In an e-mail with a staff member of the Elections Division Staff of the Office of the Texas Secretary of State, it is confirmed that Felán was correct in her calculations of the required number of signatures for the petition: 1,953 and not 2,166 as the county had calculated. 

The e-mail reads: 

   This e-mail is in reference to your e-mail copied below. You have the correct interpretation of Section 277.0024 of the Texas Election Code. If the petition is a petition that is subject to Chapter 277 of the Code, voters with an “S” notation would be excluded from any computation that is required to be applied to the number of registered voters. In your case, if the petition that you are referencing is subject to Chapter 277 and requires the signatures of a certain percentage of registered voters in the county, that percentage would be multiplied by the number of registered voters in the county minus the voters with an “S” notation. 

   We hope this will be helpful to you. 

Elections Division Staff 

Office of the Texas Secretary of State 

    Ethelvina Felán, one of the group of concerned taxpayers’ most vocal members, has sent a letter addressed to County Elections Administrator Roy Schmerber on this matter.

   Felán has also submitted another set of questions for the county, this time specifically to County Tax Assessor and Collector Isamary Villarreal. 

Felán asks for confirmation from Villarreal on the half-cent additional sales tax and its use.

The letter reads as follows:

“Ms. Villarreal,

Although required by Texas Tax Code Section 31.01(i), Maverick County’s tax bills did not show the amount of property taxes that taxpayers were saved by the County reducing the property tax rate by the half cent additional sales tax for property tax relief.  We are trying to get to the bottom of whether this was just a violation of the Tax Code or if there were around 30,000 acts of mail fraud committed when tax bills were issued demanding a property tax rate not reduced by the half-cent additional sales tax.  

Can you confirm that Maverick County is one of 123 counties in Texas whose voters approved a half-cent additional sales tax for property tax relief? 

Can you confirm that the way a half-cent additional sales tax is used for property tax relief is to subtract the “sales tax adjustment rate” from the property tax rate using the “adjusted for sales tax” lines in the Additional Sales Tax Rate section of the Effective Tax Rate Worksheet?

The County’s Effective Tax Rate Worksheets for the last 5 fiscal years (starting 9/30/12) verify the sales tax adjustment rate was always subtracted from the property tax rate using the “adjusted for sales tax” lines in the Additional Sales Tax Rate section, do you remember a year before 9/30/12 this was not done? 

On September 16, 2016 the Tax Assessor Collector’s Office used the Additional Sales Tax Rate section of the Effective Tax Rate Worksheet to calculate a reduction to the current fiscal year’s property tax rate by subtracting the sales tax adjustment rate of $0.129696 from the unadjusted $0.586525 rollback tax rate to arrive at a rollback tax rate adjusted for sales tax of $0.456839, can you confirm that this $0.456839 rollback tax rate adjusted for sales tax was not adopted by Commissioners Court at its meeting on September 29, 2016 after it voted to rescind the $0.586535 rollback tax rate UNadjusted for sales tax at this same meeting?

Can you confirm that this $0.456839 rollback tax rate adjusted for sales tax could have been adopted by Commissioners Court on September 29, 2016 because the deadline to adopt a tax rate was not until September 30, 2016?

E. Felan

Maverick County Taxpayer”