Directors of the Athens Municipal Water Authority (AMWA) did the taxpayers’ favorite thing Wednesday morning … they lowered taxes.
The Board of Directors voted to set next year’s tax rate at .122173 per $100 valuation, which is one-quarter of a cent lower than the current tax rate.
Now, if one-quarter of a penny doesn’t sound like that big of a reduction consider this: General Manager Wylie Pirkle told the directors he hopes to lower the tax rate one-quarter penny each year for the next five years.
That would be a 10 percent total reduction over the five-year period.
“I think we need to make a real effort to lower our tax rate,” Pirkle told the board.
The move came during a board meeting Wednesday that emphasized that AMWA is an organization in transition. I will have more on that in a later post.