Catoosa County, Georgia — county government finances from two published documents: the FY2026 Approved Budget (General Fund headline figures only — see the budget caveats) and the audited FY2025 financial statements. This page covers the county government only; Ringgold is the county seat and a separate city government, and none of its figures appear here.
Fiscal year ends: September 30FY2025: Oct 1, 2024 – Sep 30, 2025 (audited)FY2026: Oct 1, 2025 – Sep 30, 2026 (adopted)County seat: Ringgold, GeorgiaAuditor: Johnson, Hickey & Murchison, P.C.
Extraction note — spot re-verification owed
Figures on this page were extracted from the documents' full text while the UGA TED portal — the county's publication route for both documents — was under maintenance (HTTP 503) on October 23, 2026. Every figure was cross-checked two independent ways before inclusion, but the figures are subject to a spot re-verification pass against the source PDFs, in particular the FY2026 budget summary figures, the two cleared FY2026 revenue categories, and the Statement of Net Position restricted lines. See the caveats section.
General Fund adopted budgetFY2026 Adopted
$46,860,469
Balanced: adopted revenues of $46,785,469 plus $75,000 from sale of assets. There is no verifiable all-funds adopted total — none is published on this page.
County M&O millage — 2025 digestFY2026 Adopted
4.641 mills
Rollback rate 4.789 mills. Net M&O digest $3,496,050,944; total county M&O taxes levied $16,225,172.
All governmental funds combined, September 30, 2025 (fund basis). Up $12,185,447 during FY2025.
General Fund balanceFY2025 Audited
$30,641,051
Of which unassigned: $30,025,072 — 66.1% of General Fund expenditures. Total General Fund balance equals 67.5% of General Fund expenditures.
Governmental revenues — fund basisFY2025 Audited
$79,065,155
All governmental funds, modified accrual. General Fund revenues alone were $52,369,961.
Governmental expenditures — fund basisFY2025 Audited
$66,817,344
All governmental funds, modified accrual. General Fund expenditures were $45,418,952.
Bonded debt outstandingFY2025 Audited
$0
The county has no bonded debt. Its only borrowing is a Development Authority note payable of $850,764 — see the obligations section; $0 bonded debt does not mean $0 obligations.
Net pension liability — primary governmentFY2025 Audited
$0 reported
The county's own retirement plan is a defined-contribution plan (GMA, since April 1, 2020), so no net pension liability exists to report. Net OPEB liability is likewise $0 reported.
Capital assets, netFY2025 Audited
$370,838,961
Primary government, September 30, 2025. Total liabilities were $14,028,762.
Change in net position, FY2025FY2025 Audited
+$5,888,809
Total net position rose from $464,952,258 to $470,841,067 during FY2025; governmental net position rose $5,988,854.
Sources: Catoosa County FY 2026 Approved Budget (adopted) — FY2026 budget report (PDF, UGA TED) · Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements and Supplementary Information, Year Ended September 30, 2025 (Johnson, Hickey & Murchison, P.C., audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED). Every figure carries its fiscal-year tag; FY2025 figures are not calendar-2025 or current-year figures.
FY2026 adopted budget — General Fund
General Fund only. Only the summary figures below could be verified from the budget book; its department, function, and other-fund tables could not be confirmed and are not published here, and the book prints no verifiable all-funds adopted total. FY2026 Adopted
FY2025 amended budget
FY2026 adopted
Change
Revenues
$43,202,655*
$46,785,469*
+$3,582,814*
Other financing sources (sale of assets)
$20,000
$75,000
+$55,000
Total sources (= total budget; balanced)
$43,222,655*
$46,860,469
+$3,637,814 (+8.42%)
* Starred figures are as reconstructed from the adopted budget summary: the budget book's summary table text is character-scrambled, and these values are the unique arithmetically forced completion (for example, $46,785,469 + $75,000 = $46,860,469, and $3,637,814 ÷ $43,222,655 = 8.42%). The FY2026 total of $46,860,469 is printed in full in the budget's transmittal letter. The transmittal repeatedly uses the word "proposed" — carried over from the July 29, 2025 proposed-budget letter, which carried the same $46,860,469 General Fund total; the document's title ("FY 2026 Approved Budget," August 19, 2025) and the adopted 4.641 millage in its digest table establish its adopted status.
