New chamber of commerce under consideration
ALPINE — The Alpine City Council at its regular meeting Tuesday got a look at the present budget and tax rate for the fiscal year beginning October 1. City Manager Megan Antrim said the tax rate will be based on what is now the existing tax rate of .457554 per hundred dollar valuation. The budget now shows revenue and expenses balanced at $17,262,802, both down .82%.
Staff will continue to tweak the numbers with final approval expected September 17 after three successive weekly meetings — the regular meetings September 3 and 17 and a “called” meeting September 10. The budget has to be approved before the tax rate, which will be set by County Tax Assessor-Collector Sylvia Vega, as she does for all county entities.
Antrim said the budget is down from last year because values are up. She was able to balance what would have been a deficit budget by using the fund balance, a kind of savings account, and other reserves. She called her budget deliberations “conservative.” She said she normally over budgets for expenses and under budgets for revenue.
In other discussions, West Texas National Bank Alpine Market President Phillip Carey and video producer Conley Rasor appeared to discuss the need to revive or re-create the Alpine Chamber of Commerce. Carey was working with the Alpine Business Alliance (ABA) on reviving the Alpine business community to replace some of the businesses lost both to the pandemic and the Memorial Day weekend fire. He commented to that working group that we needed to revive the Chamber.
The ABA discussed it in a later meeting but nothing came of it. A key question was raised by Councilmember Rick Stephens Tuesday when he asked who would lead a new chamber.
Stephens remarked that unless they could find a strong leader, they would not be able to bring the chamber back to life. The former chamber was backed by the city with an office and $80,000 per year until about 10 years ago when the then chamber manager was accused of stealing from the chamber’s bank account. Stephens has said the city canceled the city backing because of some unnamed problems with some board members.