The Richardson City Council held a work session July 24-25 focused solely on development of the 2023-2024 budget. Attendance by the public was sparse. There will be public hearings on the proposed tax rate and budget in mid- to late-August.
City Manager Don Magner started by presenting a slide full of scare headlines about the state of the economy: "jobless claims increase," "recession is coming," "factory orders miss expectations," "sting of high prices." He didn't mention any good news like "buoyant labor market," "robust consumer spending," "inflation declining," or "stabilizing housing market," all of which were reported just last week in a single Wall Street Journal news article. Was Magner trying to tamp down expectations of being able to spend more money because of rising property values? Was he setting the stage for a tight budget?
How big is the bucket of money available? Total revenue for the General Fund is projected at about $177.2 million, roughly a $13 million dollar increase.
Magner's key budget areas are "Recruitment and retention," "Public Safety," and "Infrastructure." Has there ever been a time when those weren't key budget areas? It's always been potholes and police. Not just in Richardson, but definitely in Richardson.
With that, here's what Magner proposed:
- No tax rate change is currently planned.
Tax rate of $0.56095 per $100 valuation is the maximum allowed without voter approval - Senior property tax exemption was already increased to $130,000. City to maintain that and does not recommend implementing other strategies.
- No Homestead Exemption
- Revenue from Current Property Taxes are projected to increase 3.87% from the FY23 Budget.
Based on 3.5% max from Supplemental Tax Rolls allowed under SB2 - Sales tax revenue projected to increase/restore from the prior year base budget by 2%
- 5% merit-based market pay plan adjustment for all employees
- Increase the minimum starting salary for full-time and permanent part-time positions to $18.24 from $17.82
- Add 6 new firefighters for overtime reduction and 3 new fire fighters for blocking apparatus staffing
- Add one additional floating holiday, giving someone the ability to celebrate whatever holiday is most important to them
- Increase funding for traffic markings, signs and street light maintenance and Active Transportation Plan (ATP) initiatives
- Provides additional funding for screening wall, entry feature and bridge maintenance
- Funding for the Home Improvement Incentive Program: $1,242,914
- Grows property tax dedications for street and alley maintenance at the same rate as the increase in property tax revenue
- Grows property tax dedication for parks and facilities maintenance at the same rate as the increase in property tax revenue
- Increase the economic development fund property tax dedication by $537,366
- $3.92 million in funding for pay-as-you-go capital replacements and $1.45 million in funding for to the IT replacement fund
- $1.85 million in funding for the replacement of the City’s legacy IT systems and for upgrades to the traffic management system
- Water and Sewer: 3.0% water and sewer rate increase
- Solid waste: $1.00 per month rate increase for residential customers; 3% for commercial customers
- Golf: No fee changes proposed
- Gymnastics: Fee increase
- Pool: Non-resident fee increase
- Arts Grants: funding increase: $375,000, an increase of $70,000; includes full-time Cultural Arts Coordinator
- Eisemann Center: Total funding increases $2,241,638 to $6,371,333
What's the impact of property taxes and utility fees on the typical homeowner?
| Property Tax | $70 |
| Water Charges | $29 |
| Sewer Charges | $14 |
| Drainage Fee | $0 |
| Residential Solid Waste | $12 |
| Total | $125 |
What did the City Council think? Below, I show miscellaneous feedback from the City Council, at different points in the meeting, by Councilmembers. This is by no means a complete transcript of the five hours of presentation and discussion. Instead, it's a list of isolated statements that sounded (to me) like they would have the biggest likelihood of causing City Manager Magner to make any changes to what was presented.
Mayor Bob Dubey: "We're now looking at a way regionally to try and bring in a job fair for police officers and bring them all in and have multiple cities sitting there so that we would have multiple people to draw from and share in the expenses of trying to have this job fair and where it could be almost sign the dotted line while you're there."
Joe Corcoran: "When it comes to floating holidays, if one extra floating holiday brings us up to where some of our peer/competitor cities are, why don't we?"
Ken Hutchenrider: "I would challenge and ask the question, could we actually do 6% again this year?...I'm recommending that across the board."
Dan Barrios: "I do want to second Councilman Hutchenrider's thoughts on the 6%...I'd like to see it across the board versus just under one service sector."
Curtis Dorian: "Councilman Hutchenrider, I would consider supporting the 6%...The other thing too, I do like the floating holiday idea."
Jennifer Justice: "I would love to see the number on 6% because employees are the most important thing in our city for sure. But I'm curious what we have to sacrifice which I'm sure you're going to present to us now in order to do that."
Mayor Bob Dubey: "Is there a way to benefit our employees by maybe adding maybe that 1%, especially after we're in to the budget, add that later and give us a bump that keeps us above our other cities?"
Ken Hutchenrider: "A question that I have as we go through this, I hear a lot of dollars going to various organizations in different ways in different places. And I don't feel like we ever understand fully the impact that we make in that regard. Is there a way we could get a more defined dollar figure that we're supporting different groups, organizations, etc.?"
Ken Hutchenrider: "I don't expect you to solve this because you don't run North Texas [Municipal Water District], but it just seems unconscionable at this point in time that it's double digits every year for the last five years that I've been on this Council and it gets old after a while to be real honest. That's not, please know that that's directed at them not to you."
Dan Barrios: "What are our options as a city to fight on behalf of our Richardson residents?... We were looking at DART a few weeks ago, and I remember that was one of my concerns and it's a 100% increase over the next 10 years. What are our options? I mean, how does the City approach this from a strategic standpoint?"
Joe Corcoran: "If it's not this budget presentation, I do want to see some sort of comparison on rate increases presented some point just because I remember hearing Allen boast 'Hey, we have the lowest water rates in the whole region.' That kind of made me curious, well, how did they get, how do other cities get to advertise they have the lowest rates? What are they doing differently?"
Mayor Bob Dubey: "It's really important that we stop and think about, our citizens think about, we have great representation in the fact that we have John Sweeden and we have Randy Roland on the [NTMWD] board. And their job is to do the work of the water people but we still have a voice and we're still being represented and they do a great job. A great job with that and with Don [Magner] being added to this Commission or this little board to try to look at the financing and the billing and all the things the cost down the road. I know that our best interest is being looked at and I think we got to look at that. None of this is fun, but I think Don and the team has worked very, very hard to mitigate that cost. 3% is a pretty mild cost when you think about where it could be."
Mayor Pro Tem Arefin: "Solid waste collection twice a week, you know, we all love it, we want to continue that, but I think for long term we need to find an alternate way of doing it. I don't know what solution there."
Mayor Dubey: "I'm in favor of a 6% and we can make it work also, I think that our employees deserve that, need that, and maybe more."
"Budgets tight but sound,
Raises reward hard work done,
Stable taxes crowned."
—h/t ChatGPT
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