The Roundabout, Milton, GA

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2026 · Issue No. 58 · 10 min read

Milton's tax rate, next to every Fulton city's

Roswell wants 56% more. The schools want more, too. Milton's 2026 rate isn't set yet.

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In this issue

The tax rates. Roswell wants 56% more. Milton’s is down 15% since 2019, and staff wants no increase for 2026. Every Fulton city, in one table.

The schools. Fulton County Schools wants a higher tax rate: about $230 more a year on a $575,000 home, before exemptions.

The cameras. Three neighbors publish what Milton doesn’t. Plus a one-tap poll: how long should Milton keep your plate data?

And. A proposed pause on new trails, Restaurant Week, cross-country’s fifth straight Eagle Cup, the week’s meetings, and two dates to save: the hazardous waste drop-off and Crabapple Fest.

Top of Mind

the one thing to know this morning

Line chart of North Fulton city tax rates from 2019 to 2026. Milton’s falls from 5.319 mills to 4.503. Roswell’s holds near 4.9, then its proposal rises to 7.732 for 2026.

North Fulton city tax rates since 2019. Roswell’s 2026 number is a proposal; Milton’s hasn’t been set.

Fifty-six percent. That’s how much Roswell wants to raise its city property tax rate, from 4.949 mills to 7.732. (A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of taxable value, and Georgia taxes 40% of what the county says a home is worth.)

The city says the money would go to roads, aging buildings and equipment, rising health insurance costs and public safety, including the last year of its switch to a full-time fire department. On a $575,000 home, Roswell’s city tax would go from about $1,138 a year to $1,778, before exemptions. Its first reading was on Monday night’s agenda. The vote is Sept. 28.

Milton went the other way. Milton’s city rate is down 15% since 2019, from 5.319 mills to 4.503. That 4.503 comes in two parts: 4.193 to run the city, which council sets each year, and 0.310 to pay off the greenspace bonds. The first part sat at 4.731 through 2021 and has been cut three times since, and the bond part has shrunk every year. When council set the 2025 rate, the city called it the lowest in Milton’s history. In Fulton County, only Johns Creek’s is lower.

The city is the small part of your bill. Fulton County and the school system add 26.119 mills on top of whatever your city charges. Count everything and Milton’s 2025 rate was 30.622 mills, again second lowest of Fulton’s 15 cities. On that same $575,000 home, that’s about $7,043 a year before exemptions, and about $1,036 of it is Milton’s.

CityCity rateSince 2019All-in
Johns Creek3.742−5%29.861
Milton
2026 rate not set yet		4.503−15%30.622
Sandy Springs4.7310%30.850
Roswell
2026 proposal: 7.732, up 56%		4.9490%31.068
Alpharetta5.7500%31.869
Mountain Park5.954−39%32.073
Palmetto7.600−11%33.719
Chattahoochee Hills8.200−18%34.319
Fairburn9.5600%35.679
College Park11.493−9%37.612
Union City11.526−20%37.645
South Fulton12.399+7%38.518
East Point13.000−3%39.119
Atlanta11.370+11%40.909
Hapeville17.509+9%43.628

2025 rates in mills, lowest all-in first. City rate is what each city council sets, operating plus bond (Atlanta’s includes its parks levy). All-in adds Fulton County (9.039) and the schools (17.080; Atlanta Public Schools 20.500). Sources: Georgia Department of Revenue, corrected against the cities’ own records; Fulton County’s 2025 rate sheet; City of Roswell.

The schools want a mill more. Fulton County Schools is the biggest piece of every Milton bill, 17.08 mills, and the superintendent has recommended raising it to 18.08. The board gave it tentative approval Aug. 20, and three public meetings for comment come before its final vote. On that same home, one mill is about $230 a year before exemptions. When we asked in August, 20 of the 42 readers who tapped said don’t raise it; 11 said raise it and 11 said it depends on the hearings.

A lower rate isn’t always a lower bill. When home values climb, the same rate brings in more money. Georgia’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights sets a “rollback rate,” the one that would collect what the government collected the year before, and a government that goes above it has to advertise a tax increase and hold three public hearings. That’s the process Roswell is in now.

Milton’s 2026 rate isn’t set yet, but staff wants to hold it. At Monday night’s work session, staff said the rollback rate for the part council sets each year, now 4.193, came in at 4.205 for 2026. It went up because the county’s reassessments of existing property came out negative overall, so it takes a slightly higher rate to raise the same money. Staff recommended advertising the current 4.193 anyway: at the county’s new values, that should bring in about $18 million, a little more than the $17.7 million the budget counts on. Once a rate is advertised, council can adopt it or a lower one, but not a higher one.

Council hears the rate first on Sept. 21, the night it adopts the budget, and votes Oct. 5. It’s later than usual because the county’s final 2026 values only arrived Monday afternoon. The same day, a judge granted Milton, Alpharetta and Roswell, which bill their own city taxes, an order letting them set a 2026 rate instead of billing at last year’s; with the values in hand, the city says it won’t need it. The county’s own temporary bills, mailed in August on preliminary values and last year’s rates, are still due Oct. 15.

