Mayor Turner Looks To Property Tax Increases To Fund Recovery
This fall, Mayor Sylvester Turner will ask City Council to approve a temporary 8.9% property tax hike to help fund Houston's recovery from Hurricane Harvey. The proposal, which will reach a formal vote in about a month, would increase the property tax rate from 58.64 cents to 63.87 cents per $100 of appraised value. The mayor is allowed to proposed an increase beyond the so-called revenue cap by declaring a state of emergency, allowing the city to collect an additional $113M for one year.
The city's voter-imposed revenue cap limits the annual growth of Houston's property tax revenue growth to the combined rates of inflation and population growth, or 4.5%, whichever is lower.
Turner's proposal comes after months of debate over the property tax rate at the Texas Capitol in Austin, where Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed four new pieces of property tax legislation into law. Notably, SB2, which would trigger automatic elections if property tax rates spiked, did not make it through the special session.
