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EAGLE LAKE
EAGLE LAKE — Eagle Lake City Council approved a proposed 2025-2026 tax rate and budget and set a public hearing for Monday, Sept. 8, at 6 p.m. following a presentation from City Manager Charles “Tink” Jackson during its city council meeting, Wednesday, Aug. 12.
Tax rate
The city voted to propose a property tax rate of $0.586240 per $100, a 3.2% reduction from the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Despite the reduction, the budget will raise $99,049 more in property taxes than last year’s budget, a 9.25% increase. An additional $35,045 in tax revenue will be collected from new property.
The tax rate decrease follows the city’s six-year total reduction plan of 14 cents. Jackson explained that legislature requires the appraisal district to increase property appraisals each year, which in turn increases the taxable property value. Jackson said that having the same tax rate as the year before would generate too much revenue for the city and cause a rollback collection.
“[The council is] constantly trying to cut and be as frugal as we can be to keep from having to go up on taxes so we can provide those services for everybody,” Jackson said. “… Everybody thinks they’re overtaxing them. We’ve done nothing compared to what the national average is for inflation. We are way behind the inflationary curve as far as collecting for the city and what we are doing with it.”
The proposed maintenance and operations tax rate is $0.449811 per $100, a 1.3% reduction from last year.
Budget
The 2025-2026 budget’s general fund projects double the total revenue for the city compared to 2024-2025’s budget (not year-to-date actual nor reestimated actual) – $3,013,392 vs. $1,686,292. In response, the budget increases total expenditures – $3,012,465 vs. 2,794,863. For the 2025-2026 utility fund, the budget decreases compared to 2024-2025 with total revenue at $2,616,235 vs. $3,364,774 and total expenditures at $2,615,950 vs. 3,364,774. The budget also sets aside $16,000 in its contingency fund. Jackson said that the budget this year accounts for inflation unlike in previous years.
“We haven’t really done anything to address inflation in the budget, and since, it’s kind of made it difficult to take care what we need to take care of to combat it…especially to repairs for water and sewer,” Jackson said. “We are constantly trying to hold off on projects or things until the next budget year because there wasn’t enough money in the budget to do it. We moved some things around and done some other things to try and make it where we can take care of the things we need to take care of.”
The budget also introduces changes for utility fees. The base rate for water and sewage will increase by 5% – approximately $35 a year. Solid waste fees will see an increase of 3.5% per contract.
Staffing and recruitment According to the budget, the city will provide a 5% increase for all hourly employees. Around 3.5% of the increase originates from a reduction of health insurance costs by changing insurance plans. The remaining 1.5% will only cost the city $17,000. According to Jackson, the employees agreed to the change in insurance plan. “The discussion around the employees was how about we go with this plan, save some money on the insurance, and then we will use that money to try and fund an increase for the employees this year,” Jackson said. “…It puts money back in the employees’ pockets.”
The city also intends to increase their plan with Texas Municipal Retirement System (TMRS) from 6% to 8% 2:1 to help with recruitment against other cities that currently offer 7% and will likely jump to 8% as well.
“Because we were able to do what we did with the [cost of living raises] and not have hardly any impact on the general fund, we propose bumping up to the maximum level on the TMRS, so we can match these other cities and actually be able to recruit at the same level that they can recruit and maybe retain some of the employees that we’ve been losing,” Jackson said.
The council also accepted Jackson’s proposal to add $7,000 to minimum salaries for each one of the levels that the city has for their patrol officers to promote recruitment and retention. Around 2020, the council cut two police officer positions, from 11 down to the current eight total, to increase officer salaries. Eagle Lake recently lost another police officer but will hire, leaving the department with three vacancies, seven officers and Police Chief Donald Chaney. Jackson and Chaney both said that officers are leaving for significantly higher paying jobs around Houston and Harris County.
“They got to pay their bills. The 25-year-olds, the 30-year-olds and the 35-year-olds now are not the same people we were when we were 25, 30 years old. They want to be able to work; they want to be able to go on vacations. They’re going to go wherever they can get paid to do it,” Jackson said.
Jackson said that the retirement plan’s increase and some of the benefits from the new health insurance plan will also work as incentives for recruitment.
