Bexar County is among the many taxing entities projecting less revenue than the year before due to declining property values. However, unlike the City of San Antonio and other municipalities, which are calling for big tax hikes to bridge the gap, county leaders say they expect to keep their tax rate the same — and avoid major cuts to services.
Financial Planning
County leaders attribute their ability to maintain the tax rate to their decision to put away money during the years when property values were going up, and using borrowed money for more projects when interest rates were low. Now that property tax revenue has slowed, they’ve stopped issuing new bonds while working to pay down old debt, and they have enough cash reserves to carry them through.
“We look at a long-range financial forecast, and right now we’re pretty healthy, so we don’t have a recommendation to increase taxes,” said Bexar County Budget and Finance Director Tanya Gaitan. “It’s really because of the decisions the county commissioners made.”
Challenges Ahead
Despite the positive outlook, Bexar County is not out of the woods this budget season. The county budget grew by $1 billion dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now property values have cooled at the same time federal pandemic relief dollars are dwindling. Commissioners have been passing progressively smaller budgets in an attempt to scale back, but their spending is still outpacing their revenue.
Budget writers are exploring changes like a hiring freeze and adjustments to employee health benefits to rein in spending for the short-term. “This year we’re not looking to cut, we’re just looking to slow down, because we had some pretty big growth the last couple of years,” Gaitan said.
Impact on Nonprofits
The network of providers supporting some of the most at-risk community members could still feel a major squeeze, even if the county avoids big cuts to its own budget. Previous Bexar County leaders used much of their ARPA money to fund public health initiatives, aimed at mitigating the physical and emotional tolls of the pandemic. Some of those programs were always intended to be a Band-Aid on an immediate problem, while others were clearly intended to be long-term investments.
Bexar County used ARPA money to launch an entire Public Health Department aimed at addressing health disparities in the county’s unincorporated parts, and started an emergency response team that can be deployed to people experiencing a mental health crisis, called the SMART initiative. While commissioner court views both as major successes, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said that whether to keep them going will be among the court’s biggest challenges this fall.
Original reporting: San Antonio Report — read the source article.
