The data, with sources
The numbers behind the NO.
Every figure here traces to a public source: the ACC tax rate, Pflugerville ISD's certified taxable value, ACC's published fees, and ACC's own enrollment reporting.
$23 million in new taxes to remove about $3 million in fees.
Here is the deal on the table: a new, permanent ACC property tax of about $23 million a year, to remove the $201 per credit hour out of district fee for the roughly 1,820 Pflugerville residents who attend ACC. Counting only the credit hours the fee actually applies to, that relief is about $3 million a year.
| Figure | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Newly annexed area, appraised value | Travis certified roll, 2026 | $25.0 B |
| ACC taxable value after exemptions | After ACC exemptions | $21.75 B |
| New ACC levy at $0.1034 per $100 | Travis County | ≈ $22.5 M / yr |
| Williamson County portion | ~195 homes, Williamson County | ≈ $0.13 M / yr |
| New tax Pflugerville would pay | Rounded total | ≈ $23 M / yr |
| Figure | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Credit hours completed, AY 2024 to 25 | ACC open records response | 20,841 |
| Less dual credit and Early College (already free) | About a third of enrollment | − 33% |
| Hours the $201 fee actually applies to | ACC open records response | ≈ 13,900 |
| Out of district fee per hour | ACC fee schedule | $201 |
| Fees annexation would remove | 13,900 hours × $201 | ≈ $3 M / yr |
And most students already get grant aid on top of that. Separately from the calculation above, 36% of ACC's degree-seeking students receive grant aid averaging $7,202 a year, more than three times the annual fee, so for those students the fee is already covered. That makes the real out of pocket relief lower still.
Sources: ACC adopted FY2025 to 26 tax rate of $0.1034; ACC out of district fee of $201 per credit hour; ACC response to an open records request dated July 24, 2026 (credit hours, enrollment, and the dual credit and Early College share); Travis Central Appraisal District 2026 certified appraisal roll; Williamson CAD 2025 Annual Report; grant figures from federal College Navigator data for ACC, 2023 to 24 aid year. The taxable base and levy apply ACC's published exemptions parcel by parcel, and against the parcels ACC already taxes this method reproduces their taxable value to within 0.7%.
Three cost figures, and why the new tax is about $23 million.
You will hear a few different dollar figures for this tax. They are all real; they just answer different questions. Here is how they fit together.
| Figure | What it is | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| All PfISD property at ACC's rate | Gross, before netting anything out | $32.3 M |
| Already paid today | 13,362 PfISD parcels (21%) already in ACC | − $9.8 M |
| New tax this vote adds | The rest, after ACC exemptions | ≈ $23 M / yr |
About 21% of Pflugerville ISD is already inside ACC's district and already pays this tax, roughly $9.8 million a year, vote or no vote. The figure that matters for this election is the new tax on everyone else: about $23 million a year.
Travis Central Appraisal District 2026 certified appraisal roll and official entity totals file. The gross and the already-paid figures use different exemption bases (school district versus ACC), which is why they do not divide evenly; the $23 million applies ACC's own exemption schedule.
Tuition is already free. The fee is small, and a third already pay nothing.
ACC tuition is already free for Pflugerville graduates through the free tuition pilot. The only charge annexation removes is the $201 per credit hour out of district fee. Pflugerville students complete about 11.45 credit hours a year, so the fee runs roughly $2,301 a year, and many never pay it out of pocket.
| Status | Tuition & general fees | Out of district fee |
|---|---|---|
| Free tuition pilot grad (today) | $0 | $201 |
| After annexation | $0 to low | $0 |
A third of “our students” already pay nothing. ACC's own open records response shows about 600 Pflugerville dual credit and Early College students a year, roughly a third of all Pflugerville enrollment at ACC. ACC waives their tuition and fees entirely, so annexation buys them no relief at all. The real fee-paying group, and the benefit, is smaller than the raw headcount suggests.
