Remarks by Cory Crenshaw
177 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 8
- Play at 49:58
“Councilman Crenshaw. On page twenty nine of your twenty twenty seven proposed operating budget it has a statement of revenues and expenditures and for fiscal year twenty twenty seven it indicates a hundred and eighty million five hundred two thousand for expenses and then it says the revenue loss basically the deficit THAT YOU'RE PROJECTING FOR 2027 IS ONLY $605,000. WHAT RATE IS THAT BASED ON? WHAT TAX RATE? NEW SPEAKER WE'RE GETTING THERE. NEW SPEAKER YOU CAN'T JUST TELL ME.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 50:42
“NEW SPEAKER 695. OKAY. And that is impressive. I'm not saying that rate's going to work, but that's impressive that you would have reduced what we're deficit spending and have been for the last four years down to $605,000. What is, and I'm not, and I know no one's probably going to know this off the top of your head, but what have we spent deficit-wise the last four years? I know right now we're projecting $5 million. FOR 2026, WHAT DO WE DO IN 25 AND 24? IT'S OKAY. IT'S OKAY. BUT LAST YEAR WAS ONLY 2.5? 2.5 AND 2024 WAS 3.6. 3.6. THANK YOU.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:13:05
“Councilman Crenshaw. If you could go back to the slides you had before where you give us the two options there that don't require a supermajority. It was, it might have been before this one where you, it had no, yeah, perfect. This one. Okay. So under the, if we elect the current rate plus the geo debt rate, it's about a $2.1 million additional deficit to the $600,000 deficit in the binder on page 29, correct? Correct. And does that include a 2% cost of living increase?”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:13:44
“Okay. And so you had earlier said that 2% cost of living increase was about $816,000? Yes, sir. Okay. Also, if we did not do require the additional contribution that employees have to pay, if we did not require employees to pay that additional, did we increase it 9% or it's increased to 9%?”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:14:08
“INCREASED AT 9%. SO THEN THAT WOULD BE ABOUT A NET REDUCTION OF ABOUT A HALF A MILLION, CORRECT? BECAUSE WHILE IF WE DID NOT GIVE THE COLA, I ALSO THINK IT WOULD BE UNFAIR TO NOT ASK EMPLOYEES TO PAY MORE ON THE CONTRIBUTION. SO IT WOULD BE ABOUT 500,000 LESS OF THAT 2.1 MILLION, RIGHT? SO IT WOULD BE ABOUT 1.5?”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:14:46
“NEW SPEAKER I THOUGHT THE PREVIOUS SLIDE SAID $300,000.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:14:57
“And so again, I'm just, I'm running numbers trying to figure out how to get that 2.1 million down to something maybe a bit more acceptable. Tell me where we're at on travel. I know you said that you were reducing travel costs 60%.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:15:27
“Fair to say that probably can't be cut anymore.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:15:44
“So the travel includes mandatory training for, like, law enforcement and firemen?”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:15:53
“Oh, it's travel and training. Okay, well, your slide earlier just said travel. I just think of a bunch of people flying around on airplanes.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:16:30
“So if I said that I didn't think it was a good idea and we had the votes not to increase the employee contribution that they have to make to that, that would not be a net savings on the current deficit projection for 2027?”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:16:53
“Okay. And then my last question, if let's say the 2% was approved on the 2 million that we're going to be an additional deficit, have you identified what each department would have to, I've heard this happening before with organizations, each department's asked to look at its discretionary budget and cut a certain percentage in order to get us to the numbers that we need. If let's, and I'm not in any way trying to say I think that this is going to happen, but if the council adopted the current rate with the voter approved November bond election debt amount, what would each department have to…”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:18:11
“WELL, WE WANT TO SAY THERE'S NOTHING ELSE TO CUT.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:18:35
“AND THEN FINALLY, WHAT IS THE PERCENTAGE Staff is recommending that we increase property taxes, which is the city's portion. So I know the rate you're recommending is going from basically 65 cents to 69 cents, which is about 4 cents. What does that 4 cents represent overall in an increase in someone's property tax bill at the end of the year?”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:19:13
“And I know in the figures about if you had a $150,000 house, what's the yearly increase dollar-wise is around 80 or 100 bucks or whatever.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:19:33
“So if you do, yeah. So Councilman Williams just said 6%. Is that accurate? We're basically...”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:20:10
“And so we still don't have a percentage that we can talk to that that we're basically asking to increase taxes.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:20:22
“YEAH. SO WE'RE TODAY STAFF HAS PROPOSED UNDERSTAND THAT THE VALUES ARE INCREASING SO EVEN WHEN WE TALK ABOUT WE DIDN'T INCREASE YOUR TAXES YOUR TAXES STILL WENT UP BUT THAT'S A TAXING ENTITY AND WE HAVE THERE'S NOTHING WE AS THIS COUNCIL CAN DO TO CONTROL THAT. I'M JUST LOOKING AT THAT FIVE PERCENT NUMBER AND THANK YOU FOR”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:38:29
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:40:01
“Councilman Crenshaw. And just to echo on that, I mean, yes, we spend maybe higher than the state average in public safety, but we also have one of the highest crime rates in the state. So, you know, when your crime rate's high, you've got to spend more on public safety. And when you ask people what issues are impacting Beaumont and keeping our growth down, it's crime in the school district. So, you know, we've got to address that. Okay, so here's what I've been wanting to say for the last 15 minutes. I went to BeaumontBonds.com, one of these websites we paid that high dollar consultant out of…”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:41:31
“Yes. That's why to me that just that's already setting us back. Right. And so what I would much rather staff had done was said, look, we told voters this is going to cost you an extra three dollars and fourteen cents a month in November of twenty twenty five. Voters approved it, and when you came to us with a proposal on the tax rate, we could have taken our current rate and added the $3.14 a month. That's already higher than the no new revenue rate of 68 cents. That would have been somewhere between the 68 cents and the 69 cents. So it's things like that. It seems like we're almost up here…”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:48:36
“WHAT I'M SAYING WAS I WOULD RATHER STAFF HAD COME TO US WITH THE AMOUNT THAT VOTERS APPROVED AND VOTED ON IN NOVEMBER OF 2025 INSTEAD OF LESS, WHICH I ASSUME WHEN WE BORROW THE OTHER $20 MILLION THAT WE HAVEN'T BORROWED YET NEXT YEAR, THE YEAR AFTER THAT, WE'RE GOING TO COME BACK AND ASK TO INCREASE OUR GEO DEBT amount again and i just think that we're fighting against ourselves it would have been a lot easier from the beginning if we would have just come in and said voters approved the three dollars and fourteen cents increase a month on 150 000 house that's what they're expecting and that's…”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:49:45
“THE BALLOT LITERALLY SAID THIS IS A TAX INCREASE. WHICH STATE LAW REQUIRED. NEW SPEAKER COUNCILMAN WILLIAMS.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:50:00
“It's only proposed to go up to 60. The 65 plus the geo debt rate only increases to 67. So that's why the $3.04 on 68 cents threw me off because I thought we said this was going to cost more on the bond. And so the ballot said the $3.14. That's what we educated voters on on the increase would be, which they approved. And so to me, that should probably be somewhere between the, it's less than what staff is recommending today, but it's higher than the no new revenue rate. I'm assuming going by y'all's numbers.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026
- Play at 1:50:53
“But what I'm saying is they did not include all of the bond money on the geo debt rate that they proposed to us because they've only borrowed $38 million. But taxpayers already in November approved. I'll follow you now. I'm assuming that's what they did.”
City Council · Aug 18, 2026