Diboll City Council met Monday night for a budget workshop and will meet once more before finalizing the 2010-2011 budget at the regular September meeting.

“The budget is going to be pretty bare bones,” said Dennis McDuffie, city manager. “We’re not budgeting for any equipment purchases and for any increases in personnel.”

Despite tightening its belt, the city must still go up on the property tax rate by about 3 cents per $100 valuation. Last year’s tax rate was 53.41 cents per $100 valuation, and this year’s effective tax rate is 56.63 cents per $100 valuation. The effective tax rate is the rate the city must set to bring in the same amount of tax revenue as the previous year.

“Due to the changes in Temple Inland’s operation, our appraisal values in the commercial and industrial sector went down about $11 million,” McDuffie said. It went down about $20 million last year and we had an unbalanced budget by about $120,000. This year we anticipated it, so it wasn’t a shock.”

The property tax increase will cost the owner of an average ($75,000) house in Diboll about $22.50 this year.

The city has also raised its water and sewer rates to help pay for the Diboll- Lufkin Water Project, which will bring to Diboll a secondary water supply. The cost to the average water and sewer user will be about $8 a month.

The council will hold another workship, which is open to the public, later in August.