10-24-05 Regular Meeting of Fiscal Affairs Committee Minutes

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• real need to provide this. Many cities in the state still have a~10,000 exemption." The total tax bill for our average senior citizen, based on all the exemptions, has to be the lowest in the state among comparably sized cities. We're already there. We've accomplished the goal of giving seniors a tax break." What this does is add an ever greater break and shifts the tax burden from one group of people to another. If we're already at the biggest break in the state, or close to it, why are we putting an additional burden on other citizens to give this group another break," Jones said. Jones pointed out that `the average value of the homes of our seniors are only slightly below that of our other citizens. We don't have a group of seniors who can't afford to pay their property taxes." He also said there are other options seniors can take such as deferred tax payments and quarterly tax payments to the city without penalty. "We've got an aging population. Boomers are getting there and soon there will be a whole bunch of 65 guys who will be a bigger and bigger tax burden in terms of relative shift of taxes. Demographically speaking, it doesn't make sense to make this exemption larger and larger every year," Jones said. Councilman Michael Schiff said he doesn't disagree with anything Jones said and added that he would vote in favor of it because it was council's policy that staff followed in proposing the increase that Sugar Land has granted to the over-65 since 2001. "I will vote for this but ash the city manager over next year to revisit the issue and see if we want to continue this policy." On the flip side was Council Member Cyril Hosley who reminded council that the policy was agreed on in an effort to level the playing field for all groups of Sugar Land citizens. "We spend a great deal of our taxes on youth and this was just a little way of saying that if we hadn't done that we'd be able to lower taxes." The average value on seniors' homes have gone up dramatically. There are neighbors in my neighborhood who want to pay their share of taxes but who bought a $100,000 house and are now looking at paying taxes on $300,000 thanks to the increased property values." The senior and disabled tax break, she said, "is not much but kind of makes up for some of the things we spend money on for youths and families. We've said this is the best we can do, and if seniors want a tax freeze, we'll take this all away, but this was a way of compromising. A tax freeze would hurt everybody in this city a lot more than our policy,"Hosley said. Councilman Dennis Parmer said, "We've made a commitment and we need to follow it. I will continue to support the exemption. I support the exemption as stated."