The off-roll industrial district — value the city does not tax, and the payments it takes instead.
The industrial district
Deer Park has one. So do La Porte and Pasadena. This section only appears for towns that do.
Deer Park's industrial district is 2,830.3 acderived — counterfactual_no_plants.md — 42% the size of the incorporated citycomputed: dp.ida.acres ÷ (dp.city.area × 640) — and it sits outside the city. Its $2,273,908,892derived — counterfactual_no_plants.md §0(a) of value is not on the city's tax roll at all. It is 108derived — data/inlieu_district_parcels.csv parcels held by 46derived — 46 distinct HCAD owner rows; scripts distinct owners, and the companies pay a negotiated percentage of what they would owe.
That percentage has been climbing, and the 2026 contract raises it again — through 2041, the statutory maximum term.
Percent of full tax rate paid · black = today
correction on the record: City Industrial District webpage states a flat 63%; the FY2025 ACFR PILOT ($14,884,571) implies ~65%. Prior published/webpage figure 63% corrected to 65%.
Raw, undeveloped land pays 100%§3.04(e), p.7 of the full rate under the new contract — holding land pays full freight; improvements get the discount.
What the city gets
- $14,884,571printed p.25 / PDF p.31 a year — 24.1%derived — see dp.fund.gf.total, printed p.25 of General Fund revenues
- The only net-positive land use in the city: +$5,259/ac†correctedderived — HCAD 2025 certified appraisal roll
- A district that consumes, by contract, none (no water, sewer, drainage, police, fire, ambulance, or street maintenance)IDA (2027-2041) FINAL
- A rate ladder that steps up through 2041
What the city gives up
- No annexation for the life of the contract: 2027-01-01 to 2041-12-31 (15 yr)term clause; Deer_Park_IDA_One_Page_Summary_2026-07-12 §2
- No city services extended into the district — and no city codes with them
- The payment base is set by an independent appraiser of CITY's selection§2.02, p.4 — not by HCAD's public roll
That last one is the quiet load-bearing clause. The county appraisal district does have jurisdiction out there — this is a contractual limitation, not a legal one. The number a resident can look up on the public roll is not the number the payment is calculated from.
In plain language: the refinery corridor next door is not part of Deer Park — by contract. The companies pay the city a negotiated share of what they would owe if their $2,273,908,892derived — counterfactual_no_plants.md §0(a) of land and plant were on the tax roll; in exchange the city agreed not to annex them, and the district receives none (no water, sewer, drainage, police, fire, ambulance, or street maintenance)IDA (2027-2041) FINAL from the city. The ladder above is that share climbing: the black bar is today’s step, and every rung to its right is already signed, through 2041. The deal is the town’s second-largest source of yearly income — and the value the payment is calculated from is set by an independent appraiser of CITY's selection§2.02, p.4, not by the county’s public roll, so a resident cannot recompute the payment from public records.
The Refinery That’s Off the Roll
It’s a fair assumption: the Deer Park refinery is the largest industrial plant in the city, so it must be the City of Deer Park’s largest property taxpayer. The parcel record says otherwise. Almost none of the plant sits on the city’s ordinary property-tax — ad valorem — roll. On the 2025 appraisal roll, only about $3.5 million in appraised value, across roughly 24 acres, is carried under the City of Deer Park (HCAD CAMA 2025 roll, Noticed values, jurisdiction code 054, retrieved 2026-08-02).
The rest of the plant — roughly $437 million across about 979 acres — sits inside the Deer Park Industrial District (same roll, jurisdiction codes 954–984). Those parcels are off the ordinary tax roll by design. Rather than pay ordinary property tax on them, the plant pays the city an agreed in-lieu-of-tax payment — a PILOT — under the industrial district agreement. Put plainly: less than one percent of the refinery’s combined appraised value sits on the city’s ordinary roll. In practical terms, the plant is off it.
The plant’s fiscal weight still reaches the city. It just arrives through the district agreement instead of the tax roll — and that agreement is the source of a figure already on this page: an FY2025 in-lieu payment of $14,884,571, about 65% of what full taxation would produce (City of Deer Park FY2025 ACFR; City Industrial District webpage). So if you want to know what the plants pay this city, the tax roll is the wrong document to read. The industrial district agreement is the right one.
