While waiving an email from a constituent at a legislative committee meeting earlier this year, Mr. Zenger bewailed that the constituent was worried about how to pay her increased property taxes following the 2025 property re-evaluation.
There is no question that there was a significant jump in home and property values since the last reappraisal in 2021 resulting in higher property tax assessments.
However, after attacking local government spending to provide public services, Mr. Zenger proposed capping city and county property tax increases at 1, 2 or 5 percent a year (an amount still to be determined) through a state constitutional amendment.
The problem is, capping property tax increases does NOTHING to help Mr. Zenger’s constituents now, next year, the year after that or four years from now.
Unless a municipality chooses to lower its tax rate in the next four years, property taxes will stay constant during that time.
All that this proposed constitutional amendment does is significantly handcuff small towns like Lewisville that have low tax rates should it experience large increases in providing basic services like it did in 2023 when the cost of providing both solid waste pickup and community policing services jumped by 32% and 20%, respectively.
In actuality, Mr. Zenger’s proposed constitutional amendment provides no tax relief to residents and punishes towns that are holding down their tax rates.
While it sounds good, this amendment is no more than smoke and mirrors designed to provide a talking point in a very difficult election year for Mr. Zenger and other legislators.
And while the wording of the constitutional amendment on the ballot to cap tax increases sounds great, and most certainly will pass, the legislature has yet to write any of the rules of what this would mean. Passing this amendment is like giving an alcoholic the keys to the brewery.
There are a myriad of ways to provide residents with tax relief, but as is his practice, Mr. Zenger never asked any of the towns he represents for their thoughts on this.
By the way, the Town of Lewisville, that Mr. Zenger represents, reduced its spending in the most recent budget, and two years ago, reduced its property tax rate by 14%. And more impressive, in the past, the town did not raise its tax rate for 19-years.
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