Canyon sets budget, discusses projected tax rate for 2023 fiscal year
Earlier in the week, the Canyon City Council approved its fiscal year 2022-2023 budget by a 3-1 margin, with councilmember Paul Lyons being the lone dissenting vote. Councilmember Randy Ray was not present for the vote.
At issue with the proposed budget for Canyon was how to resolve a $250,000 deficit. To combat this deficit, estimates were revised to include revenues gained by the city. A reduction of the expansion of the certification program was settled on to reduce city expenditures.
Joe Wright, director of finance for the city of Canyon, elaborated on how estimates were revised.
“We had estimates for interest income and the federal reserve has been increasing interest rates, so that means the interest the bank is paying us is more, so we went and reevaluated our estimates and were able to increase budgeted revenue quite a bit for that,” Wright said.
He added that the changes to the certification program saved the city about $75,000 in city costs, which were half of the initial proposed cost of expansion.
Wright said that the previous year, the budgeting included the capital expenditure of a building for the water department, which is not included in this year’s budget. He said this year, the capital projects are not as costly, and much of the funds related to many of these projects received grants that match local funding the city will be responsible for, thus reducing costs. These measures resulted in a decrease of $385,000 from last year’s city budget.
“The total tax rate is .40016 per $100 of value; that’s actually 6% decrease in the tax rate from last year. However, property values have increased about 17%, so the city is lowering its tax rate even though that value has gone up significantly, and that’s why the increase in tax rate is only about eight percent because we’ve lowered our rate even though the values have gone up,” Wright said.
With the value of these new properties, the city sees increased revenue even with a lower tax rate.
“I feel like with inflation and all the demands on us as we’re a growing community, I feel like the commission has been responsible in adopting this budget. It is a slight increase in tax revenue, but it’s meeting the needs of the citizens of Canyon and allowing us to serve them the best we can,” Wright said.
Lyons, in his disapproval, stated the city should use reserve funds to pay for COLA pay increases and certification pay expansion that was cut in half.
The merit raises, three percent COLA increase and the salaries of two new firefighter positions were also included in the budget.
There will be a public hearing Aug. 15 to approve the actual tax rate, which would take effect Oct. 1 for the new fiscal year.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Canyon sets budget, discusses projected tax rate for 2023 fiscal year
