ODESSA, Texas — One of the big concerns for Mark Trotter, owner of Triple T Auto Repair, is whether or not the city of Odessa will be providing small businesses with some kind of relief on their property taxes this year.
Trotter says that COVID-19 has really negatively impacted small businesses. Mayor David Turner said that the City of Odessa has set some CARES Act funding aside for businesses that qualify.
In fact, the city has about $500,000 available to assist small businesses.
"We’ve allocated a half-million dollars of the CARES money to be able to help out, so all he needs to do is go ahead and file or put in his application for the CARES Act. As long as he qualifies, you know he can get up to $10,000," Turner said.
Trotter claims that this is something that should have been talked about during city council meetings but never was.
"I haven’t done the grant yet because I haven’t heard about that end of it from the city. The mayor or the council didn’t say anything about that. Dewey [Bryant] didn’t say anything about that to me so I don’t know if that’s available to us or not," Trotter said.
With property taxes due in the near future, Trotter says that he's concerned about making the payment because he hasn't seen nearly as much business compared to last year.
"We got property taxes coming up so that was a very big concern for me because as a business owner, we’re right around about 60% lower than we were last year at this time and that cuts into my funds and cuts into property taxes that we usually save to pay those," Trotter said.
Turner also said that the city never really gave relief for property taxes. Instead, they have provided other exemptions.
"We gave you a homestead exemption for your house, over 65 exemption, disabled exemption, veteran exemption. In fact it’s about $2.3 billion in money that is gone out I mean it’s not gone out but it’s all for taxable values that we give out in exemptions for over 65, homestead, you know etc.," Turner said.