Amarillo told its residents in August that the coming city budget would raise $1,596,402 more in property taxes than last year’s, an increase of 1.94 percent. On Sept. 10 the city published the same legally required statement again, with a different number: $3,796,854, or 4.61 percent. Four days later the City Council split 3-2 on the tax rate that goes with it, and set the only remaining public hearing for Sept. 29.
Local Government Code §102.005 requires the governing body of a municipality to print, with its proposed budget, a plain statement of how much more the budget will raise in property taxes than the year before, and what share of the increase comes from property newly added to the tax roll. Amarillo printed one on page 2 of the proposed budget it posted Aug. 10. It then issued a standalone replacement dated Sept. 10 carrying the larger figures. The city has published no explanation of the change, and neither document refers to the other.
A second set of numbers moved in the same window. Amarillo’s chief financial officer, Omolola Ogunremi, certified the city’s tax rate notice by hand on Aug. 7. She signed a second one on Sept. 10. Between them the voter-approval rate — the ceiling above which a city must ask voters before going higher — rose from $0.44728 to $0.45252 per $100 of taxable value. The debt arithmetic underneath it moved as well. The total the city says it needs for 2026 debt service fell by $1,113,362, to $19,789,933. Collections carried over from the prior year fell by $1,987,378, to $1,982,374. A line for 2026 certificates of obligation that appears in the August schedule, with $865,000 in principal and $319,275 in interest, is absent from the September one. Both notices give the same no-new-revenue rate, $0.42170.
The rate the council actually proposed is the one Amarillo already charges. The notice the city published Sept. 14 sets the proposed rate at $0.43070, the same to the fifth decimal as last year, and prints the record vote required by state law: “FOR the proposal: Mayor Cole Stanley, Councilmember Tim Reid and Councilmember Don Tipps AGAINST the proposal: Councilmember David Prescott and Councilmember Les Simpson PRESENT and not voting: None ABSENT: None.”
That notice is titled a notice of public hearing on a tax increase, and it explains why. A rate that does not move still collects more when property values rise. Amarillo’s no-new-revenue rate — the rate that would raise the same amount from the same properties as last year — is $0.42170, and the proposed rate sits above it. The notice puts total collections at $81,980,806 against $79,916,843 last year, an increase of $2,063,963, or 2.58 percent, and the tax on an average home at $985.76 against $975.36. The same notice describes the rate change itself as an “Increase of $0.00000 per $100, or 0%.” The Dispatch reported Sept. 14 on the same arithmetic playing out across more than a dozen Texas jurisdictions in a single week.
The vote had been scheduled a week earlier and did not happen. A staff memo for the council’s Sept. 8 meeting asked members to “discuss the tax rate, take a record vote on the proposed tax rate, and set the public hearing for September 29, 2026.” The 773,000-character agenda packet for that meeting contains no tax rate figures at all, and no reference to any error, revision or recalculation. The item carried over, with an identical caption, to a special meeting on Sept. 14 for which the city posted an agenda and no backup material whatsoever. No minutes have been posted for either meeting.
What remains is the hearing. The Sept. 14 notice sets it for 3 p.m. Sept. 29 in Room 3400 at City Hall. As of Sept. 15 the city’s own public meeting calendar did not list a Sept. 29 meeting; it showed a council work session Sept. 16, a planning and zoning meeting Sept. 21 and a regular council meeting Sept. 22. The Sept. 16 work session convenes at 11 a.m. and immediately recesses into closed session on a single subject: the city manager.
Under the Tax Code a city must adopt its rate before the later of Sept. 30 or the 60th day after it receives the certified appraisal roll. Amarillo’s own notice puts its last scheduled step the day before.