County Judge Brian Lee told a packed courtroom at the county courthouse “nobody wants to raise taxes three cents, but it is necessary to provide wanted and needed services in the county.”
The tax rate, adopted by a 4-1 vote, is 44.75 cents per $100 of property tax value, 2.939 cents higher than last year’s rate of 41.82 cents.
The lone dissenter on the court was Precinct 1 Commissioner Al Riddle, who argued during the budget process and public hearings for cuts to keep taxes from rising.“This is an extremely bad budget,” said Riddle.
He was especially hard on including cost of living increases for certain county employees. “To put $190,000 extra in the payroll is a sin.”
The courtroom Monday night held a large contingent of county employees and their family members, but a group of supporters also applauded Riddle’s comments.
Riddle said Titus County has some of the highest paid elected officials for a county its size, and he criticizes Judge Lee for taking a $25,200 supplement for the state that was available, by claiming at least 40 percent of his workload was judicial related.
He also said the $15,600 travel allowance given to some employees “is nothing but an extra paycheck.” He claimed county officials had failed to be “transparent” on its purpose, especially because withholding taxes are taken out of that money.
For his part, Judge Lee said the travel allowance “is fairly transparent by now,” and one of the last amendments to the new budget, which was also adopted, was to make his reimbursement for travel based on mileage, as is already done for Commissioners Riddle and Jimmy Parker.
In defending the tax rate and budget, Lee said “It’s not a pleasant process. We’ve encountered a wide range of opinions, and nobody wants to raise taxes.”
He said that, depending what benchmarks are used, Titus County can be seen as having the second lowest tax rate of any comparable county.
He said regardless of statistics, some people have simply said “Just please lower our tax rate”, but with no increase “our quality of services is going to erode.”
“To reduce it that much is not prudent,” he said. “We can’t absorb that much.”
On the other hand, the budget doesn’t give county employees all they want, either, but the county needs to keep its pay scale attractive.
He noted that, even with the increase, the county will take in an estimated $553,000 less in revenue because of a declining property tax base – most of that due to the Monticello power plant.
Seven years ago, the plant was valued at a billion dollars; for the coming year, the Luminant holding company claims a value of $50 million. “That’s a decline of 95 percent,” said Lee.
He said the county and Luminant are in court over the value, “and we all hope we can settle for something at least in the middle,” but for budgeting the county moved ahead assuming the $50 million value, said Lee.
Other last minute changes to the budget included adding $91,700 to share the cost of three firefighters with the City of Mount Pleasant.
Riddle, who only draws half of his salary as commissioner, asked that the other $32,000 be left in his precinct budget. “I can use that to buy more road material,” he said.
The tax rate and budget passed by a vote of 4-1, with Riddle opposed, and Lee, Parker, Mike Fields and Phillip Hinton in favor.
The tax rate, adjusted for the decline in property tax values, is considered a 7.237 increase.
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