Travis County Commissioners Court
September 26, 2006
Item 43
43 is to consider and take appropriate action on an outreach program for Travis County citizens regarding methods of payment for property taxes.
>> good morning, judge. Good afternoon. My able assistants are going to be handing you some things. I would like to take this opportunity -- my name is dusty knight with the Travis County tax office. Today with me I have nelda spears your tax assessor collector, rene deckard, who is our manager and two can-do employees, tim do you tim dow and sheryl who are workogthis project. Several weeks ago we got a call about a concern over 65 and disabled individuals in the Travis County and whether or not we were making sure that they were getting their exejses appropriate or not. I put together some information about the numbers that we had. I think I shipped all of you copies of that to show in each of the precincts the best we can tell what kind of exemptions we did have for over 65. And so he had asked can we put something together for outreach on this, and I said we'll go do that. He said before you finalize it, please bring it to Commissioners court so the rest of his peer group could wo have a chance to look at this and give us comments, feedback, whatever. So this was something we put together for y'all to look at that we would like to attempt to do, get your input and see what you think. The first thing that we handed you today was the little black folder. These are some things that we currently do. Inside that black folder on the right-hand side is the taxpayer news, which y'all -- we bring to y'all each year. We put out with the property tax statements. Approximately 250,000 people would receive that little taxpayer news. It's printed on both sides of the sheet and tries to tell everybody as much as you can on one piece of paper about the various exemptions and what you can do for the tax office. There's also a copy in spanish. We do not put that in the mailer because it would increase the mailer going out, but if people call in we would send them a copy of the same thing in spanish. The taxpayer rights that's behind there that's produced by the comptroller's office, I know a few weeks ago I got copies to judge Biscoe to take out to a group. I don't know how they received it. If you open up that taxpayer news, if luke in the second page, second column down toward the end it very specifically tells you what you need to do to be able to get a disabled exemption. That was one of the things that Commissioner Davis was wanting to know about. We have these publications in the tax office. It is produced by the controller. They sent them to the appraisal district and the appraisal district forwards them to us. So any time that y'all are doing outreach and I've heard that word used a bunch today. Any time that y'all are doing outreach let us know and we can get you these pamphlets that you can go and hand out to the groups that you're talking about because object be vusly the more people we can reach and have is them know about their exceptions, y'all have been doing very good with your exeptionz. You offer exemptions that other jurisdictions here in the county don't offer and obviously people only want to pay as much as is they need to pay. My staff -- one of the people missing today is tina morton, our public information director. She's teaching today. She's a certified teacher for property tax courses, teaching. Most of our staff have taken these courses. Anybody we get somebody into the office, we know what to ask them in order for them to get the right exemptions and help them make their payments but the problem is is there's so many I'm people that don't make it to our office. That's what the outreach is is all about today. With that I'll turn it over -- that's the basis. You have those things available right now today if tha if gow out we will get you these things to hand out to neighborhood associations. This is what now we're going to move into what our proposal is today for an outreach program. With that I'll turn it over to nelda.
>> at some point are you going to ask us --
>> you have is to look at it first.
>> I have already. I'm fast.
>> good afternoon. Nelda spears, Travis County tax assessor collector. Thank you. That changed everything. We are going to talk a little bit about outreach and a specific outreach project that we've come up with and we'd like to get your input on. We have designed a -- when I say we, I say that loosely. They have designed display boxes that are similar to the voter registration application boxes. As a matter of fact, it's the same box. This is a display box that can be placed in air community centers, -- area community centers, libraries, precinct offices, churches, senior citizen groups and organizations, and we are going try to get realtors and title companies to keep these boxes for their closings and what have you as well. And if you have suggestions on anywhere else these boxes would be appropriate, we'd like try to place them there. There are some options. You should have is a small display box with you now. Yes, you do.
>> we do?
>> and there are several -- are you going to work that one?
>> I'll work it for you.
>> there are several options as to the heading that's on the box or the label that's on the box. The first one is paying more than your share of property taxes. A lot of people feel that especially senior citizens feel that they pay more than their fair share of property taxes and the staff thought that would be a catchy phrase and I clapd.
>> the boxes would have one of these. They're not going to be as elaborate as what you have. It would have one of these on here. So webbed have different boxes having different things. They won't all be flip charts, it would just be be one with something on it like that.
>> these are just the choices that we have. And there are probably different places, different locations where different signs would be appropriate.
>> at the health strrksz the one that had the rx possibly. These were some of our thoughts.
