July 1, 2008
Chances are good that the El Paso City Council will adopt a new budget in August with no tax increase, City Manager Joyce Wilson said today.
“As we go through process and get the final Central Appraisal District numbers... I’m confident that we’ll have an effective-tax-rate budget this year,” Wilson said.
The effective tax adjusts the rate of taxation downward based on an increase in property valuations to arrive at a new rate that would effectively generate the same tax revenues this year from properties that were taxed last year.
The calculation comes from the Truth in Taxation Act to give jurisdictions a new starting point for setting tax rates each year and is used in Texas to show taxpayers whether their local governments are raising property taxes.
The city’s current tax rate is 67.1 cents per $100 valuation. The tax rate to fund the budget Wilson submitted would be 65.4 cents, and the preliminary effective tax rate that Wilson said the city will reach is 65.1 cents.
“The budget as presented is within 3/10ths of a penny of the effective tax rate,” Wilson said. “It would be an effective tax rate budget, but as we got near the end of putting it together, the budget director got a little nervous about fuel, so we included a $1 million fuel reserve.
Wilson submitted a $693 million proposed budget to City Council on Monday that shows a 4.4 percent increase in spending.
The increase comes to $26 million, she said, of which $10 million will go for increased staffing and salaries in the police and fire departments, $10 million is for the new city health department and $4.2 million is coming from park and recreation fees that had been held in special funds.
“The big change in our budget is that we are accounting for a health department that we never accounted for before,” Wilson said.
In addition, the city has hired 70 new firefighters to bring that department close to full strength and 28 new police officers, bringing the department’s increase in officers to 100 in two years.
“We’ve been able to replenish losses from attrition and actually grow the force, which was our goal,” she said.