County sets proposed tax rate

After a full day of deliberation and discussion, the Young County Commissioners Court voted to set a preliminary tax rate of $0.624 per $100 valuation at their latest meeting. 

The commissioners said the public should expect the finalized tax rate to be lower than the proposed rate. 

This was the next critical step on the commissioners court’s budget schedule after setting salaries for elected officials in the county. The court met Monday, Aug. 4, for their regular meeting and a shorter budget workshop where they officially moved into discussing revenues in the county. 

After a break the commissioners re-congregated at the Young Central District Appraisal office to discuss the tax rate based on the county’s taxable revenue while taking out certain deductibles like agricultural exemptions, 65 and over homestead exemptions and disabled and veteran exemptions. 

The county also factored in properties under protest and new improvements along with new personal property and came to an adjusted taxable value of $1,498,867,781. 

The voter approval tax rate is $0.630673 per $100 valuation. The voter approval rate is the highest tax rate the county may adopt without holding an election to seek voter approval of the rate. 

Despite the fact that Graham said the court initially tends to vote for the highest possible rate and then works it down, this number had the commissioners court feeling uncomfortable being an almost $0.20 increase from the prior year’s tax rate.

“That’s how high we can go without having what we call a roll back election,” Graham said. “Originally we were saying well lets just set that tax rate around there, but when we punched the numbers in it was going to be this massive number, it would create mass panic.” 

Due to this, and after an extra hour of discussion back at the courthouse, the commissioners court ultimately voted on the preliminary rate which was $0.12 less. 

Graham went on to say that by the time the court finalizes their official budget, their target tax rate will be around $0.586350 per $100 valuation. This is a slight decrease from last year’s approved tax rate of $0.586353 per $100 valuation. 

How the court will get to that final number Graham admitted will be a challenge though. One of the most significant factors the county judge took into account was a smaller increase in property values than the court initially expected. 

The court calculated just a 2% increase in property values when comparing the 2025 freeze adjusted taxable revenue in the county, $1,456,870,895, and the same 2024 number, $1,427,644,797.

“As far as what we have to work with, we only have a 2% increase,” Graham said. “...I was expecting (a) 5% (increase).” 

Therefore, in order to continue lowering the current tax rate, Graham said the commissioners court will either have to look at already existing expenses to see if anything can be lowered, or they will have to pull from their already existing “fund balance” money to use toward the revenue in the budget. 

“Fund balance is money that we have available, that we can use in our budget, to help with the tax rate,” Young County Auditor Cheryl Roberts said. “We put it in on our revenues.” 

Graham said that last year the court put in about $1 million of fund balance money towards revenue in the budget and that will most likely be the strategy again this year using about $1.5 million. 

The judge said about $1 million of that will go towards the general fund and the other $500,000 will go towards road and bridge revenue. 

This is funding that the commissioners can divide up to work on and improve designated road channels in their respective precincts. 

Graham, and the commissioners court, look to have a revised tax rate once their proposed budget is filed Friday, Aug. 15.