August 21 Public Hearing summary

The Combine City Council held a Public Hearing Monday August 21 @ 7:30pm with the intent of setting the tax rate for the 2006/07 budget year which begins October 1, 2006. Previous Councilman Bruce Coates explained State law requires cities to prepare their budgets first and then set the tax rate. After that, a few comments were made and the Mayor blamed their miss-start on advice from the Texas Municipal League.

The Council has not done any work on the 2006/07 budget, and they will have to get busy on it. The timeline will be tight to comply with State law and Kaufman County Tax Assessors office requests. The council plans a Budget Workshop for Monday August 28 (public input appreciated) and a Public Hearing for September 8. The next regular Combine City Council meeting will be Monday September 11. Watch for agendas for all of these meetings posted at the proper times at the usual locations.

Mayor Taylor said Kaufman County Appraisal District reports 2006/07 taxable value for Combine property as $79,890,853.00. That figure with the current tax rate of 0.251000 cents/hundred dollar value projects 2006/07 revenue to be $200,526.00 at a receipt rate of 89% making the total projected property tax revenue to be approximately $178,468.00. (See http://www.kaufman-cad.org/taxinfo3.htm )

Several members of the council stated that total expenses for 2005/06 totaling $371,218 have been found to be in line with the 2005/06 budget prepared by the previous Council, and the current tax rate should stay the same in order to keep needed funds coming in (this from Councilpersons Barber, Boyd and Mayor Taylor.) Considering all the needs of the City as well as citizens expecting much more work to be done, the 0.251000 rate would probably be needed to meet the needs of the 2006/07 budget.

However, the final 2006/07 tax rate will not be known until the 2006/07 budget is prepared.
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 8:30pm.