Friday, March 29, 2024

Growing pains

Posted

The Granbury City Council may back the blue with more taxpayer green, raising the city’s property tax rate by almost 8 cents per $100 valuation to bolster a police department whose chief says is understaffed, underpaid, overworked and overwhelmed.

If that happens, though, Granbury will still have one of the lowest property tax rates in the area, according to city officials.

Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed a bill capping property tax revenues at 3.5 percent unless voters agree otherwise, but City Manager Chris Coffman said that the new law will not affect the upcoming budget cycle.

At the city’s annual budget workshop held Monday at the Lake Granbury Conference Center, Police Chief Mitch Galvan told council members that his officers are leaving for better-paying jobs in other cities after Granbury has paid to put them through the police academy. They are also exhausted from routinely working hours of overtime, he said.

In addition to requesting more officers, Galvan and Coffman are recommending across-the-board pay increases for officers of $7,000 per year.

“They can go anywhere else and not work near as hard and make more money,” Galvan said about the department’s retention problem.

Mayor Pro Tem Tony Mobly told the HCN after the workshop that he supports the proposed property tax rate increase and feels that the rest of the council likely will as well.

The council will vote to adopt the 2019-2020 fiscal year budget in September after holding public hearings. The new fiscal year will begin on Oct. 1.

“We’ve got to give them a reason to stay here in a town they can afford to live in,” Mobly said of the city’s police officers. “I don’t want to get them ready for the major leagues only for them to go somewhere else to play ball.”

TAXPAYER IMPACT

Galvan and Coffman are asking the council to consider a property tax rate increase of .0773 cents per $100 valuation, bringing the tax rate from .399385 to .4767.

Revenue raised would fund additional police personnel and more competitive salaries for the department.

If the council agrees to the increase, Granbury’s property tax rate would still be lower than that of Weatherford, Benbrook, Mineral Wells, Kennedale, Burleson, White Settlement, Fort Worth and Cleburne, according to city staff. It would be slightly higher than Stephenville’s (.4750) and that of Glen Rose (.384074).

The annual impact on a property tax bill would be: $62 for a home valued at $80,000; $77 for a home valued at $100,000; $155 for a $200,000 home; $193 for a home valued at $250,000; and $386 for a house worth $500,000.

Each cent of the increase would bring a revenue of about $136,000.

City officials have kept Granbury’s property tax rate at around 40 cents per $100 valuation since 2010.

PUBLIC SAFETY PLAN

In a slide presentation to the council, Galvan detailed a proposal for adding 24 new positions to the Police Department through 2022.

New positions would include: 19 patrol officers (one patrol sergeant, 14 patrol officers and two to four traffic officers); two investigators; one lieutenant; one receptionist; and one community service/administration officer.

Seven new positions were approved last year. Under Galvan’s proposal, seven additional positions would be added this year, six positions in 2020, two in 2021 and another two in 2022.

Galvan noted that some of the new positions will need to be “pushed out” until a new, freestanding police headquarters is built.

Currently, the department is housed in cramped quarters inside Granbury City Hall, where four patrol sergeants share one office.

For the upcoming fiscal year, the salary adjustments, new positions and two additional Tahoes will cost $1,050,877.

Galvan said that officers are unable to raise the department’s visibility in neighborhoods because they are kept busy working more than 1,000 traffic accidents per year in the growing city.

According to Coffman, Granbury is just 75 people shy of the 10,000 mark. The U.S. Census Bureau recently determined that Hood County is the ninth fastest-growing county in the country.

Galvan said that traffic accidents require the response of two or three officers, “depending on how bad the wreck is. It takes a lot of man hours.”

Galvan wants to create a traffic unit that will do nothing but work accidents and enforce traffic laws.

“Traffic is a huge problem for our city and it’s not going to go away any time soon,” he stated.

NEW POLICE STATION

The proposed budget prepared under Coffman’s supervision suggests issuing 20-year Certificates of Obligation for the $13 million police station later this year.

Plans for a freestanding police station have been discussed by city officials since 2008.

The police station has been designed to meet the city’s needs for the next 40 years, Coffman said.

He told the council that Jeff Gerber, chief executive officer of Pierce, Goodwin, Alexander & Linville, Inc. (PGAL), is scheduled to address the council about the building’s design at the council’s regular meeting on Tuesday, July 2.

kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 258.