>> the next one is don't get a penalty on your property taxes, which would be appropriate at any of the locations that we've identified. Property taxes weighing you down? I think we all feel that way from time to time. Anyway, if have you a preference or other ideas for the labels that go on boxes, we'd love your input.
>> there's not one that says is that you do not have is to pay your property taxes? [ laughter ]
>> there's not one that says that.
>> and there's a frozen that.
>> there's a reason for that. Everybody has to pay. Every property owner has to pay. Within the boxes, which have been designed like a voter registration application, the new ones, is something that people can take. And if they have questions or concerns about any -- anything regarding property taxes, exemptions, quarterly payment plans, disabled quarterly payments, installment payments, the over 65 deferral, disabled veterans exemption or the regular disabled person deferral, anything, they can just take this and check -- fill in there their personal information, their mailing address, main mailing address, telephone number, e-mail address and the address of the property in question. Fill that out, check the boxes for information that they need, that they -- questions they have or things they want to know about these aspects of the property tax system or any other, there is a box where they can fill in others if these don't fit any of their concerns. They can fold this after completing it, they can fold it in half. Now their personal information is inside, not visible to the mailman or anyone, anyone's prying eyes, and drop it in the mail. It will be a postage paid, mail this back to the tax office and they'll be contacted by someone from the tax office. They'll erlt get a phone call or e-mail or a letter, some type of correspondence or communication from the tax office with answers to their questions to deal with whatever their concerns are. And in case these boxes are very handy and portable as we found out using them with voter registration pliksz, so we'll be able to get them to wherever they need to go. If I've left out any details, rene, I'll scoot over and up can use this mic. You can fill in.
>> good afternoon, Commissioners court. We just want to try to do our best as always to let the public know what is out there for them, what can assist is them. A lot of them don't know or they don't understand that there are 'ways to lower their taxes, get the disabled exemption. And this is just to put some thought into their head that hey, maybe I might qualify for this or maybe they didn't know there was a disabled or senior exemption. For we can just get the taxpayer to talk to us more, we can help them more.
>> on that disabled situation, there may be some folks that we serve in the community as far as offering services. They may be they're disabled, but I was look at what hhs has in defining what is disabled and who determines your disability. And I think under hhs one of our departments, health and human services, that definition of disabled is something that has to be verified by a physician, a letter or whatever instrument may be used for hhs to say, well, this particular person is disabled, but when it comes to disability, what I'm understanding is when it comes to disability or a property tax payer here in Travis County, they must substantiate and that determination must be made by -- is it the social security administration?
>> yes, sir.
>> social security administration. And then from that standpoint that information then has to go to tcad -- that's travis central appraisal district -- and atthat point they determine whether this disability exemption is is awarded based on the recognition or substantiation of that fact through the social security administration. Is that correct?
>> that's correct.
>> okay. I think it probably needs to be clear because there may be some confusion as far as some of the persons we serve in the community, disability on wrun hand and disability on the other hand when it comes to property tax exemption and disability. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> one of the things on here, as I said, this is a trial, and one of the things I wanted to ask y'all about fs one of the problems we're having with people and property taxes not keeping clear title to their properties. At one point an outside group, which is the lawyer referral growrngs had said that they would like to participate with us to make sure that they could help people with dealing with wills or at least get them started with wills so that their property title is carried forward correctly and whatnot I did not put the box on at this time because we wanted to check with y'all first if there's going to be information that would be be going to an outside other than the tax office or whatever, how the Commissioners court felt about that. That's just a question I would have for you all.
>> how do we feel about lawyers assisting people with wills?
>> putting it on this particular --
>> legal aid.
>> if we put a check box that legal aid will contact you about your will or whatever else, that's going outside the tax office, and before I reached outside -- we reached outside the boundaries of the tax office, I wanted to see what your feeling was. I know that they had asked and I didn't know what your feeling would be.
>> if it doesn't bother them, it doesn't bother mevment we maybe should post that, though, if that's a decision that the court will make. This posting probably does not allow it.
>> okay.
>> but we're asked to take a formal position as a county. It makes sense to me, though. Clearly a lot of seniors have lived in homesteads for years, young people have gone off and if something happens in the -- and nobody's there, nobody is coming back to probate the estate and the next thing you know, instead of a few months, be several years have passed and taxes kind of keep rolling, things get kind of produce quoused. So a simple will during the lifetime of the property owner make all the sense in the world to me. I recall when I was in law school as a am student project, we did wills free of charge for seniors, disabled persons and other people who couldn't afford to do their own.
