On September 14, the City Commissioners held their bi-monthly meeting, beginning with an executive session for a consultation with an attorney.
Upon reconvening, the commission moved on with the items on the agenda, starting with approving the minutes of the September 8, 2026 public hearing and special commission meeting, which was approved.
Next was to consider adopting on second and final reading Ordinance No. 1849, setting a tax rate of $.663921 per $100 valuation on taxable property for the 2026-2027 fiscal year and levying an Ad Valorem Tax on all properties subject to taxation within the corporate limits of the City of Pampa.
“This is actually a tax decrease,” Commissioner Brian Doughty said.
“Jimmy, how much did you say we were losing?” asked Commissioner Wendi Horst.
“It’s a quarter of a million, I believe,” Commissioner Jimmy Keogh said.
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next was to consider adopting on second and final reading Ordinance No. 1850, amending fees for Animal Control services.
“At the last meeting, I mentioned we look at other cities and what they charge for these same services,” City Manager Shane Stokes said. “At the end of the day and what I didn’t say was we’re trying to make sure we’re paying for the cost of that service. Some of these are even doubling and that’s just because the cost of that particular service we were only getting half of what we needed to cover the cost.”
With no further discussion, the item was approved.
Next was to consider accepting the Gray County Appraisal District’s 2027 Operating Budget, to which the Chief Appraiser Tyson Paronto addressed the commission.
“The first line-item is salaries and we did see a sizable increase in this one of $89,500. We did hire two new employees who have started, but we went ahead and pulled money out of reserves for 2026 to finance these two employees. We went ahead and billed it in to 2027’s budget.”
“So you increased from 10 to 12?” Wendi asked.
“No, we actually went from seven to nine.”
“I thought you had ten last year?”
“No, ma’am. The retirement increased $10,230; FICA did go down; employment insurance increased $162; health, life and dental increased by $27,000. The next category that did change is training and education which went up $1,000. Fees and dues went up $1,100 and travel went up from $13,000 to $16,000.”
“Really quick back to the salaries and wages, so this $89,500, is that going toward your two new employees?” Brian asked.
“No, that’s the two new employees and then a cost of living expense increase for the remaining employees.”
“While we’re on that subject, I feel like we have an incomplete budget here. It says, ‘see salary and wages with benefits paid for employee breakdown’, but it’s not in here,” Jimmy Keough said.
“Was that not part of the packet you received from the district?” Tyson asked.
“No.”
“I did bring a copy of the salary breakdown that has the benefits, but I only brought one copy. I apologize that it did not have the salary comparison on that.”
“What type of employee did you hire, what’s the pay range we’re looking at?” Wendi asked.
“They are both in the $32,000-35,000 range. They are going to be part of our data entry crew, record retention, customer service. They are going to be the ladies you see when you first walk in the district building. We’re actually losing one of our current employees toward the end of 2027. She is pursuing other interests, so part of that was trying to get ahead of the curve and getting somebody in, trained, and ready to go. So when that does take place, it won’t be such a big hit to our productivity level.”
“On the increase in staffing, why is that happening?” Mayor Mike Borger asked.
“The biggest part of that is due to a new legislation that started in 2024, the homestead audit where every year we have to go in and audit a specific part of the homesteads within Gray County. We didn’t realize how big of a project that was going to be in data collection, actually going out and gathering the accounts, looking at each specific account and seeing the criteria that is required to qualify for the homestead is current, whether it’s the drivers license, application, or whatever paperwork it might take to qualify for a disability. So that was a huge undertaking. At one point in time, we had everybody in the office working on that. And then we get into the mailing, phone calls, and the foot traffic coming back into the office. So we’ve seen a huge influx in phone calls and foot traffic for sure.”
“I was unaware that you had to reapply for a homestead,” Wendi said.
“So that’s new?” Mayor Mike asked.
“Yes, sir. You will receive a letter in the mail once we do get it to your specific part of the alphabet. That’s how we do that, we split it up. It’s part of the new legislation. What happened was there were folks throughout the state of Texas who would say they owned property in Gray County claiming homestead here and they would snowbird to the hill country for the winter, set up camp down there, and apply for a homestead as well. That’s why the law came into effect, to try to cut down on that happening.”
“Are there other exemptions who have to reapply for?” Jimmy asked.
“There are several out there, but as far as the homestead, and prior to the legislation and the way we always did it was once you applied, it was granted and until you turned 65 or became disabled, it was good.”
“I guess what I was getting at is some of the other exemptions aren’t monitored that hard,” Jimmy said.
“We have annual exemptions we have to look at every year. Most of them are keyed towards the manufacturing and industrial type properties. There are applications that have to be done annually. There are companies that lease out vehicles to an individual and have to supply us with an affidavit and the actual paperwork that goes with the affidavit to show that it’s leased to an individual versus a corporation not being used as a fleet vehicle. So that’s an example, but there’s more instances than just that.”