ACC Free Tuition Pilot (classes of 2024 to 2028); ACC out of district fee of $201/credit hour; ACC open records response, July 24, 2026, for the 11.45 completed hours and the roughly 600 dual credit and Early College students (about a third of enrollment), whose tuition and fees ACC waives; grant figures from College Navigator, ACC, 2023 to 24 (36% of degree-seeking students receive grant aid averaging $7,202).
What it adds, whether you own or rent.
This is where the tax actually lands. By ACC's own figures, the average Pflugerville home is worth $407,524, and the new tax runs about $416 a year, or $34.67 a month, after the standard homestead exemption. Seniors and residents with disabilities pay less; property with no homestead exemption pays more. And every bill rises as appraisals rise.
| Homeowner | Per year | Per month |
|---|---|---|
| Regular homestead | ≈ $416 | $34.67 |
| Senior or disabled | ≈ $339 | $28.25 |
| No homestead exemption (rentals, second homes) | ≈ $421 | $35.08 |
Renters aren't off the hook. Rental property is taxed at the full rate with no homestead, senior, or ceiling exemption, and the research is clear that the tax reaches tenants. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia finds landlords pass through 50 to 89 cents of every $1 of a property tax shock to renters. A study of 5,200 German municipal tax reforms (Löffler and Siegloch) finds higher taxes are fully passed into rents within about three years, and more so where housing is built easily, which describes Pflugerville. For commercial space, MIT and CBRE data show rents absorb 80 to 90 percent of a tax change.
Figures are from ACC's own public hearing presentation on annexation, based on an average Pflugerville ISD home value of $407,524 at ACC's adopted rate of $0.1034 per $100. ACC offers a homestead exemption of $5,000 or 1% of value, whichever is greater, with larger exemptions for seniors and residents with disabilities. Pass-through research: Baker, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia WP 25-41 (2025); Löffler and Siegloch, CESifo WP 8952 (2021); MIT Center for Real Estate with CBRE (2018).
The cost you don't see
You'll also pay it at the register.
The ACC tax doesn't stop at your own property line. Commercial property carries a heavier tax load than a home does, so a new tax hits local businesses hard, and businesses pass higher costs on to the people who shop with them.
Businesses are taxed on more
Commercial land is valued higher than homes to begin with, and a business is taxed not just on its building but on what is inside it: equipment, machinery, computers, furniture, and inventory. A new ACC rate lands on all of it, every year.
So their costs climb
That new yearly tax raises a business's operating costs. Shops and offices that rent their space feel it too, because landlords fold a higher tax bill straight into commercial rent.
And you pay the difference
To protect their margins, businesses build those costs into their prices. The result is a quiet local inflation: a little more on the goods you buy and the services you use here in Pflugerville.
It reaches every receipt. So the ACC tax can reach you twice: once on your own home or rent, and again as higher prices at the local businesses you rely on every week. Even a resident who owns no property and never takes a class still helps pay it.
In Texas, businesses are taxed on their business personal property, the equipment, inventory, and furnishings they use, on top of their real estate; homes are not taxed this way. Businesses commonly pass higher taxes and rents through to customers.
Everyone pays. Few benefit.
100% of property owners would be taxed. The residents who attend ACC and would see lower fees are about 1% of the district's population, and the record shows that share is very unlikely to grow enough to change the math.
ACC open records response, July 24, 2026 (1,820 unduplicated students, AY 2024 to 25), against total PfISD population. That is about 0.97% of residents.
The growth ACC is seeing is already available to us.
ACC's enrollment reached a thirteen-year high of 43,891 in fall 2025, up from 39,831 the year before, and ACC credits its free tuition program for much of it: it attributes 47 percent of its growth since 2023 to free tuition and says more than 10,000 students have used it. That is real, and it is an argument against joining, not for it.
The big price cut is tuition
Free tuition is a far larger price cut than removing the $201 fee, and it is what ACC says is driving the growth. Annexation does not touch tuition.
Pflugerville graduates already qualify
The free tuition pilot already covers Pflugerville's classes of 2024 through 2028, across the whole service area, with no annexation and no tax.