Disclosure — the two documents disagree on the FY2025 budget (~$7.1M)
The FY2026 adopted budget book reports the FY2025 amended General Fund budget as $43,222,655; the FY2025 audited financial statements report the FY2025 final budget at $50,345,621. The two documents' FY2025 budget columns cannot both be the final amended FY2025 budget; the difference is approximately $7,142,966 on a like-for-like total-sources basis. This page uses each document's figures only within that document. The "+8.42% over the prior year" change above is consistent with the budget book's $43,222,655 base — it is not consistent with the audit's FY2025 final-budget column, and is never shown alongside audit figures.
FY2026 adopted General Fund revenues — the two verifiable categories
Budget-book classification, from the book's budget-analysis reports (2026 APPROVED column). Only these two categories — whose components foot internally — could be verified; all other General Fund revenue categories are excluded because they could not be cross-footed to the $46,785,469 revenue total from the scrambled text. Do not merge these into the audit's category scheme: the budget book classifies cable franchise fees under "Sales and other taxes." FY2026 Adopted
Category (budget-book classification)
FY2026 adopted
General property taxes
$20,363,000
Sales and other taxes
$12,560,000
Components, as printed: property taxes — property $15,700,000; motor-vehicle title tax $4,300,000; real-estate prior-year $165,000; motor vehicle $100,000; mobile home $69,000; AAVT $21,000; railroad $6,000; timber $1,000; heavy-duty equipment $1,000. Sales and other taxes — LOST $11,500,000; penalties & interest $300,000; alcohol tax $250,000; cable franchise $250,000; real-estate transfer $160,000; financial institutions $100,000. Each category's components foot exactly to its total.
2025 tax digest and levy
From the budget book's "Current 2025 Tax Digest and Five Year History of Levy" (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-32). County M&O only — the same table's school-levy figures belong to the Catoosa County Board of Education, a separate government, and are not shown. FY2026 Adopted
Item (2025 digest)
Amount
Gross digest
$3,901,316,708
Less M&O exemptions
−$405,265,764
Net M&O digest
$3,496,050,944
Net M&O millage (adopted)
4.641 mills
Sales-tax rollback
3.297 mills
Gross M&O millage
7.938 mills
Total taxes levied (county M&O)
$16,225,172
Source: Catoosa County FY 2026 Approved Budget (adopted; transmittal dated August 19, 2025), Catoosa County Finance Office — FY2026 budget report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2026 Adopted.
Governmental revenues by source
Basis: Governmental funds (modified accrual) — Statement of Revenues, Expenditures and Changes in Fund Balances (p. 5), totals column, all governmental funds. FY2025 Audited
Source
Amount
Taxes
$55,325,226
Intergovernmental
$6,353,142
Investment earnings
$4,949,314
Fines, fees and forfeitures
$4,887,397
Charges for services
$2,807,337
Other
$2,396,679
Rental income
$2,025,884
Licenses and franchises
$320,176
Total revenues
$79,065,155
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements and Supplementary Information, Year Ended September 30, 2025, p. 5 (Johnson, Hickey & Murchison, P.C., audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
Governmental expenditures by function
Basis: Governmental funds (modified accrual) — p. 5, totals column, all governmental funds. FY2025 Audited
Function
Amount
Public safety (current)
$24,703,376
General government (current)
$10,266,017
Public works (current)
$8,218,132
Judicial (current)
$6,779,413
Capital outlay
$6,449,127
Culture and recreation (current)
$3,863,080
Intergovernmental
$3,685,058
Health and welfare (current)
$1,618,824
Housing and development (current)
$1,056,219
Debt service — principal
$171,314
Debt service — interest
$6,784
Total expenditures
$66,817,344
How the fund year closed (as printed, p. 5): excess of revenues over expenditures $12,247,811; other financing sources (uses), net −$62,364 (proceeds — sale of assets $103,781, insurance $28,382, leases $82,017, SBITAs $78,370; transfers in $7,119,869; transfers out −$7,474,783); net change in fund balances +$12,185,447; beginning balances $95,923,822 → ending $108,109,269.
