Remarks by Cole Stanley
414 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 15 of 17
“But the certified values, they are going to move every year. They do. And that is why the rate moves up and down in accordance with the no new revenue flat. So if the certified values move up, then the no new revenue rate moves down from existing rate.”
“So let's take it to the example of the actual individual. So we have a $200,000 house, right? And it didn't increase in value, it just stayed flat. And so we're saying that the existing rate is what, 43 cents? Is it 43 something? Right. Okay, so if we don't raise, now that particular individual, 200,000, it's flat, they didn't see an appreciation, whatever, and their tax rate, if it stayed the same, they'd pay the same amount in tax. If we lower that tax rate down, because their house went from 200,000 to 210,000, they would pay the same amount in tax.”
“So how are we then stipulating that the no new revenue rate is .4217? How are you getting to that number? That's what the formula gives us a 10 page calculation certified by the county and that revenues the exact same amount of money as we did the year before, but some overall, but some of it may have to go to your side.”
“There's the key. So what part of that goes to the side that didn't increase because you just told me that it went from 9 cents to 10 cents on the side, which isn't factored in your three and a half percent increase.”
“Yeah, but we've increased taxes, say, 3%, 3.5%. Then we've gone out and issued debt that came on the tax roll.”
“Yeah, you raised it one penny in order to pay an additional 2.6 million in debt service.”
“So, well, but you just put them together. So, like, we're not separating M&O and INS, treating them separately. We're saying we factor them separately, but then we can join those together to get our new revenue rate? Correct. And that total cannot exceed 3.5%?”
“The INS side can go up without a restriction, right? You could double it. You could go from $0.10 one year to $0.20 the next year, right, legally. Okay, so there's no constraints on the INS side. But we are now saying that on the M&O side, we factor in the constraints from the INS increase. The calculation does. The calculation does. So if you did increase, let's say you doubled your INS side because you borrowed a bunch of money, what would that do to your 3.5%? and that'd be a whole different calculation we'd have to run. So we don't know. We don't know. But how do we know that we factored…”
“So how do we get to zero? And this is where I'm hung up. So if we had gone through budget workshop, And you guys have come in and said, look, after factoring all of this, you're going to see if you raise the taxes, you know, you're the maximum. And you all vote for that. You're going to see four point two million dollar increase that we're going to go put in your budget. Because if you leave the taxes flat, you're going to have a no new revenue rate. Like, how do we get back to zero? zero in rate or zero in revenue? I'm just saying like the rate itself that we would say we wanted to pass in…”
“we're in my head we're conflating our role a little bit with prad like prad's role is to move people's values up and down and that will affect their their tax value with taxable value our role is just the rate so yes we we don't we don't get over into the lane but we we as council we get to vote for a rate that either increases revenues by collecting more tax money from those property payers, or we hold the tax flat and we calculate that to be in concordance or in line with the updated values. And so why are we not doing that here? We've done that here. Okay. And then we factored in the INS…”
“Okay, so let's assume here that we were a small community and we didn't really have a lot of experience with this and that the states got this implemented and we had a question. Who would we reach out to to say, can you check our math?”
“Well, they certified the values. No. Oh, they are?”
“So we have two different entities that are both working on this. And they are both saying this, that if you hold to the no new revenue rate, you lower the taxes. And you're going to realize that to the equation of 3.5 million. So your taxpayer, if we just hold to the no new revenue rate, they actually would pay less per house in taxes.”
“Well, I think after sitting through three days of budget workshop and not seeing these, and then for the first time today.”
“Well, no, I mean, I think if we had voted on it back then and said, this is what council wanted, like we would have worked off of. $0 impact at the 42 cents. Now we're saying it's different. So yes, I think the confidence that is, are we now factoring this correctly? I think that needs to be explored. So how do we explore that? How do we make sure that we've done this calculation right?”
“Okay? So who at the state offers help and assistance if we were lost?”
“Does our local COG do this for some of their other communities? Do they assist in that? Don't know.”
“I'll tell you what I'd like to do. Honestly, I don't think I have a math problem here. I think I have an interpretation of the law or the application of the law, right? So if the intent of the law from, let's say, the state Is we want communities to be able to communicate that they held their taxes flat, but they realized a loss in revenues because of this. And we're okay with that. Like, I think I think I can and I think we can, you know. I WAS ON A CALL WITH GOVERNOR ABBOTT'S OFFICE LAST WEEK THROUGH OUR REPRESENTATIVE FAIRLY. I THINK THAT WOULD BE EASY FOR US TO REACH OUT TO OUR…”
“YOU DON'T THINK THAT GOVERNOR ABBOTT HAS AIDES THAT SPECIALIZE IN THIS?”
“My question is, we're filling out a complicated document that we're not explaining right now very well. And then it assesses something that represents to our public that we're holding your taxes flat. There's no new revenue, right? So we're having zero new revenue. It doesn't say negative revenue. It says no new revenue, right? So I'd want to change that wording to this is our negative revenue rate.”
“Yeah, I just simply disagree that that rate has to be that rate if all we're trying to achieve is no new revenue.”
“The staff is just data entering this into the tabulated chart. Data entering, yes. And it spits out whatever the rate is, right? And then you calculate how much that cost us for operations. And there's a calculation there on the INS side. And I'm just saying, I don't know, I don't know enough to know better, right?”
“I don't like the law on this thing So I don't know if it's very convoluted at Councilman Simpson when you're saying the trust issues, so I don't think he does I don't think he has any issues but outside of the trust issues Councilman read so”
“Well, I think you've got $5.5 million in. What's the line item there, capital improvement? Is that the line item? Can we pull that budget up? If you if we were like, you know, we just don't have the money so if we don't have the money we don't have the money and we don't Necessarily go back and try to take it away from our number one need which is personnel and and paying appropriately And we've worked real hard to move the budget forward. So I think what you're gonna Impact here is some of those capital projects Those are one-time dollars not necessarily go to the can we get the budget up?…”
“And so everything represented up above it is the ongoing M&O side, and this is just part of the additional monies we made in sales tax, right?”