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Mistake has Big Spring City Council Reconsidering Proposed Tax Rate
Mistake has Big Spring City Council Reconsidering Proposed Tax Rate 8/30/12
CBS 7 News
August 30, 2012
tguinn@cbs7.com
Big Spring - Just as city council members were going to adopt a new budget and tax rate for the upcoming fiscal year, they ran into a road block that could cost them.
One mistake by the Howard County Appraisal District has left the council with a tough decision.
In Tuesday night's city council meeting, council members found that the effective tax rate they published was wrong. The true effective tax rate is two cents more than the published effective tax rate. The two cent difference may not seem like much, but to the city it means making up more than $130,000 in lost revenue.
Howard County Chief Appraiser, Ronny Babcock, says they built this years tax rate from the wrong data.
The appraisal district made the mistake when coming up with the value of protested appraisals. They based their figures off of this years data, when they should have based it off of 2011's data. In order for the city to bring in the same amount of revenue, the tax rate should be at 88 cents.
The problem is, the city council made it clear that they would shoot for the effective rate, and since that rate is wrong, they may have to go up by two cents.
However, Mayor Tommy Duncan says whatever rate they do adopt, tax payers will be paying less than what they are right now.
Right now, people in Big Spring are paying 94 cents per $100 valuation; that's eight cents higher than the published effective tax rate.
Now the decision to choose which tax rate to adopt is in the hands of the city council. They will discuss tax rates at their next meeting which is scheduled for Sept. 11th.