An effective tax rate is the total tax rate needed to raise the same amount of property tax revenue for the city from the same properties from one year to the next.
The $0.17 tax rate is the same tax rate the city adopted for FY 2014-15.
By a vote of 7-1, Lakeway City Council approved the FY 2015-16 budget.
Lakeway Mayor Joe Bain presides over a public hearing on the city's proposed budget and tax rate Sept. 21.[/caption]
According to the Travis County Appraisal District the city’s taxable property value for 2015 is $3,487,321,881.
Resident Kay Andrews said she had a message for City Council from the head of the Travis County Appraisal District.
“When property values go up, [cities] are getting more revenue,” she said. “Therefore, to be fair and just to the property owners who are the taxpayers paying for the city, [they need] to lower the tax rate. That is your obligation to do that.”
Deputy City Manager Chessie Zimmerman said revenue and expenses for FY 2015-16 are $12.1 million. The FY 2015-16 budget provides funding for new full-time personnel positions, expansion of positions from part-time to full-time, supplies and capital items that were deferred from last year’s budget, she said.
Zimmerman said the 2015 tax increase resulting from the $0.17 tax rate for the average Lakeway homeowner would be $47.
City Councilman Dwight Haley said he did not think this tax increase for Lakeway residents was “justified” and voted against the proposed FY 2015-16 budget.
“The problem is we’ve got a tremendously big bucket of revenue,” Haley said. “To me, when you’ve got taxpayers that are going to be paying increased dollars, I think that’s an injustice unless we share this bucket of revenue that we have—like a pie—and the taxpayers get a slice of it.
“Because of the enormous amount of revenue, we should be sharing this with our taxpayers.”
During City Council’s Sept. 21 public hearing, Treasurer Al Tyson said that, with one month left in the fiscal year, the city’s revenue for FY 2014-15 exceeded its projected budget.
Mayor Joe Bain said last year’s budget reflected the city’s concern that it would not have the income it had grossed in previous years and had reduced department budgets by 5 percent to balance its finances.
On Sept. 21 he said staff would “look hard at the effective tax rate next year.”
