Copperas Cove city council votes to propose lower tax rate

By BRITTANY FHOLER

Cove Leader-Press

The Copperas Cove City Council took a record vote to proposing a lower property tax rate for fiscal year 2021-2022 during a special meeting Thursday evening.

During the special meeting, Budget Director Ariana Beckman presented the council members with three different tax rates.

The proposed budget was made using the current tax rate of 78.65 cents per $100 valuation, which would generate $464,715 in additional revenue.

The No-New-Revenue Tax rate of 72.46 cents per $100 valuation would not generate any new revenue and would result in the city have to reduce expenses in the proposed budget by $464,247.

The Voter-Approval tax rate of 76 cents per $100 valuation would generate revenues of $92,750.

This last tax rate means that if the city council had proposed a higher rate than 76 cents, a special election would automatically be called for voters to say yes or no to that proposed rate in November.

Councilmember Dan Yancey made a motion to propose the Voter Approval tax rate of 76 cents per $100 valuation to be adopted next month, which passed unanimously among the city council.

The city council also voted to set Aug. 10, 2021 as the date to hold a public hearing and then take a vote to formally adopt the tax rate for the 2021-2022 fiscal year.

The Copperas Cove city council previously held two public hearings for the Fiscal Year 2021-2022 proposed budget for the Copperas Cove Economic Development Corporation and for the Fiscal Year 2021-2022 City Manager’s proposed budget and plan of municipal services, with no input from the public.

The EDC’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2021-2022 shows a beginning fund balance of $7,088,148. The EDC’s revenues are expected to be $1.29 million in sales tax revenue and $1,000 in interest revenues. The EDC’s budgeted operating expenditures are $613,318, combined with $149,426 for debt services, for total expenditures of $762,744. The EDC will be left with an ending fund balance of $7,616,404. The EDC’s ideal fund balance, or the amount that the EDC would need to operate for three months, is just $153,330.

The city’s final proposed general fund budget for fiscal year 2021-2022 has revenues of $18,605,228, with expenditures of $19,669,036. Previously, the revenues were expected to be $18,512,478, and expenditures were anticipated to be $19,578,649. The changes to revenue include $92,750 which would come if the city council approved the voter approval rate.

Some items which had been removed from the initial proposed budget were added back in.

After the city received the appraisal district’s proposed budgets which were higher than had been anticipated, they added back in $6,585 to account for those expenses, according to Budget Director Ariana Beckman during Thursday’s special meeting.

Other expenditures included reclassing and other personnel changes for IT, worth $9,445, and a new IT specialist position, which council proposed to delay implementation of until February, after the first quarter. This position has an impact of $40,357. Another added expenditure of $4,000 is for adding Fire Prevention staff to the city’s Public Safety Step Plan program. Other expenses include parking lot repairs and repairs to the Public Works Drive road, totaling $30,000 for the Fleet and Street departments, which had been taken out of the initial proposed budget under the General Fund in order to balance that fund.

With these new expenditures and the revenue changes, the city’s proposed budget has an ending fund balance of $7,475,190, which is still more than the city’s ideal fund balance amount of $4,780,248 by just over $2.69 million.