The Odessa College Board of Trustees discussed the 2022 tax rate at a work session Wednesday.
The board will consider approving the tax rate at its regular meeting set for 6:30 p.m. Sept. 27 in the Zant Room of the Saulsbury Campus Center.
The proposed rate is .188643 per $100 valuation. That’s a decrease of 6.5 percent over last year’s tax rate.
Last year’s tax rate was .201723 per $100 valuation.
The 2022 no new revenue rate is .177210 per $100 valuation. The no new revenue rate, previously known as the effective rate, is the tax rate you’d have to assess to receive the same amount of revenue as the previous year, less any new construction, Board Chair Gary Johnson said.
Johnson said most of the valuations this year came from minerals and new construction.
Two tax rate hearings were held, but no one from the public attended or spoke.
“For the new board members, we try to be as aggressive as we can be, from a taxation standpoint, without exceeding our bounds and limits, because we know we’re a growing community and we know we have more people to serve and we’re going to need different facilities …,” OC President Gregory Williams said.
“The board tries to take in as much revenue as we can so that we can move a certain amount of those dollars into Vision 2030, which is what we use to build the new facilities so that we can minimize the need to go out to the public …,” Williams said.
The college went to the public 11 years ago and that was the only one done in roughly 45 years, he said.
“We’re trying to be really careful about that because we understand the taxation feature,” Williams said.
Johnson said the board has made a commitment over the years of putting money into its construction programs.
From when Williams started at OC 16 years ago, the college is serving more people than ever.
Trustees also discussed a tax abatement for GCC, which produces cement, concrete, aggregates and innovative products for the construction industries in Mexico, the United States, Latin America and Canada, its website said.
It will come to the board for possible approval Sept. 27.
Chief Financial Officer Brandy Ham said as of Aug. 31, preliminary numbers show that compared to last year at the same time the college has excess revenue of $6.5 million over expenditures. Last year it was $4.6 million.
The contingency budget is at $750,000.
