Knoxville City Council adopted the city's lowest property tax rate in more than 40 years during its meeting Tuesday night.

The new rate, $2.46 per $100 assessed value, replaces the existing one of $2.81 which had been in place since 2005. That means that the owner of a home appraised at $125,000 will pay $768.75 instead of the $878.13 required under the old rate.

Prior to the approval of the new $2.46 figure the previous low had been a $2.58 property tax rate that was in place in 1997-98. Since 1968 the city's property tax rate has fluctuated from the current $2.46 to a high of $6.74 in 1982 - the year of the World's Fair.

It's unclear if there was a lower rate before 1968, the last year that records are easily accessible.

"We are very pleased with this tax rate, which is the product of hard work by City Council and the administration," said Mayor Bill Haslam.

State law requires that cities adopt a "certified tax rate" during reappraisal years that would generate the same amount of revenue as the old tax rate did. In other words a city like Knoxville has to pass a rate that brings in the same amount of money the year after the reappraisal.

However, after adopting a certified tax rate a city could then move to actually raise the tax rate if it chose to, but Haslam announced last spring that Knoxville would not raise taxes this year.