This time of year, city and county governments are getting their budgets ready for the new fiscal year which starts October 1st. Part of the budget process is setting a property tax rate. If you live or operate a business in the City of Early, your property tax rate is going down instead of up.
The proposed 2021/2022 budget for the City of Early is based on lowering the tax rate from .5310 to .4993 per $100 valuation, a reduction of 6% of the tax rate, approved unanimously Tuesday night by the Early City Council.
“Over the last four or five years, we’ve been able to maintain or reduce that tax rate consistently based on the growth that Early is having, both in new properties that are coming in and sales tax growth,” said Tony Aaron, City Administrator.
Aaron explains the City of Early has adopted a part of the city’s sales tax to help keep the property tax low.
“The more sales tax that we generate from our businesses in town then that helps keep pushing that property tax rate down. That’s why we’re so pro-active about getting new businesses in here, generating higher sales tax revenues so we can keep lowering those rates and still provide good services,” Aaron said.
The City of Early will host a public hearing on the proposed tax rate August 10 at 6:00 pm and a public hearing on the proposed city budget on Monday, August 20 at 12:00 pm at Early City Hall. The budget and tax rate are scheduled to be adopted after the final public hearing on August 20th.