posted June 18 -

Bee County commissioners want to make sure the county is getting a fair price for tax collection services.

The four local school districts want the county to collect their taxes for them, but they want to make sure their taxpayers aren’t being overcharged.

Unless both sides can set a rate they all agree on, the whole kitandkaboodle may end up in court.

At stake is tens of thousands of dollars.

Bee County Judge David Silva told commissioners Monday that Beeville ISD has obtained an attorney to help it fight — if need be — the rate adopted by commissioners earlier this month.

“My purpose of this meeting today is to maybe reach a point where we can live with what we charge, they can live with what we charge and  the litigation can stop,” Silva said during a special-called meeting of the commissioners court. “If we go into litigation... we all lose. We would lose, they would lose, we all would lose.”

Beeville ISD Superintendent Dr. John Hardwick Jr. said the school district was forced to hire an attorney after the county notified it in May that the county tax assessor-collector would not be able to collect taxes for the school districts unless she collected the rate set by the commissioners court.

Hardwick said the school district could collect its own taxes but would need time to set up an office and hire personnel. He said the school district would have to do that quickly if it wanted to collect the taxes before trustees adopt next year’s budget.

An ongoing issue

The matter has come up year after year without being resolved to the satisfaction of everyone involved.

The school districts brought up the subject a number of years ago, saying they thought they were being overcharged.

Commissioners asked the state comptroller’s office for help.

Representatives from the comptroller’s office came to Bee County to lend a hand. They studied the issue and then provided a formula to commissioners to help them determine how much to charge the taxing entities in the county for tax collection services. 

The county tax assessor-collector’s office collects taxes for all the other local taxing entities, including the city of Beeville, the tax increment finance zone, Coastal Bend College, Bee Groundwater Conservation District, Beeville Water Supply District, the fire prevention districts in each region of the county and school districts in Pawnee, Skidmore-Tynan, Pettus and Beeville.

 The state comptroller’s formula is based on the number of parcels of property on which tax is collected, the amount of tax revenue generated by the individual taxing entity and other factors.

The comptroller’s report also revealed that the county had overcharged the four school districts and other taxing entities.

After learning of the overcharges, instead of reimbursing the taxing entities, the county charged each taxing entity a reduced fee of $2 per parcel of property for the last three years for the school districts and a reduced rate for all the other taxing jurisdictions.

Commissioners were supposed to get together with the representatives from the four school districts last year and come up with a fair rate. But the two sides didn’t meet and commissioners simply continued to charge the school districts the $2 per parcel flat rate fee.

This spring the two sides got together and the school districts agreed to pay a flat rate fee of $1 per parcel. 

Who sets the rate?

At a meeting in May, county commissioners said they didn’t think the $1 per parcel was fair to county taxpayers.

Bee County Tax Assessor-Collector Andrea Gibbud told commissioners this spring that the school districts could contract with her office directly for tax collection services if they didn’t like the rate set by the county.

She said the school districts can set their own rates and she would have to collect that amount, not the amount set by the commissioners court.

The commissioners asked Bee County Attorney Mike Knight if that was the case and Knight informed them in May that the commissioners were solely responsible for setting the rate for tax collection services. If the other taxing entities didn’t like the rate set by the commissioners they could either negotiate for a lower amount or collect their own taxes, he said.

Gibbud agreed with that assessment but noted that the rate set by commissioners had to be based on the actual cost of collecting the taxes for the other entities.

“If all the (taxing) jurisdictions went away, there would still be a tax office, there would still be tax bills to mail, there would still be a need for a computer program and computers to run that program on,” she said during the May meeting. “There would still be a need for postage, there would still be a need for envelopes, there would still be a need for staff because the county would still have taxes to collect.” 

She said the county only spends an additional $3,000 or so collecting taxes for the other taxing entities. 

“You are the only ones who have the authority to determine actual costs,” she told commissioners that day. “But I think you have to use the definition that’s provided in the various attorney general opinions in effect and not come up with some cost that has nothing to do with what it actually cost the county to collect its own taxes. I think this is a situation where a definition has been created and not what is actually in the tax code.”

The commissioners court went ahead and set a rate of $2 per parcel during the May 12 meeting. At that rate, BISD would be expected to pay the county roughly $26,000 for tax collection services.

Shortly afterward, BISD trustees agreed to contract directly with the tax assessor-collector’s office for $1 per parcel. Under that resolution, BISD would have paid the county about $13,000.

