Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The North Richland Hills City Council held a work session at 6:00 p.m. and a regular meeting at 7:11 p.m. on July 28, 2025. Six council members were present; Place 4 Council Member Matt Blake was absent. The work session focused on the certified tax rolls and property tax calculations for FY 2026, and the regular meeting included consent items, an Enterprise Project nomination, an Oncor rate suspension, a charter amendment special election ordinance, and personnel actions following executive session. All votes taken during the regular meeting passed 6-0.
Oh, there it goes. Thank God. It's right here behind me. Think of it as a security blanket. There we go. Good evening. Welcome to North Richland Hills City Council work session at six o'clock, and I will call the Monday, Jan July 28th, 2025 City Council work session order. A quorum of the city council is present. The meeting has been duly posted accordance with TechSoup Meetings Act of the Texas Government Code. Items listed for discussion in the work session agenda provide an opportunity for the city council to discuss the items and receive the information from staff. The city council will not take action on any of the items listed for discussion during the work session. Any members of the public wishing to address the council regarding items listed on the work session agenda may do so during the public comments portion of the regular medium meeting. Sorry there. So first we're going to go with reviewing the certified tax roles, property tax calculations, and historic trends. Trudy Lewis. And as Trudy begins her presentation, just this is just to give you all an overview of the certified tax roles as it says there, and a little bit about the calculations. Some of y'all attended the uh TML webinar about how the truth in taxation calculations and a little bit about that. And so Trudy will talk about how that applies here. She'll also go through some historical numbers, but really it's just to focus and give you a preliminary idea of what the tax roles showed, where our property tax calculations ended up according to the truth and taxation sheet. And then, of course, Friday is when we'll review uh the proposed budget that'll include this information as well. So, Trudy. Thank you for that introduction, Paulette. Okay, so today, as Paul Lutt has said, we're going to review information that we received on Friday. So the Terran County Central Appraisal District does submit to all taxing entities by uh July the 25th, the certified roles, and we did receive our information last week. By way of context, I want to be sure to cover that the amount of revenue that we receive from property tax revenue. Um it does depend on a number of entities. Often uh, when we're talking about the property tax rate, it seems as if we're we're all doing this ourselves. Um but the truth is we are a uh we're reacting within a context that includes other entities. Sometimes they overlap, and so you'll see there's these various shades of blue between the various entities because sometimes they can look pretty similar between the work of the state legislature, our chief appraiser, property tax owners, taxing entities, which includes us, the tax assessor collector. So we'll start with the state legislature. Uh the state does establish the role for each entity. This is a segregated duty on purpose, so we do not have the same roles as one another. The state adopts our state code. I've listed here three different chapters of state code that apply specifically to this particular issue. But the state creates forms, procedures, requirements, and deadlines. Again, it does outline a separation of power between the entities by type and it provides rights for home uh for property owners, be those businesses or or residents. It does sanction eligible property tax exemptions, appraisal caps, and the types of economic development incentives that entities can partake in. And then it also sets legal limits on property tax increases, which really is cumulative one one year to the next. The chief appraiser is someone that we actually do pay. So we um every year we participate in their budget, um, just so that you all know it's not a service that's provided for free. Um the the part of the role of the chief appraiser is to uh appraise values within the county. This has to happen every three years as of January the first.