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements, Year Ended September 30, 2025, p. 5 (audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
Governmental activities — government-wide
Basis: Government-wide (full accrual) — Statement of Activities (p. 2), governmental activities only. These figures use a different accounting basis from the fund tables above and are not interchangeable with them. FY2025 Audited
Expenses by function
Function
Expenses
Public safety
$26,329,737
Public works
$22,244,965
General government
$10,850,083
Judicial
$6,980,955
Culture and recreation
$4,281,001
Health and welfare
$1,353,931
Housing and development
$1,183,836
Interest
$4,630
Total governmental expenses
$73,229,138
Why Public Works looks so different here: government-wide Public Works ($22,244,965) is about 2.7× the fund-basis current line ($8,218,132) because the accrual statement folds in depreciation — $9,923,612 of governmental depreciation is charged to Public Works — and SPLOST-funded road work. The two bases are never mixed in one visual on this page.
Revenues — governmental activities (accrual)
Revenue
Amount
Program revenues — charges for services
$9,862,625
Program revenues — operating grants and contributions
$2,949,667
Program revenues — capital grants and contributions
$5,120,841
General revenues — property taxes
$21,512,211
General revenues — SPLOST
$17,009,281
General revenues — LOST
$11,612,364
General revenues — insurance premium tax
$4,761,516
General revenues — investment earnings
$2,683,103
General revenues — rental income
$2,025,884
General revenues — other taxes
$1,006,458
General revenues — federal payments in lieu of taxes
$530,859
General revenues — franchise fees
$236,967
General revenues — other
$195,618
General revenues — gain on disposal of capital assets
$65,512
The general-revenue lines above are as printed on p. 2; as printed they foot to the total-primary-government general revenues of $61,639,773. Governmental-activities general revenues of $60,929,945 are derived (change in net position $5,988,854 = net expense −$55,296,005 + general revenues + transfers in $354,914) and confirmed by the business-type residual. Governmental activities total revenues (accrual, derived) = $17,933,133 program + $60,929,945 general = $78,863,078. Transfers: governmental +$354,914 / business-type −$354,914. Change in governmental net position +$5,988,854 (beginning $470,344,063 → ending $476,332,917).
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements, Year Ended September 30, 2025, p. 2 (audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
General Fund composition (p. 3): Nonspendable $615,979 + Unassigned $30,025,072 = $30,641,051. The all-funds unassigned total of $30,018,311 is the General Fund's unassigned $30,025,072 minus the E911 Fund deficit of −$6,761 inside Other Governmental Funds (Note 17) — the deficit is part of the total and is shown here rather than hidden.
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements, Year Ended September 30, 2025, pp. 3, 5 (audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
Net position composition
Basis: Government-wide (full accrual) — Statement of Net Position (p. 1), September 30, 2025. FY2025 Audited
Component
Governmental
Business-type
Total primary gov't
Net investment in capital assets
$367,061,128
$2,727,840
$369,788,968
Restricted
$77,474,979*
$0
$77,474,979*
Unrestricted
$31,796,810
−$8,219,690
$23,577,120
Total net position
$476,332,917
−$5,491,850
$470,841,067
* Restricted total and the $1,853 dropped line: this page uses the restricted total of $77,474,979 implied by the audited totals ($476,332,917 net position − $367,061,128 net investment − $31,796,810 unrestricted — an equation that foots exactly). The p. 1 restricted-purpose lines as extracted sum to $77,473,126 — $1,853 less — because the p. 1 text layer appears to drop the restricted Culture and recreation line of exactly $1,853 that the fund balance sheet (p. 3) reports. Governmental restricted purposes (p. 1): Capital projects $73,384,251; Housing and development $2,671,349; Public safety $694,729; Public buildings $598,163; Judicial $124,634; plus Culture and recreation $1,853 per p. 3. The five extracted p. 1 purpose lines are not charted as a complete restricted breakdown pending the PDF re-check.
Component unit, shown separately: the discretely presented Catoosa County Health Department reported net position of $2,228,862. That is a component-unit figure — the Health Department has a June 30 fiscal year-end and was audited by other auditors — it is not county (primary government) net position and is not included in any total above.
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements, Year Ended September 30, 2025, p. 1 (audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
Debt and long-term obligations
September 30, 2025. Only the note payable is a borrowing; the rest are separate obligation categories, kept apart on purpose. FY2025 Audited
Item
Amount
Treatment
Bonded debt outstanding
$0
The county reports no bonds (Note 6). Government-wide interest expense in FY2025 was $4,630.
