Budget is preparing for future growth
The last few weeks I have dedicated this column space for a discussion of the budget. We talked about reducing the tax rate over the last few years and how it will continue to go down due to the increase in new growth properties and the increase in property appraisals. But a reduction in the tax rate doesn’t always mean a reduction in taxes. So, to make sure we are working to keep the tax rate as close to the no-new-revenue rate as possible we have also worked to create a revenue model that will help reduce the reliance on property tax revenue as much as possible. We’ve done this by shifting more of the revenue to the Fees & Commissions and Sales Taxes coming from the growth the county is experiencing and will continue to experience.
So, with all of that having been discussed in the last few weeks, I thought I would discuss a bit of how the 2025 budget will work to keep Milam County on target to deal with all of the infrastructure needs the growth is creating while working to hold onto what it means to live in Milam County.
First off, we increased the revenues put into the County Commissioners’ Road and Bridge Departments. Over the past few years, each road and bridge department has seen on average an increase of revenue from around $50,000 to $125,000 in each precinct. One of our goals upon taking office was to increase the budgets of the road and bridges departments in the hopes of strengthening our road infrastructure and this year we were able to raise each precinct by about $400,000.
As a person who lives about five miles down one of these county roads, I know that living on an unpaved county road can sometimes be rather unenjoyable; however, our county roads overall are in pretty good shape. Can they be improved? Yes, and the first step in that process is to increase the funds available to the commissioners to allow them to buy the equipment and supplies we need to improve the road infrastructure thereby improving our county roads.
Another improvement to the budget we added was in the area of Child Services Programs. Currently, there are about 150 Milam County children in the CPS foster care system. The Milam County CPS Board is a volunteer organization that provides the aid and care to help our CPS officers here in the county provide necessities for these foster children especially during intake. When we came into office, only $5,000 was set aside for the CPS Board which meant that we put roughly $33 per child. The CPS Bord is funded primarily through contributions, but Milam County does help with this as do all counties in Texas.
Last year, as we prepared the budget for this year, we raised the stipend to CPS to $10,000 and added a contribution of $10,000 for the CASA program. And in 2025 we will raise each of those to $15,000 for each organization to help them with the work they are facing with a growing population and to help overcome the cost of inflation. We are also working with a couple of other organizations that do great work helping with Milam County children and families. Our goal is not to become a social services group, but to aid those who are helping in the county making sure that our most important resource, our children, are protected and cared for.
Lastly this week, we are looking to add some infrastructure in the form of new personnel. In this year’s budget, we will specifically be adding a County Fire Marshall and a second individual in the Planning and Development office. We need a Fire Marshall for several reasons but mainly to implement a fire code for the new developments of subdivisions and industrial activities in the unincorporated areas of the county. We are also adding an individual to the Planning and Development office which has been extremely busy as the county has already seen just this year more than twice the property variance permits, and new subdivision permits as we had in all of 2023.
Along with the additions of these funds, materials, and individuals; we are working on other infrastructure requirements we will face with the future growth we are already seeing. If you remember back to Hutto in 1999, they had a population of less than 1,000 and the popular thought by their elected officials at that time was, “we won’t grow much.” That didn’t go so well as their current population is over 30,000 and growing steadily. It’s incumbent on us as your elected officials to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be caught in that sort of a thought path.
Having seen a population growth since January of 2023 estimated to between 1,700 and 2,500, Milam County needs these infrastructure improvements to make sure we are as prepared as possible for the growth. As we said prior to taking office, the main goal of serving as an elected official should always be to prepare for the future so we can manage the growth and keep Milam County the place we love.