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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007-09-04-2:00PM-PUBLIC HEARINGBRAZOSCOUNTY BRYAN, TEXAS NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COURT ED rD 3: S Yr,�l�t r:�-xas THE BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COURT WILL CONDUCT A PUBLIC HEARING ON TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER 2007 AT 2:00 P.M. IN THE COMMISSIONERS COURTROOM OF THE BRAZOS COUNTY COURTHOUSE, 300 E. 26TH STREET, SUITE 115, BRYAN, TEXAS. THE COURT WILL HEAR COMMENTS ON THE PROPOSED TAX INCREASE FOR 2007. ALL INTERESTED PERSONS ARE INVITED TO ATTEND SAID HEARING AND PRESENT THEIR CAUSE, IF ANY, FOR OR AGAINST THE TAX INCREASE FOR 2007. The Brazos County Courthouse is wheelchair accessible. Handicap parking spaces are available. Any request for sign interpretive services must be made two business days before the meeting. To make arrangements, call (979) 361 -4102. Office of the County Judge • 300 East 26t' St. • Suite 114 • Bryan, Texas 77803 • Fax: (979) 361 -4503 .i ©o . l3_ COMMISSIONERS' COURT PUBLIC HEARING September 4, 2007 The Commissioners' Court of Brazos County, Texas met in a Public Hearing in the Commissioners' Courtroom in the Courthouse in Bryan, Brazos County, Texas, beginning at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday September 4, 2007, with the following members of the Court present: Randy Sims, County Judge, Presiding; Lloyd Wassermann, Commissioner of Precinct l; Duane Peters, Commissioner of Precinct 2; Kenny Mallard, Commissioner of Precinct 3; Carey Cauley, Commissioner of Precinct 4: Karen McQueen, County Clerk. Attached is a list of the citizens and officials in attendance. Attached is a transcript of the meeting. Vol i 0 o Page 114 0) BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONERS COURT Proposed Tax Increase for 2007 September 4th, 2007 Sims: Ladies and gentlemen, thank yall for coming. Brazos County Commissioner's Court will conduct a public hearing on Tuesday the 4th of September 2007 at 2:00 p.m. in the Commissioner's Courtroom of the Brazos County Courthouse, 300 E. 26th Street, Suite 115, Bryan, Texas. The Court will hear comments on the proposed tax increase for 2007. All interested person are invited to attend said hearing and present their cause, if any, for or against the tax increase. Let me just read into the record, last year's tax rate was 45.5 cents per hundred dollar evaluation. The effective tax rate is 42.6 cents per hundred dollar evaluation. Notice of a hearing limit is 42.6. Roll back rate is 48.2 cents per hundred dollar evaluation. And the proposed tax rate is 46.5 cents per hundred dollar evaluation. What else do I have to read? Do I have to read your statement? Roe: No, but I'll be happy to explain what I just handed you. Sims: Would you please explain what you just handed to me. Roe: Yes sir. This is in conjunction with House Bill 3195; it is the additional statement to the budget and we just actually received the specific calculations under this and it is making a modification to your posted budget. Actually lowering some information. It changes two of the number on your proposed budget; table of contents number 5, statement... where you have posted that last years budget will increase, raise more total property taxes than last year's budget and you currently have $4,812,926.00. Sims: Right. Roe: You can drop that number to $2,423,248.00...$2,483,248, it's in this front page that I gave you. and then it would change the percentage to 6.63 percent. Vol 1 ba ME tie 91 Sims: Change the percentage to what? Roe: 6.63% and that's on that first sheet that I gave you. The second sheet is the actual calculation sheet that I just included. Also that statement that is on the front page will be the ratification statement that the Court will make if they adopt this rate. It requires an additional vote on your tax rate. This particular bill does. Sims: How could we miss that so far, please? Roe: I don't know. Female: We did the best we could. Sims: Ok. Well I was just kind of wondering because when I saw 13.3% that kind of scared me a little bit. Roe: Well actually this is calculated using new improvement value only. And so you had to pull that down to exactly what we used in the calculation for new improvement value. And on that second sheet, I believe the new improvement value is the portion that is from Line 21, $333,916,799.00. That's the new improvement value that was used in the effective tax rate calculation. Sims: Ok. Roe: So this, of course, needs to be changed to your posting on the internet. And I just wanted to make sure