The City of Sundown citizens voted against reducing the tax rate in 2023 from 0.712811 to 0. 29288 per $100 in the May 6 Special Election.
Sundown City Administrator Billy Hernandez said there were roughly 75 ballots submitted with 22 votes in favor of decreasing the tax rate and 53 votes against decreasing the tax rate.
“The election just was up Saturday, and we did have a petition to roll us back,” Hernandez said. “The petition was to reduce the tax rate for the city of sundown current year from 0.712811 cents to 0.629288 per hundred.”
Approximately six percent of Sundown citizens voted in the special election to decide if the tax rate would be decreased for the city.
“Again, the total of 75 votes is what made that decision. Unfortunately, I don’t know if there just wasn’t interest or what,” Hernandez said. “We did let folks know on Facebook and everywhere else posting that ‘hey, this is early voting for this issue.’ Unfortunately, what we saw was low turnout.”
Revenue collected from local taxes are used to fund local services, community projects and programs.
“Making these decisions to maintain the tax rate is not always easy. We do have projects that are in place that that we wish to take on,” Hernandez said. “It’s gonna be for several different projects. Anything in the community. I know one of our main issues that we were up for this year was for water main replacement. That’s probably the biggest project we have going on.”
The water main replacement project will replace old pipes that are at the end of their life in the Southwest section of Sundown. Hernandez explained the City of Sundown applied for a grant that would cover the majority of the cost for the water main replacement.
“We have applied for grants to help offset the cost to the citizens of the community but again, we’re not guaranteed that we will get those grants,” Hernandez said. “We’re hopeful that those come through for us. The grant is 500,000. I think the project is almost $700,000 so we would have to put money toward that so the money collected on the tax would go you know go towards that as well.”
Hernandez explained that since there is a two year wait time after the grant is approved, the property taxes currently being collected are continuing to fund community services, projects and programs.
“We’re in the process of seeing if we’re going to be approved and if approval were to happen, they’ve told me that funding would not come for another 24 months,” Hernandez said. “This project is obviously not happening right away, so right now the property taxes obviously would go to the rest of the maintenance of the community for right now.”