Milton residents will wait until Oct. 19 for a final vote on the city's 2026 property tax rate after a typo forced the council to delay.

The Milton City Council deferred its millage rate vote at its Monday, Oct. 5 meeting, pushing the decision to Oct. 19. City Attorney Ken Jarrard asked for the delay after discovering what he called a "scrivener's error" in the city's required advertising for the new rate, Appen Media reported. Jarrard said the typo will be corrected and the rate readvertised before the Oct. 19 vote.

The proposed 2026 millage rate is 4.495 mills, split between 4.193 mills for maintenance and operations and 0.302 mills for debt service. That is a decrease of 0.008 mills from the 2025 rate of 4.503 mills. The deferral also gives officials more time to work through delays in Fulton County's 2026 tax digest, the official record of every property's taxable value. A backlog of 292 unprocessed land packages left the county, its school system and its cities without the numbers needed to finalize millage rates, according to Appen Media's reporting on the digest delay.

$340,000 for Thompson Road bridge

The council also approved $340,000 for structural and preventive maintenance repairs to the Thompson Road bridge over a Chicken Creek tributary. The money will come from transportation special purpose local option sales tax (TSPLOST) revenue.

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) reduced the bridge's load capacity to 10 tons in February after an inspection found deterioration, according to the city's meeting recap. That restriction knocked school buses off the bridge, forcing changes to bus routes and schedules.

Deputy Public Works Director Rob Dell-Ross presented three options: structural repairs only, structural repairs plus preventive maintenance, or expedited replacement. He told the council that concrete spalling and other problems "could lead to more serious issues if not addressed."

The council chose the middle path. Dell-Ross said the repair work could be finished by year's end.

"The bridge is going to need to be replaced (eventually) … What we're deciding tonight is when that replacement is going to happen," Dell-Ross said at the Oct. 5 meeting.

The city will now pursue full replacement of the Thompson Road bridge through the state, swapping it in for the previously planned Clarity Road bridge project.

As we reported Oct. 6, the same meeting produced a landmark conservation easement protecting 185 acres at Birmingham Park.

The next Milton City Council meeting is Monday, Oct. 19, when the millage rate vote is expected.