Lubbock Debt has Citizens on Hook for $4,400 Each

Lubbock has one of the highest per capita debt structures in the nation and each citizen owes about $4,400, largely because of water project costs.

In Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Susan Combs’ “Tell the Truth Texas” report, Lubbock reportedly has approximately $1 billion of total debt outstanding. This debt includes contract bonds, lease totals and water allocations.

Beth Hallmark, creative director at the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, said the goal of the campaign is to take public information that is available in various places to provide clarity for the taxpayer.

“Overall, the goal is just to shine more light on government finances and more specifically, debt,” she said. “So we started of course with what the state debt profiles look like and then the top 20 cities and counties and we’re going to be rolling out pretty soon the top school districts and we’re just going to keep going from there.”

The debt outstanding per capita is $4,471, according to documents from the comptroller’s office.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Lubbock ranks fifth with regard to debt outstanding per capita compared to the 20 most populous cities in Texas.

The average debt per capita in Texas is $1,513, according to taxfoundation.org, and Lubbock’s debt per capita ranks higher than 38 states, according to the website.

An open records request was filed under the Texas Public Information Act to verify this data. James Capps, senior financial analyst for the City of Lubbock, provided the debt service schedule for Lubbock. The schedule displays all of the city’s outstanding debt.

According to the data provided by Capps, Lubbock will spend $56,198,711.01 in this fiscal year alone for water and wastewater.

Lubbock has $988,950,000 of tax-supported debt and $66,472,000 of revenue-supported debt, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tom Currah, senior adviser and data analysis director at the Comptroller’s office, said tax-supported debt is debt that is backed by a tax pledge, which is typically property taxes.

“In most cases it’s being paid from property taxes,” he said. “Although in some cases it may be paid from property taxes and another revenue source or it’s the revenue source but it’s being backed by property taxes in case that revenue source falls short.”

Revenue debt is debt that is backed by another revenue source, Currah said.

“An example of that would be, say, maybe the water department issues debt to build infrastructure to deliver water and then the debt is paid out of fees that are paid by water users,” he said. “The revenue from those fees is used to pay that debt and that’s why it’s called revenue debt.”

Lubbock City Councilman Todd Klein said nearly one-third of the city’s debt could be attributed to the Lake Alan Henry project.

“Almost right at a third exact is going to be water related. About 28.5 percent of (the debt) is a project,” he said. “We’ve got a reservoir called Lake Alan Henry and that’s one of our primary water sources now and 28.5 (percent) of that (debt) is water related to that in particular. We’ve got about another 5 percent related to some other water aspects, so water is going to be one of the largest percentages out there.”

Klein said he thinks the immediate course of action for Lubbock should be to stop spending money on needs that are not immediate.

“When you’re in a hole, put down the shovel and stop digging,” he said. “So I think that’s what we’ve got to do first and foremost. Let’s not add to the debt and that’s going to mean putting off additional projects that we might do sooner, otherwise, and see if we can really start to push back on some of the capitalization, some of the spending for these programs.”