Proposed Lubbock County budget will provide property tax relief

There has been a lot of information and misinformation regarding the events of the past few weeks as it pertains to the Lubbock County budget for the upcoming fiscal year. I hope the following timeline will clear up some of the confusion about when and why decisions were made as we worked to present a budget for the citizens of Lubbock County.

On Aug.12, 2019, the Lubbock County Commissioners Court voted 5-0 to propose the current tax rate for the FY 2020 Budget. One of the purposes of the unanimous preliminary vote was to set the two public hearings on the tax rate as required by law. Over the next two weeks, we met in several open work sessions to find cuts in the budget with two goals in mind. One, to provide a budget that meets the current and future needs of Lubbock County, and two, to cut the tax rate to the effective tax rate. During the last week of August, we held several very productive budget work sessions to finalize the budget.

On Aug. 29, the last day of the work sessions, the county auditor reported that with the changes made to the budget, we could adopt the effective tax rate at our Commissioner Court meeting. All court members were in support of this. The law states the budget and tax rate must be voted on at a regularly scheduled Commissioner Court meeting, so the vote was set for Sept. 9, 2019.

Because the budget was not finalized until the afternoon of Aug. 29 and had to be filed with the county clerk on Aug. 30, the auditor explained the changes would not be included in the posted budget due to time constraints. Without these changes incorporated, she also explained that the budget would still reflect the current tax rate until she could get the amendments to the budget filed the following week.

During the following week, the auditor worked to make the approved changes to the budget. These changes were attached as amendments to the front of the budget (as required by law), reflecting the adoption of the effective tax rate.

On Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019, each member of the Commissioners Court received a copy of the posted budget along with all of the changes/amendments that allowed us to lower the property tax rate to the effective rate. The following day, I posted the agenda for the Sept. 9 Commissioners Court Meeting which stated we would be adopting the effective tax rate. I also received a copy of the official resolution adopting the budget with the effective tax rate (as required by law), as well as the language that must be read to make the motion (also as required by law) to adopt the effective tax rate.

At our regular meeting Monday, September 9th, we were able to vote on the FY2020 Budget, but could not vote on the effective tax rate because Commissioner Corley and Commissioner Seay left the Courthouse. As required by law, there must be four Commissioners Court members present to vote on any tax levy for the County. Due to the absence of the two commissioners, the court was unable to vote on the tax cut for the county property owners as well as the proposed tax cut for the Lubbock County Hospital District.

The commitment to adopt the effective tax rate has not changed. This will be posted on the agenda again for the Sept. 23, 2019 Commissioners Court meeting. I am hopeful that all of your commissioners will be in attendance Sept. 23 so we can cast our vote on much-needed property tax relief for the citizens of Lubbock County.

Curtis Parrish was elected Lubbock County Judge in November 2018.