“What about ag use valuation, is that annually?” Mayor Mike asked.
“Well the biggest thing that queues ag applications to be remailed is normally when say a tract is split or ownership of the property changes, it’s flagged right then and we mail out one the next January 1.”
“But if it doesn’t change hands, there’s not a requirement to reapply annually?”
“No, sir, unless we have determined through some source that the use of that property has changed.”
“The next category is supplies, materials, and equipment, and there is three changes in this category,” Tyson continued. “The first being office supplies, and it actually did go down by $1,200. Printing went down by $1,000, so there’s only the two changes. The next category is our contractual services, our vendors. The first change in that is consulting fees. That contract resulted in a sizeable increase because of what we predict coming down the pipe with the new data center and potentially properties of that type coming in the future. That was the main reason for that going up. For software, they go up about 3 or 4% every year, just trying to keep up with all the changes coming down from the legislature and what the software has to render each year for us to report back to the state. The accounting services tend to go up every year. The next biggest one is our IT services and that goes up periodically due to whatever new equipment we’re having to put into place and the software and support it’s going to take to utilize that equipment.”
“$163,000 on that consulting fee-wouldn’t it be condusive to just open up a position and hire somebody in-house?” Wendi asked.
“We would need more likely somebody with some type of petroleum background. I don’t really have a clue as to what type of salary that would be. We would have to have not just an engineer on staff, but more staff members to go out with boots on the ground at these facilities. We’ve talked about it in the past, but we and the directors have felt that it was cheaper on the jurisidictions to farm it out because we wouldn’t have to pay for the position, we wouldn’t have to provide vehicle allowance or insurance. So that was our thinking on that in the past.”
“So how much was the increase?” Wendi asked.
“It was right at $50,000.”
“That’s significant.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Have you ever really sat down and looked at a petroleum engineer and talked to them about it?” Brian asked.
“Honestly, we have brought it up to board of directors meetings, but that’s as far as the conversation went once we got into salary, vehicle allowance, insurance, and retirement.”
“On here it shows one person getting a $15,000 raise, is that correct?” Wendi asked. “If I look at what what you turned in to what Barbara gave us, yours would be the $87,750, and then this is what we’re comparing to from last year which was the $85,250, right?”
“That is one-one of ‘26, yes, ma’am.”
“So that’s $2,000 for you give or take, and if we look at the next line down, which is the appraiser, that was at $50,000 and you’re raising that up to $62,000?”
“That second position that you’re seeing in the budget is actually the assistant chief appraiser and office manager, it’s the HR admin assistant.”
“So that was increased $2,500?” Mayor Mike asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“So the next category we’re looking at is utilities and we are not predicting any increase in utilities at this time,” Tyson continued. “Moving on to other expenses-legal notices we have rolled into publications and subscriptions, so we zeroed legal notices but we did leave some board expense. The publications went from $5,200 to $7,000. Liability insurance stayed the same. Building insurance went up a little bit. And that’s all I have, I know that was a quick overview.”
“So Mr. Paronto, I’ll tell you why we’re asking some hard questions,” Mayor Mike said. “Number one, our great City of Pampa employees, we weren’t able to give a cost of living raise this year because of lack of funds. You are primarily our source of funds, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to us that you guys are getting cost of living raises when we can’t do that for our employees. So that’s some concern to us.”
“Understandable,” Tyson replied.
