The Lubbock City Council met Thursday for a regularly scheduled meeting.
The Council heard from some residents during citizen’s comment, several of which had spoken to Council on the same annexation issue before. A few residents spoke up once again about the possible annexation of South Lubbock County land into the city limits.
On Thursday’s agenda was an item proposed by Mayor Pro Tem Jim Gerlt, looking at doing a new survey of the South Lubbock County land, but leaving out the areas where people currently live.
“Mayor Pro Tem Gerlt has asked to put a new annexation plan together, cutting out the people who really don’t wish to be annexed, and really only annexing the larger portions that wanted to be annexed,” Mayor Glen Robertson said.
The resolution passed Thursday, giving the City Council another option going forward. The City Council will have a special called meeting Monday to look at other options they have with the landowners in this area.
“Come up with a type of agreement that would allow people anywhere from 15 years up to 45 years, depending on what council votes on, to opt out of being annex,” Robertson said.
That meeting will be Monday, March 28 at 4 p.m.
The Council also discussed a sales tax on electric bills.
“We really just found out tonight that there’s a state statute that allows us to as a city to exempt our citizens from having to pay sales tax on the electric utility bill,” Robertson said. “I think we need to consider that, even if we can’t get council support to do completely away with the sales tax on the electric utility bill, which I think we should do, we need to at least address the fact that we are now currently charging sales tax on top of the pilot fee and a franchise fee. So in essence, it’s a tax on a tax, it’s double taxation.”
This item was not up for a vote Thursday, but Robertson said he plans to discuss it at a meeting very soon.
“I’ve asked for it to be on the next City Council meeting, I will be working hard to try to gather support,” Robertson said.
“You know, it’s about $2.4 million in revenue to the general fund for the total amount of sales tax, our portion, our 2% portion of the sales tax to the general fund.So it will do two things. Number one – it will lower everybody’s electric utility bill immediately, but number two – it will force us as councilmembers to find a way to save $2.4 million, which I think it doesn’t hurt to have that kind of pressure on us,” Robertson said.
LP&L spokesman Matt Rose released this statement Thursday :
“Sales tax collected by LP&L, like other City of Lubbock utilities, is passed directly through to the City’s General Revenue Fund. Policy decisions related to the sales tax remittance for City of Lubbock Utilities fall under the Lubbock City Council and LP&L is happy to abide by any decisions made by the Council on this matter.”
