Resident urges special election on property-tax increases, criticizes state incentives

During the public-comment period at the start of the Sept. 14 meeting, Amarillo resident Charles Little asked the council to refer any property-tax increases to a citizen vote and questioned state priorities in offering incentives to large developers while local infrastructure remains in need.

Little told the council that households are struggling with rising costs and said city residents deserve transparency about how much any proposed tax increase would cost individual homeowners. "So if you're gonna raise the property tax, we need to know how much you wanna raise it, what it's gonna cost us because everybody's tapped out," he said, and later added: "The governor finds it necessary to give billions of dollars to billionaires to build data centers when that money could go to the cities and counties to work on their infrastructure." Council thanked him for his comments and moved into the staff presentation.