Plano approves 2014-15 budget, tax rate
Tax rate to remain unchanged
Kevin Cummings
Staff writer, Plano Star Courier
In the culmination of months of preparation, planning and public hearings, the Plano City Council unanimously voted to approve the budget and tax rate for the 2014-15 fiscal year at its Tuesday meeting.
While the city’s budget increased to $468,586,163, largely due to an increased in assessed property values from the Collin and Denton county central appraisal districts and from new development within the city, the tax rate will remain the same as it has been since the 2009-10 fiscal year.
“Our main focus [for this budget] would be to go in and restore and enhance public safety services,” said Karen Rhodes-Whitley, Plano budget director. “Back in the economic downturn we had to put a lot of our capital improvement projects on hold and now we're playing catch-up.”
The newly adopted budget marks a $25.6 million, or 5.8 percent, increase from the previous budget. Highlights of the 2014-15 budget include hiring of 39 full-time and three part-time city employees, 20 of which will go to enhance the city’s public safety programs.
In addition to hiring more employees, the city is also awarding a 3-percent raise to all city employees. The increase is partially tied to the city’s tax rate. The tax rate as a whole is remaining at 48.86 cents per $100 of assessed property value. The maintenance and operations portion of the rate, which is used to help fund the city’s daily operations, increased from 32.96 cents to 34.38 cents. The debt service rate is decreasing from 15.9 cents to 14.48 cents. According to Rhodes-Whitley, Plano has gone several years without raising employees’ pay, and the increase will allow the city to maintain quality employees and stay competitive with other cities in the area.
“We’re always looking at how we can continue to operate as efficiently and effectively; we try to ensure that the budget meets the needs, and what we try to do is maintain the tax rate,” said Bruce Glasscock, city manager.
Residents can expect an increase in their water and sewer service rates. The North Texas Municipal Water District (NTMWD), which supplies Plano and many other surrounding cities with water, is expecting to increase the cost of wholesale water purchases by 9.6 percent per thousand gallons and increase wastewater treatment costs by 1.4 percent per thousand gallons. The increase from the water district is expected to help pay off the pipeline connecting Lake Texoma to the NTMWD treatment plant in Wylie, which cost about $300 million. Plano plans to increase rates by 10 percent for water used and by 2.5 percent for sewer for its residents.
Plano is contractually required to purchase a minimum of 26.7 billion gallons of water annually from the NTMWD. However, due to watering restrictions, it only uses about 19 billion gallons. This will result in an expected deficit of about $9.8 million for the city.
Glasscock and Rhodes-Whitley both stated that the city is expecting increased revenue from new development projects coming online and that the growth along with new residents moving to Plano will have a beneficial impact on the city’s future revenues.
“The main goal ... was maintain services and [restore] services where we had, over the years, cut back,” Glasscock said. “[Moving forward] we’ll start undertaking the infrastructure repairs that were approved through the capital projects.”