Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\nHarris County commissioners will consider the county\u2019s proposed $3.1 billion budget on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Commissioners plan to set a tax rate during a meeting on Sept. 17 before the county\u2019s 2027 fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. <\/p>\n
During a press conference on Thursday, Ramsey said he will propose an end to the Holistic Assistance Response Team or HART, a county program that deploys unarmed first responders to non-emergency 911 calls. He said the court could also trim various administrative costs to reduce spending.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go through the core services of what we do and then look at those areas where, that\u2019s really not a core service, those are room for significant decreases,\u201d Ramsey said. \u201cThere are dozens and dozens and dozens of areas where we could reduce again non-statutory areas of responsibility that we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioners are charged with setting tax rates for four separate taxing entities, including the Harris County Flood Control District, Harris Health and the Port of Houston Authority. <\/p>\n
In total, the proposed county tax rate is $0.67 per $100 of valuation \u2014 a 7.6% increase from last year\u2019s tax rate of $0.62 cents, according to agenda documents. <\/p>\n
State Senator Paul Bettencourt has, in recent weeks, criticized local Democratic commissioners for spending money he said the county doesn\u2019t have. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t happen in Texas, except in Harris County,\u201d State Senator Paul Bettencourt said on Thursday. \u201c[Taxpayers] are bleeding with this type of increase. It doesn\u2019t happen anywhere else in the state, but it happens here in Harris County because spending is out of control here. If you spend out of control, you\u2019re going to tax out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking on Hello Houston Thursday, Commissioner Lesley Briones did not say how she intends to vote on the proposed tax increase. She said her office is still workshopping cost saving efforts before the meeting next week. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, we are in control of Harris County taxes,\u201d Briones said. \u201cSo the City of Houston, the other 33 cities, they have the joy of getting to work on their own budgets. Harris County, the unincorporated part, is growing 2.6 times faster than the City of Houston.<\/p>\n
Commissioners have recently approved a slate of raises for most elected county officials. That was after Commissioner Rodney Ellis said he would only vote in favor of raising each eight elected county constables’ salaries to $305,000 if the provision also included most other elected officials in the county.<\/p>\n
Commissioners will also consider a pay increase of $40,000 for County Treasurer Carla Wyatt on Tuesday \u2014 a recommendation made by the county\u2019s salary grievance committee. <\/p>\n
RELATED: Harris County committee recommends $40,000 pay boost for treasurer, despite effort to eliminate position<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cTo me, it\u2019s how do we deliver the excellence in services, do it with discipline and responsibility in a way that we\u2019re minimizing the impact on residents,\u201d Briones said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sarah Grunau\/ Houston Public Media Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey spoke against the county\u2019s proposed property tax increase…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[405,39967,4164,100093,56,58,57,66,223,148285],"class_list":["post-426459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-harris-county","tag-harris-county-commissioners","tag-harris-county-commissioners-court","tag-harris-county-property-taxes","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-property-tax-increases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426459","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=426459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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