Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly’s office has released the finalized version of its proposed property tax rate and supplemental budget, which asks the City Council to adopt a property tax rate of $1.93 per $100 of assessed property value.
The updates come after weeks of budget work sessions with the City Council and ahead of an August 19 public hearing. The $1.93 rate would be a historic reduction from the city’s current millage rate of $2.25 and would raise $44.8 million, protecting community centers, investing in affordable housing and securing more competitive wages for police and firefighters who answered the call this week following historic rainfall and flood events across Chattanooga.
The Administration's proposal would also:
- fund 15 new firefighting positions and a new fire truck for Station 21 in East Brainerd
- provide $7.5 million in additional funding for paving, moving up important projects that would otherwise go unfunded for years
- add staffing to improve the effectiveness of Public Works, boosting important efforts like road paving and traffic signal re-timing
- provide $5 million for affordable housing and eviction prevention resources for Chattanooga’s most vulnerable
- cut money from the budget that would have gone toward technology licenses and professional testing
- adjust for an accounting error that resulted in a public safety expenditure being double-counted in budget projections
“Budget negotiations are difficult and emotional. We need to remember that our common enemy is inflation, which has severely cut into our ability to pay competitive wages for our police and fire first responders, to fund baseline services like road paving, and to be able to supply essential public safety assets like fire and police vehicles or staffing at our fire stations at levels needed to deliver the protection Chattanoogans expect and deserve,” said Mayor Tim Kelly. “At the conclusion of weeks of robust conversation with the City Council, I think we’ve landed at an affordable rate that strikes a fair balance between taxpayers’ pocketbooks and the reality that the cost of doing business is moving in only one direction.”
The proposal would represent the largest decrease in Chattanooga’s property tax rate in decades, while allowing the city to keep pace with 22.5% overall inflation since the last revenue change in 2021. Fixed costs for government have outpaced that inflation, and the City of Chattanooga has seen more than 35% increased costs on average across the same time period.
Because of the rise in property values recognized by the Hamilton County Assessor, the average new cost per household with this change in Chattanooga will be $1.10 per day compared to last year’s tax bill. This would remain lower than the tax rate for residents in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis and would stay in line with Tennessee’s nationally-recognized low rate of taxation.
