Questions & answers.

In November 2026, Pflugerville ISD voters decide whether to annex into the Austin Community College taxing district. If it passes, every property owner in the district begins paying a new, permanent property tax to ACC in exchange for lower ACC fees and ACC voting rights.

By ACC's own figures, the average Pflugerville home is worth $407,524 and would owe about $416 a year ($34.67 a month) after the homestead exemption, at ACC's rate of $0.1034 per $100. Seniors and residents with disabilities pay less; property with no homestead exemption pays more. Because it's based on appraised value, the amount grows as your home's value rises. See The Numbers for the full breakdown.

Yes. Annexation has no sunset clause. Unlike a bond that's eventually paid off, this tax continues indefinitely, with no built in review, renewal vote, or expiration date. ACC's maintenance and operations rate is at the ceiling its voters set, 9 cents per $100, so that part can't rise without another district wide vote, but the debt service rate is separate and can rise with voter-approved bonds, and either way your bill grows on its own every year as your home's appraised value rises.

Yes. This is not only a homeowner tax. Rental property is taxed at the full rate with no homestead or senior exemption, and the research is clear that the tax reaches tenants: the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia finds landlords pass 50 to 89 cents of every dollar of a property tax shock through to renters, and a study of 5,200 German tax reforms finds it fully in rents within about three years, more so where housing is built easily, as it is here.

Residents who attend ACC would pay lower fees. But that's about 1% of the population. Roughly 1,820 Pflugerville area residents attend ACC, against a district population near 187,685, so about 1% are current ACC students, while 100% of property owners would pay the tax. And about a third of those students are dual credit or Early College, who already pay no fee at all.

Yes. Tuition at ACC is already free for Pflugerville graduates through the pilot program. What's left is a separate out of district fee of $201 per credit hour. This vote isn't about tuition; it's about that fee. The question is whether to pay about $23 million a year in permanent taxes to remove roughly $3 million a year in those fees.

Because most of the money never comes back to Pflugerville. Netting out the fifth of the district already inside ACC and applying ACC's exemptions, the new levy is about $23 million a year. The fees annexation would actually remove come to about $3 million a year. That's more than a 7-to-1 imbalance. You may hear a bigger figure: about $32 million is what ACC's rate would raise on all Pflugerville ISD property, but roughly $9.8 million of that is already paid by the 21% of the district already in ACC, so the new tax is about $23 million.

Yes. Voters rejected ACC annexation in 2018 over the same cost benefit concern. Since then, the district's taxable value has risen more than 80%, so the tax burden today is significantly larger than what voters already turned down.

Yes. Texas law lets a community college contract with a city, county, employer, or nonprofit so that covered students pay the in-district rate. A direct agreement like that would cover the same fee for about $3 million a year instead of the $23 million annexation would cost, reviewed every budget year instead of forever. Austin has funded exactly this model through Capital IDEA for 28 years. Helping students and opposing a forever tax are not in conflict. See the better way.

Lockhart annexed in 2024 and its ACC enrollment rose from 176 to 343. That's real, and it's what the research predicts, for Lockhart. The study the pro-annexation campaign posted finds the benefit follows an inverted U by distance: towns 21 to 38 miles from a campus benefit more than the tax costs, while a town close in already gets the spillovers and gains little while still paying the full tax. Lockhart is about 30 miles out. Pflugerville is nine, next to two ACC campuses. Lockhart is the argument for annexing Lockhart, not Pflugerville. See The Numbers.

Nothing on the ballot builds a campus. Two ACC campuses, Northridge and Round Rock, are already about nine miles away. ACC's 2026 service plan for Pflugerville commits only to “future consideration of ACC facility expansion,” and ACC's own plan says it builds facilities only inside its taxing district. Manor and Del Valle have both been in ACC's district for years, paying the tax the whole time, and neither has a campus. More on what's already here.

ACC points to a $2.6 billion economic impact study, but it doesn't answer this vote. Most of that figure is ACC's own spending of tax money; it counts only students from outside the service district as new spending, so Pflugerville's students add nothing to it by the study's own rule; and it counts graduates' higher salaries, then counts them spending those salaries again. Moving $23 million from Pflugerville households to ACC relocates activity, it doesn't create it. The Pflugerville students who attend today are already counted in that $2.6 billion, and based on what annexation did in Round Rock, Hays and Elgin, joining would add only a few hundred more students over time, mostly older adults, with no separate impact assigned to them. See The Numbers.

The measure is on the ballot in November 2026. Sign up for updates so you know your registration deadline, early voting dates, and polling locations as they're confirmed.