it was very clear. Sims: Taxes are always clear as mud. Roe: Absolutely. Gallego: Does that change what we posted in the paper also? Was there any of that... Roe: I don't believe so. This particular sheet is not required. Gallego: I just wanted to make sure I didn't need to do anything. Roe: This has to do with the budget. Gallego: Ok. Vol 1 0 0 Page 1 1 E Roe: And the statement has to do, I believe with the tax rate adoption. When we got the tax rate, you'll adopt the budget, the rate in two parts and then you will ratify the rate you adopted as an increase with this statement. Yes sir? Cauley: I don't want to muddy the waters but if I don't understand, I need to ask a question. Roe: Certainly. Cauley: And my question is; effectively, do we have two million something more or do we have actual money? Not effective and all this other stuff but actual money? Do we have two million more or four million more? Roe: Let me see if I can find my calculation which I probably would anyway ... I gave you a worksheet back during the process and if I don't have a copy of that I will get it to you. The actual dollar amount has not modified and this figure includes your over 65 ceiling property. We had the options and it was pretty much our call. What this does is it uses your tax rate on all of the value of the property excluding our ceiling... comes up with a proposed tax revenue and then adds the ceilings back to that. So it's the closest thing to the amount of money we can come up with. And we took those ceilings into account when we did this calculation... just so you would know. Is that clear? Mallard: No. McLeod: No. Cauley: Well it's clear, she said the money is there. Roe: It's not going to impact what you're projected revenue is. Cauley: All right. That's good. Roe: It's simply modifies that statement by bringing that four million dollar amount down to a little over two million which is the actual revenue based on new improvement; which is what that is supposed to look at. So we were looking at new improvement value and... Mallard: So this is the additional stuff that has come on the books since then... Roe: Right. Since last year. Mallard: ... and that equals the two million. Vol 100 Page i � � 5 Roe: Yes sir. And that's what they're asking for and in that addition statement in your budget is, overall, how much addition revenue are getting with this tax rate ... how much of that is new improvement and what is the percentage of increase. Sims: And the percentage is 6.3 %? Roe: Yes sir. Sims: Ok. Mallard: Which is the new improvements? Roe: Roughly. Sims: Right. McLeod: Did I hear you say this is not going to require an additional notice in the paper? Roe: Yes ma'am. McLeod: Yes ma'am...? Roe: Yes ma'am, it is not going to. Sims: What was the answer to that? McLeod: The answer is, no, we don't have to do another notice in the paper. Roe: We do need to correct the posting on the internet and we need to make sure that you file this with the County Clerk as the attachment to your budget to correct (inaudible). If what you had posted had been less than this then you might have run into a problem but it's not, it's more. So this is an adjustment. Sims: Ok. But the budget will raise only two million as opposed to four million, is that correct? Is that what I'm reading? Roe: The budget will raise more total property taxes, yes. Sims: Than last year by two million or 6.3% instead of 13.3 %? Vol 100 Page H9. AI Roe: Yes. Sims: Ok. As originally stated. Roe: As originally stated. Sims: Ok. 6.3 %, all right. That amount is $1,500,000.00 in tax revenue to be raised from new property added to the tax rolls this year. Ok. Thank you. McLeod: Does this need to be filed with the proposed budget before we adopt it next week? Roe: Yes. And modified on the internet. McLeod: Do we have to take action on this? Roe: It will be in the adopted budget. Gallego: At the proposed we just present it. McLeod: Ok. Sims: Ok. We have a citizen that would like to speak; Mr. Ramiro Galindo. Mr. Galindo lives at 1920 W. Villa Maria, Bryan, Texas. Ramiro, you have the floor sir. Galindo: Thank you County Judge and Commissioners. I am a little confused about what I just heard. I have thought about your tax proposals done a little work which I think is worth sharing with you if I could. Sims: Ok. Fine. Galindo: I took the time to try to understand the history of taxation in Brazos County and I got the data from the most reliable sources that I could get. Population data was 2000 from the census bureau and the years following from the Brazos County Council of Governments. The tax base is from the Tax Appraisal District, certified