REVENUE CAP: Turner seeks extra funding to boost public safety
Mayor Sylvester Turner used his third State of the City speech to call — again — for the city to be able to collect more revenue than allowed by the property tax cap voters imposed 14 years ago, this time floating the idea of collecting extra dollars specifically for public safety.
Turner had taken a similar line during the 2015 campaign, then moved to advocating for a full repeal of the cap during much of his first two years in office. He backed away from placing such a request on last November's ballot, however, fearing it would imperil the $1 billion bond referendum that was needed to secure the landmark pension reform package he shepherded through the Legislature last year.
The mayor on Tuesday instead highlighted the need to increase staffing in the police department, and suggested the idea of following former Mayor Bill White’s playbook from 2006, when White got voters’ permission to let the city collect $90 million more than the cap otherwise would have allowed for spending on public safety.
It took Houston eight years to exhaust that breathing room and run into the cap for the first time. Amid rising property values, the City Council has been forced to cut the property tax rate every fall since to avoid collecting more revenue than the cap allows. Council cut the tax rate to 58.42 cents per $100 of assessed value last September, the lowest rate since 1988.
The revenue cap limits the annual growth in city property tax revenue to 4.5 percent or the combined rates of inflation and population growth, whichever is lower.
Turner did not commit to White’s approach, to a dollar amount, or to placing an item before voters this November, saying he intends to force a conversation on the need to invest in more officers and in ancillary areas such as cybersecurity protections, adding “the current model is not sustainable.”
“I’m just simply sounding the alarm. We cannot continue to cut and cut and cut and add 500 to 600 more police to our force,” Turner said after his speech to a luncheon hosted by the Greater Houston Partnership.
November vote mentioned
Tweets from his official Twitter account, however, were more definitive about taking the matter to voters: “I will move to put an item on the ballot on (sic) this November to make sure Houston continues to be resilient and strong when it comes to protecting innocent people.” said one. Another said, “Our city sorely needs revenue to increase staffing & resources for first responders at Police & Fire Dpartments. But we’re constrained by the #revenuecap. That’s why it’s time to ask voters to lift the cap solely for strengthening public safety & city services.”
Turner also used the pulpit at the packed Hilton Americas ballroom downtown to promise he would help explore a nonprofit model to assist Houston ISD’s 10 longest-struggling schools, which are at risk of closure under state law. Los Angeles used a similar approach a decade ago, using philanthropic dollars to provide intensive oversight at more than a dozen failing schools.
In his speech, the mayor hailed two city workers, Houston Public Works employee Joseph Dowell and Houston Police Department Sgt. Steve Perez, who drowned trying to get to work during Hurricane Harvey. He also praised recent announcements of projects centered on innovation initiatives, and lauded Rich and Nancy Kinder for giving $70 million to advance the Memorial Park master plan, among other items.
Houston, as of the end of March, had 5,116 officers to police a population of 2.3 million spread across more than 620 square miles, not counting cadets. HPD’s officer headcount has declined steadily since late 2010, when there were 5,350 officers on the force.
Even implementing former Chief Charles McClelland’s late 2014 plan to grow the force by 590 officers within five years — or current union leaders’ push to grow the roster by 500 officers — would leave Houston with a lower police-to-citizen ratio than it had in the late 1990s.
The cost of McClelland’s proposal was then estimated at $85 million for salaries and benefits, plus $20 million for equipment and vehicles.
Houston has about 240 officers per 100,000 residents, whereas New York, Chicago and Philadelphia all top 400. Dallas and Los Angeles have similar ratios to Houston, however, and the Bayou City has more officers per capita than San Antonio or Austin, both of which are growing at even faster rates.
Still, HPD data shows the department’s response times have slid, particularly for less serious calls, and that a lack of investiga tors has made catching suspects a struggle. HPD solved violent crimes and property crimes at lower rates than its peer big cities in 2013, the most recent data available. The department also was unable to follow up even on promising leads in 21,000 burglaries, thefts, hit-and-run crashes or assaults in 2013, a local study showed.
Manpower crisis
“I don’t think it’s any secret to anybody in Houston that we’re amidst the worst manpower crisis the Houston Police Department has ever seen. So, if we can free up additional resources to hire, train and bring on more officers and invest in new technology that can be a force multiplier for us, of course we’d be supportive,” Houston Police Officers Union President Joe Gamaldi said after Turner’s speech Tuesday. “We want to be able to be trusted by the community and show up there when they call us. To do that we need more people.”
Turner and his predecessor, Annise Parker, have discussed removing or adjusting the revenue cap every year since it came fully into force in 2014.
What makes Turner’s Tuesday comments different, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, is that he is focusing solely on public safety.
“There does not exist a strong public appetite for lifting the revenue cap unconditionally,” Jones said. “The only way to really sell it is via public safety. That’s probably the only winning method.”
Turner seemed to acknowledged as much Tuesday, saying in part, “It’s quite clear, it seems to me, people want to maintain the revenue cap. OK, fine. What I’m simply saying is, we need to find a way to generate some additional dollars on top of that revenue cap.”
One complication, Jones said, is that Harris County Commissioners Court voted, also on Tuesday, to schedule a flood control bond for late August that will result in a property tax increase, and almost all city of Houston residents also live in Harris County. “The county has, in some ways, cut in front of him in line,” Jones said. “Houston homeowners could be faced with a double whammy.”
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a north Houston Republican who was among those who pushed for the revenue cap in 2004, agreed.
“I think there’s going to be some pretty extreme ballot fatigue for taxpayers if somebody puts another tax increase up in November,” Bettencourt said. “Somebody is going to stop this train, the question is, when. Voters are going to have to be convinced that … there’s a need for it.”