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Forsyth County School Board opens public hearing on proposed 2025 millage; proposal would hold rate at 15.208
Summary
At a special July 22 meeting the Forsyth County Board of Education heard a staff presentation proposing the maintenance-and-operations millage remain at 15.208 and debt service at 1.418. No final vote on the millage was taken; the board opened a public hearing and scheduled two follow-up meetings.
The Forsyth County Board of Education opened a public hearing July 22 on a proposed 2025 property tax millage that would keep the maintenance-and-operations (M&O) rate at 15.208 mills and hold debt-service at 1.418 mills.
The proposal was presented by Larry Hammel, who walked the board and the public through the state-required rollback calculations and the tax digest changes that underlie the millage calculations. Hammel said the rollback rate for the M&O portion would be 14.626 mills based on reassessment, while the rollback for debt service would be 1.365 mills. Hammel said reassessment growth on the digest totaled about $913 million and additional growth items accounted for roughly $674 million, leaving the county-wide digest near $23.87 billion for the 2025 tax year.
The presentation noted that holding the M&O rate at 15.208 mills would represent roughly a 3.98% difference compared with the rollback rate on reassessed value and that the debt-service difference was about 3.88%. Hammel also said the district proposes to present the same debt-service millage of 1.418 this year. He invited questions and the board opened the public-comment portion of the hearing.
Board chair and other board members framed the proposal with fiscal context, saying the district had imposed a 4% self-cap on reassessment growth this year that voters approved with about 74% support. The board said the system’s overall spending increase for 2025 is approximately 5% — about $35 million year over year — and that roughly 3.5 percentage points of that increase stem from state-mandated costs for benefits and retirement. The board emphasized local staff and leadership actions to limit new positions and reduce duplicative spending while maintaining teacher step increases.
Two members of the public spoke during the hearing. John Ingram said he opposed any increase “in anything” and urged the board to focus on quality-of-life issues such as traffic and on workforce readiness for students entering the local trades. Derek Smith said the presentation clarified where tax dollars are going but expressed concern that continued housing growth could bring students whose families do not pay local taxes, and asked whether similar increases would be proposed again in future years.
Board members and staff clarified that land-use and zoning decisions — and much of traffic planning — fall under county commission authority, not the school board, though the board said it coordinates closely with county officials. The board also noted it previously passed a resolution requesting a slowdown of county growth, which helped prompt a county moratorium on new development earlier this year.
No final vote on the millage rate was taken at the July 22 meeting; the board has two additional public meetings scheduled for July 29 (9 a.m. and 5 p.m.) to continue the millage-setting process. The board did take one procedural vote at the start of the special meeting to adopt the meeting agenda.
Votes at a glance: Motion to adopt the meeting agenda — moved by Mister Usherwood, seconded by Mister Grimes; outcome: approved unanimously (no roll-call tally given).
