ORANGE COUNTY, Texas — The Orange County Commissioners' Court held a public hearing Tuesday regarding a proposed tax rate, which passed.
The tax rate has gone down from .542 to .532.
Property taxes from last year's budget will now be raised by $4,396,742 with only $303,618 coming from new property added.
Although overall rates went down, the county is still taking in more in property taxes because the values went up.
Orange County Judge John Gothia says the county has been running on a minimal budget for the past few years.
"Our goal is to build our reserves back, and reduce the tax rate. We're not where we need to be at the end of the budget, but we'll be somewhere around 8 million in reserves," He said. "We need to be closer to the 14, 15 million dollar range. Hopefully we'll build that up over the next couple of years."
Gothia also says their goal is to fill their reserve funds for disasters. Last storm they had, since a disaster wasn’t declared, the clean-up efforts came from the county, causing it to drain their reserves