Note payable — Catoosa County Development Authority to Financial Corporation of North Georgia, LLC
$850,764
The county's only borrowing — a note, not bonded debt. Original borrowings $1,704,923 at 0% interest, collateralized by undeveloped property, due on or before October 2025; all $850,764 due within one year (Note 6).
Lease liabilities (equipment)
$126,929
Obligation, not bonded debt.
SBITA liabilities
$72,300
Obligation, not bonded debt.
Compensated absences
$1,285,846
Obligation, not debt — $658,716 current / $627,130 long-term.
Governmental long-term liabilities subtotal
$2,335,839
$1,587,436 due within one year + $748,403 due after one year; ties to the p. 1 long-term liability lines.
Environmental liability, not debt — Site #1 $2,287,702 + Site #2 $5,800,047 (Georgia EPD estimate). Note 14 anticipates part will be liquidated with general government resources.
Net pension liability — primary government
$0
The county's plan is defined-contribution (GMA, effective April 1, 2020; ~427 participants; FY2025 employer contributions ≈ $2,034,857). No net pension liability exists to report (Note 9).
Net OPEB liability — primary government
$0 reported
No county OPEB plan amounts appear in the statements; all OPEB disclosures in the report relate solely to the Health Department component unit (Note 10).
Primary-government long-term obligations total $10,423,588 ($2,335,839 governmental + $8,087,749 landfill), tying to the statements' long-term obligations activity total. Read "$0 bonded debt" with this table: the county carries the note, leases, SBITAs, compensated absences, and the landfill liability listed above.
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements, Year Ended September 30, 2025, Notes 5, 6, 9, 10, 14 (audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
Budget and actual — as printed in the audit
The audit itself contains GAAP-basis budgetary comparisons (Required Supplementary Information, pp. 50–55), labeled exactly as the statements present them. Only the totals rows and the Actual column are published here: the seven revenue category budget columns do not foot to the printed totals in the extracted text (Original categories $14,500 high; Final categories $14,500 low — a single mis-extracted category pair), so category-level Original/Final budget figures are excluded. FY2025 Audited
General Fund (pp. 50–54)
Original budget
Final budget
Actual
Variance vs final
Total revenues
$49,058,585
$50,345,621
$52,369,961
+$2,024,340
Total expenditures
$47,603,268
$48,882,480
$45,418,952
+$3,463,528 (under)
Other financing sources (uses), net
−$1,455,317
−$7,563,141
−$7,182,233
+$380,908
Net change in fund balance
$0
−$6,100,000
−$231,224
+$5,868,776
Fund balance, September 30
$30,872,275
$24,772,275
$30,641,051
—
Public Facilities Authority Fund (p. 55)
Original budget
Final budget
Actual
Revenues
$2,022,884
$2,022,884
$2,133,266
Expenditures (General government)
$2,022,884
$2,022,884
$1,874,566
Net change in fund balance (Actual) / Fund balance, Sep 30
—
—
+$258,700 / $598,163
The Public Facilities Authority's actual revenues exceeded budget by $110,382 (unbudgeted investment earnings); its ending fund balance of $598,163 ties to pp. 3/5. Actual General Fund revenues and expenditures above tie exactly to the p. 5 General Fund column.
Source: Catoosa County, Georgia — Financial Statements, Year Ended September 30, 2025, RSI pp. 50–55 (audited) — FY2025 financial report (PDF, UGA TED) · FY2025 Audited.
Caveats and source disclosures
Read these before citing any figure from this page.
September 30 fiscal year-end. Audited figures are FY2025 (October 1, 2024 – September 30, 2025); adopted figures are FY2026 (October 1, 2025 – September 30, 2026). Neither is a calendar-year or untagged "current" figure.
Extracted while TED was down. The UGA TED portal returned HTTP 503 ("Down for maintenance") throughout extraction on October 23, 2026. Figures come from the full text of the same TED PDFs and were all cross-checked two ways, but a direct-PDF spot re-verification pass is owed — in particular for the FY2026 budget summary figures, the two cleared FY2026 revenue categories, and the p. 1 restricted-purpose lines. The budget side of this page should not be treated as final until that pass is done.
