The Brownsville Independent School District Board of Trustees adopted a tax rate of $1.1758 cents per $100 valuation for the 2020-2021 school year, a decrease of about one cent from the current tax rate of $1.1867 for the 2019-2020 school year.
The levy results in taxes of about $102 on a $100,000 home.
The board approved the tax rate at a special-called meeting during which district CFO David Robledo explained that taxes have decreased almost 10 cents over the past two years due to changes in state funding formulas.
During the 2014-2015 school year, BISD raised taxes by 11 1/4 cents per $100 taxable value to finance school improvement projects across the district. Last year the district was able to lower the levy by almost nine cents, and this year by another penny due to tax compression under the provisions of House Bill 3, he said. In 2018, the district’s tax rate was roughly $1.26 per $100 taxable value. Tax rates have gone down, but property values have gone up, resulting in current tax bills.
When BISD approved its operating budget of $558 million for 2020-2021, it estimated property tax revenues. The values ended up coming in higher than estimated, resulting in the levy adopted Thursday afternoon.