Annexation adds no tuition benefit
Joining adds only the removal of the $201 fee. The tuition benefit that is actually moving enrollment is already ours.
So the draw is already here. Whatever growth free tuition is producing, Pflugerville students can get it today without a permanent tax. Annexation buys the small piece, the fee, not the big one.
ACC Fact Book Fall 2025; ACC Newsroom, February 2025 and January 2026 (43,891 enrollment; free tuition credited with 47% of growth since 2023; more than 10,000 users).
Lockhart is the argument for annexing Lockhart.
The other side leads with Lockhart, which annexed in November 2024 and saw its ACC enrollment jump from 176 to 343 in a year. That is real. It is also exactly what the research predicts, for Lockhart.
The study the pro-annexation campaign posted on September 25 finds the benefit of joining a college taxing district follows an inverted U by distance. Communities 21 to 38 miles from a campus benefit more than the new tax costs. Beyond 38 miles they get nothing. Close in, a community already receives the spillovers and gains little while still paying the full tax.
Lockhart is thirty miles from a campus. The study their own campaign posted says that is exactly where annexation pays off, 21 to 38 miles out. Pflugerville is at nine, next to two ACC campuses. Lockhart is the argument for annexing Lockhart, not Pflugerville.
Lockhart already had free tuition
Its vote changed only the fee, exactly as Pflugerville's would, which makes it the closest apples-to-apples test that exists, and still a small one.
The gain was small
Lockhart's entire gain was 167 students. Pflugerville would need about 8,560 more fee-paying students to break even on a $23 million tax.
Pflugerville is the other end of the curve
The Northridge and Round Rock campuses are about nine miles away. At that distance the study finds little net benefit and the full tax.
ACC Fact Book Fall 2025; ACC Newsroom, February 2025 and January 2026 (Lockhart 176 to 343); Simon, “Costly Centralization: Evidence from Community College Expansions,” International Tax and Public Finance (2025), sections 7 and 8.
What we're actually buying.
Set the dollars aside for a moment and look at outcomes. These are ACC's own six-year results for first-time students from our area.
| Outcome | Share |
|---|---|
| Earned an award | 21.8% |
| Transferred to a university | 32.1% |
| Neither | 58.0% |
The first two rows overlap on purpose: a student who earns an award and then transfers is counted in both, so those shares are not meant to add to 100. The line that matters is the last one. Even counting a transfer with no credential as a success, well over half of first-time students from our area left after six years with neither an award nor a transfer.
Federal IPEDS data for ACC district wide agrees: about 20 percent graduated and 30 percent transferred. Two independent sources, the same answer.
ACC open records response, July 24, 2026 (386 first-time students entering falls 2017 to 2019); College Navigator (NCES/IPEDS), Austin CC.
There is no $22,000 earnings premium.
ACC advertises $55,831 median earnings for graduates five years out against $33,222, which its own chart labels an entry-level wage for high school diplomas. Comparing a five-year figure to an entry-level wage implies a $22,609 premium. That is not a like-for-like comparison.
Line the numbers up at the same career stage and the gap collapses to about a third of that. Use ACC's own chart correctly, five years out against five years out ($44,315 versus $33,222), and the premium is $11,093. Texas Workforce Commission wage records for Texans ages 25 to 30 put it at $6,980. The Bureau of Labor Statistics figure for full-time workers 25 and older is $6,812. Peer-reviewed studies that follow the same people before and after an associate degree land between $6,000 and $8,000. Every honest comparison clusters around $7,000, not $22,000, and none of it hinges on annexation: a degree earns the same premium whether or not Pflugerville pays ACC's tax.
| Source | Premium |
|---|---|
| Same stage, ACC's own chart ($44,315 vs $33,222) | $11,093 |
| Texas Workforce Commission wage records, ages 25 to 30 | $6,980 |
| BLS 2025, full-time workers 25+ | $6,812 |
| Peer-reviewed within-person studies | $6,000 to $8,000 |
Trellis Strategies 2026 Economic Impact Report, page 8; TPEIR Wage Comparison by Educational Attainment, Texans ages 25 to 30; BLS Table 37b, 2025 annual averages; Jepsen, Troske and Coomes, Journal of Labor Economics 32(1), 2014.
