Fannin Commissioners Meet Today to Hash Out 2026 Budget Priorities

The Fannin County Board of Commissioners meets Monday, September 28, 2026, at 9 a.m. for a special called budget work session in the Jury Assembly Room on the third floor of the county building at 400 W. Main Street in Blue Ridge. The session is open to the public, and it's where commissioners will start dividing up next year's tax dollars among roads, public safety and the rest of county government.

The timing matters. Commissioners just finished setting the county's 2026 property tax rate, and this work session is the next step toward deciding what that money actually pays for.

Earlier this month, the board adopted a full-rollback millage rate of 2.401 mills for the county portion of the tax bill, unchanged in practice from the rollback rate the county calculated after this year's property reassessments. Combined with the Fannin County Board of Education's rate of 6.517 mills, the total levy comes to 8.918 mills per $1,000 of assessed property value. Because the county held to the rollback rate rather than taking the higher rate the reassessment would have allowed, most property owners should see tax bills similar to last year's, even though home values have climbed.

A rollback rate means the county isn't collecting extra revenue just because property values went up. That makes budget work sessions like Monday's more important, not less. With the tax rate essentially flat, commissioners have to work within roughly the same pot of money while covering the usual pressures of a growing mountain county: road maintenance, fuel and equipment costs, public safety staffing, and building or facility upkeep.

What Happens at a Work Session

Work sessions are less formal than regular board meetings. There's no set agenda of votes to take. Instead, commissioners and department heads sit down together to go line by line through spending requests, ask questions, and flag where a budget needs to be trimmed or where a department is asking for more than it got last year.

Monday's session follows the board's regular meeting on September 22. Formal budget adoption typically comes later, after commissioners have had one or more work sessions to sort through department requests. The county has not announced a date for a final budget vote.

Residents who want to weigh in on how the county spends its budget don't have to wait for a formal hearing. Work sessions are public meetings, and commissioners take questions from residents who show up. Anyone with concerns about a specific department, road, or service can raise it before the numbers get locked in later this fall.

For more on the board's schedule and upcoming meetings, residents can check the Fannin County Board of Commissioners page.

Stay with Blue Ridge Georgia Community Website for updates as the budget process moves forward, and join the conversation in our Community Forum. For related coverage, visit our government and politics section or browse more local news.

Header photo: Thomson200 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)