Shiner ISD proposes lowest tax rate in years

By Clayton Kelley, Staff Reporter

Taxpayers in Shiner ISD will pay, on average, more than $500 less than they did last year, after members of the school’s board of directors voted last week to move forward with a proposed tax rate of slightly more than 74 cents per $100 valuation.
That’s a major change when compared to last year’s tax rate of 92.5 cents per $100 valuation, with slightly more than 85 cents per $100 dedicated to the school’s maintenance and operations budget.
According to the public notice that appears inside this edition announcing the proposed tax rate and 6 p.m. public budget hearing scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 30, some $11 million is what remains on the SISD’s bonded indebtedness as of August 2023.
Members of the school’s board of directors reviewed the budget numbers last Monday, Aug. 14, as part of their regularly scheduled monthly business meeting. State law requires that they first approve a proposed tax rate (which they did last week) before they hold the public hearing and vote once more to finalize the tax rate and budget for the 2023-24 school year.
State law also requires that the final vote take place before Sept. 1, when the new budget year begins for public school districts statewide.
Despite trustees backing a proposed tax rate that is nearly 18 cents less than last year’s assessed rates, planned expenditures in the school’s budget are projected to increase by more than 12% in the coming year.
A good portion of those increases are made possible by the sharp rise in appraisal values realized this year. Total appraised valuations within the Shiner school district leapt from about $1.1 billion in 2022 to about $1.4 billion in 2023.
Those appraisal increases caused the average market value for most homes found here to increase by more than $27,500 from last year’s numbers, from an average of $190,908 per residence to $217,694 per residence.
Even with those increases, however, tax bills will still be down a lot, due in large part to Gov. Greg Abbott’s recently signed tax relief bills that were passed in special session of the Texas Legislature, designed to lower school tax bills specifically by several combined measures, such as increasing the homestead exemption property owners can claim, limiting the amount appraisal districts can increase valuations in a single year and capping the rates that a school district in Texas can levy.
That said, Shiner’s taxable values—despite those market values climbing by more the $27,500 in a single year—saw sharp declines this year, falling from $139,226 in 2022 to just $103,300 in 2023.
Applied to the average homeowner within the Shiner school district, who paid a roughly $1,289 tax bill to the school last year, they will only have to pay about $765 in school taxes this year, according to their posted tax notice, helping homeowners realize a nearly $525 savings in their overall school taxes.