Taylor County Judge addresses tax increase & residents’ requests

TAYLOR COUNTY, Texas ( KTAB/KRBC ) — In this week’s episode of Big Country Politics, Taylor County Judge Phil Crowley discussed the 2024 budget, which faced a $20 million deficit. To address this, the county made $12 million in cuts and increased taxes, prioritizing public safety and law enforcement.

He shared that the county budget started the year with a $20 million deficit due to requests from county departments and outside agencies compared to the projected revenue.

“One thing to keep in mind that’s different about local government and even state government is we’re not Washington D.C… We don’t get to run deficits, we don’t get to print money, we don’t get to borrow money. So when you’re looking at a $20 million deficit, you have to balance those books. We ended up with $12 million in cuts in terms of turning down requests and had to find other ways to fund the rest,” Crowley shared. “I always look at my number one priority, which is public safety and law and order. When I say law and order, I mean the sheriff’s office, I mean the constable’s office, juvenile probation, the jail, the court system, the District Attorney’s Office and indigent defense… We have to fund those costs as well.”

He mentioned that delivering the news about budget cuts is not always easy, but the staff understands and collaborates.

“It could be a challenge, for sure, especially at the county level. Most of your officials are elected officials in their own right, but they do come to Commissioners Court for the funds, so they’re not always the most pleasant conversations. But our elected officials are reasonable, and our department heads are reasonable, so they understand, and we just try to work together. They come up with the best formula we can. Sometimes, we obviously have to stair-step projects in terms of adding personnel or different projects, so they’re frank conversations but good conversations, and everyone’s always reasonable and understands,” Crowley shared.

This is Crowley’s second year tackling the Taylor County Budget, and he says he is gaining more knowledge every day, particularly in problem-solving.

“Just kind of like anything you do in life, you get better as you go. I guess I’d say I was a redshirt freshman last year, and now I definitely have more knowledge about how it works. I definitely think that I was able to bring more to the table this year and contribute more in terms of problem-solving. When I say problem-solving, that’s what we really try to do,” Crowley shared. “So we made those $12 million in cuts. We had almost $2 million in new construction that was added. We ended up pulling about $2 million out of the fund balance, which is the county’s operating account, savings account, and operating account while we’re waiting on property taxes to roll in. We also ended up raising some more revenue by using some federal ARPA grant money to fund some projects. We’re also going to do a certificate of obligation for some of those projects to keep it off the tax rate.”

He mentioned that the budget for this cycle is slightly more than 110 million, with Taylor County allocating at least 50% of the budget to public safety and law enforcement.

“There are some things, though, that the sheriff’s office needed that we could not cut out of the budget. The jail needed a new roof, and just a couple of years ago, that roof was going to cost 1.4 million dollars. Now it’s going to be at least 4 million, possibly 6 million. And of course, when you’re working on a roof, you sometimes have to move inmates, and so the county may have about $2.5 million in terms of housing inmates and other detention facilities, just because they’re strict jail standards,” Crowley explained. “Then we also had $500,000 for a storage facility for some things that they need to store, and also $1 million for a training facility. So right now, the county has a gun range, and that’s all we have in terms of training. Something I find embarrassing, there’s not even a restroom out there. Our female deputies have to go into town in Tuscola to use a restroom. I think accounting for our size, especially in 2024, needs a training facility.”

He mentioned that they are also working on a fiber project to establish a backup, ensuring communication between the jail and the rest of the county. To afford all these projects, Taylor County will submit a Certificate of Obligation .

“What we did is we’re going to do a 10 million what’s called a Certificate of Obligation, and how we’re going to pay for that is going to be over 15 years, and we’ll pay for that with about $1 million a year in new construction. That’ll come off the top. The beauty of that is the people out in the county who are relying the most on the sheriff’s office in terms of law enforcement will be actually paying the bill for that instead of the majority of our tax base, which is in Abilene,” Crowley shared.

They needed to deal with approximately $16 million in infrastructure expenses. Crowley outlined several tasks they had to tackle, including paving projects at the Expo Center, hiring four sheriff’s office employees and two deputy constables, and boosting funding to volunteer fire departments by $30,000.

“The big thing about $1.1 million extra this year is more ambulance coverage. So, right now, we have one full-time ambulance and one part-time ambulance. When you’re looking at Ovalo, wait times can sometimes be 45 minutes. When you’re looking at Merkel and Trent and Tye, they can sometimes be 30 minutes. What we’re going to have starting October 1 is three full-time ambulances with our View station in the center of the county. Merkel is going to have its own station. Tuscola is going to have its own station, so we’re going to reduce those times in half, if not by two-thirds,” Crowley said.

Crowley mentioned they had to make numerous cuts to balance the deficit this year.

“What that means is it’s terms of requests versus projected revenue. So, like I said, we started 20 million and had to figure out a way to get that to zero. Because, as you mentioned, every year, counties, cities, and states don’t have the luxury that the federal government has, which honestly, I think, gets them in trouble. But we can’t print money, we can’t borrow money. We can’t just have a rolling deficit, and so we have to close that deficit each year, which is what Taylor County did with cuts and also pulling money from the fund balance, pulling money from new construction, and pulling in new revenue,” Crowley explained. “A large portion of those cuts, even though our priority is the sheriff’s office and our priority is public safety in general, a lot of those cuts came from the sheriff’s office. They asked for quite a few new employees, and we had to cut down to four. We’d like to have more new employees to cover the county. But again, we have to think of the taxpayer.”

Overall, the Taylor County budget experienced $12 million in cuts. Factors such as inflation and supply chain issues influenced the deficit.

“We pulled 2 million out of new construction money. We pulled 2 million out of the fund balance. We’re about 2.87 cents over the no new revenue rate from last year. That’s a tax increase. They’re bringing new revenue to the county. For your average taxpayer, if you have a household of about $213,000 in value, close to 214,000, that’s the average tax with the average home price; you’re going to see about $4.84 more a month in additional taxes from the county,” Crowley shared.

In addition to inflation, Crowley stated that they have had to spend more on inmate healthcare.

“We spend about $5 million a year on inmate healthcare. So literally, if you have juveniles and the juvenile detention center, you have adults in the Taylor County jail. Besides being humane, the courts say you have to provide them with healthcare. We have a legal obligation. To be frank, sometimes people neglect conditions on the streets, such as diabetes or high blood pressure or heart disease, if it’s extended to that point, or other issues from drugs and they go to jail, and now they have nothing to do except focus on their court case and also focus on trying to rehabilitate themselves,” Crowley shared. “Our bills have gone way up just on indigent or inmate healthcare. We’re now spending almost $3 million a year on that. $565,000, our indigent defense costs have gone up to almost $5 million a year. With a $400,000 increase on the juvenile side, we’re having to spend $500,000 a year on residential treatment. So we’re talking about juveniles that have drug addiction or are sex offenders, and so they need treatment for those two issues. Because especially when we’re talking about the juvenile justice system, the whole goal is rehabilitation. We’re hoping that we can save and change these people before they become adults, and so we’re having to pay for that treatment as well. These are costs you can cut, plenty of things, but those are costs you can’t cut.”

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