(Seguin) — Guadalupe County residents had the chance Tuesday to weigh in on the idea of creating one or more County Assistance Districts — a proposal that would collect sales tax in the unincorporated areas of the county in which to fund specific needs.
Although the deadline to place the matter before voters in the November election has already passed, county leaders say they still want to pursue the concept, using the coming months to gather input and address questions from constituents.
The County Assistance District, if approved by voters, would be authorized to collect a local sales tax — up to a maximum of 2 percent combined with other local taxes.
It’s only in the unincorporated areas of the county where they are currently at a 6.75 percent. That’s one and a half cents below the state maximum of 8.25 percent. If approved, it could generate an additional $1.5-$1.8 million.
During the public hearing, residents spoke in opposition. Terry Harper questioned whether the tax would even generate enough revenue to make a difference.
Former County Attorney Bob Etlinger urged commissioners to abandon the proposal altogether, saying it “should die right here.”
County Judge Kyle Kutscher explained that the measure would not involve raising property taxes, but rather sales taxes, with revenues restricted to “certain allowable uses.”
“I know that there’s a lot of individuals that see the word tax and have very strong feelings about it right. I think all of us have our own opinions about that and most people, no matter what your background is or perspective — don’t want to pay additional tax. I don’t like it. This court doesn’t like it. We are trying to find unique ways to solve very very big expensive challenges. Some of the questions were what are those issues? In local government code in the state of Texas that creates the ability to create these assistance districts also limit the ability of entities like counties to be able to use those funds only for specific things. So, the tax assistance district can only be used for road construction, for law enforcement, for detention and jail facilities, for fire protection or economic development,” said Kutscher.
Kutscher says no whether the county chooses to move forward with county assistance districts, the needs will still exist.
“We are looking at tremendous growth, a tremendous amount impact to our county roads and our inability to keep up with that development, a lot of drainage related problems, jail capacity issues, more law enforcement needs with the SO. We are at almost max capacity on the 598 (bed) jail. We are also going to have to use planning funds to look at feasibility options on the expansion of the current jail facility and its location or a new facility. None of us up here are excited about having a conversation about building a new adult detention facility. But we as five individuals don’t get to control how people act unfortunately, and they do stupid things sometimes and law enforcement gets involved. We are obligated as a county created by the state of Texas to have a jail facility,” said Kutscher.
Commissioner Pct. 3 Michael Carpenter told attendees that, as a consumption tax, the burden wouldn’t fall solely on county residents — noting that tourists, passersby, and even undocumented individuals who make purchases would contribute to the fund.
Carpenter says the state legislation has made things challenging for counties especially those who are experiencing rapid growth in the unincorporated areas.
“Because of the changes that the state legislator has made over the last three biennial sessions, cities largely cannot annex without voluntary annexations or elections and that’s not a bad thing but one of the cascading effects of that is that new development is going to happen in unincorporated areas of the county or ETJs – however the state legislator has also made it where any landowner that is in an ETJ can opt out of that ETJ and it becomes an unincorporated area of the county. So, the dynamic has shifted from years and years ago where cities tended to expand over time by annexation and unincorporated areas of the county would get smaller and smaller. We are actually in a dynamic now and we are struggling to figure out how to respond to it where the unincorporated areas in many if not most of the counties in the state are actually beginning to expand,” said Carpenter.
He added that, with the November ballot option off the table, the county now has roughly a year to explore this, and other possible revenue streams needed to support the area’s fast paced growth.
Meanwhile, Carpenter says he encourages residents to remain engaged and wants them to share ideas directly with him.
“The reason that we have the public hearing is we do want to hear from everyone. If you have other ideas of ways that we can do even better than we are doing now, we really do want to hear from you because we are struggling with these questions and the state legislator – God bless them – they sometimes don’t understand the cascading effects of the things that they put into place and we are trying to find ways to do things in a very conservative manner,” said Carpenter.
No action was taken on the matter, as the hearing was solely for public comment.