City holds first of three town hall meetings on Tax Rate Election
By BRITTANY FHOLER
Cove Leader-Press
Copperas Cove city officials held the first of three town halls Tuesday evening at the Civic Center, hoping to inform the public about the upcoming No New Revenue Tax Rate Election.
The Copperas Cove city council adopted a budget for fiscal year 2024-2025 that has the No New Revenue Tax Rate of $0.661043 per $100 valuation, which is an decrease of the current tax rate of $0.672652 per $100 valuation.
However, the proposed tax rate is higher than the Voter Approval Rate, which is approximately five cents lower at $0.608079 per $100 valuation.
City Manager Ryan Haverlah explained to a crowd of less than 30 about why an election to approve this tax rate is required.
“It is required by state law when City Council adopts a tax rate where the maintenance and operation portion of that tax rate exceeds the voter approval tax rate for maintenance and operations,” Haverlah said.
The proposed No New Revenue tax rate would allow for funds to be allocated toward higher salaries for police and fire personnel.
If the rate passes in the election, the No New Revenue tax rate would generate $1.1 million more than the Voter Approval tax rate would, Haverlah said.
It would result in an average tax bill increase to homeowners of $8.25 per month.
Should voters say no to the No New Revenue tax rate, the tax rate would go to the Voter Approval tax rate, which would show up on the average tax bill as a decrease of approximately $0.33 per month for homeowners, but the city would be facing a deficit.
The city council and the city manager would find other ways to fund the higher salaries for those personnel since those increases have already been approved with the city’s budget.
“The reason why City Council is adopting the No New Revenue tax rate or a rate higher than that voter approval rate, the specific reason is to provide funding for competitive police and fire salaries and continue those public services,” Haverlah said. “City council, over the last six years, has taken action to eventually reduce our tax rate from almost 80 cents down to 67 cents this current year and 66 cents next year.”
The City’s general fund revenue comes partly from property taxes, about 43 percent, said Haverlah.
“On the expense side (of the general fund), 61 percent is police and fire related, so those are the police officers. Those are the firefighters. That’s the dispatch that when we call 911, and we talk to an Emergency Operations operator, they’re communicating with us to law enforcement, to our emergency response, fire or medical response, out to whatever situation is going on. You can see that the other items are parks and recreation, Public Works and development services and then administration.”
Haverlah said that at the beginning of the current calendar year, a survey showed that Copperas Cove was behind several other cities of similar, smaller and larger size in the region and further by an average of 14 percent in regards to pay for police and fire departments.
“That is the primary reason why City Council adopted the tax rate which will help fund those competitive police and fire salaries, to raise those salaries to be competitive with our regional communities,” Haverlah said. “Lastly, the passing of the No New Revenue tax rate, not only will it provide the funding for those salaries for police and fire, police officers and firefighters, but if this does fail, there will be a budgeted deficit, so by the passing of that tax rate, it will deal with that deficit.”
The starting pay for police officers in Copperas Cove is around $51,000, which is lower than the starting pay of Round Rock, Temple, Hutto, Cedar Park, Killeen, Bryan, Harker Heights, Georgetown, Corsicana, Williamson County, Lakeway, Leander, Schertz, College Station and Belton.
In fact, of the 18 departments listed on the presentation, only two ranked lower in pay than Copperas Cove: Lampasas and Big Spring.
The budget that has been passed using the proposed tax rate would bump that starting pay closer to the market pay at approximately $62,000.
Police Chief Eddie Wilson shared information about the department’s recruiting and retention efforts, but first touched on the importance of the community attending town halls like this one.
He said that one of the biggest criticisms that the city faces are conspiracy theories about how the city is hiding money and finding ways to pay people off or going on extravagant vacations or other things, and he added that a lot of people in the community do not feel the city is transparent in how the city handles taxpayer dollars.
“It’s all out there, down to the dollar,” Wilson said. “Every dollar that we get in revenue to every dollar we spend as an expenditure is out there for the community to see.”
Wilson went on to thank the people in attendance before calling the low turnout “embarrassing.”
“It’s embarrassing how many empty seats that we have in this room,” Wilson said. “It’s embarrassing enough the number of people who actually go out and vote in this community. It seems that there are a lot more people talking about it than there are actually people who are taking action when that opportunity arises.”
Wilson said that the low starting salary compared to other communities, including those neighboring Copperas Cove, is not serving as a great recruiting tool.
The average tenure for a new patrol officer in Copperas Cove is about two years, which includes training time, he said.
“The only reason we’re able to get them to stay longer than two right now is because we introduced a training agreement where they have to pay back a lot of things that cost city taxpayers to get them to that point,” Wilson said.
Wilson said that when he has spoken with other police chiefs about recruiting and pay, he isn’t facing the same dilemma that they are facing of having to win over city council for the funding.
“That’s not our problem,” Wilson said. “We have phenomenal leadership in this city. Our council is great. If they had the dollar to give us, I know they would.”
Wilson said that the department has faced a high turnover rate. In the last 10 years, the department has hired 106 staff members- 73 on the police side and 33 on the dispatch communications side.
The department currently has 54 officers on the payroll and 13 staff in communications. There are five vacancies on the police officer side- not counting the two individuals who are currently attending the police academy, which is a year long process.
The cost to send candidates through the police academy is about $70,000 per officer and about $25,000 per employee on the dispatch side, Wilson said.
“So, just on the police side alone, if you account for the cost, the rising cost of salary, benefits, equipment and all those other things, in the past 10 years, we’ve spent, as a city, as a police department, about $4.3 million to train those 73 officers that we’ve hired,” Wilson said. “On the dispatch side, it’s cost us about $660,000.”
Fire Chief Gary Young said that the fire department was facing similar struggles.
“Pay Gap history has been in existence for a very long time, and when we look at our retention, one of the things that we’ve noticed with retention and our turnover, in the last 10 years, where chief Wilson spoke about how many he’s hired, I’m going to look at how many we’ve lost. We’ve lost 101 firefighters in the last 10 years,” Young said.
He mentioned the pandemic and firefighters being close to retirement age at the time of the pandemic as one of the reasons. Another reason is the higher pay in other locations that are close enough that the firefighter doesn’t have to move houses.
The starting pay for firefighters in Copperas Cove is less than $50,000, according to the presentation. It was not specified during the town hall what that salary would be bumped up to with the No New Revenue tax rate.
The next town halls for residents to attend will be Monday, Oct. 7 at 6 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 19 at 12 p.m.
The last day to register to vote is October 7. Early voting begins October 21, and Election Day is November 5.