information. Information related to inflation and Statewide budgets and population from the Comptroller. So let me carry you through this first; in the year 2000 the population of the County was 152,415 people. By the year 2007, the population grew to 161,000 in yearly increments listed there of 3,000 in 2001 and almost 5,000 in Vol 1 yD Page ( l9 7 2002. Today it has sort of stabilized for the following years. Actually with a few decreases in between and a small increase this year. Sims: Did you get this from...? Galindo: Council of Governments. Sims: Ok. Be honest with you ... the last time I checked with the Census Bureau, their estimate was 170,000. Galindo: Well I asked that question because after our conversation I was also wanting to verify that and I got corroborating from the City of Bryan ... I have all the information in here, all the backup information. Sims: Ok. But the last time I talked to them, they said, "You're close to 170,000. Galindo: That's not what they say in Bryan. Sims: Ok. Galindo: I asked that same question. The appraised value of the total worth of the Brazos County real estate is listed in that first column called `Value x 1000'. In other words, in the year 2000 the County had a value of $4,947,147,000, almost $5,000,000,000. That has grown at a pretty significant rate until the Appraisal District, Mr. Buddy Winn, certified that this year the tax rolls are worth $9,227,810,000.00. That is almost doubling the value of the County during that period of time. The yearly increments are in the next column; in 2007, the value of County went up almost one billion dollars, 924 thousand (million) dollars. That represents an 11.13% increase over the previous year. You can see the yearly rates of growth in the numbers above in the same column. Following down on the County itself, the property taxes that the County collects to carry out it's business in the year 2000 it was $20,283,331.00 and it represented a rate of 41 %. Every year the rate has been ... except for the first few years, it was stable ... it has been inching upwards little by little with a small decrease in 2006. On the next two sets of columns, I calculated the cost to each resident in the County, man, woman or children of the services that we get from the County. In the year 2000 it was a $133.00 per person. In the year 2007, it's $267.00 Vol ( 00 Page Igo per person. It has doubled. The cost of living in the County for each resident has doubled in the last seven year. The question that begs itself to be answered is has the quality of the services in the County really doubled in quality in quantity. There must be some other compelling reasons that have forced you to raise the taxes in that proportion. The rate of increase of those taxes is given in the last column. The last year being 13.3 %. The County is proposing to raise the taxes by 13 %...I just heard something that it is not going to be so but perhaps. This is information that I have. So I wanted to make some important points based on that state of the numbers for the taxation in the County. The organic rate of growth is equal to the sum of the increase of population plus the cost of the inflation. If you needed $100.00 last year to buy a certain service then this year you need $103.00 because of inflation. Well, that's a natural thing that we all understand. If the population went up by a 1,000 then we need to spend a little bit more money. So when I add up the organic growth of the County, it's about 3.72 for the year 2006 which is made up by the numbers listed up there; 0.13% in population and 3.59 of inflation. In the year 2000, the Commissioners budgeted 2.5 times the amount that the organic growth would have required. And again, the question is why did we have to do that? The County population didn't really grow that much and the inflation wasn't that high. Why did we have to come up with a lot more money? If it were a one time event; we had to catch up with something, we had fallen behind or there had been a disaster or something... that would be an easier situation to understand. But when it is persistent year in and year out, then the question remains. In the year 2000 (2007), which is my point number two; the organic growth is 2.71% inflation plus population and the budget reflects a 13.3% growth. That's 4.9 times the amount of the organic growth. Again, I hope somebody will have an explanation for that growth. I drew some comparisons with the State of Texas. In the year 2006 the whole State experienced a population growth of 2.63% and inflation was 3.72 %. Added together, Texas showed an organic growth of 6.35% over 2005. For the same