Upcoming Hays County Budget, Salary Grievance Hearings Scheduled

Hays County will host two public hearings to discuss the FY 2019 Budget and a salary grievance hearing in September…

Hays County will host two public hearings to discuss the FY 2019 Budget and a salary grievance hearing in September.

On August 31, Hays County announced commissioners would host a salary grievance hearing on September 7.

During the August 7 Commissioners meeting, Commissioners Ingalsbe and Shell spoke on the $935,000 for a 3 percent merit pool for employees, Department Heads and Elected officials.

Commissioner Ingalsbe asked Vickie Dorsett to drop the merit pool from 3 percent to 2 percent excluding Elected Officials.

The proposed budget does not include raises for elected officials, although some may see increases due to longevity pay.

According to the notice, the salary grievance hearing will be held at 8:30 AM and address concerns regarding the following four items.

1. Presentation from Counsel Regarding Salary Grievance Committee Procedures.
2. Hearing(s) regarding Grievances filed by elected officials in response the FY 2019 budget.
3. Deliberation of Committee regarding Grievances filed.
4. Vote of Committee for each Grievance by secret ballot.

On August 29, Hays County also announced that the commissioners voted to lower the proposed property tax rate.

In preceding years, the tax rate was $0.4450 per $100. However, the proposed tax rate is $0.4337 per $100. With rising property appraisal values, the county will make the same amount of revenue from property taxes with the lower tax rate as they did for Fiscal Year 2018.

The proposed budget will raise more revenue from property taxes than last year’s budget by an amount of $1,458,446 or 1.96% increase from last year’s budget. The property tax revenue to be raised from new property added to the tax roll this year is $3,789,867.

Commissioners will hold a final public hearing on September 18 to discuss and potentially vote on the proposed 2019 tax rate and the FY 2019 Budget. The meeting will take place at 1:00 PM and the new fiscal year budget will begin October 1.