Projected $88 million budget gap for Houston | What's Your Point?

We've lost around $60 million in appraised value of property. But even with that, our shortfall now is projected at $88 million, which if we continue the efficiencies and continue to eliminate the duplication, continue to fight conflicts of interest and corruption, we will have a balanced budget presented to this council next spring that does not raise taxes a somber Houston Mayor John Whitmire holding the line despite news commercial property values have fallen and the city's revenue with them Mr King has dug into this development what's the situation Bill so the the city has to set their budget in the spring of every year because the fiscal ends on June 30th well in the spring you don't have much idea about what the property tax roll is going to be because that's when the value notices are going out and all that's resolved later in the year so they projected about a three percent increase in the property tax roll because that's historically kind of what it's run but it looks like it's going to come in almost flat this year and this is because of office buildings and and frankly house values are not up nearly what they've been in previous years so what they they got a letter from the appraisal district here a few weeks ago that said hey look it looks like to us we're you're not going to be able to hit these numbers and so that's what they're all reacting to now a couple of pieces of good news about it one we have enough in reserve to cover this shortfall but the second thing that's even the better news is that sales tax is running significantly above what they projected by the way this is exactly what happened last year we projected property taxes too high and sales taxes too low they ended up basically offsetting each other it kind of looks like that's where we're headed again this year yeah why can't the county do what the city does hold the line on spending while people are in an affordability crisis any thoughts there real quick no i agree i think there's a lot of lessons to be learned how the city of Houston manages their budget absolutely all right thanks for this week's panel and thank you for joining us the conversation continues on a national level next on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream, and we'll keep talking here with Watcher Point Overtime, streaming live on Fox26Houston.com, and on our free Fox Local app for your phone or smart TV. From all of us here, have a safe and healthy week. Stick around. We're going to talk on Overtime.