PEARLAND, Texas — Pearland City Manager Clay Pearson was terminated effective immediately after a unanimous vote by the city council.
Editorial note: The above video is from a previous story.
The city said it held a closed executive session Monday night and voted 6-0 to terminate Pearson.
Last week, the city of Pearland was facing a massive budget problem after property appraisals were miscalculated, leading the city to pass a higher budget than it should have.
Somehow, city officials said calculations on property appraisals were inflated by more than $1 billion. When the city of Pearland sets a budget each year, they look at how much money they’ll be getting from property taxes.
“City property taxes make up about a third of our general fund each year," Budget Officer Eric Roche said.
To do that, they have to look at the appraised value of the property they’ll tax to project how much money they will receive.
When projecting the 2023 budget, the city said numbers they got from Harris County were inaccurately calculated by $1.3 billion, which led the city to believe they would get more money than they actually should. It's part of the reason their higher budget was narrowly approved.
“We certainly wouldn’t have had this budget," Pearland Mayor Kevin Cole said.
“Ultimately, what that means is there is less property out there for us to apply our tax rate to, less property value. So we will be bringing in less revenue than the city budget initially envisioned," Roche said.
Now, with the correct appraisal calculations, they realize their budget will be $10.3 million short.
Pearson worked for the city since March 2014.