Midland City Council votes on budget, tax rate for FY 2024-25

During their Sept. 10 meeting, Midland City Council voted on budget and tax-related matters for the fiscal year 2024-25.

The budget ordinance will allocate funds for the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1, 2024, and ending Sept. 30, 2025. These funds will be used for the maintenance and operation of various city departments, as well as for activities and improvements throughout the city, such as infrastructure.

Mayor Lori Blong addressed the inclusion of unexpected funds in the budget. According to Blong, the appraisal district identified additional revenue that had not been part of the initial balanced budget during the last budget presentation.

The “found money” amounts to $1.2 million, which Blong proposed to partially allocate for a tax reduction while still contributing $800,000 to the city's fund balance.

Blong also addressed the importance of understanding enterprise funds, which cover essential services like water and sanitation.

“I think it's important for us to talk about the rest of those enterprise funds because there is a lot of confusion in the community about how those work,” she said. “Water, sanitation, and some of those other groups are also enterprise funds. When we look at the totality of the needs of our community, some of those are covered by enterprise funds and some of them are not. We can't use those dollars interchangeably between enterprise funds to address some of those needs. That's why this budget season is so important.”

The city council also voted on the tax rate for fiscal year 2024-25. According to the meeting packet, the proposed rate of 0.350662 per $100 valuation consists of a voter-approval maintenance and operations rate (0.29232) and a debt service levy (0.058342).

According to City Manager Tommy Gonzalez, this is the second consecutive year that the City Council has reduced the overall tax rate.

This meeting was the first public reading. The second public reading is set to be held before Oct. 1.