Council OKs next year’s budget, tax rate

San Marcos has adopted a budget of $239,058,970 for the upcoming fiscal year.

The San Marcos City Council voted 6-1 to approve next year’s budget on the second of two readings, with a dissenting vote from Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Prewitt. In addition to the budget, Council approved a ratification of next year’s tax rate, which is required when the tax rate will exceed the effective tax rate, or the rate “that will produce effectively the same amount of revenue as fiscal year FY19 based on the new appraised values of the same properties.”

Following two public hearings on the tax rate, Council voted 6-1 to set the tax rate for the 2019 tax year at 61.39 cents on each $100 of taxable value of real property that is not exempt from taxation. This means the tax rate will effectively be raised by 7.97%.

Prewitt explained her decision to vote against both the budget and the tax rate, though she noted the budget contains many “well thought out community initiatives and programs.”

“For multiple years we as a council have been discussing the need to offer our citizens some tax relief as our property appraisals continue to skyrocket year after year,” Prewitt said. “This makes it very difficult for many of our residents and business owners to keep up with the increasing cost of living and running a small business successfully, especially our most vulnerable citizens which includes our aging population.”

Prewitt then said too many years have passed while “this has been a topic of discussion without management supportive action.”

“My decision is based on our commitment to hear out what our community needs and how to apply a solution to that need,” she said.

Councilmember Ed Mihalkanin explained his reason for voting in favor of the new tax rate.

“The only reason why I’m supporting maintaining the tax rate on our real property is because our fellow citizens voted in favor of two bond proposals that include substantial renovation of our police department building, two new fire stations, a live fire training center and a substantial increased expansion of our library,” he said.

Likewise, Councilmember Saul Gonzalez told Council he thinks property taxes are “really getting out of control.”

“But at this time and point we’ve got meet and confer to worry about,” Gonzalez said. “That went up in price — that’s our civil service agreement that we have. Also our health insurance for the city employees has gone up quite a bit as well and in order to be able to fund those things we have to raise those taxes.”

Following a vote on the tax rate, Mihalkanin brought up a request for funding by the The Family Justice Center at the Village Main which would total $45,000.

City Manager Bert Lumbreras said he would find a way to incorporate the request into the budget and then bring an amended budget back to Council for approval.