Property Taxes Levied by City of Georgetown

Some city council members seem to be upset when the State of Texas, which created cities, impose reporting and transparency requirements.

Here is very relevant information in the City's budget that the State required be disclosed in a prominent, simple and straight forward manner. Notice the State requirement at the top of the graphic.

Our, city leaders like to justify the ever increasing budgets by pointing to the growth in population. Notice that only $827K out of $2591K of increased property tax revenue to the city for 2018 comes from new property added to the roles. That is 32%. 68% of the increase comes from existing property owners, but, it is even worse than that because approximately 1/3 of the Georgetown property owners have their property taxes frozen because of their age, disability, etc. That means about 45% of existing property owners shoulder the burden for the entire increase in property tax revenue collected by the City.

Notice also, property tax revenues increased year over year by 10.1%.

Why is the city taxing residents at a 10.1% rate when the population is increasing at a 5% rate? It would appear the City Council is not being frugal with your property tax dollars as this 2:1 spending versus population growth has been going on for 10 years or more.

The following information is part of the disinformation provided by all politicians with taxing authority in Texas. They tell the public what great stewards of public funds they are by showing they held the tax rate constant. Georgetown City Council touts the fact that the tax rate did not change between 2017 and 2017. The question is: why did they not reduce the rate since the property tax revenue increased 10.1% from 2017 to 2018?

In fine print at the bottom we are told the total debt secured by our property is $127,248,211. But, this is not all the city debt. At the end of the fiscal year 2017, the City of Georgetown’s outstanding debt was $276,790,000. Of this amount, $184,060,000 comprises the CO and GO debt backed by the full faith and credit of the City. The revenue bond totals $92,730,000. The Sales Tax Revenue Bond (Georgetown Transportation Enhancement Corporation) debt total is $6,685,000.

The City debt will be explored in a later post.