Photo via City of Amarillo
Today’s Amarillo City Council meeting took a surprising turn with the council rejecting their previously proposed rate of $0.49086 in favor of a $0.40628 rate. This is is a reduction from the current rate, which is $0.44334.
The 40 cent rate was first mentioned by Mayor Ginger Nelson just before public address portion of the meeting began. “It will be my recommendation that we move toward the 40 cent rate,” said the mayor. This caught many watching the meeting by surprise, as no mention of a proposed 40 cent rate was made on the agenda or public notice.
The new 40 cent rate was described in a presentation by Assistant City Manager Laura Storrs as “the same rate [as the previously proposed 49 cent rate], less the amount needed for the Civic Center project funding.”
This seems to be a win for Councilman Cole Stanley, who had been the only vote against the proposed rate last month. Specifically, Stanley was concerned about including civic center funding in the rate due to the fact that the debt for the project hadn’t yet been approved by the Texas Secretary of State’s office and was being challenged in court by businessman Alex Fairly.
“We are in a recession. I would prefer not to tax in advance,” said Stanley at the August 2nd meeting. Since that meeting, challenges to the civic center debt have continued to grow, with local activists having recently turned in a petition seeking to force the council to either repeal the tax notes or put the issue on the ballot box.
It appears that Stanley’s concerns about the proposed rate were enough to get city staff to work on a proposed rate that dropped the civic center project funding and to sway the council to support such a rate. At the end of today’s meeting, the council unanimously voted in support of the 40 cent rate. This is the first time Mayor Ginger Nelson has voted for a tax rate cut instead of a tax rate hike while in office.
The council will meet again on Thursday at 1:00 pm for a public hearing on the tax rate and to vote on final approvals of the budget and tax rate.