Travis County Commissioners Court
June 23, 2009,
Item 28
Now let's call back to order the voting session of the Travis County Commissioners court.
item no.
28.
consider and take appropriate action on assumptions for Travis County regarding the following: a, property tax considerations and b, 2009 parcel rate fees.
>> good afternoon, Commissioners, judge.
i'm renee decker with the Travis County tax office.
i'm over the property tax collections and this is our staff, sheryl
>> [indiscernible]
>> [papers shuffling - audio interference] jennifer.
we do a lot of the number crunching for you all.
so we're here to report and ken.
>> welcome to all of you.
>> the same considerations as in the past, which we mentioned for the other districts.
100% anticipated collection rate and now the optional homestead exemption of 65,000 for disabled and over 65 in the greater, 5,000 or 20% for all of the other homesteads, historical exemption of 100% on the structure and 50% on the land for residences or non-profit agencies and
>> [indiscernible] that for all other historical properties.
we have provided Commissioners court with a list of those historical exemptions in the backup information.
the Commissioners router
>> [indiscernible] buy down the debt rate and we recommend no buy down of the debt rate for the county, which was decided on after preparing the memo that you have.
>> each year, we look at those historical exemptions and wonder why we don't do more to vet them and get informed about them and take appropriate action.
i'm not asking that we do anything today, but can we footnote that notion for early next fiscal year so we can start early and kind of look at it.
what we've done historically was simply buy into the city of Austin's determinations, right?
>> uh-huh.
>> and one year we kind of started looking at them and it really turned out to be a hornet's nest more than anything else.
but I think I'm bold enough to give us a six or seven month head start and see whether our historical approach of kind of rubber stamping these is the best way to go.
>> actually, judge, as I understand it the city has made some changes that we have not adopted in their historical exemption process.
i need to do a little more research on that, but we will be happy to do so.
>> if they're good, we ought to adopt them, if they are not, we ought to turn our head and look the other way.
but -- but this number has kind of grown over time, I think.
and I think -- also think it was four or five years ago that we kind of looked at it.
i haven't concluded that certain things ought to be done except that we ought to look at it more closely.
with that, there are some assumptions that we are recommended to -- to approve.
i move that we do so.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
b is a 2009 parcel rate fees.
>> which is the per parcel fee that we charge to the jurisdictions based on the actual expenses we incur while assessing and collecting for them.
for our calculation we have used the same costing model as in the past which is on the second page of the memo, with the exact numbers for this year on the third page.
it all comes out to about 1.57 million in collection expenses for our efforts under sections other than Travis County with a parcel count of about 1.52 million taking our parcel fee rate to $1.03, with the revenue of $1.57 million.
that rate is 3 cents higher than the rate we have now and the revenue is about 97,000 more than last year's.
the parcel count is 51,000 more than last year.
most of that increase belongs to the seven jurisdictions we have new to this year.
and the calculation also took into account a little less than one percent retirement cost increase for personal expenses and $25,000 in software upgrade costs for our computer system.
>> move that we adon't $1.03 parcel rate fee.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you, judge and Commissioners.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>>
>> [indiscernible],
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> 29?
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 1:31 PM