The FY2026 budget side is deliberately partial. The budget book's General Fund expenditure summary, its other-funds summary (Special Revenue, Capital Projects/SPLOST, Enterprise/Solid Waste), and the adopting resolution's fund-by-fund appropriations could not be verified from the scrambled text and are excluded. No all-funds adopted total is published, because none is verifiably printed.
Two accounting bases coexist in the audit. Fund-basis (modified accrual, pp. 3/5) and government-wide (accrual, pp. 1/2) totals differ by design — for example, Taxes of $55,325,226 on the fund basis versus roughly $56.6M of tax general revenues government-wide, and Public Works of $8,218,132 (fund, current) versus $22,244,965 (government-wide). Every table on this page carries its basis label; figures from different bases are never summed or compared without the label.
Negative balances are real and are shown, not hidden: business-type net position −$5,491,850; the Solid Waste Management Fund's net position deficit of −$6,163,275 (driven by the $8,087,749 landfill postclosure liability, Note 17); and the E911 Fund deficit of −$6,761 inside Other Governmental Funds' unassigned balance. Governmental net position rose $5,988,854 in FY2025 and governmental fund balances rose $12,185,447 — the deficits should not be read as county-wide distress, and they are not hidden either.
"$0 bonded debt" needs its footnote. The county has no bonds, but it carries a Development Authority note payable ($850,764, due October 2025), leases ($126,929), SBITAs ($72,300), compensated absences ($1,285,846), and the landfill postclosure liability ($8,087,749).
No county pension or OPEB liability exists to display. The county's retirement plan is defined-contribution (GMA) — there is no net pension liability and no OPEB liability for the primary government. Any pension or OPEB number in the statements belongs to the Health Department component unit.
Component-unit separation. Health Department figures (net position $2,228,862; net pension liability $1,073,829; net OPEB assets $60,515 State + $97,110 SEAD; compensated absences $302,288) belong to the discretely presented component unit, which has a June 30 year-end and was audited by other auditors. They are kept separate from county figures and never appear as county totals.
Proprietary-fund presentation difference (not an error). The proprietary statements (pp. 7–8) report business-type totals gross of interfund balances (total liabilities $8,219,721), while p. 1 nets the $128,548 internal balance (total liabilities $8,091,173). This page uses p. 1 totals for government-wide displays.
No population figure. Neither source document prints a population figure that could be verified, so none is shown on this page.
Inconsistencies inside the source documents
FY2025 General Fund budget — budget book vs audit (~$7.1M). The FY2026 budget book reports the FY2025 amended General Fund budget as $43,222,655; the FY2025 audit's budget-and-actual schedule reports the FY2025 final budget revenues at $50,345,621 (plus $20,000 of budgeted sale-of-assets proceeds in the budget book's presentation) — a difference of approximately $7,142,966 on a like-for-like total-sources basis, unresolved from the available text. This page uses each document's figures only within that document.
Statement of Net Position restricted lines foot $1,853 short in extraction. The p. 1 restricted-purpose lines as extracted sum to $77,473,126, which is $1,853 less than the restricted total implied by the audited totals ($77,474,979). The fund balance sheet (p. 3) reports a restricted Culture and recreation balance of exactly $1,853 with no counterpart line visible in the p. 1 extraction — the p. 1 line was almost certainly dropped by the text layer. This page uses the implied total $77,474,979.
MD&A capital-assets total differs by $3. The MD&A capital-asset activity table prints an ending total of $370,838,958; the statements and Note 5 foot to $370,838,961 (governmental $368,111,121 + business-type $2,727,840). This page uses $370,838,961 and does not publish the MD&A table.
MD&A rounded narratives vs statements. The MD&A rounds aggressively ("net position $471 million," "governmental funds revenues $79 million," a General Fund balance "decrease of $200 thousand" versus the statements' −$231,224), and its in-millions summary table contains visibly transposed deferred-inflow figures. All figures on this page come from the statements, not the MD&A.
Transmittal wording. The FY2026 Approved Budget transmittal repeatedly says "proposed" — carried over from the July 29, 2025 proposed-budget letter, which carried the same $46,860,469 General Fund total but the rollback millage of 4.789. The document's title and subject ("FY 2026 Approved Budget," August 19, 2025) and the adopted 4.641 millage in its digest table establish its adopted status; the General Fund total did not change between proposed and approved.