The Bexar Central Appraisal District (BCAD) is adjusting a popular 2024 policy that sought to keep property owners from having to challenge their appraisal values as often as usual.
Chief Appraiser Rogelio Sandoval said Monday the change is merely a language compliance issue that won’t impact taxpayers — but several board members accused him of misrepresenting the situation to clawback hard-fought protections.
Two years ago, Bexar County was among several Texas counties where appraisal districts pursued innovative policies after the Legislature expanded boards.
New elected members took office months before BCAD approved its two-year reappraisal plan and quickly rallied support for a policy that would freeze property values for people who successfully challenged them the previous year.
Appraisal district staff was supportive at the time, but the net impact has always been a point of contention among the municipalities and school districts that rely on BCAD’s data.
This year, two elected members hoped to continue that in the 2027-2028 reappraisal plan, and BCAD leaders initially appeared to be on board.
But the day of the reappraisal vote, Sandoval told them that a new state law aimed at Tarrant County had made the policy illegal, and they’d need to make some modifications to achieve the same goal.
“I want to assure you that this plan also continues your prior policy objective, which is providing stability year to year to the property owners,” Sandoval said of the revised language.
Two board members disagreed with that characterization, and accused BCAD staff of siding with the taxing entities that have blamed their 2024 policy for reducing their property tax revenue.
Under the new wording, they said, it’s unclear what will happen to properties in which market evidence suggests the value has increased, but the property itself has not materially changed.
The old policy ensured they wouldn’t go up, said Place 2 Board Member Erika Hizel, and Sandoval couldn’t give a straight answer about how it would work going forward.
“The chief appraiser took out the taxpayer protection and bullshitted around it,” Hizel said. “No one has told him or their staff that we were ever out of compliance with the original appraisal plan.”
Hizel and Place 3 Board Member Jon Melendez, who are both up for reelection in November, tried to amend the language back to what was approved in 2024, but were voted down by the rest of the board.
Later they both voted against the overall 2027-2028 reappraisal plan, which was approved 6-2.
“Before the vote, I was told multiple times that the carry-forward provision was a success and that the taxpayers liked it and that would be reinstated,” said Melendez, a conservative organizer who was recently appointed to the board.
” … I think [removing] it has everything to do with the city budget shortfall.”
A district under pressure
In Texas, appraisal districts are an arm of the state, responsible for assigning the taxable values that both state and local governments use to assess property taxes.
But their boards have long been appointed by the taxing entities themselves, causing some skepticism from taxpayers in the years when valuations were skyrocketing.
To add transparency to a confusing process, state lawmakers created the elected positions in the 2023 session, and some of them went on to push dramatic changes — aimed at offering property owners relief from rising valuations.
Now the real estate market is cooling down, and appraisal districts face more pressure from municipal leaders facing revenue deficits, than from property owners, whose valuations are mostly stable.
“I know how sensitive and how important this topic is,” Sandoval said at the beginning of Monday’s meeting. ” …I’d like to assure the taxing jurisdictions that this reappraisal plan calls for an annual reappraisal of all properties as of January 1st, looking at current data, and more importantly, evidence.”
Like many property tax relief efforts, critics of the 2024 policy say the changes have never been felt equally throughout the community.
As the real estate market continues to soften, only a small number of properties have continued to go up in value — primarily those at the top end of the market.
That’s as 92% of residential properties in Bexar County either stayed the same or decreased in value from 2025 to 2026, meaning those property owners are unlikely to be challenging their valuations.
Against that backdrop, some policy experts say it makes sense for policymakers to reconsider efforts that only help the top of the market, because lower-value property owners bear the brunt of higher rates when taxing entities fall short on their revenue projections.
Here’s why cheaper homes have a higher tax burden in San Antonio
But there was little discussion of that on Monday, from a board where most members represent taxing entities that are now considering raising rates to make ends meet — either this year or in the near future.
Two years ago, appraisal district staff said the one-year reprieve would be revenue neutral for the taxing entities, because it enshrined practices the district already uses.
They appraise properties every two years, staff said, and only increase them if substantial improvements are made, which was still allowed under the 2024 policy.
On Monday, however, the appraisal district estimated about 9,500 people were able to skip a year of challenging their valuation since it was first implemented — something both critics and supporters say indicates that it’s having a financial impact.
“We’re supposed to be transparent, right? Isn’t that our first mission?” Hizel said. “How do you think I’m going to explain this to neighborhoods?”
San Antonio city leaders raised concern about potential revenue loss when the 2025-2026 plan was first approved.
But the city’s Chief Financial Officer Troy Elliott said Tuesday that it was never clear whether it actually worked out that way, and he said the 9,500 figure presented this year was indeed confusing.
Elliott said the city has had many conversations with the appraisal district since the 2024 policy was first created, and he understood the new reappraisal plan to be an improvement because it removed the policy rolling over previously challenged valuations.
A changing landscape
Before the elected positions were created, appraisal district leaders say the board’s work was primarily administrative.
Now even state lawmakers have had some reservations about their efforts to take a bigger role in shaping tax policy.
In particular, Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth, elected conservatives to a board that approved less frequent appraisals so that fast-rising valuations could only go up once every three years.
Since then many of the same properties are appraising lower than they were the previous year, and Tarrant’s appraisal policy has caused an estimated 200,000 homes to be overtaxed because sinking market values weren’t being reflected.
Texas lawmakers responded by outlawing reappraisal plans that reduce appraisal frequency, which BCAD leaders said repeatedly would make their own 2025-2026 plan illegal if they tried to repeat it.
“Our friends in Tarrant [County] did their thing, and then the State Legislature took issue with it,” Board Chair Dave Gannon said Monday.
Gannon said that Bexar County had come up with a solution that would still keep people from having to fight their appraisals as often, while also avoiding a conflict with the next state law.
“What our [2025] plan said is that [if a valuation had just been lowered], we would not reappraise it,” Gannon said. “What we’re saying here [with the new policy] is, by law, we will reappraise it, but if you protest, that value will remain as the basis for your property value the following year, absent clear and convincing evidence.”
But critics said BCAD leaders never took the issue to the district’s legal counsel, before saying the policy had become illegal.
They also ignored input from state Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), who helped craft a legislative change that would save Bexar County’s policy, and wrote a letter to the board saying so.
Gannon said Wednesday that BCAD only received Dorazio’s letter late Monday afternoon. Mail room staff delivered it to a pre-meeting planning session, where he read it five minutes before the start of the meeting.
“We’re pretty disappointed in the actions of the appraisal board,” Dorazio said in a statement Tuesday. “This was an important taxpayer protection that [the late BCAD board member] Bob Bruce got across the finish line, and now that he’s passed away they have gotten rid of it.”
