Amarillo council moves forward on budget, tax rate, interim city manager
The Amarillo City Council approved its new tax rate and budget Tuesday with a unanimous vote on its first reading at city hall in downtown Amarillo. Deputy City Manager Andrew Freeman was also named as the interim city manager by the city council.
At the meeting, the council was presented with a tax rate of 39.195 cents per $100 of property value, which was slightly lower than the 39.867 cents maximum tax rate that was approved last month. The new tax rate is lower than last year’s tax rate of 40.628 cents per $100 of property valuation, but with increased property values, homeowners will still pay about $2 per month per $100 on average in taxes.
The new tax rate will go toward supporting the current proposed budget of $531 million, which is an increase of $40 million over the previous year’s budget and increases the total budget by about 8% from the previous year.
Included in the new budget will be an additional four police officers, along with additional Amarillo Police Department (APD) positions. There will also be $33 million for water and sewer projects and $46 million for drainage projects related to improving the infrastructure that failed during June’s flooding, which destroyed and impacted homes and businesses in the city and surrounding areas.
Also allocated was an issuance of $13.3 million in debt for street projects that included funding for the NE 24th Street railroad overpass project and the SE 10th Street streetscape improvement project.
Within the budget, the fire department is adding three new district chiefs and an aircraft rescue training facility. There will also be a 30% COLA adjustment for retirees to compensate for no adjustments in recent years.
Among the programs that had reduced funding was the Amarillo Public Library system, which will reduce uninterrupted hours to 64 hours a week at all libraries and will now have the same hours at each location. With the reduction, the Amarillo Library system will be at the bare minimum number of hours to keep its accreditations.
Laura Storrs, the Amarillo assistant city manager, spoke about the agreed upon tax rate and its impacts.
“While this is a tax rate decrease, but because appraised values have gone up since last year, this actually will be about a $2 dollar a month increase for the average resident,” Storrs said. “We talked about a lot of different options, but what we heard over and over is that council wants departments to work as efficiently as possible.”
Speaking about library budget cuts, Storrs said that the city council looked to scale back hours later in the day which the council asserted have less patrons at those times to create about $200,000 in savings and reduce the need for more staff.
Storrs said that while the need to improve infrastructure in drainage and wastewater are addressed in the budget, the major renovations to wastewater will be addressed in future budgets as designs are being planned to address those issues from severely overworked and outdated systems.
“Citizens still have another week before the final votes are taken next Tuesday at the next city council meeting on both the budget and tax rate to voice their opinions and concerns to city officials,” Storrs said. "We encourage citizens to come out and voice their opinions on both of those areas.”
The city council also agreed to sell 22,169 square feet of commercial space located at its downtown parking garage at Buchanan and 6th Street for $1.9 million. The city has been trying to get tenants in this commercial space since it opened in September of 2017, but to date it has only been successful in attracting one business, Joe Taco, to the location. With this agreement, the city hopes that the new owner can attract businesses to the location, which they found quite a challenge in their endeavors.
Freeman spoke about the reasons for the city moving forward to sell the space to the Llano Real Estate Group.
“We have spent the last five years trying to fill that space with tenants and have not been as successful as we would have liked to be,” Freeman said. “So we started looking for private partners that could piece out different locations to tenants to sell to. One of the benefits is that a private partner will not have to worry about leased agreements going through city council to move forward.”
Freeman said that he felt that this being a young market that the city with the delays to the baseball team and the impact of COVID, it was best for the city to move forward with this plan to sell.
Mayor Cole Stanley spoke about the decision to make Freeman the interim city manager and the additional stipend in salary. Freeman was given a raise to $240,000 a year with possible incentives that could bring his pay up to $290,000.
Stanley said the additional $50,000 will be tied to agreed upon objective measurable metrics reached in the city by Freeman in the areas of public safety initiatives and customer service over the next eight months.
“What we don’t mind as a council saying is we don’t mind paying for that position at a high paying rate, but we want to see outcomes that are measurable,” Stanley said. “That gives him eight months to go out and perform and earn it.”
Stanley said the process to hire a new city manager will be started later in the year with putting a committee together and hiring a consulting group to assist in the position search. He said that he expects that Freeman will apply for that position, and this will give the council some time to evaluate him in that position.
“I think it's really good to be able to get through the change and disruption of the organization of letting Mr. Miller go,” Stanley said. “To see that change and the gravity around Mr. Freeman and the other assistant city managers pulling together heading up that team in this circumstance, I think you see the support from the directors below them.”
Freeman spoke about being named interim city manager.
“I am very excited about the responsibility, but the big change will be working with the city council and setting the agenda,” Freeman said. “I am working to make sure that we are being efficient and working toward the visons and priorities that the council is setting for the city. It’s exciting; we have a great team and staff that I get to work with each day. I am looking forward to this opportunity over the next few months."
Weighing in on the approved city budget, Stanley stressed that council worked really hard to find all the ways to keep the budget within reason while taking care of core interests. He said that working with different departments, the council came up with as much savings as they could.
“The proposed budget reflects the priorities of voters and the Amarillo community who spoke at the ballot box this past May,” Stanley said. “Voters stressed public safety and improving city infrastructure such as streets. We want to put back money into things that our citizens want and need.”
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo City Council votes for first reading of budget, tax rate
