MARFA – The Marfa City Council met this week to approve a preliminary tax rate for the budget season and to hear from the Presidio County Appraisal District (PCAD) on its budget needs and processes, which are becoming increasingly complex due to state requirements, officials said.

With the exception of Mark Morrison, all council members were present.

Property tax collection, one of the city’s revenue sources, is determined by the tax rate. While the tax rate has yet to be formally adopted, for now council members have settled on the voter-approved rate of .328 per $100 of taxable value, a 1.6% increase over last year’s tax rate. “This kind of gives us permission to work with that rate for the budget,” said City Manager Mandy Roane.

Mayor Manny Baeza said he plans to present the budget proposal to council members later this month.

Last year’s taxable values ​​were around $316 million, resulting in a tax rate of .323 and a tax levy of $1,022,579 – which is paid to the city’s general fund and its debt repayment. The city is in the process of paying off a $3 million tax debt for road repairs.

This year’s taxable values ​​are $336,068,084, a 6% increase from last year. “This is one of the lowest increases in a long time,” said City Auditor Dan Dunlap, who presented the tax rate summary on behalf of Presidio County Tax Collector Natalia Williams.

This year’s voter approval rate — the maximum rate allowed by law without voter approval — allows for $77,500 in additional tax revenue. The tax rate without new revenue, another option the council could use to raise the same amount as last year, is .304.

The Council will officially adopt the tax rate in late September and will begin announcing dates for public hearings shortly.

Council members also heard an update from Chief Assessor Cynthia Ramirez on the appraisal district’s budget and operations. She asked the council to allow the district to retain the city’s share of the surplus funds from last year’s budget, about $4,000, and approve the new budget. (The appraisal district is funded by local taxing entities, including the city of Marfa.)

Ramirez explained that the appraisal district’s budget is increasing from $533,752 last year to $656,123 this year due to a number of factors. The district dropped its previous appraisal contractor, Western Valuation, with whom it had worked for about 10 years at a very reasonable rate, Ramirez said. The new company, Pritchard and Abbott Inc., is a much larger company that will send larger teams to the area to assist Ramirez.

“Their fee will be much higher than what we paid to Western Valuation. They will be about $43,000, and we are paying Western almost $20,000,” Ramirez said.

Roane asked if the appraisal district’s existing staff could work toward obtaining higher qualifications so that the PCAD can rely less on contractors in the future. Ramirez said her team is working on it, but there are four levels of appraisers and the exams to obtain higher qualifications are “very difficult.” So right now, she’s the only real estate appraiser (RPA) in the office, which means she has a significant workload and needs the assistance of contractors.

The assessment district also plans to hire a part-time employee to help update the maps, she said. The PCAD’s maps were reviewed by the State Comptroller’s Office this year, she explained, and they were cut because the majority of parcels in the district are unparceled. That and additional new state requirements put a strain on staff, she said.

“The state has so many mandates now and in the legislative session last year they gave even more responsibility to the assessment districts,” Ramirez said. “We have more sites to deal with… they’re putting more and more demands on the district, which I think is a little more stressful for all of us.”

Ramirez said the budget also includes raises for herself, as she is underpaid compared to other assessors and her staff. The PCAD’s expenses have also increased, she said, as costs for technology, mapping and website services have increased.

The council agreed to let the assessment district keep its surplus from this year and approved its budget for next year. The increase in the payment to the city is less than $9,000, Baeza said. “I think we can absorb that cost,” he said.

Councilman Eddie Pallarez, who sits on the assessment district committee as the city council’s representative, said there were long discussions about the various budget increases, but in the end everyone agreed they were necessary to support the district and its employees.

“It’s a lot of money, but we want to keep Ms. Ramirez and all the staff and give them as much as we can afford,” Pallarez said. “We are willing to support that.”

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