07/27/07
It Comes from the Base -
Categories: Of significance considering any budget is how much money you expect to be dealing with. Every year, councils and staffs await information from the Dallas County Appraisal District as to the valuations and expected tax collections. Yesterday's Dallas Morning News reported that Dallas County tax rolls gained ten percent.
Gains reported for Garland and some nearby cities were:
|
City
|
Change
|
| Carrollton |
10.6%
|
| Dallas |
10.4%
|
| Farmers Branch |
8.9%
|
| Garland |
6.3%
|
| Mesquite |
5.0%
|
| Richardson |
5.3%
|
| Rowlett |
5.3%
|
| Sachse |
5.4%
|
Obviously, compared to the cities adjacent to Garland, we look a little better. However, the DMN does not take into consideration everything necessary to calculate our exact tax expectations. Bryan Bradford, Garland's budget director, shows Garland's 2007 Certified Tax Base as:
|
|
Residential
|
Commercial
|
Business Personal Property |
Total Base |
|
Total Base
|
6,541,502,166
|
3,061,424,618
|
1,386,093,877
|
10,989,020,661
|
|
Total Increase
|
72,770,252
|
456,348,600
|
57,176,859
|
586,295,711
|
|
New Construction 1
|
95,226,643
|
102,742,280
|
1,259,760
|
199,228,683
|
|
Increase
|
1.1%
|
17.5%
|
4.3%
|
5.6%
|
|
Change in Existing Base 2
|
(0.3%)
|
13.6%
|
4.2%
|
3.7%
|
|
Change in Existing Base (Excluding 1% HSE) 3 |
0.6%
|
|
|
|
1 Amount is included in "Total Increase"
2 Shows change in existing base without "New Construction" and with the increased Homestead Exemption
3 Shows change in existing base without "New Construction" and without the increased Homestead Exemption
New Construction and Commercial Property are the two primary driving components of our increasing tax base. The residential component is barely holding even, actually dipping some with the increased Homestead Exemption, and, as mentioned more than once, not keeping stride with inflation.
We must have a strategy to keep growing the base to and through build-out, a few imprecise years away. At build-out, we run out of land. New Construction hits a wall, Commercial values will probably continue to appreciate for a while, and Residential is already sinking. Compounding the sinking Residential is the Homestead Exemption that depletes the base and we aren't offsetting that decline except with good wishes. We haven't cut expenses, we haven't cut debt, we haven't discovered gas, and we haven't done anything else to generate additional income.
I'm not predicting doom and gloom—we can deal with these challenges but we must have a strategy. Business-as-usual must be adapted to the pending challenges.
Comments:
Thanks for posting this information. The data provided in the Morning News was so general as to be of little real value. The information on the DCCAD website was a little more detailed, but not enough. I recently posted on Garland Citizens' Forum a piece about how inflation, combined with the current flat residential real estate market in Garland, means people are, in fact, losing money in their homes.
The one piece of information I didn't have available when I wrote that was what part of the increase in the residential tax base was, in fact, from new residential development. You've provided the answer. This data shows that essentially all the additional residential tax base in the 2007 certified values, comes from new construction.
Garland must find solutions to re-invigorating our older neighborhoods, keeping them vibrant places where people want to reinvest and stay, rather than live for a while and then move on to some other, newer, place with less character.
Thanks again for this posting. This is full of good information.
John Willis
07/27/07 @ 20:04 Comments are closed for this post.
