YISD approves budget, decreased tax rate

Yoakum school trustees adopted the 2022-2023 budget and approved a 16.66% year-over-year drop in the tax rate during their Aug. 29 special meeting. 

With no public comments on the proposed tax rate or budget, trustees voted to set the district’s overall tax rate at $1.19459 per $100 of property valuation. The approved rate resulted in a decrease of $302.81 in taxes due on the average residence relative to 2021’s rate, according to YISD’s notice of the public hearing.

The Maintenance and Operations Fund (M&O) rate decreased from $0.9634 to $0.8546, and the Interest and Sinking Fund (I&S) rate fell from $0.47 to $0.33999. Due to an increase in total appraised property value of about $339 million, the approved rate increases projected revenue despite the decreased total tax rate. 

“Our M&O rate is lower; our I&S rate is lower. So, overall, our taxpayers are getting a significantly lower tax rate than the previous year,” said YISD Superintendent Tom Kelley during the meeting. 

The unanimously adopted budget included projected revenues of $17,423,950 and expenditures of $17,068,812. 

“There’s pay raises in that budget, and we have accounted for the expenses (concerning) inflation of fuel, electricity, water, food and supply prices that have gone up,” Kelley said. “We have taken all of that into account on an estimate.”

The superintendent also reported a district-wide enrollment increase of about 60 students relative to last year.

“We expected an increase in Pre-K students, but we did not predict it to be 110...” said Kelley.  “Our total enrollment is at 1529, which is where we were at in March of 2020 before the pandemic.”

Data Courtesy YoakumISD.net