City readies for annual budget talks

With budget time right around the corner, Shiner city secretary Natalie Fric said Monday she wanted to review a few items so that they wouldn’t come as a surprise next month when city leaders dive into the numbers for real.

The first of those involved the city’s preliminary taxable value estimates. “Based on current estimates of what we’ll likely be losing as part of the property tax freeze adjustments approved by voters earlier this year, it appears that some $20 million in taxable worth could soon be disappearing from the city’s tax rolls.

In dealing with those losses, council agreed to have county tax assessor-collector Deborah Sevcik run the numbers to help the city decipher its tax rates once again next year.

“There’s not much that can be done to change that vote now,” Fric said, but there might be a few possible solutions, and it's something the council brings up regularly at city budget time but, thus far, has never acted on.

“Perhaps now is the time to consider upping our local sales tax to make it the same as everyone else’s,” she said.

Indeed, Shiner’s sales tax is one of the few anywhere that’s less than the standard 8¼% that most places charge. To make that adjustment, however, Fric said the city needs to be thinking about it now, so they can plan for the required election, as the next election takes place in November.

Both Mayor Hilscher and mayor pro-tem David Schroeder seemed to like the idea.

“I’d much rather spread the burden among everyone, visitors and residents alike, than simply hit our property owners once again,” Schroeder said.

Hilscher agreed, adding “This is something we should have done a long time ago.”

Not everyone, however, was thrilled by the notion. Dr. Marshall Bishop, who happened to be in attendance Monday for an Eagle Scout Project proposal his son brought before the city. Bishop went so far as to say he could only imagine such a measure failing miserably at the polls, given current market inflation and spiking costs. “I know I sure wouldn’t support it,” he said. 

Schroeder said the sales tax stands to bring in far more revenue than property tax increase would . (NOTE: The print version of the story in this weeks newspaper mistakenly reversed those two. Schroder contacted the author Friday morning to correct. Based on current year collections, that could amount to as much as $400,000. In comparison, the recent property tax increase, which Schroeder did not support, raised $17,000.) 

Whatever steps the council takes next, "It’ll take some pretty serious educational work on our part,” he added.

In other items:

• Council approved a partial payment expenditure totaling $133,826.94 to Udelhoven Oilfield System Services, for work that company did on the city water tower/plant improvements project.

• Two meeting dates were planned for next month. The first moved next month’s regular first Monday meeting, which falls on the July 4 holiday, to 6 p.m. Tuesday, July 5. Also, the first city budget workshop for 2022 is set for 6 p.m. Monday, July 25.

• Council denied a citizen request to turn the old tennis courts (the ones set just off Avenue E on Shiner’s west side) into pickle ball courts, unless something far more substantial could be made available to tennis players first.

“We don’t have to decide now, of course,” Schroeder said. “But the catholic schools use those courts to play tennis and practice. If they might have an interest in perhaps expanding the tennis facilities we have, or, perhaps maybe they'd like to build a new pickleball court there, I think we'd all be willing to listen and likely even help each other out.”