The $2.6 billion impact claim, unpacked.
The other side cites ACC's economic impact study. Here is what that number is made of.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| ACC's own purchases and payroll | $471 M |
| Student spending, only the 8,000 from outside the service district | $273 M |
| Capital and visitors | $32 M |
| Multiplier applied to all of the above | $584 M |
| Alumni earnings premium | $1,000 M |
| Alumni spending of that premium | $227 M |
Tax money, counted as a benefit
About two-thirds of ACC's budget is property tax revenue, so most of that $471M is tax money being spent. Moving $23M from Pflugerville households to ACC relocates activity rather than creating it.
Our students add nothing to it
The study counts only students from outside the service district as new spending. Pflugerville is inside it, so by the study's own rule our students add nothing to that category, and annexation cannot change it.
The salary and the spending of it
It counts a graduate's higher salary, then counts the graduate spending that same salary again as a second benefit.
And the students we already send are already in that number. Every Pflugerville resident attending ACC today is counted in the $2.6 billion. Annexation does not add them; they are there now. Based on what annexation actually did in Round Rock, Hays and Elgin, joining would add only a few hundred more students over time, most of them older adults, and ACC's study assigns those additional students no separate economic impact at all. There is no extra $2.6 billion, or any measurable share of it, waiting on the other side of this tax.
Trellis Strategies 2026 Economic Impact Report, pages 5 through 11; ACC Newsroom FY27 budget, July 6, 2026.
What annexation actually adds: a few hundred students.
The bigger annexations tell the same story as Lockhart. When Round Rock, Hays and Elgin joined ACC's district, high school graduate enrollment rose only slightly. Almost all of the enrollment growth came from older students returning to school, not from new high school graduates, and the rest of the growth in Round Rock and Hays simply tracked how fast those areas were adding population in the first place.
Apply that older-student growth rate to Pflugerville and it produces a few hundred additional students over time, phased in across years. That is the honest ceiling on what a $23 million a year tax would buy in new enrollment.
High school graduates hardly changed
In Round Rock, Hays and Elgin, the number of new high school graduates enrolling at ACC rose only slightly after annexation. The tax did not open a door that free tuition had not already opened.
Most of the gain was returning adults
What growth there was came mostly from older students coming back to school. Applying that same rate to Pflugerville adds a few hundred students, not thousands, and adds them slowly.
The rest was population growth
Most of the remaining enrollment growth in Round Rock and Hays simply followed population growth that was happening regardless of the tax. Annexation did not cause it and cannot claim it.
A few hundred students, phased in over years, for $23 million every year, forever. That is the real trade, measured against what annexation actually produced in the districts that already did it.
ACC enrollment by sending district and age, ACC Fact Book and ACC open records response, July 24, 2026 (Round Rock, Hays, and Elgin annexations); U.S. Census population estimates for Round Rock and Hays County.
Pflugerville rejected this in 2018.
The first annexation attempt failed at the ballot box over the same cost benefit concern. Pflugerville's taxable value has risen more than 80% since, so the tax burden today is larger than what voters already turned down.
| Measure | 2018 | Today |
|---|---|---|
| Average home value | $266,500 | ~$407,500 |
| Projected tax increase, average home | ~$274 | ~$416 |
| PfISD taxable value | $13.6 B | $24.8 B |
| Outcome | Rejected | On ballot |
Sources: 2018 election results (Community Impact) and ACC's 2018 announcement. Voters rejected annexation. The 2018 figure recomputes the projected increase on the 2018 median home: ($266,500 − $5,000) × 0.001048 ≈ $274.
The bottom line
Large, permanent cost. Small, narrow benefit.
No spin needed. $23 million for $3 million, paid by everyone, forever, is not a deal worth signing.