Intending to send the El Paso Central Appraisal District a message and, perhaps, hoping to start an uprising of sorts, the El Paso City Council disapproved the district’s $12.4 million budget Tuesday.

It was a first in the 28 year history of the property appraising entity homeowners love to hate and commercial property owners love to fight.

With 140 employees, the CAD is a creature that serves the 30 taxing jurisdictions in El Paso County and is financed by the 16 largest, based on their respective tax bases. The city is the biggest contributor to the CAD budget at $2 million.

City Rep. Ann Lilly, whose tenure on the board has been quiet for the past two years and who has not brought complaints about the agency to council before, called the CAD’s budget bloated.

That budget is $200,000 or 1.7 percent over last year’s. [CAD approves $12.4m budget; $1m is for lawsuit over Western Refining valuation, June 12, 2009]

“Council, this has been one of my biggest frustrations since being on the CAD board,” Lilly said. “We can’t get information.”

Lilly noted that the county Commissioners Court rejected the CAD’s budget Monday, but it would take a majority of the 16 school boards and other governments that have a say on the budget to force CAD to revise its budget now.

Among the line items Lilly mentioned were the $166,000 budgeted for furniture. Last year, it was $810,000 and the year before, $110,000.

Then there was the $8,000 for coffee.

Representing the appraisal district at council was David Stone, the information technology director and the second ranking person on the staff.

Lilly introduced him by the last name of Stoner.

“Mr. Stoner, I take it you’re going to be the sacrificial lamb,” Mayor John Cook said when Stone reached the microphone as one or two council members chuckled.

Stone said the furniture budget is a misnomer because much of that money is for technology items.

“This year we replaced the computer system that has been in place since 1993,” he said. “It will provide more accurate appraisals.”

And the coffee budget?

“I know on the face of it, it looks bad,” Stone said. “But we get a lot of people coming into our office. They’re not real pleased with their interaction.

“To improve it, we provide free coffee. It does help to calm them down and it takes off the edge at their meetings.”

What about the $8,000 for landscaping the asphalt parking lot, Stone was asked.

“It’s not all asphalt,” he said. “There is landscaping. The weather has caused branches to fall on off on cars and damage them. We have a service that keeps up with the parking lot and to do the restriping.”

Lilly jumped in, saying, “I want to tell you, this budget just goes on and on with things like this. … I’ve just been really concerned about this whole budget and the $400,000 that is kept away for a lawsuit with Western Refinery.”

The CAD actually has a $1 million set aside for a looming court fight over the steep increases in value the appraisal district has placed on the refinery in recent years.

Because of improvements made at the refinery in recent years, the CAD raised its valuation from $198 million in 2006 to $368 million in 2007 and then to $370 million in 2008.

This year’s appraisal has also gone up.

At stake are millions of school tax dollars as well as revenue for the city, county, hospital district and community college.

City Attorney Charles McNabb said the CAD came to the city last year to discuss the need to obligate those funds.

Lilly also questioned why CAD was self-funded for health benefits instead of using an insurance company. For most of the past 20 years, the city and the county’s major school districts used a third party administrator, Access HealthSource, to handle their self-funded health plans.

“I want to see if there’s not a better way,” she said.

Stone said the district went to a self-funded health plan to get away from exorbitant insurance premiums.

“It has been very successful and has saved a lot of money,” Stone said, adding that health benefit rates took a big jump last year because of several very large claims that prompted CAD’s carrier of catastrophic insurance to raise the premiums sharply.

With that, Lilly said, “I’m going to ask you to disapprove this budget so we can be on record that this budget and the way they do their budgeting is not acceptable to the city.”

City Rep. Eddie Holguin quickly seconded the motion.

In further discussion, Office of Management and Budget Director David Almonte said the CAD has already lowered its proposed budget from the 5 percent originally proposed to the current 1.7 percent increase.

There were more questions about the plan to offer hourly employees a 3 percent cost of living increase for 92 hourly employees of the district’s 140-member workforce and a 2 percent merit raise for some of the rest.

“We all represent taxpayers,” Rep. Carl Robinson said. “We hear repeatedly about taxes and people getting t5axed out of their houses. … We’re in the process of trying to save jobs instead of laying off.

“How do you justify raises?”

Stone said they’re good for morale and productivity and that raises amounting to 1.1 percent of the budget didn’t seem excessive.

Before the council voted down the CAD budget, Cook noted that city employees will be getting raises in the fourth quarter of the year that starts Sept. 1.

Police and firefighters, who have union negotiated contracts with 2 to 3 percent increases, are in the process of voting on whether to go along with the city’s request that they postpone their scheduled raises for four months.

And as a result of the voters’ 2007 approval of pay raises for council members, effective June 28, the mayor’s salary jumped 39 percent to $45,000 a year from $32,423 and representatives’ pay leapt 51.5 percent to $29,000 from $19,144.

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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605, ext. 30, or 630-6622.