Commissioners adopt fiscal 2025 budget, tax rate

Gonzales County commissioners officially adopted their budget and tax rate for the 2024-25 fiscal year during a short special called meeting Tuesday, Sept. 3

A public hearing was held but there was no comment from the public and the budget and tax rate were approved in quick order.

The fiscal 2025 budget adopted unanimously by commissioners calls for more than $26.85 million in expenditures across all funds against revenues of more than $21.12 million.

Meanwhile, the total tax rate adopted by commissioners dropped from $0.2420 per $100 valuation last year to $0.2032 this fall, a decrease of 3.88 cents from last year’s tax rate.

The proposed tax rate is equal to the no-new-revenue rate, which essentially a tax rate that would produce the same amount of taxes if applied to the same properties taxed in the current and prior fiscal year, without taking any new improvements into consideration.

The total tax levy on all property in the county is increasing to $14,233,257 this year — an increase of $123,090, or 0.87 percent. Of that amount, $129,654 is tax revenue to be raised from new property added to the tax roll this year.

The average homestead went up in value from $143,678 in 2023 to $155,290, an increase of $11,612, or 8.08 percent, but the tax on the average homestead is expected to go down from $347.40 last year to $315.55 this year, a decrease of $32.15, or 6.05 percent.

The proposed budget calls for general fund expenditures of $19,124,238.66, an increase of $1,061,109.75, or 5.87 percent, above last year’s general fund budget of $18,063,128.91. The majority of that increase comes from a salary increase of $0.50 per hour, or $1,040 per year, across the board for full-time county employees.

There are also increases for longevity pay as well as for increases for the cost of supplies due to inflation. The general fund is expected to generate $15,596,636 in revenue for the upcoming year, an increase of 8.3 percent or $1,197,870, above the $14,398,766 that was generated last year.

Gonzales County has also budgeted an overall total of $6,848,480.40 for road and bridge expenditures, which includes salaries, capital outlay, supplies and money for right-of-way acquisition and maintenance costs. Last year, Gonzales County budgeted $7,046,168.52, so this year’s budget represents a decrease of $197,688.12, or almost 2.8 percent.

Gonzales County has budgeted revenue of $4,779,652 for the road and bridge fund for fiscal year 2025, compared to the $6,000,036 that was budgeted in 2024 — a decrease of $1,220,384 in revenue, or more than 20.3 percent.

The county has an adjusted taxable value of $7,004,555,765 — an increase of $888,979,260 above the 2023 adjusted value of $6,119,576,505. That comes after identifying $346,793,100 in taxable value as subject to a tax ceiling (over 65 or disabled) from the certified net taxable value of $7,351,348,865. New properties on the tax rolls account for $63,806,280 in taxable value.

A sharp rise in taxable value for the county during the past two years has seen the county’s tax rate drop from 43.91 cents in 2021-22 to a proposed 20.32 cents in 2024-25, a decrease of 23.61 cents per $100 valuation in three years.