We have a new budget folks. Austin City Council officially approved a $3.9 billion budget last week. It will go into effect on October 1st.
So what does that mean for you?
The average Austin homeowner (with a home valued at $305,000) will pay $151 more next year in taxes and fees to the City of Austin.
This new budget doesn’t include many radical changes over last year’s. In the end, very little money was leftover for new spending or programs, but some additional money was directed toward homelessness services, public health, and immigrant legal services.
So where will the money go?
As we’ve mentioned before, when we talk about budgets, we mostly discuss the General Fund budget, which this year is just over $1 billion. It usually gets the most attention because it’s where a majority of the city’s discretionary spending lies. A bulk of the rest of the money goes toward our city’s two major utilities (Austin Water and Austin Energy), but those revenues usually come from utility bills paid by customers (as opposed to property taxes).
Here’s where the General Fund money will be spent:
- Police, Fire, and EMS – 66.5 percent
- Parks and Recreation – 8 percent
- Austin Public Health – 6.65 percent
- Development Services – 5.65 percent
- Austin Public Library – 4.88 percent
- Municipal Court – 2.17 percent
- Animal Services – 1.28 percent
- Planning and Zoning – .84 percent
