Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, June 8, 2010,
Item 20
>> number 20 is to consider and take appropriate action on assumptions, mr. Knight, for travis county regarding the following: a, property tax considerations and b, 2010 parcel rate fees. Mr. Knight and your team.
>> i just happen to be here to drive them today. They're going to make the presentation.
>> [ laughter ]
>> good morning.
>> good morning. My name is den do you and this is sarah certifyta and we are your tax crunchers -- numbers crunchers at the tax office. Those items that we in the planning and budget office recommend the court adopt are 100% anticipated collection rate for use specifically in the effective tax rate calculations. The optional homestead exemptions of $65,000 for the disabled and over 65. And 5,000 or 20%, whichever is greater, for all homesteads. The historical exemption recommended changes are going to be discussed by the planning and budget office, but those are currently set at 100% on the structure and 50% on the land for residences or nonprofit agencies. Angd half that for all other historical properties. That buy-down, which is the reduction of the debt service using year end balances from the bond or general fund, and we recommend no debt buydown for the health care district and the county debt service will be discussed on a later date.
>> so it's basically our typical historical assumptions, i take it.
>> correct.
>> to go back over, so some people don't -- there is a formula used to do the anticipated collection rate for the calculation. It is not the same one that the auditor will come up with for collection rate of the taxes. This is a form that one has to use in this calculation. If you're collecting 100% or less you can raise your debt rate to make sure that you have enough money to pay your debt. We've always, the way the formula is done, we've collected over 100%. So if you set 100% and collect 103, you don't have to pay it back. So we've been safe in doing the 100% every year. That's the anticipated collection rate that we're talking about there. After item 18 i want to be sure and say out loud that the 20% that you're granted is the maximum allowed by the state constitution, so y'all are going to the max there currently. At 65 you do have the option of changing that to whatever you would want it to be, but the 20% you are granting today is the maximum allowed by state law.
>> and to that point i think the value in -- to that point regarding what we're doing on this agenda item, the value in number 18 is an agenda item in looking at homestead is that in order to look at the 65 in the disability discount you have to look at them altogether because howard hughes at 65 get the 65 discount and the homestead. And the disability, presumely howard would have qualified. So we want to bear that in mind that while we're trying to inject progressivity into it, it's a very blunt instrument by statutory requirement.
>> yes.
>> right now you really can qualify for the 20% homestead, the over65 or disabled, and the historical exemptions.
>> we do have some of those that get all of that, yes. And let me go one step further. And there's a cap. When we were looking at the historicals, the market value was way up here, but they were capped down here and then we start doing all the rest of this. So many of them were paying zero for a-million-dollar property when we were looking at that earlier.
>> and then even for those who have some leftover, they could further defer what they do owe until their estate pays it 20 years from now.
>> so do we require that the historical exemption be applied first or after the 20% and the over 65 or disabled?
>> when i spoke to you, tcad what they do when they make the calculation, they could not take the 20% off and then make the historical commission -- historical exemption. For example, if you had -- in my backup i had a property that had a 100,000-dollar value on the structure, 400 on the land, which gave them a 300,000 historical exemption. It did not matter that -- it was the same for the city and the county that the --
>> so the historical comes first.
>> right.
>> if you qualify foe that, then you can take your 20% on top of that.
>> right. There's no reduction.
>> and one of the differences between the city and the county is that the city actually has a cap on the historical exemption where the county does not have a cap.
>> so when we said we will follow the city's actions, in fact we only followed part of their actions.
>> we did not implement the cap.
>> so we did not follow all of it to our detriment.
>> that's correct. And that's the reason during the last budget cycle that the court had asked pbo to look at this. And katy has been doing some research and the backup shows that. So that's the reason that we integrated it with dusty's presentation on the exemptions.
>> is pbo in favor of the assumptions that the tax office recommends in a?
>> pbo fully supports the tax office's recommendations.
>>
>> [ inaudible ].
>> okay. Will that harm us in any way?
>> they said it wouldn't.
>> i think it actually helps us in moving forward if in fact the court will approve those exemptions that they're comfortable with and obviously the historical exemption will need more discussion before you finalize your recommendation on that. I do think that we ought to aim for having whatever exceptions finalized no later than probably third week in july so that we do not hold up the certification of tcad certified roll.
>> 20 a will be back on the court's agenda one week, commissioner?
>> that will be fine.
>> next week. B is 2010 parcel rate fees.
>> when calculating we attempted to calculate the expenses occurred when assessing and collecting and those expenses include accounting delinquent collections, the effective tax rate add in calculations, its supports and systems maintenance and analyzed costs. Our 2010 total collection costs allocated to jurisdictions other than travis county is about 1.7 million and our 2010 parcel count for jurisdictions other than travis county is about 1.5 million. So we in the planning and budget office recommend the court adopts the parcel fee rate of $1.11, which is eight cents higher than our current 2009 rate of $1.03.
>> so the many jurisdictions for which we collect property taxes we charge a parcel rate of $1.11 per taxpayer?
>> currently it was $1.03 for this year. We're recommending $1.11 for next year.
>> move approval of 1.11. Pbo?
>> we currently support it.
>> you are a mightily agreeable person today, mr. Nellis. I enjoy working with you. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, June 8, 2010 1:45 PM
