(Seguin) – While it wrangled the various line items of its budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court not only took a dip into reserves to fund needs, but it also reduced its proposed tax increase.
That is according to Guadalupe County Judge Kyle Kutscher who is helping to break down the numbers. He says the number crunching came after nearly 12 hours of budget discussions in which commissioners revisited spending requests, moved money between existing budget lines, removed a planned $2 million capital allocation and ultimately agreed to use fund balance and reserves.
He says the end result is a budget that provides more flexibility for several county departments while reducing the proposed tax increase from 5.65 percent to 4 percent.
Kutscher says he was reluctant throughout much of the process to use reserves because of the county’s long-term financial position.
“The court ultimately decided to use some of the fund balance and reserves to address some of the public safety-related items within the budget, some of the positions we’ve talked about,” said Kutscher. “That was a total of about $2.15 million.”
Those expenditures include three additional patrol deputies for the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office, additional firefighters for Guadalupe County Fire Rescue, emergency funding for volunteer fire departments and additional resources for the county’s four constable offices and fire marshal’s office, along with other departmental adjustments.
At the same time, he says commissioners removed a $2 million allocation that had been included in the general fund for a future building purchase.
He says that change helped offset much of the additional spending approved during Tuesday’s meeting.
“Ultimately removing the $2 million out of the fund balance for the building purchase helps offset that allocation of the $2.15 million that we use to add the additional changes,” said Kutscher.
The proposed tax rate adopted earlier in the budget process was $0.3549 per $100 of taxable value, representing a 5.65 percent increase. Commissioners voted Tuesday to use approximately $1.145 million in fund balance to lower that rate to $0.3493, which represents a 4 percent overall increase in the proposed number.
Kutscher says despite the action, it should be noted that it did not eliminate the tax increase.
He says the “distinction is important because commissioners did not reduce the tax rate below the county’s current rate. Instead, they reduced the size of the increase that had been proposed.”
Kutscher says the court’s reasoning for using approximately $1.145 million in reserves to lower the tax increase was tied in part to how much money typically remains unspent by county departments at the end of a budget year.
“We were talking about that going with unspent funds,” said Kutscher. “We’ll typically see about $1 million to $1.5 million return from departments. You’ve got $100 million total budget, 1 percent to 1.5 percent across the board typically go unspent.”
He says those dollars do not necessarily represent money that departments failed to need.
“Sometimes you have projects earmarked and those funds are used already, and sometimes that comes into fund balance, and that’s part of what you see in those reserves,” said Kutscher. “So the court kind of offset that, I think, in that discussion going, ‘Look, let’s use that to decrease the tax rate increase,’ knowing there’s a very good chance we’re going to see that $1 million or $1.1 or $1.2 come back,” said Kutscher.
Still, the use of reserves was not a decision Kutscher says he took lightly.
Throughout the budget process, he had repeatedly warned commissioners about the importance of protecting the county’s financial position and avoiding the temptation to treat reserves as an unlimited source of money.
“I feel like I had to be the gatekeeper for so many years and even in this process about reserves because it’s easy to dip into that bucket,” said Kutscher. “But if you just, if it’s easy, people will want to continue to do that.”
Kutscher says he struggled with crossing that threshold during his final budget process, but ultimately believed the circumstances warranted a limited use of reserves.
“It was hard for me to cross that threshold to do something I really didn’t want to do,” said Kutscher. “But at the same time, I felt like there was enough caution in the conversation that people knew how serious it was, that it created a different conversation as opposed to, ‘Oh, there’s just a pot of money there we don’t think we’re ever going to need. Let’s go do this.’”
Respnsible for the financial pressure facing the county was a major factor throughout the budget process.
The county’s taxable property value fell from approximately $21.98 billion in 2025 to about $20.90 billion in 2026. New property added to the tax roll also declined, from approximately $921.5 million last year to about $864.2 million this year.
Kutscher from the very beginning described the county’s financial environment as one of the most challenging it has faced in recent years, citing slowing revenue growth, declining taxable values, additional state-authorized exemptions and increasing costs for mandated services.
Meanwhile, Kutscher says the decisions made Tuesday should not be viewed as an indication that the county has unlimited financial flexibility.
“None of us have to stick around. We’re trying to do the right thing. And the last thing I want to do, even though, especially since I’m not going to be there, is to leave a problem,” said Kutscher.
Again, the final tax rate for Guadalupe County is $0.3493 per $100 of property valuation. This represents a 4 percent increase and an overall decrease from the original proposed tax rate.