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City manager outlines 2027 budget priorities and explains tax-rate options amid valuation uncertainty
Summary
City Manager Sylvia reviewed nine focus areas for the proposed 2027 budget, explained preliminary property valuations and three tax-rate options (no-new-revenue, voter-approved and de minimis), and told council staff will re-run calculations after pending valuation protests and HB9 clarifications.
City Manager Sylvia told the Bastrop City Council at a budget workshop that staff have produced two preliminary valuation iterations and that those numbers remain subject to protest and adjustment, and she asked the council for direction on the tax-rate approach.
"We filed our audit March 19, well before the March 31 deadline," Sylvia said, adding the city is not on the Attorney General's noncompliant list. She then walked the council through the OpenGov transparency portal and how to review line-item budget data online.
Sylvia described three statutory tax-rate benchmarks staff calculate each year: the "no new revenue" rate, the voter-approved rate and the de minimis rate. Using the preliminary rolls, she gave a working no-new-revenue rate of about 0.4759, a voter-approved illustrative rate of 0.4851 and the de minimis number around 0.5009. She said those rates will shift as the appraisal roll solidifies and as exemptions under the new business personal property law (referred to in the workshop as HB9) are resolved.
Why it matters: those rates determine whether the city must include a statutorily required voter-notice phrase and how much the average household’s tax bill would change. Councilmembers pressed staff to recalculate impacts several ways (total-value approach and delta-on-delta) so the projected per-resident dollar impact is clear. Sylvia agreed to circulate corrected spreadsheets and two more valuation iterations before the council schedules any rate adoption.
The council did not adopt a rate at the workshop; staff were directed to keep refining valuations, watch protest outcomes, and return with updated calculations and a recommendation.