>> we will check to be sure that they want to be involved with this and bring this back to y'all as a vote if that's what you would like to do. I wanted to be sure before we started adding anything like that because you could get others that would want to piggyback with them.
>> it's my understanding that they have been willing to talk with them and neighborhood associations are trying to do this. We've not done anything with them. They had asked, not getting off into a different tangent, about with with our delinquent social security notices and whatnot, that if you have problems to contact legal aid. So I know they're willing to deal with property tax issues. I just wanted to be sure that y'all were aware and were approving of that before we did it.
>> right now -- [ inaudible ].
>> I think so too, Commissioner. Let me ask you this. In the outreach -- I don't know if it's against the law to have these things in churches. It's not.
>> we've been able to place the voter registration boxes there.
>> some places -- I visit different churches and stuff, but I haven't seen this display, not similar to this, but as far as the information as relevant as this, I haven't seen them in some of the churches. So that's why I was asking that question. I doesn't know if tchs legal to have is it.
>> it's just providing providing nompls the citizens.
>> but in your outreach, per se, is it something that you can do internally as far as an amount of money of getting the materials out to the number of effective outreach locations for this type of tax be information for the taxpayers of Travis County?
>> we would be able to -- the card stock we're talk being was a little special because there was a glue strip that would glue it together. That costs I think about $40 a thousand to get the card tock. We can certainly do that under our current budget. That's not a problem. Setting up what we're looking at here is postage paid thing, that's not a big problem. That's about $600 to do that with the post office. We do have one at the tax office. I would want to be sure whether we can piggyback or that's a separate one. Error management has indicated that's not a problem with them. The biggest thing would be the postage coming back. It's going to be 24 cents per item, and six cents per handling through the post office, so it's roughly 30 cents per item coming back to us, but you can do this like the prepaid phones. If you only want to pay for 100, you buy 100 and that's it. If you want to do a thousand, we can prepay a thousand. We can be in control. We do not have to set aside 10,000 dollars' worth of postage and it never be be used. We can do this jution like a prepaid phone card. That's why we would because I don't think we'll get 50,000 of these back in the next year. For us if people will just pick them up and be be aware of it, they can call us and it costs nothing at that point in time. Or they can go out on the internet. Most of the information we have is on the internet site and if they have the ability to get on the internet they can see it there. Once again, I think it can be handled in the budget, yes, sir, and be we would not be going out trying to say we would do this for 50,000 to set aside 10,000 or 20,000 of postage. We'll see how it goes. I am saying that yes, we can cover it through the county's budget. We don't have postage in our budget. It would be working with errors management, but that -- records management, but that shouldn't be that big a deevment.
>> in terms of establishing age 65 or older, I guess identification, drivers license, birth certificate, stuff like that? So on disability a doctor's certification won't do, you really need to be determined disabled under the federal old age survivors and disability insurance program?
>> yes, sir. They will send a letter and you can forward that letter straight to the appraisal district and the appraisal district will deal with it.
>> so what do they expect to see?
>> they?
>> the federal old age survivors and disability insurance program.
>> I couldn't tell you what all you file with that. That's probably the same thing you got from your physician and you're trying to get some kind of benefits.
>> I should have said I don't know, but being a lawyer, I didn't. It seem if your doctor certifies you were disabled --
>> I'm sure one of the can do's will find that out and we'll have it before we come back next tievment. Time.
>> you mentioned the $65,000 in addition to the homestead exemption. Everybody sort of perks up. The other thing is is that I think a lot of them have claimed the overcategory 5 already and don't know it. Over 65 and don't know it. It's real big at the county and I know some of the other entities have smaller exemptions that you have qualify for. So do we tell people, though, that -- like when I go out I tell them I'm talking about Travis County. And the exemptions vary by jurisdiction. And so then I try to summarize some of the others, but I do tell them, you know, --
>> yes, sir.
>> obviously we do -- the main thing is trying to get the school tax freeze. Most people feel that when you turn 65 you become exempt from paying taxes. So you have to sit down and explain them that it's basically talking about the schools and it's freezing their tax where it -- it's placing a ceiling where they won't pay more than that. We do explain that to anyone that we come in contact with to discuss with them. It's also very important thing is the deferral. As you said, the people were out there that can't pay their taxes anymore, they're over 65, they don't know they can defer their taksz. It may be something that the children need to know about helping the parents defer. So there's a lot of information that needs to go out to people to know what all is available to them under the property tax code.
