Pflugerville staff present FY26 budget built on voter-approval tax rate; proposal trims events and 13 funded positions

Tracy, the staff presenter, told the Pflugerville City Council the proposed fiscal 2026 budget was distributed Aug. 1 and is grounded in the council’s strategic pillars, with some line items beginning implementation this year.

Tracy said the budget was built using the voter-approval tax-rate calculation and showed the proposed aggregate tax rate landing at about 53.50 cents per $100 of valuation, with a debt-service component around 28.50 cents; she estimated that choosing the voter-approval rate yields roughly $686,000 in additional revenue compared with a no-new-revenue scenario. "We are sitting at a 53.50 proposed rate," Tracy said during the presentation.

The proposed budget packages the city’s government funds, special revenues (including hotel-occupancy tax), PCDC funds and utilities. Tracy reported general-fund revenues rising modestly (about $800,000) while recurring expenditures increase by roughly $1.4 million, and she said capital requests tied to the CIP could require up to about $99 million in issuance in coming years. "That ceiling is what we're looking at," Tracy said of the CIP estimate.

City Manager Serena, speaking about personnel and compensation trade-offs, framed the staff approach to the package: the proposal includes a 3% cost-of-living adjustment and a 5% health-insurance increase, and staff plan targeted reductions rather than broad cuts to core services. She said the proposal reflects an effort to preserve meaningful COLAs rather than smaller adjustments that would be offset entirely by rising employee benefit costs. "This has been the toughest budget that I've ever been through," Serena said, adding staff looked at dozens of line items to find savings while minimizing front-facing impacts.

Among the specific changes in the proposed plan, staff said the general fund shows a net reduction of 13 funded positions (some vacant, some to be reallocated across departments) and multiple program- and frequency-level reductions — examples cited include reducing music-in-the-park and Rock-the-Block events and scaling back certain employee-incentive and consultant expenditures. Tracy said some cherished items remain but at reduced frequency: "The goats will still be here, but they won't be here as often," she said.

On utilities, staff described rate assumptions and capital planning tied to a new water-treatment plant. Tracy said utility debt service is rising (she cited debt-service figures moving to roughly $33.7 million) and that the utility fund will transfer $6 million to the utility projects fund to begin cash-funding CIP in lieu of entirely relying on bond issuance.

Council members pressed staff for clearer net-change calculations (revenue minus expenditures) and for a breakdown of which of the 13 eliminated funded positions are vacant versus occupied. Several council members urged caution about cutting maintenance items such as trail repairs and park mowing, arguing small cuts there could cause large declines in usability.

Council also discussed procurement changes recommended in the proposed purchasing policy: staff noted a state-law change increasing the competitive-bid threshold from $50,000 to $100,000 and recommended aligning council-reporting so contracts of $100,000 and above come to council; staff said three informal vendor quotes would still be required for smaller purchases.

The PCDC (Pflugerville Community Development Corporation) summary accompanied the budget discussion. The PCDC executive director described line items for wet-labs, Impact Way and land acquisition and said some amounts shown in the PCDC column are intended as program-level placeholders pending further project-level work; council and staff agreed certain amounts are held as working fund balance until policy details or project-level approvals are completed.

Tracy closed by listing next procedural steps: a public hearing on the FY26 proposed budget is scheduled for Aug. 26; a public hearing on the tax rate, related master fee schedule ordinance, and adoption of the budget are scheduled for Sept. 9.

The council did not take formal action on the budget at this presentation; staff said corrected budget-book tables and supporting net-change calculations would be uploaded for council review prior to public hearings.