AUSTIN (KXAN) — When voters head to the polls this Election Day, Austin residents will be asked to vote on Proposition Q — a tax rate hike that would pay for what some city leaders are calling “core services.”
The city’s portion of your property tax bill will go up either way. The question is: How much?
If voters approve that proposition, the average homeowner’s property tax bill will go up by $302.14 annually. Should Prop Q fail, your property tax bill would go up by $104.76 annually instead. The city calculated “average homeowner” at an assessed home value of $494,803.
Should Prop Q pass, the roughly $110 million that increase would generate for the city annually would go toward services like homelessness services, parks, public safety programs and public health. Here are some of the line items:
- The largest chunk of that funding would go toward the city’s homeless strategy office, including:
- $12 million for rapid rehousing services
- $8 million for emergency shelter operations and services like housing navigation
- $2 million for street outreach
- Money would also go toward dozens of sworn EMS positions
- More than $8 million to restore the Austin Fire Department’s overtime budget
- And $1.6 million “in one-time funding to provide stability to core public health grants at risk of reduced grant funding”
You can find the full breakdown of where that funding could go here.
What happens if Prop Q fails?
While the city isn’t saying exactly which services would be cut, we do know city council and city of Austin executive staff would have to come back to revisit their budget, which went into effect Oct. 1.
During the budget process, city council discussed several options, including a proportional cut across all departments or returning to the city manager’s base proposed budget.
City council members have said is that they believe extreme cuts would need to be made across significant swaths of the current budget should the proposition fail.
As for how it would change your property tax bill, the city of Austin told us: “If the voters reject Proposition Q, the property tax rate will be reduced to the voter-approval tax rate of 52.4017 cents per $100 value. At that tax rate, the City estimates it will collect $109.5 million less revenue than the amount budgeted for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 General Fund revenue, and the typical Austin property owner’s 2026 tax bill would see an annual increase of $104.76 from the previous tax year, based on a median homestead assessed value of $494,803.“
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