Your questions about Kerrville’s disaster tax rate, answered

The Lead’s live Facebook coverage of Friday’s Kerrville City Council budget workshop drew dozens of comments from readers, many raising the same core questions about the likely disaster tax rate and the city’s flood recovery finances. Here, The Lead answers them directly.

What exactly is a “disaster tax rate,” and how is it different from a normal tax increase?

Under Texas law, cities that have experienced a declared disaster can adopt a “disaster tax rate” — a mechanism that lets them raise the property tax rate above the standard voter-approval cap without triggering an automatic election, specifically to fund disaster-related recovery costs. It’s a separate legal calculation from the city’s regular no-new-revenue and voter-approval rates, and it’s tied to documented disaster expenses rather than general operating costs.

Is this a new tax rate stacked on top of last year’s disaster tax rate?

No. Mayor Joe Herring said explicitly at Friday’s meeting that any new disaster tax rate would not be cumulative with the one adopted after the 2025 flood. It would be a separate, new calculation using the same legal mechanism, tied specifically to July 2026 flood costs. Several commenters raised a related and legally accurate point: a disaster tax rate is tied to a specific qualifying disaster, and a taxing unit generally cannot continue relying on a prior disaster’s authorization once a new one has occurred — which is part of why the city is now doing the math over again rather than simply extending last year’s rate.

Why raise taxes at all — isn’t this what FEMA, state grants and last year’s donations are for?

This is the most common question in the thread, and it deserves a direct answer: FEMA public assistance is not guaranteed, and even when granted, it typically doesn’t cover 100% of costs, arrives months to years after the disaster, and reimburses rather than pre-funds. As reported this week, Texas needs to document $60 million in public infrastructure damage statewide to trigger a federal disaster declaration — Kerrville’s damage alone already accounts for more than half that threshold, but the declaration itself is not yet secured, and city officials have said the standard federal process (unlike last year’s immediate declaration, which followed the loss of life) will take longer. The disaster tax rate exists precisely to bridge that gap: it lets the city pay for urgent repairs now, with the expectation that some costs may later be offset by federal or state reimbursement.

As for last year’s flood relief donations — those were largely directed to individual victims and nonprofit-administered relief funds, not the city’s general fund or infrastructure budget.

Texas does have state-level disaster assistance programs that can supplement federal aid, and the city has previously drawn on state resources following the 2025 flood. The Lead does not yet have confirmation of what specific state funding, if any, has been identified for this flood’s recovery costs, or how it factors into the current budget math. We’ll follow up with the city for specifics.

Why should people outside a flood zone have to pay this tax?

This is one of the most common objections, and it comes down to how a disaster tax rate actually works: it’s a citywide property tax rate, not a fee charged only to flood-zone properties. Like the rest of the city’s general property tax rate, it applies to all taxable property within city limits, regardless of whether an individual property flooded. That’s different from flood insurance, which is voluntary (or required by a mortgage lender) and priced specifically to a property’s flood risk. The disaster tax rate exists because the damage — to roads, bridges, water and sewer lines, parks and other public infrastructure — affects services and systems every resident and business relies on, not just property in the floodplain. Whether that’s the fairest way to fund recovery is a legitimate policy debate, and one City Council will likely hear more of as this moves toward a vote.

If the city was “broke” from last year’s flood, how did it afford a new police station?

The new public safety facility was not funded out of annual operating revenue. City Manager Dalton Rice has previously explained that voters approved $45 million in bonds for the facility in 2022 — three years before the 2025 flood — separate from the city’s general operating budget. That kind of voter-approved capital debt is a fundamentally different funding mechanism than the day-to-day general fund dollars now strained by flood recovery and insurance costs — the city can carry long-term, voter-approved construction debt at the same time its operating budget is squeezed by recurring expenses like personnel, insurance and emergency repairs. The city charter also caps total debt service at 25% of the maintenance and operations budget, a legal guardrail on how much debt the city can take on regardless of project.

What is the “2024 flood” people keep referencing?

Kerrville also saw significant flooding in July 2024, driven by heavy rainfall on Johnson Creek. It caused damage in Ingram and partially flooded Louise Hays Park. It was less catastrophic than the July 2025 flood, which killed 119 people countywide, but it’s part of why officials are now describing 2026 as the third consecutive July flood event.

Are these actually “1,000-year” or “500-year” floods, or is that number wrong?

This comes up every time, so it’s worth explaining plainly: a “100-year flood” or “500-year flood” doesn’t mean a flood of that severity happens only once every 100 or 500 years, or that an area is safe until that clock runs out. It’s a statistical shorthand for probability — a “100-year flood” is one with a 1% chance of being equaled or exceeded in any given year, and a “500-year flood” has a 0.2% chance. Those odds reset every year and are independent of when the last one happened, so a location can see multiple “500-year” events in a short span without contradicting the label — it’s a low-probability event happening repeatedly, not a data error. The National Weather Service classified the July 2025 flood as a 1,000-year event, and the rainfall and flow metrics behind this month’s flood are similarly extreme — the major difference between the two is the catastrophic loss of life in 2025. It’s also worth noting flood probability designations are based on historical rainfall data that some hydrologists argue is increasingly outdated given how the region’s rainfall patterns are shifting.

Does the city carry insurance on its facilities and infrastructure?

