09 City Council (7/28/2003) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular City Council Meeting July 28 , 2003 Page 7 tax increase was a result of the selling of bonds to pay for the police station. Mr. Malone advised that he had been presenting budgets on that basis for several years in a row. The City Manager advised that he did not see revenue growing any great deal and it is a significant amount to give any kind of cost of living increase. He is assuming, and he may be totally wrong about this because he did not have the tax roll and all the figures compiled at this point, but he was assuming if there is any kind of cost of living increase, it would probably require a tax increase, or other things would have to be cut from the budget. Councilman Plata said he remembers the city having a 5% increase for the Police Station, and then they went 3% over. Mr. Anderson came forward stating that the tax rate is at 69.5 cents and it was 61 cents and 5% of that was for the 2002 Bond Issue, and the balance of it, as he recalled, was to make up for the revenue shortfall in the sales tax and some of those franchise fees. Councilman Plata said that Chip Harper said the city was actually better than staff had predicated. Mr. Anderson advised that he did not know where he got that number but it does not coincide with any numbers that he has and he did not feel like standing up in a public meeting and questioning it, but those numbers did not match up with any percentage by looking at the city's actual income numbers. The City Manager said he was incorrect as he recalls the statement. Councilman Plata said that Erik Roddy of PEDC also said that. City Manager Malone said he was incorrect also. Mr. Anderson explained that the PEDC's mistake was that he did not take into account the fact that there was an audit adjustment for the previous year which reduced that artificially so it looked like it was a big increase. He said the actual net increase over the previous year has been running about a percent and a half to 2% collection increase over last year. Councilman Guest stated that it looks like they have two challenges. One is to give pay increases to the employees and the other one is not to increase the tax rate. If he is reading the Texas Municipal League correctly, the city is in the top 10% of the state tax rate now, and wanted to know if that was correct. Mr.