposing a 12.49% increase in property taxes for 2025. This increase is tied to the adoption of a new millage rate of 9.87 mills, which is 1.096 mills higher than the previous year. The county’s Board of Commissioners cited increased costs for services, including those related to the Fulton County Jail, as reasons for the proposed increase.
On June 29, 2025 the Fulton County Board of Commissioners announced its intentions to increase the 2025 General Fund property taxes it will levy this year by 12.49 percent over the rollback millage rate.
Each year the Board of Tax Assessors is required to review the assessed value for property tax purposes of taxable property in the county. When the trend of prices on properties that have recently sold in the county indicate there has been an increase in the fair market value of any specific property, the board of tax assessors is required by law to re-determine the value of such property and adjust the assessment. This is called a reassessment.
When the total digest of taxable property is prepared, Georgia law requires a rollback millage rate must be computed that will produce the same total revenue on the current year’s digest that last year’s millage rate would have produced had no reassessment occurred
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labatt, after several years of contentious debate and struggling to obtain adequate funding for the Fulton County Jail staff and operations, made clear his intention to file a lawsuit against the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. He claimed that the withholding of funds is punitive and an effort to control the running of the jail.
Labatt suffered more financial stress when the Strategic Security Corp. severed its relationship with Fulton County Jail and discontinued providing security services for the much embattled detention facility, aka Rice Street in Atlanta.
“Despite multiple efforts to resolve the situation, including numerous emails, phone calls, meetings, and notices to various offices including the sheriff’s office, the Mayor of Atlanta’s Office, the County Commissioner’s Office, and even the Governor’s Office, no viable solution has been proposed by the responsible parties,” the company said in a statement. “Regrettably, no timeline for payment or good faith attempt to address the outstanding balance has been made.”
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat admitted in a press conference following the SSC’s decision in August 2024 to discontinue services that his office had not paid the company in three months and had racked up about $1 million in outstanding payments.
Labat went on to criticize SSC for its abruptness in ending the agreement with his office and putting jail personnel at risk by advising their 80 employees to abandon their posts immediately on Thursday, Aug. 29. Labat added that the jail hired more than 50 percent of the former SSC guards back with a 10 percent increase in pay.
Buy Lababtt’s problems with the Fulton County Board of Commissioners extends back to heated disagreements over the years on whether or not to renovate the current facility which has been the subject of multiple investigations and accusations of neglect and dysfunction in some cases leading to inmate deaths or to build a new modern facility to improve jail operations.