Changed their minds

Commissioners decided later in May to rescind the $2 flat rate and instead charge the tax entities a fee based on the state comptroller’s formula.

Under the state comptroller’s formula, BISD could be expected to pay about $34,000 for tax collection services.

Precinct 2 Commissioner Susan Stasny said at that meeting that the percentage-based formula is fairer than the flat rate because some taxing entities have more parcels of property than others and a very low tax rate. 

Commissioners also agreed to notify the four area school districts that the county will not honor any resolution they have passed that sets a fee for tax collection services. 

Litigation rears its ugly head

At Monday’s meeting, Silva informed his colleagues that BISD has obtained an attorney and appears willing to sue the county unless it allows the school district to pay Gibbud the $1 per parcel rate for tax collection services.

Silva said the attorney representing BISD has assured the school board that they do not have to pay the rate set by the commissioners court.

“I think the board has met on that and is going forward (with a possible lawsuit) and I think the commissioners court needs to look at this again and come up with a figure that maybe we can live with and that the school district can live with as well,” Silva told the commissioners. “We probably will not get all that we want and neither will the school district. We can give and take a little bit.”

He reminded commissioners that any litigation would cost the taxpayers of Bee County and the taxpayers of the school districts, who also pay taxes to Bee County, and vice versa.

“I wish that the BISD taxpayers didn’t pay taxes to the county or to the city, and I wish the county taxpayers didn’t pay taxes to the ISDs or the college,” he said. “We’re taxing the same people. So if we go into litigation, this is us, it’s among ourselves. And we all lose. That’s my feeling.”

The three other school districts are waiting to see how BISD fares before they also hire attorneys or contract with the tax assessor-collector’s office, Hardwick explained.

“They’re letting BISD take the lead,” he said.

‘Not going to fly’

Hardwick was the only school chief to attend Monday’s meeting. He assured commissioners that his board of trustees was set on the $1 per parcel fee.

He said the school district could probably staff its own tax office and spend between $1.25 and $1.50 per parcel to collect its own taxes if it were pressed.

Silva said he felt the school board might be willing to accept up to $1.25 per parcel and appeared to be steering his colleagues to accept that amount. 

He said he met with the trustees and was assured by school board President Nick Cardenas that “the $2 per parcel was not going to fly.”

The three commissioners present, Carlos Salazar Jr., Eloy Rodriguez and Ronnie Olivares, said they were willing to abandon the state comptroller’s formula and adopt the $2 flat rate fee.

But they said they didn’t think it was fair to county taxpayers to go lower than that.

Salazar said he came to the meeting with the intention of rescinding the fee based on the comptroller’s formula and re-adopting the $2 flat rate, which would have saved BISD some $8,000, just to show he was willing to work with the school districts.

Rodriguez reminded his colleagues that the county’s own attorney had assured them that the school districts could not contract directly with the tax assessor-collector’s office.

“Nobody wants to go into litigation,” Rodriguez said. “We want to be fair but at the same time we want the school districts to be fair with us and not taking advantage of us.”

He said BISD issued a report of tax collection rates set in other counties and the report showed that G-P paid far less than BISD was being asked to pay.

But Rodriguez said the report didn’t include other school districts that paid more than G-P or Beeville, such as Alice ISD.

“Hopefully there’s not a trust issue in this thing, but we’re seeing figures that are favorable to the district but then we’re doing some homework and finding out there are some other similar-sized districts that are paying much more than what Beeville is paying,” he said. “I’m all for helping the school districts, but we also run a business here. We’re not here to just give away money for services.”

Nevertheless, he said he was also willing to rescind the rate based on the comptroller’s formula for the $2 per parcel flat rate.

“I don’t want to be shortchanged and I don’t want the citizens of Bee County to be shortchanged by undercharging the people we deal with,” he said. “I want to be fair. I think by us digressing to $1.25 is not fair to the taxpayers of Bee County.”

Rodriguez said he believed the $2 rate is a generous offer on behalf of the county.

“Using the formula recommended by the state comptroller’s office, then BISD would have to pay a lot more,” he said.

Rodriguez wanted to postpone voting on the issue until Commissioner Stasny was in court because she had done most or all of the research on the matter on behalf of the commissioners.

Silva said he didn’t believe the school district could wait until Stasny’s return.

Salazar finally recommended that the commissioners court set a flat rate of $1.50 and hope that the school board will accept it.

His colleagues accepted the recommendation.

At that rate, BISD will pay about $19,000.

However, County Judge Silva did not vote either way. The vote was 3-0.