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Legislative Update
By CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ, HAA Legislative Chair, with ANDY TEAS, CAE, Vice President of Public Affairs
PERMITS, WATER RATES AND TRESPASSERS Stafford rescinds huge permit fee increase.
THE CITY OF Stafford’s property tax rate is zero. That’s right. Stafford, Texas is the only city we know of that charges no municipal property tax. Through a mixture of fiscal responsibility and healthy sales tax collections from retail establishments along the Southwest Freeway, Stafford has been able to give property owners (and renters) a break on the tax that increasingly drives rental rates more than any other expense. The costs of running a city are significant, however, as Stafford Fire Chief Larry DeCamillo pointed out last month, a single fire truck now costs more than $700,000. To better fund the fire department, Stafford quietly adopted a requirement that apartments purchase an “assembly permit” for each individual building at a cost of $250. One Houston Apartment Association member’s annual expense for fire permits went instantly from $750 to over $20,000. The problem – besides the obvious one – is that apartment properties are not classified as assembly occupancies in Stafford’s fire code. To the credit of Stafford’s fire chief and elected officials, they agreed when HAA pointed that out. The city has rescinded the assembly permit requirement and will work with HAA on a new, more reasonable inspection permit requirement for adoption next year. Thanks to Rockwell Management CEO Etan Mirwis for his work on this issue and for his help negotiating a solution with the city leadership. Houston Water and Sewer Rates Many of you may remember the Houston Apartment Association was founded more than 60 years ago over Houston water and sewer rates. In June, the Houston City Council voted to enact a significant water and sewer rate increase to be phased in over several years starting next month. While we never want to see our residents’ rates go up, this was a difficult issue. After years of www.haaonline.org
neglect, Houston finally settled a lawsuit it was about to lose with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. It is a felony violation of the Clean Water Act to discharge any untreated sewage into the environment, and Houston was discharging copious amounts every time it rained, with older, lower-income neighborhoods often getting the worst of it. Under the court order, Houston agreed to major upgrades of its sewer system – upgrades that frankly should have been completed long ago. The upgrades will cost around $3 billion, and the cost must be paid by ratepayers, since the water and sewer system is an “enterprise fund” that cannot be subsidized by tax money. For your budgeting purposes: Starting in September, your monthly base charge per meter will increase slightly (between $2 and $25), depending on the size of the meter. The multifamily water charge per thousand gallons will increase from $4.65 to $5.45. The multifamily sewer charge per thousand gallons will increase from $6.76 to $7.40. If you have a separate irrigation meter, the new water rate will be $10 per thousand gallons with no sewer charge. Future increases are scheduled for April of each year through 2026, and are available here: https://www.houstontx.gov/citysec/HPW/serviceratestudy.pdf If your Houston property does not submeter or allocate the expense for water and sewer to residents, be sure to account for the higher rates as you negotiate leases. If you want to begin an allocation program for the first time, there are rules you have to follow and some water-saving devices you may need to install – see your TAA Redbook for details. Trespass Bill Vetoed After trying for three legislative sessions, the apartment industry was finally able to pass a bill
to give police officers some additional options to deal with trespassers on apartment properties. The bill passed the House and Senate unanimously, only to be vetoed by Governor Greg Abbott in June. The story is familiar to most apartment managers – someone is hanging around your property who does not belong there. You ask them to leave. They refuse. You call the police. Criminal trespass is a Class B misdemeanor – meaning an officer must make an arrest in order to charge someone with that crime. The police officer knows prosecutors are reluctant to accept charges on trespassers, that judges are reluctant to punish them, and that a trespass arrest will take him out of his patrol area for half his shift. Accordingly, the officer often just tells the trespasser to get lost. The trespasser generally leaves but is soon back at your property with no record that anything occurred. S.B. 237 would have given police officers the discretion of either making an arrest or simply writing a citation for criminal trespass. A ticket would have required the trespasser to pay a fine – or go before a judge and explain himself – and would have created a record of what happened, which would’ve been available to officers in the case of repeat offenders. Governor Abbott’s veto proclamation indicates the bill might have gotten caught up in some politics involving immigration and border security. HAA members owe thanks to Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), our Senate author, and Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins (D-San Antonio), our House sponsor, for their work on this bill for the past three sessions. And a thank you to Villa Serena Properties CEO Steve Moore for his tireless advocacy for this. We hope to try again next session. If you have a regulatory problem or question, call the HAA main line at 713-595-0300 and ask for Public Affairs.
August 2021
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