year of 2006, the State budgeted an increase of 5.85% on it's budget above the previous year. Actually, the expenses of the State were below the organic growth. Vol 108 I O.Me Id4 Vol M In the year 2007, however, the organic growth was 4.21 % and the State budget 7.02% on it's own budget growth. So there is a year that is more and a year that it's less. They tend to balance each other over a history of years. There's also a greater tendency to increase more than the organic growth. Point number four makes a very important point that I wanted to make for you on here. This is specific to how we are affecting our local economy. The Appraisal District states that less than 40% of the value of the real estate that I spoke about before is value of homesteads. People who are, by law, not permitted to increase in value more than 10% in appraisal every year. So if 40% of the State worth in 2006...304 more homesteads and by law we can only increase at the rate of 10% a year; that means then that by the year 2007 the value of the homesteads in Brazos County is 3.65 billion dollars. How do those 3.65 billion dollars... at the rate stated here of 4.65 %, 46¢ per $100.00 valuation... the County will take about 1.7 million of the additional growth that it needs for this year. Additional growth in the County needs for this year is 5.12 million dollars. That's how much more taxes you're expecting to collect this year as compared to last year. Out of the 5.12, 1.7 million, 1.699 million will come out of the homestead. The rest will come out of commercial tax payers which is business and anybody not declaring a homestead exemption. That means that you're going to raise $3,430,000.00 more than you did last year from commercial properties. Those commercial properties, then, are valued at $5,574,000,000.00 in the County. When you adjust the appraisals and you put everything on the same basis, the actual tax that you are collecting from commercial real estate is $.6154 per $100 of valuation. I may have confused you and I hope you follow me. But the presentation that you make to the public saying taxes go up by only one cent from $0.455 to $0.465 per $100 is only for residential properties. Commercial businesses are being tax at $0.615 per $100.00 valuation if we are to reach the target that you have there. Again, if that were an occurrence that happened one time, again, it could be understood. But the average of tax increases that we have had for the last five years in Brazos County is 12.2 %. Every year for five year, taxes at the County level have rises by 12.2 %. This is a very severe determent to the growth of the economy in the community. You might say, `Well, there's still a lot of construction going on and we're permitting more jobs than we ever thought we would.' What is really happening is that a lot of those people are coming to you at some level with a tax exception. They say, `Hey, give me a break in this ... I'll invest, I'll build a huge target facility here.' (inaudible) Another guy comes and says, `They'll set up a TIFF here and take my additional taxes away from you.' Yet the services of the County have to continue in providing 160 Page l as 10 for the rest of the population. We're still growing and that's being financed by an addition burden on the existing taxpayers. So I just wanted to plant that thought in your heads so that you can really have a sense of what's happening to commercial taxes here. Commercial properties pay 1.50 times what residential properties pay in taxes. If you guys really wanted to foster an economy that has opportunities for all, it would be to keep taxes level for everybody. I may have gone too fast and I may have given you too much information to digest in ten minutes. If I can help by answering any questions, I'll be glad to. I know that all of you have already come out to support the tax increase at the new rate and this is probably not something that you can consider this year. If you do, I will be more than welcome to continue helping, working with you to try to follow the numbers to your satisfaction. I think they are generally right and so for next year I hope you consider this. Sims: I would like to take the opportunity to digest everything you gave us here, to take a look at it. I know that you're inflation rate ... I know you define it as organic budget growth equals increase in population plus inflation... Galindo: Right. Sims: ...I think you're missing the inflation rate because I know what we're buying rock for, I know what we're buying oil based products for, and it's way above... Galindo: I took the inflation rate of the State. Now there is an office ... that was the inflation rate across Texas which is a little bit different than the CPI that the Commerce Department publishes nationwide. Not too different. Sims: But I just know what our Road and Bridge is paying for oil based products and rock and repairs on equipment and all of this good stuff and it's ... as you well know, we've got an increase in the minimum wage coming at no fault of ours. But we have to fund it. Galindo: And we all are faced with that. Sims: Galindo Vol I understand. So certainly, I would urge you to please check those numbers and plug in your own numbers. 