MARFA — The Marfa City Council met this week to approve a preliminary tax rate for budget season and to hear from the Presidio County Appraisal District (PCAD) on their budgeting needs and operations, which are becoming increasingly complex due to state requirements, officials said.
All council members were present with the exception of Mark Morrison.
Property tax collection, one of the city’s funding sources, is driven by the tax rate. While the tax rate is pending formal adoption, for now, council members chose to go with the voter approval rate, .328 per $100 taxable value, a 1.6% increase from last year’s tax rate. “This is just sort of giving us the go ahead to work with that rate for the budget,” City Manager Mandy Roane said.
Mayor Manny Baeza said he plans to present council members with the proposed budget later this month.
Last year’s taxable values were around $316 million, resulting in a .323 tax rate and a $1,022,579 tax levy — which gets distributed to the city’s general fund and its debt payments. The city is in the process of paying off a $3 million tax note for street repairs.
This year’s taxable values are $336,068,084, a 6% increase from the previous year. “That’s one of the lowest increases we’ve had in a long time,” said city accountant Dan Dunlap, who was presenting the tax rate summary on behalf of Presidio County Tax Assessor-Collector Natalia Williams.
This year’s voter approval rate — the maximum rate allowed by law without voter approval — will allow $77,500 in additional taxes to be raised. The no new revenue rate, another option council had that would raise the same amount of money as the year prior, is .304.
Council will formally adopt the tax rate in late September and will soon start the process of posting public hearing dates.
Council members also heard updates from Chief Appraiser Cynthia Ramirez on the appraisal district’s budget and operations. She requested that council allow the district to retain the city’s portion of surplus funds from last year’s budget, around $4,000, and that council approve their new budget. (The appraisal district is funded by local taxing entities including the City of Marfa.)
Ramirez explained that the appraisal district’s budget was increasing from $533,752 last year to $656,123 this year due to a number of factors. The district was dropped by its previous valuation contractor, Western Valuation, whom it had worked with for around 10 years at a very reasonable rate, Ramirez said. The new company hired, Pritchard and Abbott Inc., is a much larger company who will be sending bigger teams out to the area to assist Ramirez.
“Their fee is going to be a lot higher than what we were paying Western Valuation; they’re going to be coming in at around $43,000, and with Western we’re paying close to $20,000,” Ramirez said.
Roane asked if existing appraisal district employees could work towards earning advanced credentials, allowing the PCAD to rely less on contractors in the future. Ramirez said her team is working on it, but there are four levels of appraisers, and tests to earn higher credentials are “very difficult.” So for now she is the only Real Property Appraiser (RPA) in the office, meaning her workload is significant, requiring contractor assistance.
The appraisal district also plans to hire a part-time employee to assist with mapping updates, she said. The PCAD’s maps were reviewed by the State Comptroller’s Office this year, she explained, and they were docked because the majority of the parcels in the county are not platted. This plus additional new state requirements were straining staff, she said.
“The state has so many mandates now, and with the legislative session that went on last year they put down more responsibilities on appraisal districts,” Ramirez said. “We have to take care of more websites … they’re putting more and more requirements on the district, which I think is a little bit more stressful on all of us.”
Ramirez said the budget also includes raises for herself, because she is underpaid compared to other area chief appraisers, and her staff. The PCAD’s expenses are also up, she said, with costs of technology, mapping and website services increasing.
The council voted to approve that the appraisal district keep their surplus from this year and approved their budget for the coming year. The increase to the city’s payment is less than $9,000, Baeza said. “I think we can absorb this cost,” he said.
Councilmember Eddie Pallarez, who serves as a city council representative on the appraisal district board, said long discussions were had about the various budget increases, but in the end everyone agreed they were needed to support the district and its staff.
“It’s a lot of money, but we do want to keep Ms. Ramirez and all of the employees as well as give them as much as we possibly could afford,” Pallarez said. “We’re ready to support it.”