Flood funds

While the state and feds help us to rebuild, Houston needs to pay its share.

In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Houstonians banded together like never before. We rescued our neighbors from flooded homes, volunteered at shelters and went door to door mucking out the houses of complete strangers.

We didn’t wait for outsiders to save us — we saved ourselves. And that spirit must continue. We support — and hope you will, too — Mayor Sylvester Turner’s proposed temporary property tax increase. Houston will receive a sizable amount of state and federal relief funding. The city’s insurance policies eventually will pay out. But it is incumbent on all Houstonians to contribute to the recovery effort, even if it means a higher tax bill in 2018.

Nobody particularly enjoys paying taxes, and we sympathize with homeowners who feel the mayor’s proposal adds insult to injury. We especially feel for those facing the prospect of paying more taxes for flooded homes that are suddenly worth a lot less.

Unfortunately, the city has little choice. Houston desperately needs extra funding to get back to normal as quickly as possible. City Hall, the municipal courts complex and two wastewater treatment plants suffered major damage. More than 300 city vehicles were destroyed by floodwaters. And the city is on the hook for $20 million of the $200 million cost for debris removal (FEMA is covering the rest).

In 2013, Houston voters approved a revenue cap that has forced the City Council to cut the property tax rate in each of the past four years. The rate is now 58.64 cents per $100 of appraised value, the lowest it has been since 1987.

But the revenue cap included a provision allowing the city to temporarily raise taxes in an emergency. To echo the mayor, if this isn’t an emergency, what is? Enacting the proposed increase would return the city for one year to the rate we paid from 2009 to 2013, 63.87 cents.

That means the average homeowner would pay $118 more to the city in 2018.

An extra $10 a month isn’t likely to bankrupt anybody. Provided the city uses the extra revenue appropriately — and we have a city controller who is supposed to be watching — the money will help us rebuild and prepare for the next flood. The mayor has promised the emergency increase will expire after a year and the city will return to a rate dictated by the revenue cap. The city’s voters and City Council can hold him to that promise.

All of Harris County has been penny wise and pound foolish. Our aversion to taxes in any form and the infrastructure they fund is certainly a contributing factor to the mess we’re in today. Turner’s plan is necessary to clean it up.

So again we say band together and help City Hall rebuild. Support the mayor as he asks for resources Houston needs in an emergency.