See what’s included: City of Seguin wraps up budget process

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Darren Dunn

(Seguin) — The city of Seguin is putting the finishing touches on its budget process for the coming fiscal year. The Seguin City Council on Tuesday approved the budget and tax rate for the 2022-23 fiscal year.  

City Manager Steve Parker says he’s proud of this budget and he’s pleased they were able to include several much-needed items, while also lowering the overall tax rate in the city.

“We are proud to announce that we are recommending, and council gave direction during our budget workshop, to drop the tax rate by 1.87 cents from $.5412 to $.5225. We did see significant property valuations almost $185 million in new property alone. There is still $308 million under protest for the tax appraisal office. We’ve made some estimates of what that would be. The average home value went from $192,000 to $217,000. We’ve had strong sales tax growth which has helped us and will keep us sustainable in the long run so good sales tax growth. We are able to address a lot of personnel issues in the budget that we need. A lot of it is inflation but this is a good sign that we are seeing a trend of being able to recommend reducing the tax rate which isn’t always possible,” said Parker.

The general fund budget, which includes services like police, fire and parks, calls for expenditures of nearly $66.7 million. Parker says the city is in a fiscally strong position, and that allowed them to address a number of personnel needs across the board.

“We have had the strong sales tax growth almost 26 percent up from the previous year – year over year – which is great trend. We are leading in the region in sales tax growth year over year compared to our surrounding communities – strong property taxes but this year, we are able to address a lot of personnel issues. We will still say we are a very lean organization, but we are starting to really become that next level city and with that, we’ve been able to add these programs. The GIS manager last year. We are still kind of trying to continue that trend making sure that we are not letting things fall through the hoops. We are keeping up with growth. I think in a lot of great ways, this budget hires three new police officers and a part-time telecommunication operator mid-year,” said Parker.

Parker says there are also new firefighter positions in the pipeline, as the city gets prepared for its plans to eventually build a new fire station. He says they are also taking some steps to offer more professional service support for those emergency workers, while also looking at other ways to enhance the services that the city provides.

“We are adding for the first-time education pay for fire and police which is something that most cities do but we do not. We are hiring a contract’s administrator to make sure that we are keeping up and renewing all of our contracts and making sure that we are really fine tuning all those things – to make sure that things aren’t slipping through the cracks. We’re hiring two engineering interns to start an ADA transition plan. This is something that is going to be required of us. We have upgraded a couple of positions in IT. Not adding new positions but making sure that we are having that — I think what I refer to is that leg growth potential in our IT department and in all departments,” said Parker.

“The budget also includes a major addition to the city’s parks and recreation department. Parker says the city needs to focus more on offering programs through the parks department and this new position will help to make that happen.

“I think one of the most exciting positions we are recommending is a parks and recreation supervisor so we can actually start some youth programming here in the city that has not been available here. So, really looking at potentially partnering with the school district to add some youth basketball leagues as a starter and then to continue to grow that as we go, movies in the park – all those types of things,” said Parker.

Parker says they are also taking steps to further reward employees who take the initiative to improve their skill levels. He says it’s important to encourage people to grow themselves professionally.

“We added some certification pays to make sure that we are rewarding people who are going out and getting that next level of education above their own job responsibilities that they were hired for but continuing to improve whether its cyber security or something they want to have a certification. We want that because that’s a benefit to our community. It comes at a very cheap cost but when you think about it and compare it to the results that we get out of it,” said Parker.

The new budget also calls for the city to start a new program that will allow citizens to get a better understanding of how the city works. Parker says its largely based on the successful police and fire citizens academies that are already in place in the city.

“We put a PIO, part-time intern to help with the growth that is going to focus on a Citizen Civic Academy. It’s something that we really want to be proud of because we talk about different things in the community and how city government is funded but we really would like to get more in-depth like they do in the fire and police to show exactly how city operations work. How does a water treatment work and a wastewater treatment plant. How come we are not able to pave our streets with gold just per say. Everyone wants the perfect street and the just what the limitations in our budget are related to that. We do add two services workers in the public works department. One will be a dedicated patch hole specialist and the other one will be a right-of-way specialist that will actually be responsible for picking up trash and helping weed eat as we grow because we have grown in area over the last few years. We want to make sure that we can keep up with our normal cycles especially when we have wet periods,” said Parker.

The city of Seguin is also a utility provider. The city’s utility budget has its owned fund, and its revenue is generated by the rate payers that use those services. Parker says the city’s utility fund budget call for total expenditures of just over $100 million and includes some major capital improvement projects.

“This is our annual budget adoption for the utility fund. That’s our water, wastewater and electric department and our drainage utility fee which is new. This does come with a five percent increase in water and wastewater rates which was approved at a previous council meeting in August. The water, wastewater rate increases were driven primarily by inflation. We went through that pretty much in-depth of fuel, cost of employees, the new employees that we did recommend. You know, we are really still proposed to take over a large portion, new service territory north of I-10. That will come with some challenges to make sure that we can service that, so a couple of positions slated for July this year – a utility billing clerk, service worker so forth, data analyst to make sure we are keeping up with this new service area. Then hopefully, we can bring you an adoption to do that in the next council meeting is what we are shooting for but then it does come really driven by the utility operation.

A second and final reading is needed for the budget and the tax rate. That action is expected to be taken during the next city council meeting. The city’s new fiscal year begins on October 1. 

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