NEDERLAND — The city continue to have the lowest tax rate in the county, City Manager Chris Duque said.

“Our proposed budget is $23,178,352,” Duque said. “That’s several different funds. We are proposing to maintain the tax rate. Our tax rate is 0.609578. Last year, we went to that amount after we issued the Nederland Avenue debt. We had to increase our debt service tax portion to pay for that bond payment. That’s why we went to that number.

The county provides the city with the effective tax rate (0.596083) and the rollback tax rate (0.618234). The effective tax rate is calculated by the county and based off what the city would need to maintain what they spent last year. An entity is only considered to have a tax increase if the tax rate is higher than the effective tax rate.

Duque said he doesn’t agree with “tax raise” but it is the term they have to use.

“It’s .013 more, and that translates to about $150,000 in additional revenue,” he said. “We’re creating three new positions in this budget in the general fund. Those three new positions are costing over $200,000. That’s why we are maintaining the tax rate instead of going with the effective. It’s covering these three new positions.”

The city is adding two resource officers to the school district and an accounting assistant in the finance department. The two new positions will be patrol officers for the police department, and NPD will select two officers already on staff to work the schools.

“Adding these two additional positions in PD allows us to dedicate two new positions to NISD,” Duque said. “Right now, we have one SRO (School Resource Officer). In the past, he focused most of his time at the high school, but he would have to go to all of the other campuses. Working with the school district over the summer, they requested that we add two additional SROs.

“The plan is that one would remain at the high school, one would be assigned to one of the middle schools and the other would be assigned to the other middle school, and they would divide the elementary schools between those two new positions.”

Nederland will also be applying for a federal grant to improve the radio system that law enforcement uses, Duque said.

“Years ago we started a phased approach to improving our radio system for law enforcement,” he said. “It’s a joint project with the cities in the county as well as the county. It’s long term. Every few years we apply for a grant to help upgrade the system.”

Nederland city employees will receive a 2-percent raise for the upcoming fiscal year.

The street budget for 2018-2019 is $1.295 million, Duque said

“We anticipate having carryover money at the end of this fiscal year,” he said. “Some of our street projects came in under budget. Once we close out these projects, we’ll pin down exactly where we are at and increase that amount to about $1.5 million for next year.”

Duque said the city didn’t necessarily have any project requests they had to turn down or table until next year.

“The department heads do a good job of having realistic expectations,” he said. “We don’t tell them that it’s Christmas time and to just write a letter to Santa. They don’t have that mentality. They know what they can and can’t ask for or what they should and shouldn’t ask for. I think they all have some things that they hope we can still get, but they understand the finances.

“I think we have an overall very strong financial position, while maintaining the lowest tax rate of the full-service cities in this county.”