>> is is this for people take their Travis County as in county taxes or is it for anybody that's paying taxes within Travis County? You understand is it on behalf of all jurisdictions or just our jurisdiction?
>> all.
>> it seems like it might need to have a built of tweaking. You know me, I have to use my degree, my mother gets very proud when I do that, but I would be happy to work with you to tweak a few things here. I'm also thinking in terms of simplicity. We've got like nine boxes here for people to fill out, and it seems like if you don't know enough about it, probably there are maybe about three things as homeowner exemptions. Any exemptions for over 65, rather than them trying to figure out do I need something or another or they may think, I wouldn't even know what an over category 5 65deferral means. If I were over 65 I would want to know about everything whether I asked you about it or not because I wouldn't want people to not hit a box and you really want to give them more information rather than less information. I would be happy to work with you in terms of simplicity of language and my usual editing stuff.
>> I am the one that wanted to see the lots of boxes. I want people to be be aware that there are a lot of options. That was the way that I went with with this. There are a lot of things that we can do, different ways that we can help. If you just say there are options and check it, they may not do it, but there are a lot of different options. I was the one that chose to do that so that they can see there are a lot of different things being offered by the government to help them pay their taxes.
>> in looking at all this and talking, I guess it's not a situation where -- this is very well as far as having input coming from Commissioners court to maybe come up with a good, best final product as it goes into the community, but whatever that final product is will be in the future when we get to that point, the tweaking and all the other things that is necessary. I'm really interested in making sure that this gets the outreach. And I don't mind being part of this outreach because of the number of inquiries I get about taxes. The programs that may be available. I'm quite sure the other Commissioners get the same I believe quirries as we're -- the same inquiries as we're out and about. Travis County is different 'than the other entities as far as some of the taxing things that we have -- the availability of offsetting some of your taxes. So whenever that final deal comes in, like I say, again, I would like to be part of that outreach as far as I could especially take it to some of the churches, for example, and making sure that they get that because there's a lot of folks that may not be aware much this information, but have it available for them and in where it's understandable and to the point and very easy to understand. So I'm for all of that --
>> I would hope that this could be something that each of y'all could carry out to the meetings that gow to. A lot of times people are afraid to get up and ask a question in a group because it makes them look stupid, but if you leave them with something like this, they can fill out whatever they want, send it to us and we will be able to send is them things in the mail, answer the questions or whatever. We very much need y'all to participate in the outreach.
>> I participate in acorn meeting for an example. Some of the acorn people that were in the meeting, a lot of things did come up as far as some of the senior citizens that were there. On taxes for example. And it would have been good to have -- verbally I did the best I could with the information I had available to me, but this would have went a long way and something they could have took home with them instead ofious trying to remember or trying to yot down what I told them in the meeting. So those kind of things I think will be very appropriate.
>> once again let me go back to the controller's thing. I don't know how it went with you, judge, when you took them out there, but we have those rights, both in english and in spanish. They come in a cellophane wrapper. You can keep them there until people need something. It gets into everything you want to know. We send them out to people when they're changing titles from another state to here, they're fixing to be a taxpayer here, so they don't know anything about it, obviously coming in from another state. So that's a very good publication available for y'all to hand out also. Just let us know and we'll make sure you have a supply.
>> I think another one that's important on here is is if you've got a surviving spouse it was the deceased person who was over 65. A lot of people might erroneously believe I lost my exemption and there are special rules on that. Something my mother was able to take advantage of is is when she moved from conroe to Travis County she was able to transfer things and exemptions that were in place in conroe were moved to Austin. I think of folks thought that law got changed, thank goodness, because basically if you moved you lost your frozen status. That's important too. There's a lot of important information that folks are not aware of.
>> as we said this was a start. This wasn't finalized. Anything you have we would appreciate you sending to us, get wuss or whatever because we would like to go ahead and move forward on this because the -- we're hoping to start this Sunday I believe is October the 1st and we're hopefully going to start preparing the tax bills for 2006. So bills will be going out and we hope to have information for people to make sure they get all their exemptions and whatever. So please give us your input.
>> who does the calculations for a certain taxpayer? Travis County does.
>> we do it. We will be loading. We receive the appraisal --
>> that's good u.n. So at the central travis appraisal district is where you pick up your pliksz, you send those and they make the determination as to the exemptions and then convey the nompls us and dwoa the calculations twhoet do the calculations and the bill. This has been enlightening. Thank you very much for outreaching to us. Office we need to post the other thing about the wills, let us know and we'll stick it on and work with you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 27, 2006 9:54 AM