The average Arlington homeowner can expect to see their property tax bill decrease, but will see some of their other bills go up.
Council members gave their second and final vote of approval to Arlington’s $876 million budget and tax rate Tuesday night. The city will finish with a roughly $3 million surplus.
The tax rate will stay the same as last year’s, but fees for things such as water and garbage pickup will go up.
Council members Brittney Garcia-Dumas and Jason Shelton both voted against the tax rate, as they did during the first vote, saying they felt a higher rate could preserve and enhance services the city provides for residents.
For some taxpayers, this will mean a lower tax bill. Under the Tarrant Appraisal District, an appraisal freeze has meant that the taxable value of homes has either remained the same or gone down as residents file valuation protests.
City Manager Trey Yelverton previously told council members that the taxable value of homes in the city dropped by 1.23%, the second-largest drop in value this century for Arlington.
Protests led to a roughly $5 billion property value decrease, Yelverton said.
The Arlington portion of a tax bill for the average homeowner is roughly $1,500. Last year’s was roughly $1,574.
However, other bills will be going up.
The water and sewer rates will be going up by roughly 20-40 cents per month. Currently, the average resident pays roughly $80 per month. Next year, the average residential user will pay $85 per month, or roughly $60 more per year.
Residents’ garbage pickup will also cost more. The increase comes after Republic Services, the company the city contracts with for trash pickup, requested them to match the increase in operational costs, according to a city staff report.
In addition to the trash and water rate increases, the council approved a slew of fees, both new and old, from the Arlington Planning and Development Services department. Last year, as the department moved to a new permitting process, it updated its fee schedule.
At the time, Gincy Thoppil, the director of Planning and Development Services, said that the fees were meant to help recover the costs of the services provided and that some hadn’t been updated since 2009.
The council also adopted a formal cost-recovery policy for the city.
Chief Financial Officer Spencer Slider told council members that the policy would formalize the way staff looks into recovering the costs of some city services.
“As a result of some of the external pressures we are facing on some of our more traditional revenues, we are looking at the potential for a constraint on how we’re able to continue to provide the excellent services to the residents of Arlington,” Slider told council members.
The policy asks staff to evaluate the services the city offers, from police to the city-owned Texas Rangers Golf Club, and determine whether those services have a large community benefit or a benefit to individual users. From there, staff will decide if it should be primarily funded by tax dollars or through fees for using the service.
Slider said the golf course would be an example of how the policy would work in action.
“If someone wants to go play a round of golf at the Texas Rangers Golf course, for instance, that is primarily a high individual benefit, so that person playing that round of golf should be expected to pay a high share of what that costs,” Slider said.
Chris Moss is a reporter for the Arlington Report. Contact him at chris.moss@arlingtonreport.org.
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