Who wants to pay higher property taxes?
We’re about to find out. The city council members who you have been faithfully contacting (asking them NOT to vote for the rate increase), is claiming they’re receiving emails 10 to 1 in FAVOR of increasing the property tax revenue calculation up the 7.98% max allowed under the disaster loophole. So either we have an inexplicable anomaly happening in the city of Kerrville (because this is like a bipartisan 90-10 type of issue), or something or someone else is causing a ‘flood’ of emails to council members. FYI, council members are all answering your correspondence with similar talking points — all saying 10 to 1 in FAVOR within days of our communications going out to ask residents to express opposition. With 55% of voters who voted BOTH in last year’s Republican primary AND the city council election voting Republican, how many Republicans do you know who think we need to pay HIGHER property taxes? Anyone?
So that leads us to suspect the people ‘flooding’ the city council right now are likely in three categories:
1) Chamber of Commerce business types that do business with the city (think corporate welfare, taxpayer subsidies). Notably, Brinkman Properties & Happy State Bank reps were at the city council meeting. They didn’t speak, because they don’t have to. The council knows what their presence means.
2) Former city council members and their sphere of influence (they were the ONLY ones to speak in favor of the higher property tax rate Tuesday at council)
3) City employees and their sphere of influence who want to increase city spending and fear CUTS to government budgets if they don’t raise taxes. We saw this up close at the county budget hearings with county employees actively lobbying for higher taxes and even getting rather rude with our county commissioners for wanting to keep taxes low.
See a prime example below…
Ordinary taxpayers can’t afford to dig any deeper.
They’ve already made deep cuts to survive the Biden years. Inflation is still stubbornly high. Our young workers cannot afford homes or the cost of living. The higher the housing costs go, the more out of reach it becomes, and the greater the wage pressures hit area businesses. It’s time for government to tighten its belt, not flood survivors and the workers we’ll need to rebuild Kerrville.
ACTION STEPS
1
Time to flood the city council with correspondence saying: NO to the 7.98% property tax hike over the no new revenue rate!!!
You know what to do…
Joe Herring, Jr.
Mayor
Joe.Herring@kerrvilletx.gov
Delayne Sigerman
Councilmember – Place 1
Delayne.Sigerman@kerrvilletx.gov
Jeff Harris
Councilmember – Place 2
Jeff.Harris@kerrvilletx.gov
Kent McKinney
Councilmember – Place 3
Kent.McKinney@kerrvilletx.gov
Brenda Hughes
Councilmember – Place 4
Brenda.Hughes@kerrvilletx.gov
2
AMPLIFY YOUR VOICE
Get the word out to your friends, neighbors, church members and talk it up on SOCIAL MEDIA!