Pearland Mayor Kevin Cole hosts a Aug. 23 Talk of the Town event to present the 2024 fiscal year budget and proposed tax rate at the West Pearland Community Center, 2150 Country Place Parkway.
Houston Chronicle
Pooja Bhakta, Staff writer
The city of Pearland is preparing to finalize its upcoming 2024 fiscal year budget and proposed tax rate increase that will address last year's $10 million shortfall.
The city’s proposed 3-cent tax rate increase has some residents wondering if more could have been done to lessen the tax impact on property owners.
"They seem to be managing (the budget) appropriately," said Joseph Sherril, a Pearland resident. "I would say keep the (tax) rate the same and figure out what you're not going to do. You got to make hard decisions to not do some things to keep from killing your retiring population."
What's in the budget?
Following a strategic visioning retreat in Feburary, Pearland city council members identified priorities for the 2024 budget including building a trusted government, strong economy, safe economy, sustainable infrastructure, resilient finances and whole community that fosters diversity and unity.
"We really look to those strategic priorities to determine what can we do this year because coming out of last year, we knew it was going to be a very tight budget, a very difficult budget to put together," said Pearland city manager Trent Epperson at a Aug. 23 community meeting.
The overall general fund operating budget for fiscal year 2024 is more than $114 million that includes developing a 311 city customer service call center, an incident management team course to improve emergency preparedness and a full-time sergeant with a vehicle for the district's special resource officer division in response to House Bill 3.
"I like the fact that they started out with a strategy that are most important and worth watching," said Alexandra Eliason, another Pearland resident. "The council, hopefully, have heard what the citizens are saying and act accordingly."
Proposed new tax rate
The city is considering a proposed property tax rate of 65.54 cents per $100 in property value, a 3-cent increase in total rate from last fiscal year.
The average home in Pearland is currently valued at around $377,000, according to online real estate marketplace Zillow. Based on that value, this rate will cost the average homeowner roughly $2,470.85 per year.
This rate works toward addressing issues such as a $10 million budget shortfall due to a tax valuation error stemming from a worksheet from the Brazoria County tax assessor-collector's office last year, according to city documents.
The worksheet was used to calculate Pearland's property tax rate that mistakenly counted the Harris County portion of the city's property values twice, overestimating values by $1.3 billion.
More to come
Pearland Mayor Kevin Cole plans to host another Talk of the Town event for the community in November.
The meeting will tentatively be held at the new $145 million surface water treatment plant that will provide independence from the city of Houston for clean drinking water. It is slated to open in December.