The Pima County Board of Supervisors approved a $1.24 billion tentative budget Tuesday that includes a 10-cent primary property tax reduction.
The reduction was based in part on County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry’s opinion that it is unlikely the state will appeal a recent Maricopa County Superior Court judge’s decision that eliminates a roughly $16 million state cost shift to the county.
The budget was approved on a 4-1 vote, with District 4 Supervisor Ray Carroll casting the “nay” vote. The supervisors failed to approve a tentative budget at their May 24 meeting, where they split 2-2 with Supervisor Ramón Valadez absent.
District 1 Supervisor Ally Miller, who voted against the previous tentative budget, voted “yes” this time around, saying: “We’re heading in the right direction.”
A draft budget presented in April proposed a 10-cent property tax increase to cover a portion of the nearly $16 million bill the county was expecting, much of it due to the Tucson Unified School District, but that recommendation was nixed in the wake of the late-May court decision.
The county raised the primary property tax rate roughly 10 cents last year to cover what it thought would be an $8.4 million payment to TUSD. This spring, however, the Property Tax Oversight Commission determined that the county would bear all of the $15.8 million bill, which resulted in Huckelberry’s recommendation for an additional 10-cent primary property tax hike for next year’s budget.
In the recent court ruling, the judge decided that the Legislature had unconstitutionally delegated taxing powers to the commission in a 2015 bill.
Valadez said it was incumbent upon the supervisors to approve the tax cut because taxpayers had been told last year’s hike and this year’s proposed hike would be unnecessary if the county won in court.
“We said we were only doing it because of the state. We won the lawsuit … I would say that is a promise made and promise kept,” he added.
District 5 Supervisor Richard Elías said, “I think it’s a good move to reduce property taxes at this particular time, provided of course that we deal with issues in front of us.” Those issues, he said, include addressing concerns about county employee pay.
Huckelberry said he would present “alternatives and options” to the board before the final budget is approved, likely in early July.
Tentative budgets set ceilings for tax rates and budgets that final budgets can come in under. The maximum primary property tax rate approved by the board Tuesday was just under $4.29 for every $100 of assessed value. The current rate is roughly $4.39, and the rate proposed in April was just over $4.49.
The difference in annual primary property tax burdens for the average Pima County homeowner between the proposed and approved rates is about $32, according to estimates previously provided by the county. The cut from the current tax rate would be about $16 in annual savings for the average homeowner.
Because the $1.24 billion budget figure corresponds to a primary rate of around $4.39, the final budget total will be closer to $1.23 billion, Huckelberry said after the meeting.
A 2-cent hike in the secondary property tax rate for the flood control district was approved by the board in May.
