On the 22nd of September, Jim Forsyth of WOAI published a short article about the new non-tax of Sandy Oaks. It couples the city with Von Ormy as being the second city within Bexar county to “abolish” property tax. Von Ormy recently announced that it would be getting rid of its .25 residential tax, one of the lowest rates in the county.
However, the WOAI article is incredibly misleading because the Sandy Oaks city council didn’t abolish any tax. A city property tax has never existed. On September 18, the city council held a budget hearing in which taxes were discussed and the Aldermen voted to not have any taxes for the first year. The reason being that any tax would have been retroactive, forcing residents to pay for the entire past year without any services being offered.
To make things even more distorted, WOAI quotes Mayor Jim Clement as telling them that he pushed for “zero property tax.” In reality, Clement presented a budget that would have doubled property taxes and would have given Sandy Oaks residents only a few weeks notice before the bill arrived. When questioned at the budget hearing about presenting such a tax, Clement’s response was “It’s all or nothing”, implying that he was more comfortable with the “all” option.
Mayor Jim Clement, as well as Aldermen Earnest Gay, Doug Tomasini, and Joel Ortega, all campaigned on the goal of establishing a 38 cent sales tax.
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