Commissioners ratify tax rate; tax increase coming

There will likely be a slight increase in taxes next year for most property owners in El Paso County.

On Monday, Commissioners Court voted to ratify the new County property tax rate.

The vote was 4-1 with Commissioner Vince Perez the only one voting against the new tax rate and increased budget. Perez explained he wanted the County to lower its general fund balance to make the increase even smaller.

“We haven’t seen property values decrease in a long time … definitely in the last decade,” said El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar.

A drop in property values left Commissioners Court raising the effective tax rate just to get back to the same amount of property tax revenue as last year.

“Virtually every taxing entity has adopted the effective tax rate,” Escobar said.

The new property tax rate is approximately 45 cents for every $100 in property value. That means the owner of a home valued at $100,000 will have to pay about $20 more in property taxes compared to last year.

“We’re not dealing with out budget spiraling up,” Commissioner Pat Abeln said, “we’re dealing with our tax base winding down maybe more than any of us would want.”

Commissioners said the increase is designed to bring in about $8.5 million more in revenue, an increase of about 3.5 percent overall. Escobar said two percent of that is because of the rare drop in property values, then there’s the additional 1.5 percent voted on by commissioners.

“We voted on seven tenths of a cent as an increase,” Abeln said. “The impact that we’ll all feel is more like two cents.”

The $311 million County budget breaks down like this: $20.3 million for debt service, $5.75 million in enterprise funds, $3.7 million for capital projects, nearly $32 million in special revenues and a bigger general fund, which now stands at $252 million.

“The biggest disagreement we had is the level of the fund balance, which I’m sure you’re aware is essentially like the savings account for the County,” said Commissioner Perez, who wanted to lower the County general fund balance from 15 percent to 12.5 percent. His fellow commissioners only wanted to go down to 13 and a half percent.

“Last year we were asked for a two cent increase to adhere to the 15 percent rate, which came out to about $38 million,” Perez said. “We ended the year at about 50 million, so i felt there was cushion there to lower the fund balance reserve to 12.5 percent.”

Perez went on to explain that he looked at general fund balances in other Texas counties. He said most ranged between 10 to 15 percent and many were at just 12.5 percent.

Escobar said she didn’t want to lower the fund balance to any less than 13.5 percent out of concern of the unknown for the County in upcoming years.