Every Fulton city, with the trend since 2019 and how we checked the numbers →

The Cameras, Continued

Three neighbors publish the page Milton doesn’t. Woodstock’s shows 8 cameras, 30 days of retention and 75 searches last month. Dunwoody’s shows 81 cameras, 30 days, 389 searches, and a spreadsheet of every one of those searches that anyone can download. Roswell’s shows 99 cameras, 485 searches, and the names of about 1,770 agencies in 47 states that can query its data, Milton’s police among them. The same page lists about 1,250 agencies Roswell receives data from, and Milton is on that list too.

They’re called transparency portals, and Flock hosts them free; the company says more than 1,500 agencies have one. We asked the department Saturday whether Milton will publish one. No answer yet. In the meantime, our map shows every camera we’ve found in Milton so far.

Reader poll · One tap

How long should Milton keep license plate camera data?

Milton keeps it a year now; it used to be 30 days. Flock’s new default is 7 days, and Georgia law allows up to 30 months.

7 days
30 days
One year
30 months
Don’t collect it

Tap once and you’ll see how everyone else voted. Results Thursday.

The Alpharetta case. Sunday we reported that former Alpharetta officer Dustin Bozzo was charged under Georgia’s license plate data law. His attorney, Brian Hansford, answered our request for comment Monday: because this is a pending criminal matter, “we are not going to comment on the allegations or evidence outside of the judicial process.” The Fulton County Solicitor-General’s office and Alpharetta’s Department of Public Safety have not responded.

Council Watch

what the city decided, and what it is about to

A proposed pause on new trails. Monday’s work session also took up trails, and staff’s plan goes further than a map. It recommended dropping the 2017 Trails Blueprint from both the Comprehensive Plan and the development code, writing a new trail plan with residents, and pausing new trails until that plan is done. New developments would pay the city instead of building sidewalks, unless a sidewalk would make a logical connection or join an existing network. Only city trail projects already underway would continue. Council members sounded supportive. One asked for quick wins near parks and schools; another asked about sidewalks that lead nowhere on rural roads, and staff said removing them could be part of the new plan. No votes happen at work sessions. The plan’s working draft is at miltonga.gov/2026CompPlanUpdate.

Still waiting. The city still hasn’t answered the question we asked on Sept. 10: what its rules provide when a council member answers a resident from the dais, and whether that resident has any way to respond on the record.

Restaurant Week, Day Two

Six days left. Milton Restaurant Week runs through Sept. 20, with fourteen restaurants in and set menus running $25 to $75. Before you book, our guide lines up each set menu against what the same dishes cost on the regular menu, so you can see which ones actually save you money.

The Scoreboard

every game, both schools, the night it finishes

Volleyball, Saturday. Milton went 1-3 in its tournament matches, beating Bremen and falling to Brookwood, Northgate and Science Hill. Cambridge went 2-2, beating Chattahoochee and Creekside and losing to Johns Creek and Roswell.

Cross-country, Saturday. Milton hosted 24 schools at its home invitational. The girls won and stayed unbeaten, the boys finished second, and Milton kept the meet’s Eagle Cup for a fifth straight year. Cambridge won the JV boys race.

Tonight. Milton volleyball hosts Alpharetta at 6. Cambridge softball plays at Centennial at 6, and Milton softball is at Riverwood at 6:30. Every schedule and score →

Correction

what we got wrong, and what replaces it

Sunday’s issue said council would vote on Milton’s 2026 millage rate on Sept. 21. The budget adoption is still that night, but the millage rate gets only its first presentation; the vote is Oct. 5, on the schedule staff laid out Monday. We had the wrong date for the vote. Every correction we have run is on our corrections page.

The Agenda

public meetings this week and next

Every meeting below is at City Hall and open to the public.

This Week in Milton

the calendar, day by day

Tuesday, September 15

Wednesday, September 16

Saturday, September 19

  • →8:00 PM · Shakerag, alt-country and Americana, at Matilda’s · 850 Hickory Flat Rd

Further out: hazardous waste drop-off, Sept. 26. The city’s annual collection runs 8 a.m. to noon at Cambridge High School. It takes batteries, car fluids, gas, fluorescent bulbs, pesticides, pool chemicals, aerosol paint and up to 10 gallons of stain or varnish. It’s free, but you have to register first, and spots go fast: miltonga.gov/HHWCollection.

Further out: Crabapple Fest, Oct. 3. The city’s fall festival fills Crabapple Road from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with more than 100 vendors, a bigger KidZone and, for the first time, a music stage near the Heritage Walk roundabout. Park at Milton High, Northwestern Middle, Crabapple Crossing Elementary or Milton Community Church and ride the free shuttle. Plan around the road: Crabapple Road closes to through traffic around 10 a.m. on Oct. 2 and stays closed until late on Oct. 3. Our guide has the rest.

See the full Milton calendar → · Got an event? Submit it

Also going on in Milton: AR Workshop Adult/Teen Classes, AR Workshop Youth Classes, Adult Pétanque and Adult Soccer (free). Plus 27 more on the activities page.

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