100 On 123 11 Sims: Ok. I will. I'd like to see how this ... and I'm not debating the fact is wrong ... I'm just saying I'd like to have the opportunity to look at it. Galindo: There is different from different sources. Sims: Right. Galindo: I don't think there's a whole lot of difference but the point that you make that Brazos County may have had a higher inflation for certain items than the rest of the State might be quite true. Population may be not just exactly what the Council of Governments is saying. But, in general, I think the principal that residential householders are not being taxed at the same rate as commercial is absolutely true. Sims: That's probably true. Galindo: And the burden of commercial is coming down very strongly and what that's causing is for anybody who wants to invest a substantial amount here in the County to come to you and say, `Give me a tax (inaudible). Give me a break here.' Sims: Right. Galindo: And in order to get the jobs and economic activity you think it makes sense. But then the services still have to be provided and who is paying for that ... the rest of the taxpayers who stay here and haven't asked for that tax (inaudible). So that's really the gist of my request or my presentation and I hope you consider it. Sims: Ok. Sure will. Thank you, Ramiro. Any questions, gentlemen of Mister Galindo? Thank you Ramiro, appreciate it. Galindo: Thank you very much. Sims: All right. Do we have anyone else that would like to make a comment or statement or whatever you would like to make; this is a public hearing open to anyone that would like to make comments and statements. Sims: I'm glad we had you here, Ramiro, we wouldn't have had anybody to talk to. Ok. So be it. I will close this public hearing of the Commissioners Court having to do with the one cent tax increase for 2007. Thank you. Vol too Page f a 12 Roe: Judge, could you please announce the date, time. and place of the vote on the tax rate? Sims: It's the 11th McLeod: It's the I lth Sims: September 11th Roe: Same time? McLeod: 10:00 o'clock. Roe: Yes. Gallego: 9:00 o'clock. Sims: September the 11th at what time? Galindo: At 9:00. Sims: 9:00 a.m., ok, good. Yes sir? Galindo: Judge, did I miss ... this is not going to be the 13% increase that the newspapers said? Sims: No. No. Galindo: It's not going to happen? Sims: No, according to our ... I guess we just mis -spoke in our budget here. It is going to be a 6.63 ... is that not right Kristy. Roe: Yes. Galindo: That's a lot more sensible. A lot more sensible. So that makes a lot of my comments moot. Sims: Ramiro, you know, sometimes we don't figure right and that's what happened to us ... we didn't figure right to begin with. Galindo: Thank you very much. Vol 100 Page 1a5 13 Mallard: You never know until you get closer to it. Sims: Thank you. Gallego: And then also we have another public hearing on Friday. Sims: We have a public hearing Friday? Gallego: At 2:00. Sims: What's the date? Don't just tell me Friday. Gallego: September 71n Sims: September 7tn... at what time? Gallego: 2:00 p.m. Sims: What else gentlemen? What else do we need to know? We have on September the 71n, 2:00 p.m., right? Gallego: Yes sir. Sims: Ok. Any other ones that we need to put on our schedule? No? McLeod: Just need the date that you're going to vote on it which is the 11:00. Sims: September the 1 ltn. What time? Is that at the Court meeting? McLeod: 9:00 o'clock. Yes, it's the Court meeting. Sims: Ok. What else? Adjourned. End of tape. Vol 100 Page 1 dfv 14 of 14 The foregoing minutes of the Commissioners Court Public Hearing held September 4th 2007, have been examined and approved in open Court this the 6),n_ day of 20_01j', in Bryan, Brazos County, Texas. Duane Peters Commissioner, Precinct No. 2 arey 7uley,_ Jr. Commis oner, Precinct 4 Attest: Karen McQueen County Clerk Vol W Page 1a I I ' Lloyd V&ssermann Commissioner, Precinct No. 1 Kenny Malla Commissioner, Precinct No. 3 BRAZOS COUNTY COMMISSIONER'S COURT DAY OF 20 67 02. oo -"/P.M Name rMAX Tj Organization (PLEASE PRINT) SQIF' pg of