Tax rate may go up as county works on budget

Young County Judge John C. Bullock proposed on July 22 a total tax rate increase which is substantially higher than the 2016 rate. The proposed rate is 0.729491 cents per $100 in property value, a leap from the current rate of 0.5687 cents per $100 in value. Bullock reminded taxpayers that at this stage in the budgeting process, proposed rates are a best-guess of what actual rates will end up being. Two public hearings are to be scheduled before Aug. 10 and, once dates are available, will be published in the Graham Leader. A tentative budget adoption date of Aug. 29 is set for Young County. “There are specific timeframes we have to meet for that and so we are going to have to get our tax rate, our effective rate, our rollback rate, our net rate, all calculated and we have a meeting to do that, not a court meeting, it’s a meeting with a representative over at our tax appraisal district and specialist to come in and walk us through that,” Bullock said. “It’s a very complicated matter to calculate those rates and it takes us two to three hours to get those done with some expert help. So, we’ve got to get those done before we can see what that (actual) rate is and before we can actually publish that meeting.” How it works By law, the County Judge is the person required to submit a budget and the tax rate required to fund it. Taxing entities’ budgets are made up of two main components, one for maintenance and operations (the M&O rate), and debt service (interest and principal on bonds and other debts). The effective rate is the the rate needed to come up with the same amount of money as was brought in the previous year. The rollback rate is the sum of the M&O and debt service rate, a figure usually higher than the effective rate, unless the amount of debt has decreased. If a taxing entity adopts a tax rate higher than its rollback rate, voters can petition to have an election to decide whether or not to accept that rate. The county’s appraisal board sets the effective and rollback rates only after all challenges to appraisals have been decided and the final tax roll is adopted. The county has until Sept. 30 to adopt its final tax rate. The county’s meeting to establish the effective, rollback and net rates for the 2017 budget is this Thursday, Aug. 4. For the rest of this story, pick up a copy of Wednesday’s Graham Leader, or subscribe to our online edition.