According to the City of Odessa’s proposed budget, next year’s property tax will remain the same as this year’s. In addition, officials expect to see a 5% increase or a nearly $2.6 million increase in property tax revenue.
While the property tax rate is expected to stay the same, that does not mean city property taxes won’t go up due to rising appraisals. Residents will be seeing increases in water, sewer and solid waste fees.
City officials recently posted the proposed FY23-24 budget on its website.
According to that document, residents will see a 6% rate increase in water and sewer rates and a 3.5% increase in solid waste rates. Inflationary costs account for 2.5% of the rate increase for water and sewer and the remaining 3.5% is for the additional debt issued during FY21 for the rehabilitation of the water treatment plant, the document states.
According to that document, property tax revenues were projected using an ad valorem tax rate of $0.483791 per $100 valuation. The proposed rate is the same as this year, but higher than the no-new-revenue tax rate of $0.474371, but lower than the voter-approved rate of $0.522978.
The city’s proposed general fund expenditures for next year is nearly $14 million or 12.58% higher than the current year. According to the proposed budget, the increase can be attributed to increased fuel, chemical, street material costs and proposed increases in personnel costs.
In a letter to the city council, new City Manager John Beckmeyer wrote the proposed budget anticipates $269,555,712 in total revenues and total expenditures of $277,023,424. The general fund revenues are projected to be $12 million or 10.9% higher than this year for a total of $121,992,030, he said.
He wrote that in the past, the city has used excess revenue to make one-time expenditures, but this year they instituted a zero-based budget where department heads were asked to enter their operational expenditures by line item and they were only to submit one-time expenditures “that were critical to the operation of their department, needed to provide services to citizens or due to the inflationary costs the city has been experiencing these last several months.”
For months Mayor Javier Joven said he wanted the city to adopt a zero-based budget and said T2 Professional Consulting was going to help city officials determine the appropriate number of full-time positions needed in each department. He questioned the intelligence of keeping long open positions budgeted.
The Odessa American filed a Texas Public Information Act request seeking the number of all positions cut during the budget process, the department each position was listed under, the salary for each position cut, how long each position was vacant and how many budgeted positions there were for each department impacted by the cuts.
The OA was told “There are currently no approved budget cuts until the beginning of the fiscal year October 1, 2023.”
According to a general fund overview document, the proposed budgets for several departments have increased substantially:
- Fire Department: $30.5 million to $35 million
- Street department: $10.6 million to $16.3 million
- Public Works: $459,000 to $1.7 million.
- Parks and recreation: $7.1 million to roughly $8.5 million.
- Traffic engineering: $2.3 million to roughly $2.7 million.
- City Manager’s office: Roughly $1.6 million to just under $1.9 million.
- City Attorney’s Office: $2.3 million to just under $2.5 million.
- Building services: Approximately $2 million to $2.2 million.
- Building inspection: $1.7 million to $1.9 million
- Planning and Development department: $649,049 to $939,587.
- Code Enforcement department: From $1.9 million to roughly $2.4 million.
- Public Safety communications: $2.4 million to just under $2.6 million.
A few departments saw cuts. Downtown Odessa is projected to lose $300 and “outside agencies” will lose roughly $9,000, but the Odessa Police Department’s budget will fall from around $33.4 million to roughly $31.4 million.
The Odessa City Council voted in December to use American Rescue Plan Act funding to provide raises to city firefighters, police officers and dispatchers.
Budget documents indicate the city has budgeted for five more firefighters than last year or 240 and it has budgeted for 10 more police officers or 248.
The bulk of the cuts in the police department fall under “personal services.” Last year, the city budgeted $25.3 million under that category. This year, that number is $23.5 million. OPD’s maintenance budget was also slashed to $68,559 from $218,359.
Internal emails and memos obtained by the Odessa American earlier this year showed a high level of frustration within the city’s public works and street departments with officials bemoaning the low pay for their workers and their inability to recruit and retain workers.
Budget documents indicate the budget increases in the public works, building inspection, traffic engineering and parks departments will be dedicated to capital projects. The number of budgeted personnel in those departments will remain unchanged for the most part.
The parks department is getting $1.3 million for capital projects and the public works department will receive $800,000.
The number of budgeted positions in the street department will increase from 36 to 45, documents show.
Public documents obtained by the OA also revealed the city attorney’s office lost several attorneys after City Attorney Natasha Brooks was fired in December. According to this year’s proposed budget, the city is budgeting for 14 attorneys instead of the 19 they budgeted for in the two years prior. However, the office’s overall budget is expected to increase from $2.3 million to $2.5 million.
Beckmeyer, who began his job Aug. 10, wrote the proposed budget “reflects a conservative outlook for the next year, while at the same time allowing us the ability to continue with some major projects and the required day-to-day operations of the city.”
