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Newton County court opts to propose no-new-revenue tax rate for 2025
Summary
Facing a roughly $80,000 difference between rate options and concerns about raising taxes again, the county court voted to propose the no-new-revenue tax rate and schedule a public notice; the hearing on the budget was set for Sept. 23, 2025.
The Newton County Commissioners Court voted to propose the no-new-revenue tax rate for 2025 after a lengthy discussion about budget trade-offs and whether to advertise a higher rate that would raise property tax revenue.
The judge, who led the discussion, described three calculated rates — the no-new-revenue rate, a no-new-revenue “M” rate that would raise revenue, and the voter-approval rate — and asked commissioners whether to advertise any rate that would increase taxes. “I can't in good faith agree to raising the taxes more,” the judge said during the exchange, and then moved to propose the no-new-revenue rate of 0.696645 for public notice; Commissioner Pal seconded the motion and the court approved the proposal for public notification.
County staff explained the numeric differences: the no-new-revenue rate was presented as 0.696645, the no-new-revenue M rate as 0.703124 and the voter-approval rate as 0.752692; using the M rate would raise roughly $80,000 to $93,276 (about a 0.90% increase) in property tax revenue compared with last year. Commissioners discussed planned one-off uses of fund balance such as completing a communications tower and proposed employee pay increases that factor into the budget outlook.
Because the court chose to advertise the lower no-new-revenue rate, the public notice and required hearings will proceed; staff confirmed that the final adopted rate can still be adjusted at budget adoption. The court did not record individual vote tallies in the transcript.
