Pierce County Board of Commissioners (Chairman Neal Bennett): the 2025-2026 minutes read whole - 62 files - with the House Bill 581 opt-out that kept the county’s own floating homestead, the Army-veteran County Manager and the homestead workload

The board. The county's Chairman & District Commissioners page seats the five: "Chairman - Mr. Neal Bennett"; "District 1 - Commissioner Mr. Troy Mattox"; "District 2 - Commissioner Mr. Graham Raley"; "District 3 - Commissioner Mr. Randy Dixon"; and "District 4 - Commissioner Mr. David Lowman", at "Board of Commissioners, 312 Nichols Street, Suite 5, Blackshear, GA 31516, t: 912.449.2022, f: 912.449.2024". The 2025-2026 minutes seat the same five and the staff: "Raphel Maddox, County Manager; Donna Golding, County Clerk; Adam Craft, County Attorney." The record. The county's Commissioner Meeting Agendas page posts 62 2025 and 2026 documents, all downloaded from the county's own server and read whole. The veteran record: the January 28, 2025 joint work session with Eastman, Chester and Chauncey on "HB 581 which provides a 'floating' homestead exemption that will limit annual assessment increases on homesteaded property to the rate of inflation"; the February 26, 2025 public hearing, where "County Manager Raphel Maddox presented the two choices for homestead exemptions" and Chief Appraiser Bill Rozier "stated that the current local homestead exemption is the best of the two exemptions"; the February 27, 2025 adoption recorded in the exemptions entry; the July 8, 2025 minutes' opening - "Pledge of Allegiance Leader-County Manager Raphel Mattox; 20 Year Army Veteran, Retired as First Sergeant, Senior Human Resources Specialist" - the county's own seat of its manager's service; the July 8, 2025 discussion of the Floating Local Option Sales Tax, "By creating a new exemption to the two-penny local sales tax limit under state law, local governments can hold a future referendum for a FLOST if the homestead exemption referendum is approved and all local governments that tax property choose not to opt out"; the February 10, 2026 minutes' manager's report - "had a meeting with two Superior Court Judges in reference to HB 85, zoom meeting on Floating Local Option Sales Tax HB581 (FLOST), zoom meeting on Homestead Property Tax Relief/Elimination HR1114"; and the August 4, 2026 Tax Assessor's report, "We processed 575 homestead exemptions, during the regular applications time we processed 403 applications and 172 during the appeal period." No benefit is known to have been adopted, narrowed or repealed. The county's own organizations. American Legion Post 181 sits in Blackshear per the Department of Georgia's post list (District 8). The VFW's own post locator, searched for Blackshear on 2026-11-03, names no post.