“And then you and I have talked about these valuations that some folks aren’t paying their fair share of taxes and we’re convinced of that more and more as time goes on,” Mayor Mike continued. “I want to show you a list that I put together. There’s the property ID number and then the acreage. These are all just land, no structures and they’re all within the city limits. The next column is the zoning, and the next column is the ag activity within the last seven years. This is what I’ve spoken to you about before. Several of those don’t have any evidence of ag activites in the last seven years that’s based on site inspections and the Google Earth images during that time. The footnote is 2019, 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2026 where satellite imagery has been looked at and there’s no evidence of ag activity. The rest of them-pet horses and eight head of cattle for part of that time. So that’s the ag activity that is observable. It doesn’t meet the standard according to Tax Code 23.56. That standard for ag valuation inside the city limits is they must maintain ag activity at least five out of the previous seven years. If regular city services are available to the property, activity must be continuous for the last five years. The ag operation must be at an intensity that is standard for Gray County in the Texas panhandle. In other words, it can’t be ‘token’, it has to be legit with regard to what’s standard for Gray County. Horses kept for pets and pleasure riding do not qualify as ag activity. An ag activity must not conflict with the city zoning for the property, and obviously we have one property that is zoned a single-family one and two. It’s not even zoned for ag. So with the ag use valuation that the Gray County Appraisal District allowed on these, the total value for all this and this is between 4 and 5% of all the land inside the city limits of Pampa, the valuation is $6,400 combined which yields a ‘fantastic’ tax revenue of $45.37 which is what the city got out of that. Those people have fire protection, police protection, and many cases have paved streets. Some of them of access to some utilities like water and sewer and they combined pay $45.37. Now if they reapplied and it was determined as it should be that they don’t qualify, it would move to land that isn’t ag valued on the appraisal website, that’s called land non-homesite value and it’s usually valued at $10,000 an acre. I couldn’t find any that was different than that. So at a minimum, I would say that land that is currently valued at $6,481 should be a $1,634,000 and yield an annual city tax of $11,443. Not if it’s determined that it doesn’t qualify, the law provides for a three-year rollback where they would have to pay taxes they would have paid three years prior plus 5% interest. So that’s what I would say is the minimum due to the city. And then it’s a bigger number when you include all the tax entities because that ag valuation doesn’t affect just the City of Pampa, it affects the county, the school district, and all the taxing entities. So you take the total tax rate, we’ve been missing some revenue on that. So Mr. Paronto I just want to ask you-I’ve visited with you about this and nothing happened and in fact, what did happen made it even worse. One of these properties put a round bale of hay in a city lot on Beech Street, further aggravating their neighbor next door, who pays ten times the amount of tax on his lot as that landowner pays. I’m just appealing to the hardworking citizens of Pampa who own a house and pay their full board of taxes, they’re carrying the weight for these wealthy landowners who have a lot of acreage and pay nothing. And you’ve let that happen. I just want to know why?”
“The answer I have for that is we have to do a whole category of properties, and yeah I can go out and just remove an application or an exemption from a piece of property, but if there are a multitude of properties that need to be looked at, we’ll do them in a universe instead of just picking on one person. That’s why we call it mass apprasail.”
“All of the properties inside the city limits that claim ag value, could you not require them to reapply?” Mayor Mike asked.
“We could a mass application request. That spreadsheet, was that part of the packet that was sent out for the public and everybody to view? Because I would like to have seen that before the meeting,” Tyson said.
“It was on the agenda,” Mayor Mike replied.
“No, the budget was on the agenda, but there was nothing on the agenda about talking about land values.”
“Well, we’re talking about your budget and you’re talking about increasing what we pay for your services and I’m complaining about the services and the budget,” Mayor Mike said. “I’m going to tell you when we vote here in a minute, I’m not going to vote to accept your budget. Everyone else can do what they want to, but I’ve asked you about this previously, and all this is a reminder of conversations you and I have had about this, and yet nothing changed. So it just doesn’t seem appropriate for you to come in asking for more money, wanting us to accept that, and I still feel resistance on this. I’m just going to call for the vote right now.”
“Quick question, Mr. Paronoto. You talked about that you could ask or force these landowners to reapply. How soon and what’s the earliest that could happen?” Brian asked.
“That would actually be considered a 2027 reapplication.”
“I would like to add that we’re only being asked to accept the budget,” Mayor Mike said. “The budget’s already been approved so this won’t have any impact other than us getting to speak our mind about it, which I’ve done.”
With no further discussion, a vote was held to accept the Gray County Appraisal District’s 2027 Operating Budget, and all commissioners voted against it.
“May I make a request? Can I get a copy of that spreadsheet?” Tyson asked, to which it was given. “In the future, I just would like to see something like this before I come in.”
Next was to consider approving the Pampa Economic Development Corporation and Pampa Energy Center 2026-2027 Operating Budget, to which PEDC Executive Director Ryan Bradley addressed the commission.
