At the regular meeting for the Taylor Independent School District Aug. 15, the board voted 7-0 to set a tax rate of $1.2854 per $100 valuation of properties, lowering the rate from years past. In addition, the board opted to not take advantage of three additional disaster pennies that would have been permitted by the state for this fiscal year due to Winter Storm Uri.
The board opted to lower the tax rate due to a projected surplus for this year’s budget thanks to higher-thanexpected projected enrollment figures and rising property values.
“Dr. Padavil shared some wonderful news that our enrollment is up,” said Lorine David, the chief financial officer for Taylor ISD. “If that ADA (Average Daily Attendance) is at 2,883, which I hope is still a conservative number, the total surplus with certified values and disaster pennies would be $883,000, and the surplus with certified values without disaster pennies is $304,000, so we do have a great opportunity maybe not to take advantage of the disaster pennies.”
In Texas, schools receive funding from the state in part from ADA, which is the projected enrollment divided by the number of days of instruction.
In June, when the board adopted the $43 million budget for this fiscal year, projected funding was based in part on an ADA of 2,737 students. However, a more realistic number is 2883, based on 3100 students enrolled with a 93% attendance rate, David said at the meeting.
Superintendent Devin Padavil recommended forgoing the disaster pennies funding, but with a caveat.
“Some things that could play against us is an unexpected surge of the pandemic or some sort of other natural disaster that gets in the way of kids going to school, but at this point, most school districts are planning for a return to normalcy,” Padavil said. In addition, the overall tax rate of $1.2854 reflected lower rates for both Maintenance and Operations and Interest and Sinking because of rising property values, Padavil said after the meeting “Taylor ISD chose to use the increased projection of appraisal value over the next year to lower the I&S tax rate by three pennies,” Padavil said. “Additionally, the M&O tax rate was lowered through state compression by another two pennies.”
Padavil said that had the board opted to take advantage of three disaster pennies from the state to bring in additional revenue to the school district, it would have created an even larger budget surplus and easily covered additional expenses to support the district, but it would have burdened the taxpayers during a year of rising costs.
“Because we understand the burden rising appraisals by Williamson County have on the property taxes of our residents, we recommended to our trustees that they consider not approving the three additional pennies,” he said. “They chose to take none of the pennies, effectively dropping the tax rate by five pennies. Since 2020, these tax rate drops have saved the average taxpayer more than $300 per year.”
Board President Marco Ortiz echoed this sentiment.
“As a board, we continue to provide a consistent message to our taxpayers that we have their best interests at heart,” he said. “The action we took to adopt a tax rate of $1.2854 is evidence of that.”
According to the Austin Board of Realtors statistics for July 2022, In Williamson County the median sales price for an average price soared to $485,000, a 10% increase over last year.
