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City Council Special Meeting <br />September 3, 2019 <br />Page 3 <br />projects that were budgeted to use up that $560,000. Mr. Anderson said the quickest way to <br />reach that amount would be to look at the capital fund where there were large ticketed items. <br />Council Member Portugal said if they could speed up the downtown project, she would be <br />willing to keep the tax rate or reduce it by one-half. <br />Mayor Clifford inquired of Council how they wanted to proceed. Council Member Knox <br />said she would like to try to see if they could keep the budget neutral. Council Member Hughes <br />expressed concern about cutting from salaries, in that it might be more difficult to retain good <br />employees. Council Member Portugal suggested to Mr. Ekstrom that he also contact their State <br />Representative Gary VanDeaver as to the school taxes, because legislators had promised tax <br />relief. She said the school taxes were much higher than City taxes. Retired TxDOT employee <br />Steve Ekstrom said he would not sell his house for the appraised value, and that PISD needed to <br />throttle back on their budget. <br />Council Member Pilgrim said he would like to see some cuts to the budget. Mayor <br />Clifford said he would like Mr. Anderson to see if he could get the budget neutral. Mayor <br />Clifford said this money had been spread uniformly all over the budget, in a thousand places and <br />that is why they could not find it. He said once Mr. Anderson brings the budget back to budget <br />neutral, the Council could decide if a project was important, and could add a little back in. He <br />said they did not know what they were getting for their money, and that the Council was the <br />guardians of taxpayer money. Council Member Pilgrim said they would see an increase in taxes <br />by lowering them, because lower taxes would encourage growth. <br />Citizen Chad Lindsey said maybe they could look at general revenue and annexing <br />property. Citizen James O'Bryan suggested they use a large part to pay off debt and generate <br />more income. <br />Mayor Clifford closed the public hearing. <br />Mr. Anderson explained that if any item was increased in this budget a public hearing <br />would be required, and there would not be sufficient time to act on that unless staff knew what <br />the increases were tonight. Mr. Anderson said if they wanted to get back to revenue neutral, an <br />alternative would be to adopt a rate that was going to allow some increase. He said then in <br />October after the budget was adopted, Council could come back and amend it. Mr. Anderson <br />said at that time, they could increase items. Mayor Clifford confirmed they could tell Mr. <br />Anderson to decrease items, adopt a higher tax rate at a future meeting but lower than what they <br />have, and then amend the budget in another month. Council Member Knox said by then they <br />would have the year-end numbers, could see where they actually were and that would be a great <br />help. <br />It was a consensus of the City Council to have Mr. Anderson try to get the budget back to <br />budget neutral. <br />5. Discuss and act on a Resolution calling a public hearing on proposed amendments to the <br />proposed budget for fiscal year 2019-2020. <br />