“We’re expecting revenues of one and a half million from our sales tax, which is a 70% increase year-over-year. Last year was 1.4 and this year we’re going to do 1.5. That’s kind of how things are tracking for us. One thing that is of note is we have been very fortunate to have acquired a lot of assets in CDs and investments. One thing that we’re doing this year is we’re going to be investing a lot of that back into the community. If you notice on our budget, we’ve allocated at least $2 million. We actually have a negative budget, we will be spending more than we’re taking in, but as an EDC, I feel that’s a good thing to be doing, especially right now when things are growing and booming. It’s nice to have that nest egg to begin with, and now it’s time to deploy all of those assets. The personnel has increased year over year. I am pleased to announce we have hired two additional employees-Michelle Gray and Jimena Montes who will be joining us next week. That increase in personnel that will actually include a couple months at the end of this year as we transition our staff from what it is to what it will be and it will level back out. In our capital expense section, you’ll notice we’ve allocated $300,000 for beautification, and we’ve actually added tree removal to that as well. We are about to conclude our first year of beautification grants. We’re able to have, I believe, 14 businesses and/or properties participate in that. I’m waiting to get the final numbers, but I think it’s around $165,000 has been given out primarily in the downtown area. We started with a budget of $100,000, then raised it to $200,000, and then this year we are just going right into it with $300,000 and it will actually be open to the whole entirety of the community. Originally we wanted it to be focused, but what we found is the whole town is booming and the whole town needs help. So this coming year, we will be targeting the entrances of the city. They will get priority in selection of funding, but everybody is allowed if you’re a business owner or even property owner to apply for facade grants and we’ll also help with tree removals. And also the workforce funds and the long range wealth and growth, those are two line-items that we’re trying to set aside. One as we have the data center coming in and the other businesses that come with it and as we have other businesses coming and going in our community, there’s going to be a turnover in workforce of both kids graduating into it, people who are currently in it, and people moving into our community. So we are working very diligently with the ISD and the college to help find training, certifications, connecting the dots from employers, and that sort of thing to try to help everybody get engaged in the economy that is coming. Then with the long range wealth and growth, that’s something that is actually near and dear to my heart. That is something that whenever we are discussing with potential clients or clients that are here, that we put together a comprehensive plan, and we know what to ask for. So whenever they come to you, to the county, to local business owners, or come to me, we have a similar song sheet. So while these things are coming and going, especially while they’re coming, we get the most out of it that we can. We have a plan to get the money and get the benefits that we can affect change today, but also so that change will be recognized 25, 50 years from now. The monies that come in and the partnerships that are formed, those sorts of things benefit us for generations to come. What that is there is a committee and we will go out and find consultants and companies that will help us to formulate these plans. We’ll share it with you, the county and the public, and we’ll hold an economic forum to make sure that the whole community understands what the direction is. If nothing else, that one is dear to me. Circling back, being able to hire staff is going to allow us to engage with the community a lot more. I found a lot of my time has been negotiating and chasing outside of town, and the new staff that I’m hiring and the new focus of it will be to engage and help those businesses and workforce that is here to grow and prepare, and for the entrepreneurs who are among us to kind of sieze these opportunities. This isn’t anywhere in any of this, but if there are entrepreneurs out there who are thinking about starting anything or doing anything, now is the time and when we need it most. The good thing about the EDC right now is we have a little bit of money, but we are looking to engage into the community and put it out and start all these supporting businesses. The last one I’ll say is there is a line-item for demo and acquisitions. There are a lot of buildings that need to come down. There are a lot of buildings that need to get repaired. If you are a property owner and you would be interested in either making your building disappear and/or getting the asbestos or whatever the remediations needing to be done to bring it back on the market, we are here to help with that. There’s a lot of buildings that just with a little bit of love, they can be brought back up to speed, put back on the market, and new businesses can come into those. But that is a financial hurdle that a lot of people are unable to meet, so we have set aside monies to help with that as well.”
“To that point, doing something like that, is there an expectation for said business owner to repay that money once it’s brought up to standard or market?” Brian asked.
“Each one will be handled differently. Right now, the thought for like asbestos remediation is we would just cover the cost of those sorts of things. If you have a business and you’re just starting and it’s going to be here two to five years, then we would treat that a little bit different than if it’s coming down or getting cleaned up. When you start looking at cleaning up buildings or acquiring properties to clean them up after you pay the demo cost and the acquisition cost, this is actually a fairly small number when it comes to that. Then as far as the Energy Center is going, we don’t have any plans this year. We’re maintaining our water wells and stuff out there, which is what that expediture is. We’re looking to save that money and we’d absolutely love to put in a railhead and get some good commercial rail coming in. We’re basically wanting to save up our money because that’s a pricey thing to do.”
“I’d like to commend the PEDC for the beautification grant and urge the public to contact the PEDC to get ahold of y’all and to look into this because this is really a benefit,” Jimmy said. “This money right here will make a definite difference in town.”
“To that point, we’ve completed our first year of it, actually this month will be the last month that we review and not do our stuff and then next month is the beginning of the next one. So there will be a revision to it where applications will effectively be brought in at the first of the quarter and payments will be paid out at the end of each quarter. It will be a rolling quarterly basis type of deal and it will just continue to go through the year. It started off slow then it picked up a lot of steam and we still have some applications coming in hoping they were on the last one. But what we’re hoping going to a quarterly program, that it doesn’t matter what point in the year that anybody wants to engage in it. There are applications being accepted and reviewed and approved, and it just rolls in through a thing. That’s windows, doors, paint, lighting, cleanup, stucco-all those sorts of things.”
“Is the city available to apply for any of these?” Wendi asked.
“Yes.”
“On the forgivable loans that you guys have done in the past and once they have to meet certain criteria and expectations, can we get an update where some of those businesses are?” Brian asked.
“Yes, absolutely. In the annual report, it has a summary of what you’re asking. I do have a draft copy of that to leave with you.”
With no further discussion, the budget was approved and the meeting was adjourned.
