County Officials Vote 4-1 to Raise Property Taxes

The Fayette County Commissioners Court voted 4-1 last Friday to propose a nearly 3.5 cent property tax increase.

Overall property appraisals were down across the County this year. The certified values dropped from about $5.93 billion in 2025 to $5.859 billion this year. At the Commissioners Court meeting last Friday, Fayette County Chief Appraiser Amanda Thibodeaux said the decrease was mostly due to lower mineral values in January, when they are calculated for tax purposes. She said a new state law granting business a $150,000 personal property exemption drove down values as well.

The current property tax rate for the County is $0.40984 per $100 of taxable value. The rate to bring in the same revenue as this year, known as the no-new revenue rate, would have been $0.42030 per $100. The Court instead chose the highest rate they could set without triggering a tax election, known as the voter approval rate, which is $0.44439.

At that rate, the County will generate approximately $25,484,481.22 in property taxes, assuming a 98 percent collection rate. According to documents presented at Friday’s meeting, property taxes this year generated $25,051,508.33 in revenue for the County.

Pct. 1 Commissioner Jason McBroom cast the single dissenting vote on proposed tax increase.

“This proposed rate, the voter approval rate, the burden now is going to be on the taxpayers to make up for the loss of mineral values and the personal property exemption,” McBroom said during the meeting. “It’s going to raise our tax rate. I don’t remember the last time it was $0.444. It’s been a long time.”

McBroom was also the only dissenting vote on the proposed budget, which the Court approved Friday. The budget, as presented Friday, showed a surplus of about $368,000 in the general fund and approximately $626,000 overall. However, County Auditor Cindy Havelka said she still needed to update a few line items in the budget.

When the vote to propose the tax rate came up, Pct. 4 Commissioner Drew Brossmann suggested that the Court could lower the rate when it comes up for final approval next month.

“If we pass this now, you file it, and then once you get all the figures, can we lower it?” Brossmann asked.

Havelka responded by saying the Court could lower the tax rate at final approval, but they could not raise it.

Brossmann moved to propose the rate, and Pct. 2 Commissioner Clint Sternadel seconded it. Brossmann, Sternadel, Pct. 3 Commissioner Harvey Berckenhoff and County Judge Dan Mueller voted in favor of the proposed rate.

If the rate goes into effect, it will be the highest property tax rate the County has imposed since 2017.

The Court had been navigating this year’s budget process somewhat in the dark. The Fayette County Appraisal District calculates property tax revenue projections based on appraised values. Those numbers were not available until last week. And by state law, Friday was the last day the Court had to officially propose the budget.

The votes last Friday followed a contentious budget workshop held the day prior. Up to that point, the Court had not yet approved nor denied any of the non-routine spending requests from various department heads. Some of the items included new vehicle purchases, new equipment and new staff positions. At the meeting on Thursday, Aug. 13, Havelka pushed the Commissioners to make a decision on those items.

“We’re trying to decipher all this to make sure we have the right numbers before we make a decision,” Brossmann said. “At the last meeting, we had absolutely no clue what our revenues were going to be. So it’s kind of hard to say let’s slash and do this and that when you don’t have all the facts. I’m not going to shoot in the dark.”

“Let me reframe something for you,” Havelka said. “This is not my job, but I am doing it. It is the County Judge’s (job). He is the budget officer. All I am supposed to do is give him assistance by providing him with information.”

The Court ultimately approved each and every one of the requests.

At that point in the process, the budget showed a $2.7 million surplus in 2027. (However, as noted earlier, the surplus shrank to $626,000 after all spending requests were accounted for.) Plum resident William Bernsen, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for County Judge in the Republican Primary this year, was at the meeting. He questioned the large surplus and asked the Court to consider lowering the property tax rate.

“I just want to make sure I understand this correctly,” Bernsen said. “With the current budget, with all these numbers plugged in, with all the increases and extra asks and all the salary increases, we still have a $2.7 million surplus? If that’s the case, how is our surplus so high? And shouldn’t we consider, I don’t know, lowering the tax rate?”

Bernsen said he could understand the surplus if the County were to put some of it in the contingency fund for future emergencies. Last year, the County placed $700,000 of surplus funds into the contingency fund. But the Court did not do that this year.”

“William, I agree,” McBroom said. “But it goes back to the tax rate, which we just got late Tuesday afternoon. I mean, I agree, it is something to look at.”

Fayette County EMS Director Josh Vandever blamed some of the consternation on the State Legislature for mandating such a difficult budget calendar.

“This is the same story every single year,” Vandever said at the meeting. “We present this doom and gloom scenario of what the budget is going to look like. We go through this whole process and we don’t have any factual information until the week y’all are expected to make a $30 million decision. It’s the process that’s the problem, and the process is prescribed by the legislature.”