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Budget Committee <br />August 7, 1999 <br />Page 5 <br />taxes. The Attorney Fees has for a number of years maintained a <br />delinquent tax attorney to help collect those delinquent taxes and he is <br />allowed under the law to add a 15% fee to those delinquent collections, <br />which is just a pass- through item. The Certificate of Obligation Series <br />1993 1 & S is the only issue of debt that the City has that is currently <br />being payed for by property taxes. It was issued in 1993 and part of the <br />tax rate in the debt portion of the tax rate is what funds the debt <br />payments in the 1 & S Fund. Mr. Anderson also went over with the <br />Committee the calculation of the effective tax rate, and explained the <br />rollback rate. <br />Mr. Anderson went back to the General Fund revenues where the sales <br />tax is shown, and explained that the municipal sales tax, the on cent <br />sales tax that the City has had since the 60's, that is what the first <br />number represents. The City also has a line item there for the <br />Economic Development Sales Tax, but nothing is shown for that <br />because it is passed on to the PEDC. Next is the hotel -motel tax, and <br />for those who are new to the Council and the Committee, the City has <br />a collected which is 7% of the room rent. The City collects that directly <br />from the hotels and passes that money on to the Chamber of <br />Commerce under a contractual agreement, and they spend that money <br />for certain things that they are allowed to spend it for by law. <br />The next item is franchises and gross receipt taxes. Mr. Anderson said <br />generally speaking, most of those are 4% of the utilities gross revenue. <br />That is not true for every case here, but people like Southwestern Bell, <br />Lone Star Gas, TU and TCA Cable, it is true for them. Tenaska III is not <br />a percentage, it is a flat dollar amount that was negotiated with them <br />several years ago. <br />Mr. Wilson said that years ago all of our whole telephone bills came <br />from Southwestern Bell, and we received 4 %, and now, with all the long <br />distance companies and independent companies coming in, he wanted <br />to know if the City is getting the tax from the long distance, or is it just <br />on the service, and not the long distance charges. <br />Mr. Anderson said it just on the service, and advised that the City ran <br />