Budget, tax rate approved for county

By Chris Edwards
[email protected]

WOODVILLE – Creating a budget and adopting a property tax rate to help support that budget are two major functions of a taxing entity’s governing body, under statute. County officials have been hard at work as of late drafting the budget, and hosting workshops to determine what monies are needed where. 

The Tyler County Commissioners Court unanimously voted on Monday morning to adopt the budget for the coming fiscal year and the tax rate for 2024-25.

The commissioners and County Judge Milton Powers all voted to approve the tax rates for the county’s general fund; the farm-to-market/flood control (county special) and Tyler County Hospital tax rates, as well as the new budget and salary schedule and expenses for the new year.

The general fund tax rate of $0.6084 per $100 of valuation was approved, as the no-new-revenue tax rate. This brings a levy of a little more than $9 million, countywide, working from a total taxable value of $1.48 billion.

The no-new-revenue tax rate, according to the state comptroller’s office, enables the public to evaluate the relationship between taxes for the previous year and the current year, based on a rate of taxation that would produce the same amount of revenue, if applied to the same properties taxed in both years.

Given the high appraisals for the next year’s levy, this should result in a lower rate to offset the increased revenue.

The no-new-revenue rates of $0.2617 for the county special fund and $0.1861 for the Tyler County Hospital were approved, as well.

Powers said he wished to thank County Auditor Jackie Skinner and her office for all their hard work on the county’s budget. “It has been a challenging year,” Powers said, citing trending economic uncertainty affecting the entire nation.

In other business during Monday’s brief meeting, the purchase of 17 new body cameras for the Tyler County Sheriff’s Office was approved, with funds used for this coming from state grant funding from SB 22.

Tyler County Sheriff Bryan Weatherford spoke about this topic and said that the body cameras currently used by TCSO deputies are nine years old, and have sustained a great deal of wear and tear. The new cameras will be from Motorola, and paid out at a cost of $62K over five years, at no cost to the county, Weatherford said.