Gainesville property taxes to drop, while revenues rise
Sep. 7—Gainesville's property tax rate is going down, but revenue to the city is going up.
Gainesville City Council approved a tax rate of 57.6 cents per $100 property value for the 2024 budget cycle Tuesday — 42.97 cents of the tax rate will go to the general fund and 14.63 cents will go to the interest and sinking fund.
According to City Manager Barry Sullivan, this is approximately a five cent reduction on the tax rate itself.
"However, we will bring in more money than we did last year," Sullivan noted
Fees on the Annual Fee Schedule had to be increased to meet the budget.
"We are having some fee increases," said Sullivan. "Four percent for water, 10 percent for sewer, solid waste: four percent, and cemetery at five percent."
Sullivan said these increases were necessary to bring in the needed revenues for current and future projects.
"We've not only had around an eight percent increase in inflation, but for a lot of our construction projects, they've come in much higher," said Sullivan. "When you're talking about water and sewer, some of those have come in 25+ percent higher."
While the prices have gone up, the city still has to complete these projects to keep the city going.
"We've had to go ahead and invest in those to get those capital projects completed so we can keep operating, and this is what it'll take for us to maintain and continue to operate our systems and also grow our system," said Sullivan. "The issue is you have to expand it before you have the growth, so you have to pay for it upfront, and then you slowly get repaid over the years."
The total budget will be $49 million, which draws on existing fund balances.
"The total of all the funds is $45 million, expenditures are $49 million," said Sullivan. "Additional funds we're using out of the fund balances are coming from the assigned fund and the hotel/motel funds."
The assigned fund is made up of excess revenues from previous years and goes to capital projects such as streets.
Hotel/motel funds are paid through the hotel occupancy tax, which only people who stay in hotels have to pay, and can only be used on projects related to recreation and tourism. This year's budget has $1 million of the hotel/motel fund going to the Civic Center Expansion. Some of the hotel/motel fund is also going to sponsoring the North Texas Wine Trail, which features 35 wineries from around Grapevine north to the Red River.
Daily boat fee
It's a good time to be out on Moss Lake for boaters.
Gainesville City Council approved a daily boat fee of $5. This is in addition to the already available annual pass, which is $35 for the date of purchase through the end of the year.
"The one day is for boats just visiting for a day ... $5 is the standard for lakes around here," said City Manager Barry Sullivan. "That was at the request of Texas Parks and Wildlife that we go ahead and have a daily rate."
