Last week, an article in the Dallas Morning News proclaimed Farmers Branch to be the cheapest of nineteen North Texas cities. And who says so? The figures came from the City of Carrollton.
 
Reading further and scanning the accompanying chart, we are told that Garland is one of the higher cost cities, based on property taxes and utility rates, in there with Dallas and Fort Worth.
 
We've learned a few times recently that such articles and unverified figures should be suspect and usually aren't totally accurate. Still, I've not checked these but I assume that there is a general accuracy to the figures.
 
As others in the article discuss, the comparisons from city to city involve a number of variables that makes it extremely difficult to have a true head-to-head comparison. The point of comparison might be favorable for one city and unfavorable for another. Also, there is no indication that the property tax figures account for various homestead exemption levels between cities. The list goes on.
 
Garland will usually be higher when utilities are compared because most cities don't have the same level of service and reliability that Garland has. Not shown are electric rates, which are higher in every city shown than for GP&L users in Garland. If electric savings were included, Garland could well be among the lowest, again depending on what comparison level was chosen. Denton is among the highest on the list, but their electric rates are even lower than Garland's.
 
One of the biggest dividers between those cities listed and Garland is the level of commercial taxes. Garland has a good industrial base but residential properties are still about 60% of our tax base, much higher than most of those other cities. For Farmers Branch, their commercial base is 78%, which allows them to offer free garbage pick-up to residents.
 
Such articles with limited research and data can oftentimes give a good glimpse of the real picture but it is best to look to the sources and limits of the data before taking them to be gospel.