The budget proposed in early August by Ted Benavides, Dallas City Manager, indicated that the city property tax rate could be decreased slightly next year from a rate of 64.91 cents per $100 of valuation to a rate of 64.66 cents. However, Councilman Alan Walne raised a question with respect to the fairness of the property tax levied on automobiles. The policy of the city had been to not tax automobiles that were more than eight years old.
After debating the issue, the council voted to eliminate the property tax on automobiles. The council also recognized that the auto tax was relatively expensive to administer when compared to the tax on real estate. Eliminating the auto tax would save the city $900,000 in overhead on approximately $15.3 million raised by the tax. In addition, Dallas is the only city in Texas with a population greater than 5,000 that was taxing automobiles.
Of course, the council was then faced with the question of whether to cut spending, raise taxes on real estate, or a combination of both to compensate for the loss of the auto tax. In the end, the council decided to raise the property tax rate to 66.75 cents per $100 of valuation (an increase of 2.8%) and to increase the budget by approximately $3.3 million. More than 55% of the increase went to raise the level of basic city services — street repair, bulky trash collection and library materials.
The combination of eliminating the auto tax and increasing the real estate tax will affect everyone slightly differently depending upon the values of their homes and cars. However, it is safe to say that most individual homeowners will enjoy a decrease in their total tax bills. A comparison of the old plan and the new plan (assuming a 20% homestead exemption) in a hypothetical situation is shown below.
Under-65 Taxpayer
Old Rate: 64.91¢
New Rate: 66.75¢
$100,000 Home
$519.28
$534.00
$20,000 Car
129.82
0.00
$10,000 Car
64.91
0.00
Total Tax
$714.01
$534.00
A comparison of the taxes in several other hypothetical situations before and after the changes can be found on my web site at www.dallastex.com.
As with the old law, any senior citizen whose home is valued at $80,000 or less will pay no real estate property tax because of the combination of the general exemption and the over-65 exemption. The City of Dallas still has the largest senior citizen exemption ($64,000) of any of the large cities in Texas.
More Budget News
In the final version of the budget that was passed on September 22nd, the council voted to add an additional $900,000 for streets maintenance and another $50,000 for additional median mowing. Please check my web site for additional information about streets and basic city services.
The city is finally on its way to restoring our streets to their 1981 condition when they had a satisfactory rating of 89%. Because of the economic downturn of the mid- and late-80s, the city was forced to curtail funding for basic maintenance, and the satisfactory rating fell to 61% in 1994. In that year, the city budget contained only $13.9 million for street maintenance.
The new council that was elected for the 1995-1996 term, including Mayor Kirk and myself, voted in 1995 to increase the amount to $41.1 million. The increased expenditures for the past four years have returned our streets to a rating of 73%. Our current goal is to reach 80% by the year 2010. I believe that we will be able to exceed this goal — both in rating and the time required to achieve it.
Please do not hesitate to call me at city hall at 214-670-4069 or on the District 9 Hotline at 214-826-5100 if I can be of help to you. You can also e-mail me at mary@dallastex.com or send me a fax at 214-670-1880.