Yes. When asked about reimbursement for street repairs from the 2025 flood, city staff said most of that damage was isolated to the river corridor, with Bear Creek as the main exception — and the city used its own property insurance, rather than waiting on federal reimbursement, to fund those Bear Creek repairs, and has since received the insurance payout.

For this year’s flood, the finance department has a staff member dedicated to photographing public infrastructure damage specifically to file with the city’s insurance carriers and TDEM, cross-referencing field damage against municipal records to confirm how much each individual city asset is insured for. When insurance payouts or FEMA grants do come in for public repairs, Finance Director Julie Behrens said those funds are routed directly into capital improvement project accounts, so the recovery money and the repairs it pays for stay tracked together in one place.

Staff are also urging private property owners to report flood damage to the state portal even if they’re fully covered by private insurance — not because it affects their own payout, but because every reported loss, insured or not, counts toward the cumulative damage total the state needs to clear the $60 million threshold for a federal disaster declaration.

Separately from payouts, the city’s own insurance premiums — property, auto and liability — have been rising sharply for reasons unrelated to this flood; the new public safety facility alone added $100,000 to the city’s annual insurance costs.

What about the cloud seeding claims?

Cloud seeding conspiracy theories circulated widely after the July 2025 flood and have resurfaced with this one. The Lead has previously investigated and debunked similar flood conspiracy claims. There is no credible evidence connecting cloud seeding operations to the rainfall totals behind either the 2025 or 2026 floods; the amounts of rain involved are far beyond what seeding techniques are capable of producing. We’ll continue to fact-check specific claims as they circulate.

What are “the barges” people keep asking about, and why is the city paying for them?

They’re not a city expense. The barges are part of the state-funded recovery mission and are paid for by the Texas Division of Emergency Management, not the city budget. They don’t factor into the disaster tax rate discussion.

Did the city overestimate flood damage after the 2025 flood to justify last year’s tax increase?

There’s no evidence to suggest the city overestimated the 2025 damage to justify last year’s tax increase. For one, the city is on the hook for a percentage of any FEMA reimbursement — inflating damage estimates would mean inflating the city’s own required match, not just the amount it stands to recoup. In practice, last year’s disaster tax rate largely went toward covering public safety overtime costs incurred during and after the 2025 flood response, which is a documented, auditable expense rather than a speculative one.

Did HEB offer a grant to help rebuild flood-damaged parks?

Yes, but it’s narrower than the comment thread suggested, and it’s separate from another park grant The Lead has previously covered. HEB pledged $2.5 million toward rebuilding Louise Hays Park, on top of the $8.4 million grant the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country awarded the city in April to rebuild a destination playground, splashpad, dog park and parking at the park — itself well short of the roughly $15 million the city has estimated it needs to fully rebuild that park. Neither is a general-purpose fund the city can draw on for broader flood recovery or other damaged parks.

That distinction matters for the broader “why not use donations” question, too: the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which has handled much of the region’s flood philanthropy, has repeatedly said it cannot fund city operational expenses. Restricted and charitable dollars generally can’t substitute for the kind of ongoing infrastructure and operating costs the disaster tax rate is meant to cover.

Wasn’t some of that park money already spent once, only for the repairs to be destroyed again?

Yes, and it’s a real question the city will likely have to grapple with. Part of the Community Foundation’s flood recovery funding went toward restoring the Guadalupe Street Park playground after the 2025 flood — that project was finished and the park was set to reopen with a ribbon-cutting on July 17, but the July 16 flood destroyed it again before the ceremony could happen. The Lead does not yet have a dollar figure for what was spent on that rebuild or whether Community Foundation funds can be used a second time for the same site, but it’s a legitimate question about how the city and its philanthropic partners approach rebuilding in flood-prone areas going forward, and one we’ll continue to press on.

Is the city’s water reuse plan actually just “recycled sewage water”?

This characterization has circulated around the city’s indirect potable reuse (IPR) proposal for some time, and it oversimplifies how the process actually works. IPR treats wastewater through a multi-stage purification process before returning it to the river system, where it blends with the existing water supply and undergoes additional natural and treatment-plant filtration before it’s ever drawn back out for drinking water use. City officials have said in the past that water returned through this process is held to standards as strict as, or stricter than, the water already in the river. It is not raw or minimally treated sewage discharged directly into the drinking water supply. That said, whether to pursue IPR — and how to communicate it to the public — remains a live and legitimate local debate, and The Lead will continue covering the Elm Creek Pipeline proposal as it develops.

Do the mayor and city council members get paid $70,000-$80,000 a year?

No. That figure, which circulated in the comments on our live coverage, is far off. Kerrville pays its mayor and city council members $25 per meeting — not a salary. It’s a common misconception, since some larger Texas cities do pay their elected officials salaries in the tens of thousands of dollars, but Kerrville’s council members are effectively volunteers reimbursed a modest per-meeting stipend, not paid municipal employees.

A note on debris removal

Several readers, including at least one running a volunteer donation effort, flagged that debris removal capacity is still falling short in parts of the county, with families unable to find anywhere to take flood debris. As a reminder: the city has debris vouchers available at the City Hall front desk (ask for Angela) to avoid out-of-pocket charges at Republic Waste, and residents without a voucher should still put debris out for eventual pickup. The Lead will ask the city directly about additional debris removal support, including dump truck availability, for a follow-up story.

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Have a question about the budget, the disaster tax rate or flood recovery that isn’t answered here? Send it to louis.amestoy@kerrcountylead.com and we’ll look into it for a follow-up.