By N. Bradford
Pearland city leaders on Monday passed first readings of a new fiscal year budget and approximate 10-cent tax increase to fund it.
“It is a structurally balanced budget,” City Manager Trent Epperson told City Council members. “We used a lot of our existing resources to maximum efficiency.”
A final public hearing and adoption of the budget and tax rate is set for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, at City Hall, 3519 Liberty Drive.
Grappling with inflation plus a challenging environment for employee retention, the city is working with a new tax rate of 65.54 cents per $100 of property value is about a dime above the no-new-revenue rate of 55.1 cents. Once known as the effective rate, the no-new-revenue rate is the calculated tax rate that would bring in the same revenue from the same properties taxed the prior year.
The prior year’s tax rate — which city leaders have emphasized was artificially low due to a budgeting error — was 62 cents.
The city’s portion of the annual property tax bill has always been between 25 and 30 percent, Epperson said.
“The big thing that’s occurred is what the state has done with the school districts for this year, so there’s a significant drop on the school district piece of the tax rate.”
A 14 percent rate utility rate increase for fiscal year 2024 means the average Pearland household using about 6,000 gallons of water per month will pay $12.40 more per month.
“I keep hearing the word flat, but it doesn’t feel very flat to me,” said Councilman Alex Kamkar, who cast the lone votes against the budget and tax rate first readings. “The number that we control is going up; it’s not going down.”
Kamkar made two motions to reduce the tax rate by 1.5 cents; both died for lack of a second.