Sources. On/off-roll value and acreage: HCAD CAMA 2025 roll, Noticed values (retrieved 2026-08-02) — code 054 = City of Deer Park; codes 954–984 = Deer Park Industrial District. PILOT figure and 65%-of-full-taxation share: City of Deer Park FY2025 ACFR; City Industrial District webpage.
The Same Plants, on a Different Roll
Off the city’s ordinary roll is not off every roll. The parcels that pay Deer Park an in-lieu payment instead of property tax still sit inside Harris County and inside Deer Park ISD — and both of those governments do tax them. On the school district’s principal-taxpayer list the refineries and petrochemical plants are its top taxpayers, carried at appraised value with no in-lieu discount: the arrangement that keeps them off the city’s roll does not reach the school district’s (Deer Park ISD FY2024 ACFR, Principal Taxpayers). Specific projects do carry disclosed Chapter 313 value-limitations on their school M&O value — the Lubrizol agreement (Deer Park ISD No. 1084) remains active (Texas Comptroller Chapter 313 agreement 1084; DPISD FY2024 ACFR) — a statutory reduction on the record, separate from the ETJ in-lieu mechanism.
These are two different rolls, and the figures are not the same measure. The city’s in-lieu base is $2,273,908,892derived — counterfactual_no_plants.md §0(a) — the parcels of Deer Park’s own industrial district. The school district’s roll reaches much further: Deer Park ISD’s boundaries take in Ship Channel industry well beyond the city’s district, and across them industrial property — the state’s categories F2 (industrial real) and L2 (industrial personal) — totaled $11,077,496,246derived — Texas Comptroller PVS 2024 (F2 + L2 sum) in the Comptroller’s 2024 study year, the most recent certified. The city figure and the district figure describe different property on different rolls; they are not interchangeable.
Set against the district’s whole roll, that value is not a footnote. The industrial roll (F2 + L2), $11,077,496,246derived — Texas Comptroller PVS 2024 (F2 + L2 sum), is about ~61%derived — F2 $7,168,775,633 + L2 $3,908,720,613 of Deer Park ISD’s $18,254,455,953Texas Comptroller School District Property Value Study (PVS) gross appraised roll — and about ~82%derived — F2 $7,168,775,633 + L2 $3,908,720,613 of its $13,581,600,004Texas Comptroller School District Property Value Study (PVS) net taxable value, the base the state certifies for school funding and uses to measure a district’s wealth for recapture (Texas Comptroller Property Value Study; TEA Chapter 49 school-finance basis). The gap between the two — $4,672,855,949Texas Comptroller School District Property Value Study (PVS) in exemptions and statutory limitations, including the Chapter 313 Lubrizol limitation noted above — is the difference between appraised value and what is actually taxed. In the tax-base-composition frame that Strong Towns uses to read a place’s fiscal health, Deer Park ISD is a district whose base is built on industry.
That composition is the mechanism behind a figure elsewhere on this ledger. A roll this industry-heavy makes the district property-rich per student, and under Texas’s Chapter 49 “recapture” the state takes a share of what it collects locally back for redistribution. Deer Park ISD has paid recapture every year since 1994: ~$624,022,726CDN 101908 (sum FY94-FY26); deer_park_isd.md Gap 1 cumulatively, $4,572,286CDN 101908, sheet FY94-FY26, SY2026; re-derived 2026-08-10 in the current year (SY2026) (TEA Recapture Paid by District, CDN 101908). The full thirty-year arc is decoded on the School District page.
Sources. Industrial roll by state category (F2, L2), gross roll, and net taxable value: Texas Comptroller School District Property Value Study, CDN 101-908, 2024 study year. Full-value taxation of the plants by the school district and the Chapter 313 limitation: Deer Park ISD FY2024 ACFR; Texas Comptroller Chapter 313 agreement 1084. Recapture: TEA Recapture Paid by District (CDN 101908). Framework: Strong Towns — tax-base composition.