Chief Appraiser Juan Saucedo was met with mixed reactions when he presented the Lampasas Central Appraisal District’s proposed 2026 budget at Tuesday’s Commissioners Court and Kempner City Council meetings. The budget reflects a 78% increase for LCAD.
Although members of the Commissioners Court said they appreciated Saucedo’s detailed presentation on the status of the appraisal district and its needs, Kempner City Council members voiced frustration with the large increase LCAD is seeking.
LCAD’s 2026 proposed budget of $1,589,264 represents a $600,000 increase over the 2025 approved budget of $890,471.
DETAILS ON THE INCREASE
At both meetings, Saucedo provided a synopsis of the current state of the appraisal district. He said LCAD’s parcel count is 20,507 with a market value of $6.87 billion, a 1.53% increase from 2024. In 2020, the market value for properties under LCAD’s jurisdiction was $3.075 billion. The district’s new value increased by $64 million in 2025, versus $110.3 million a year ago.
Saucedo highlighted the efforts of BIS Consulting, which helped draw over 15,800 parcels through the mapping process. Saucedo said 81% of the county’s 18,000 real property accounts have been mapped. Also, BIS has helped with recording deeds by reviewing 3,200 documents, including 1,167 ownership updates.
LCAD has a contract with BIS Consulting for $83,000 until the end of 2025. The chief appraiser said its work has been more than anyone initially realized.
“Corrections are eating up our time,” Saucedo said at the Kempner meeting. “We are budgeted to pay them 40 hours a month. They are using 60 hours a month just to get these corrections done. They are not charging us for the additional 20, but they didn’t know how much work was involved.”
Saucedo informed both governmental bodies of corrections that have led to potential lost revenue for LCAD’s taxing units. The district is still researching the city of Lampasas, Lampasas ISD and smaller ISDs affiliated with LCAD.
So far, a total of $294,913 across the last 10 years in lost revenue from 53 properties has been identified. The district currently has 3,557 missing properties, he said.
One reason the appraisal district is behind in catching these problems is the lack of staff, Saucedo said. A big increase to the budget is the addition of three appraisal employees to bring LCAD’s staff to 10. The LCAD Board of Directors approved the hiring of an eighth employee last summer, but the district has failed to maintain a full staff since then.
Saucedo told commissioners and Kempner council members LCAD is budgeting as a tier 3 appraisal district according to the Texas Comptroller guidelines, when it should be budgeting as a tier 2 district. Lampasas County has had a population over 20,000 since 2012, which places it within the 20,000 to 120,000 population threshold of a tier 2 entity.
“Since 2012 to current, we have been budgeting as a tier 3,” Saucedo told the Commissioners Court. “We are really not a tier 3; we are a tier 2 appraisal district and growing. Based on those comptroller’s statistics, the budget should be somewhere between $1.4 million and $1.6 million without collections. This appraisal district does collect.”
Along with staff increases, Saucedo also is seeking to move the property reappraisal plan from every three years to every two years due to continued growth in the area. Other budget requests include digitizing appraisal and collection records, making HVAC repairs and adding new furniture.
LCAD’s 2026 proposed budget shows a total levy of $40.659 million for its taxing units, an increase of nearly $3 million in 2025.
COMMISSIONERS COURT DISCUSSION Over the last 10 years, LCAD estimated the county lost a total of $14,165 in potential revenue on seven properties with a market value of $5.675 million. Precinct 2 Commissioner Jamie Smart and Precinct 1 Commissioner Bobby Carroll asked Saucedo in Tuesday morning’s meeting how the appraisal district was missing so many properties.
“It is hard to say, but probably poor mapping from the CAD in the past,” Saucedo responded.
Commissioners also questioned why the appraisal district did not have updated deeds when the paperwork was filed through the county clerk’s office.
LCAD Board Chairman Marshal Brewer, who was present at both the Lampasas and Kempner meetings, explained the district does not have the same data as the county.
“You are talking about two different data sets,” Brewer said. “You’ve got a dataset at the county level and a dataset at the CAD. The CAD has been bad for years and years and years. We are getting it much, much better, but it is not there yet.”
Smart said the missing properties uncovered by LCAD were a dose of some needed transparency.
“I’ve been in office for seven years, and I don’t think we’ve approved the appraisal district budget in seven years,” the commissioner said. “We’ve always suspected there has been a problem, and you are bringing that to our attention that it has been a problem. It sounds to me you are beginning to get things back in line.”
Carroll inquired whether contracted appraisal staff might help save the district some money.
While the district does utilize contracted workers for industrial and commercial properties, Saucedo said it is in LCAD’s best interest to have local staff.
“It could help, but it is better if it is done by local individuals who know what’s going on,” the chief appraiser said. “A contractor is going to come in one or two days a week, and we may go back to where we are at now.”
Precinct 4 Commissioner Mark Rainwater seemed pleased with Saucedo’s presentation. He said with more properties uncovered, proper appraisals could lead to more revenue for the county.
“If your budget has to go up to this, I’m going to be in support of it -- as bad as I hate it -- but I like to save money,” Rainwater said.
KEMPNER COUNCIL DISCUSSION Kempner Councilman Elliott Whitton questioned why so many properties were missed from the tax rolls. The city of Kempner lost $64,669 in potential revenue over the last 10 years due to 16 missing properties in the LCAD data set, according to numbers provided on Tuesday.
“Most likely, we didn’t have staff trained to do deeds and mapping in-house,” Saucedo said. “I think the CAD has contracted and hired staff to do it. It is not something the average [employee can handle] – you have to have a GIS degree to be able to do this. Throughout the year, deeds have probably been missed.”
Councilman Thomas Combs had multiple questions for Saucedo throughout the council’s nearly two-hour discussion over the LCAD budget. He said the $1.5 million proposed budget that is $100,000 less than the average budget of tier 2 appraisal districts was an unfair comparison, considering Lampasas barely classified as a tier 2 district.
“I know we are growing, but you are saying our budget should be this amount. Well, that’s an average budget,” Combs said. “This [LCAD’s proposed budget] is slightly under average for all the others. I see that as an excessive jump in reference to the tier 2 level.”
Mayor John Wilkerson was vocal about his displeasure with the new budget numbers. While the council has been supportive of incremental increases in the past to help the district grow, those efforts haven’t come to fruition, he said.
“When y’all have walked in here and said we need to give a pay increase to our employees, and we need to get this and need to get that, not one council member up here bucked at it because it was incremental,” Wilkerson said. “Internally, I don’t know if it is the board [that is the problem]. I don’t know what it is, but internally something is broke there.”
The mayor said it was inappropriate for LCAD to ask for all the funding it needs to get back on track when Kempner has slowly increased pay for its staff to try to be more competitive.
Councilman Rob Green followed Wilkerson’s comment with an unfiltered sentiment. “This is a big bend-over-the-desk moment,” he said.
At the end of the session with Saucedo, Wilkerson asked for thoughts from each council member on the proposed 2026 LCAD budget. Green, Whitton and Dan Long all agreed the budget was off the mark.
“It’s too large of an ask,” Green said. “It needs to be implemented incrementally over a period of years.”
Despite some reservations, Combs said the large budget increase may be needed to get the appraisal district on its feet.
“We know it has been broken for many years, and it needs to be fixed,” Combs said. “Should it be fixed in one year? I don’t necessarily agree.”
Saucedo repeated to council members that LCAD is trying to help all its taxing units. To accomplish its goals, it needs a budget hike.
“Scaling back is not going to help,” the chief appraiser said. “We are presenting you a solution to get out of the hole we are in now. We are in a pretty big hole -- the whole county, not just Kempner.”