Tim Chapman 
EDINBURG – The City of Edinburg held a public city council meeting on September 6th and voted to approve a new property tax rate of .64 cents per 100 dollars making it .4 cents lower than the current rate of .68 cents
This new property tax rate will take effect next fiscal year from October 1st through September 30th. According to city officials, the financial condition of the city will be monitored throughout this time in order to decide if further reductions can be made efficiently.
Johnny Garica, the city of Edinburg mayor pro tem, said that multiple factors such as the coronavirus pandemic and inflation went into determining that this tax reduction needed to be done this next fiscal year.
“Us as a council we had seen the hardships that the citizens were facing and we had talked about it for the last couple of years but we had never even put it into practice and so when the new budget started happening at the beginning of the year we had started working on how we could able to be more effective and to be able to lower the taxes for the citizens but at the same time to keep the same services that we have been providing,” said Garcia.
City of Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr explains how not only this tax reduction is a reason for residents to pay less, but it is also a necessity due to the rising valuation of homes.
“If we would’ve kept the same tax rate at 68 cents because of the increase in valuation people would have had to pay more in taxes but based on this action people are going to pay a little bit less,” said Garza.
Mayor Garza along with the rest of the city council see this new tax reduction as a step in the right direction, with their goal being to reduce taxes by a total of 10 cents sometime in the future.
