The Brownsville City Commission voted to approve the Fiscal Year 2022 budget and property tax rate, which is lower than the current rate but will generate a 4.2% increase in revenue from last year because the value of properties has gone up. Shown (from left) are Commissioner At-Large “B” Rose Gowen, Commissioner At-Large “A” John Cowen Jr., District 4 Commissioner Pedro Cardenas, Mayor Trey Mendez, District 1 Commissioner Nurith Galonsky Pizana and District 3 Commissioner Roy De los Santos. Alejandra Yañez/THE RIDER
The Brownsville City Commission has voted to approve the $158.5 million Fiscal Year 2022 budget and a property tax rate that will increase revenue by 4.2% from last year.
The new tax rate, $0.697113 per $100 valuation, will raise more revenue than the 2021 budget by $1,989,318. The levy is $0.000851 lower than the current rate of $0.697964, according to agenda documents.
“The reason that the city is getting more revenue is because the total value of the properties in Brownsville went up,” Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez said after last Tuesday’s meeting.
Mendez said the value of properties is decided by the Cameron County Appraisal District.
“It’s important when we do something like this, especially for me, that it is to raise additional revenue to address basic needs of the city,” said District 3 Commissioner Roy De los Santos. “This isn’t about ‘I want to build some new quality-of-life thing’ or build a new trail. It’s not something that’s a luxury. It’s about the basic needs.”
De los Santos said the tax revenue is being raised because of basic needs, such as salaries, wages and infrastructure. He said city employees sometimes go a long time without raises.
“As long as we’re doing it because there are needs in those areas, that’s something I will always support,” De los Santos said.
In compliance with the Local Government Code, the commission conducted a separate vote to ratify the Fiscal year 2022 budget.
“Texas Local Government Code requires that the adoption of a budget that will raise more revenue from property taxes than in the previous year requires a separate vote of the governing body to ratify the property tax increase reflected in the budget, and that such vote is in addition to and separate from the vote to adopt the budget or to set the tax rate required by Chapter 26, Tax Code,” according to the agenda documents.
As previously reported by The Rider, during the commission’s Sept. 7 meeting, the board voted to table action on the tax property rate and the Fiscal Year 2022 city budget.
During last Tuesday’s meeting, De los Santos made the motion to both remove the item from the table and to approve the final reading of the property tax levy.
Commissioner at Large “B” Rose Gowen seconded both motions.
The adoption of the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Budget was removed from the table by Gowen. She then made the motion to approve the item.
Because the item was under individual consideration, all commissioners had to vote “aye” individually.
Asked why he decided to approve the budget this time around, De los Santos replied, “The data that I was seeking before has since been provided and the answers that I needed to feel comfortable with the budget, I received, and that’s why I was comfortable with it now.”
He said some of his greatest reservations about the budget involved the Municipal Court and the changes made there recently.
“I wanted to know how that department had been performing already, so I asked for data from the last 10 years in regard to positions, salary, citations, fines and fees collected and things of that nature,” De los Santos said. “I wanted to see how they were affected by the pandemic and how they otherwise performed because I also want to see the baseline.”
