Not everyone realizes that there are two separate elections in May. There’s the runoff for Congress and other partisan offices on May 24 and the less well-known Constitutional Amendment election on May 7. There are two propositions on the May 7 ballot; both are related to property taxes.
Proposition 1 says, “The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the resident homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on a homestead.”
Yes, it is widely agreed that the ballot language sounds like gibberish; even lawyers have to ask experts what it means. Those experts will refer you back to the actual legislation that generated the proposition and the Texas Constitution and explain that if passed it would reduce property taxes for elderly and disabled Texans by decreasing the amount they pay to public schools, which is generally the largest part of a homeowner’s tax bill.
