At a March Commissioners Court meeting, Bexar County manager David Smith and his team revealed that the number of properties with tax exemptions increased by 50,000 since last year, resulting in less revenue for the county.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot more properties were able to access that exemption compared to last year,\u201d Tanya Gaitan, Bexar County budget manager, said. \u201cThat is about $10 billion lost in property values, which is pretty significant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Property taxes make up 80% of the county\u2019s general fund. Gaitan said the property tax exemptions that Texas voters approved in the fall will take their toll.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most significant one was they expanded the business personal property,\u201d Gaitan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The law allows Texas businesses to exempt up to $125,000 in personal property taxes annually.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey also expanded widows for disabled vets, so they have access to exemptions as well,\u201d Gaitan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, says property evaluations had state government pivoting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why state legislature pushed to try to raise the exemptions, tried to push for some relief on some property taxes,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThat in turn is having a downward pressure on local government, particularly city, county and school districts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The county is forecasting a $145 million budget deficit by 2029. Taylor said that if this prediction rings true, tough decisions will have to be made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[Instead of] a county park being open seven days a week, it might only be open four days a week,\u201d Gaitan said. \u201cSame with swimming pools with the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Taylor and Gaitan say it hasn\u2019t gotten to that point yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cServices are going to remain the same: county parks, the roads, the flood projects,\u201d Gaitan said. \u201cOur major expense is the criminal justice system locally. Our jail, our sheriff\u2019s office, the constables, the courts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But things could change come July 25, when the county receives all the data from property tax protests.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a March Commissioners Court meeting, Bexar County manager David Smith and his team revealed that the number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2160,3565,6294,223,82,84,83,27,1569,2053,835],"class_list":["post-339593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-app-top-stories","tag-community-news","tag-jose-arredondo","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}