Savannah-Chatham board debates whether to opt into state’s HB 581 homestead exemption; leans toward keeping local Stevens Day law

Savannah-Chatham County Board of Public Education members spent more than an hour Feb. 5 discussing House Bill 581, a 2024 state law that creates a statewide “floating” homestead exemption and an optional local sales-tax mechanism, and whether the school district should opt into it or keep the county’s existing Stevens Day homestead exemption.

The conversation focused on technical differences between HB 581 and Stevens Day, operational burdens on local staff, and the uncertainty of pending state-level changes. Mr. Jackson, a district staff member who presented the board’s analysis, said that because Chatham County already has the Stevens Day exemption — enacted in 1998 and long used locally — the county and most municipalities are planning to opt out of HB 581. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he said, summarizing the district’s preliminary view.

Why it matters: HB 581 would create a statewide mechanism meant to limit property-tax increases for homeowners by establishing a new base-year calculation and permitting a local option sales tax (FLOST) to offset property-tax revenue. Chatham County’s Stevens Day exemption…