GEORGE WEST – George West City Council voted to lower the tax rate by 2.5 cents at their Aug. 20 meeting however that does not guarantee that when the tax bill comes in the mail it will be lower .

Live Oak County chief appraiser Willie James told the council that if the city charged the same rate of $.58649 as last year it would collect an extra $26,000.

However the effective rate which is the rate that would allow the city to collect that exact same amount as last year is $.551 and the new proposed rate for this year is $.561. So while the tax rate is dropping it is called a tax rate increase because they are charging above the effective rate.

James told the council the increase in collections was due to some commercial property worth approximately $5.7 million was left off the tax roll and when that was added it would bring in an additional $32,750, for a total of an extra $47,700.

While the council members and mayor were excited to hear this news, they wanted to be fair to the citizens and ask James to start calculating using a lower tax rate.

They finally settled on a rate of $.56149 per $100 property valuation. At a 93 percent collection rate, which is the rate of taxes the city was able to collect last year, the council stands to gain $37,402 more than it had last year.

The council approved the new rate 4-0 (council member David Cantu was absent).

The council set the dates of Aug. 29 at 10 a.m. and Sept. 5 at 5:30 p.m. for the two public hearings required before a tax rate can be made official.