The Southlake City Council is considering reducing the tax rate by 3.7 cents. If approved, it would be the city’s largest tax reduction in the past 25 years.
The FY2020 budget was first presented to the council during one of their August meetings, and its first public hearing was held on Tuesday evening on September 3. According to MySouthlakeNews, several priorities have been included in the 2020 budget, including debt reduction, mobility initiatives and security allocations that issues upgraded technology and equipment for police officers and firefighters and ongoing funding for the School Resource Officer program.
But one of the most significant provisions is the proposed city tax rate, which reduces the tax rate from .447 cents to .41 cents per $100, according to a tax notice. Southlake’s 20% homestead exemption will provide homeowners with additional relief, giving residents a tax rate equivalent of .328 per $100.
“Each year when we’re in the process of developing the budget, homeowner tax relief is always in the forefront of our minds in thinking through how we can provide relief to our residents,” Chief Financial Officer Sharen Jackson says to the council in August.
Mayor Laura Hill explained in a Facebook post that this is the eighth year in a row the council has offered residential taxpayers property tax relief, and the homestead exemption is a continued effort from its first implementation in 2009.
Although the tax rate reduction will result in $2.9 million less city revenue, Hill explains they were able to make that change because they’ve reduced tax-supported debt by over half since 2010.
“At the end of the day, we’re living within our means,” Hill says in MySouthlakeNews. “We can do things big and better and fancy, but at the end of the day, the money belongs to the taxpayers, and we learn to manage that money and still build an incredible community.”
The council will hold their last public meeting and vote on the proposed budget and tax rate at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 17 at the Southlake Town Hall.