Travis County Commssioners Court
August 5, 2003
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Road District #3
Let's call to order the golden triangle. We do not need item 1 as there are no claims and no investments. Number 2 is to approve the proposed tax rate and the proposed f.y. '04 road district budget.
>> you should have an analysis provided by the road district's financial adviser who is not here right now, but I can briefly run through the sections on his recommendations which is to modify the tax rate for the road district from 15 cents to 16.6 cents. This is a perfect example of how the effective tax rate works because the values in the -- for the 185 parcels in the road district went from 417 down to 369 million. Tax rate go up 11% from 15 cents to 16.6 cents. There's also about a million nine worth of new construction of the the question that came before your financial advisor was the appropriate amount that he would recommend to go into the reserves to level off the tax rate, not necessarily simply for next year, but future years. And that really is a function of the best most conservative recommendation might be on future changes in the growth of the road district. You can see the road district back in 1996 had taxable value of 112 million. It peaked at 417 million in 2002, not very long after, and is now down to 36 #-. There is an assumption that a conservative estimate would be a 10 -- another 10% drop in values and then leveling off and increasing at 4% thereafter. But each year the road district has an opportunity to establish what the appropriate tax rate is and use of the reserves. The recommendation from your financial advisor is to use $47,000 worth of reserves, set the tax rate at 16.6 cents. That is necessary to make a decision at this point so that the advertisesment that the tax assessor has shows you are interested in using some of the reserves to help pay for debt service. The entire road district is only financing debt service. And you see before you a proposed budget and a tax rate which would then finally be approved at the end of September.
>> I think if lad were here, he would make two other comments. A, there is no residential property whatsoever within this road district. It's all commercial.
>> correct.
>> and there is no real m and o, it's all about debt service at this point, and you can see the rate back in '96 was 45 cents and because of the value coming into this district it's now down to 16 cents. The other thing is, a question being raised by property owners out there is oh, my goodness are we able to refy these bonds because of historic low interest rates and lad has said these are not callable for another two years so that would be lovely, but we're not eligible to refy these for another two years so we'll just have to be there when we are there.
>> we need to move approval of the tax rate? At 16.6 cents?
>> I would move so, and the recommendation from our financial advisor related to the use of the $47,000 for the debt service.
>> second.
>> any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> move we adjourn.
>> second.
>> all in favor? That passes by unanimous vote also.
Last Modified: Wednesday, August 6, 2003 4:52 PM