County adopts 20-21 budget, new tax rate

 Dalondo Moultrie The Seguin Gazette

Guadalupe County residents in the coming year will pay about $3.50 more in property taxes for every $100,000 at which their properties are valued.

Commissioners Court on Tuesday adopted a budget at a tax rate of .3854 per $100 of property valuation. Commissioners praised the county judge for hashing out the budget.

“I’d like to say thank you for bringing a balanced budget to us each year,” Precinct No. 4 Commissioner Judy Cope told County Judge Kyle Kutscher. “I wish our national budget could be the same.”

The court unanimously approved the 2020-21 budget, a Maintenance and Operations tax rate of 0.3184 per $100 of taxable value, a Debt Service tax rate of 0.0170 per $100, a Lateral Road tax rate of 0.0500 per $100 of taxable value and the overall tax rate of 0.3854.

State law requires the county to separately approve, as a show of transparency, each of the rates that contribute to the overall rate, Kutscher said.

Owners of property at the average homestead’s taxable value of $219,344 will pay $845.35 in property taxes, under the new rate. To simplify the calculation, a person who owns a home valued at $100,000, for instance, would pay $385.40, whereas for the current year, a person at such a home would’ve paid $381.90.

The budget came in at $86 million.

The county judge thanked each of the departments and department heads for whittling their budgets down to necessities.

“Overall, I think it’s a very conservative budget that takes into consideration all of the impacts our citizens of Guadalupe County have been under,” Kutscher said. “This budget is set up for us to be financially strong and financially conservative. I’d like to thank everyone for helping us.”

Precinct No. 2 Commissioner Drew Engelke said he was pleased with the budget as adopted. It is a good spending plan for employees and citizens of Guadalupe County, he told Kutscher.

“You have done a fantastic job of doing this,” Engelke said. “A very conservative, balanced budget I think has turned out very well for everyone.

“You deserve a raise but as conservative as you are, you wouldn’t even accept it.”

Dalondo Moultrie is the assistant managing editor of the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail him at dalondo.moultrie@seguingazette.com

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