Travis County Commissioners Court
June 17, 2008
Item 30
30 is consider and take appropriate action on assumptions regarding the following: a, property tax rate consideration and b, 2008 parcel rate fees.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. Russ knight with the Travis County tax office. Each year we come to the Commissioners court to get our assumptions approved for the coming up tax year. We will need assumptions for calculation of the effective tax rate that will start about July the 25th. We also need to have you set a parcel rate, and that's the amount which we charge the various taxing jurisdictions so we can notify them so they can place that in their budgets for this coming tax year. For the last 15 years or so we have one individual in the tax office that did all this, the individual retired, and so we decided it was best to have this knowledge spread out over a lot of people so I will have staff introduce themselves and they are the ones doing all this work now versus one individual.
>>
>> [inaudible] I think they are all kind of shy.
>> get them indoctrinated but I'm going to do my best because I'm going to ask tim to talk to y'all about the considerations y'all need to do as far as setting a tax rate or for us to do the tax calculation for the effective tax rate.
>> there are four items that are reviewed every year and we are recommending the same parameters as in years past. The first one is the anticipated collection rates. 100%.
>> I want to make sure, we talk about a lot of different anticipated collection rates in Commissioners court. This is one for the truth in taxation, whereas if we weren't going to be collecting, you could set a lower rate so that you could raise your i. N s debt service to make sure you get enough money to pay the debt service. This is based on an historical formula and what's been done in previous years. If you choose less than 100% and you collect over 100%, you get penalized in the following year. So we have always done under the calculation by the state 100% here so we're recommending the same 100%. But you'll hear other anticipated collection rates talked about. This is just this one specific for the effective tax rate and the debt service side.
>> and the optional homestead exemption, 65,000 for the disabled and over 65, and at 5,000 or 20%, whichever is greater, for all homesteads, and that is the maximum allowed by the law. And then no exemptions for the road district. The historic load exemptions are 100% on the structure and 50% on the land for residences or nonprofit agencies, and half that for all other historical exemptions, and no exemptions for the road district. And then the debt buy-down, the debt service and the resulting debt rate may be reduced by using year-end or reserve balances from the bond or general fund. And we recommend no debt rate buy-down for the county road district or the health care district.
>> yes, I failed to mention you all are doing this, we've been told you need to do this for the hospital district, health district and Travis County and the road district. So you are looking at three this year.
>> and those are the four items.
>> do we think this posting is sufficient to cover the health care district?
>> I think you ought to go ahead and repost that. Same for the road district. Unless you have that separate posting for that.
>> do we have time to post the road districts and the health care district next week? And to save you all a trip down here since we're hearing the explanation today, we may not need you next week. We love to see you, but we may not need you.
>> thank you.
>> okay.
>> move approval of a.
>> second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. You did an excellent job.
>> on the parcel rate calculations, once again tim gathers information from the various offices, county attorney, i.t. And other people put together a work sheet based on what we have received from planning and budget. And we give that information to planning and budget and came up with an amount so I will release this over to leroy to discuss that part.
>> yeah, we have reviewed the tax office's, tim's compilations of the cost of collecting per parcel. My understanding is there's about 1.4 million parcels. Our current rate for '08 is $1.02, and in the calculations we have found that there is actually a decrease that's recommended for f.y. '09 at one dollar. So p.b.o. Has reviewed those calculations and we recommend that you approve that rate.
>> calculations of a whole lot of other factual circumstances that your e-mail outlined. Move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion? So our other jurisdiction should be happy and I guess we ought to be too if leroy's explanation was accurate. And it would never be inaccurate. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you all very much. Good to see you. See you next year.
>> thank you. Now let's call up the 24-hour fitness item, and then we'll go to the compensation-related issues.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 2:31 PM