Houston City Council approved a nominal increase in the city's property tax rate Wednesday, the first rate hike at City Hall in two decades.

The increase of less than 1 percent passed by a lopsided vote of 13-3 and was accompanied by only a brief skirmish over whether projected property tax collections of nearly $1.2 billion should shrink by a few million bucks.

A bitter fight over whether to grant firefighters the same salaries as police of corresponding rank and seniority — the “parity” referendum is Proposition B on the Nov. 6 ballot — weighs heavily on every discussion of spending at City Hall these days.

Mayor Sylvester Turner has said passage of the parity measure would cost the city more than $100 million a year and force the layoff of as many as 1,000 city employees, including firefighters and police. The firefighters union disputes that cost and has called the layoff estimates a scare tactic intended to defeat the parity measure to punish firefighters.

Turner, who repeatedly has said firefighters deserve a raise but not the “unaffordable” one on the ballot, has instituted a hiring freeze, saying there is no point hiring people who would be laid off if the parity measure passes. Turner appears to have extended that freeze to overtime pay, as well — Councilwoman Brenda Stardig expressed her displeasure with Turner at Wednesday’s meeting that her request for police overtime for extra patrols in her district was denied.

Yet, the mayor and council approved a new police contract this month that will give officers a 7 percent raise over the coming two years and another 2 percent raise the following year if a new deal is not struck by the end of 2020 — raises that would drive up the costs of Prop. B, should it pass.

The firefighters union says the city finds ways to fund what it wants to pay for, noting that police now have negotiated raises of more than 30 percent since 2011, while firefighters have received just 3 percent during the same period.

All of those bills would be easier to pay if Turner had convinced voters to rescind the property tax revenue cap they imposed in 2004 or to lift that cap to allow more dollars to be collected for public safety, but despite discussing both ideas, the mayor has placed neither on a ballot.

The tax rate council approved Wednesday complies with the revenue cap. The city property tax rate will rise from about 58.4 cents per $100 in assessed value to about 58.8 cents.

Council members Stardig, Mike Knox and Michael Kubosh opposed the change, suggesting the rate could have remained the same as last year’s.

Doing so would have let the city take in $4.4 million more in property taxes than it did last year, according to the city controller’s office. The rate adopted Wednesday will generate about $10.9 million more than last year, for a projected total of about $1.18 billion in property taxes.

“We voted for a decrease in the increase,” Kubosh said. “The other council members voted for an increase in the increase.”

Turner said the roughly $7 million gap between leaving the rate flat and adopting his proposal is significant, given new labor contracts adopted this year with police and municipal workers and the possible cost of Prop. B. He also took issue with Stardig’s complaints about a lack of overtime money and her opposition to collecting an extra $7 million for the general fund.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Turner said. “You can’t send out tweets and Facebooks saying, ‘The mayor is opposed to overtime,’ and you’re voting against $7 million that could be used for overtime for police.”

Stardig did not return a call after the mayor’s comments, but during the tax rate discussion she said her constituents “continue to see their property values go up, and with that value their taxes go up, whether the rate stays the same or not.”

Voters OK'd the revenue cap in 2004, amending the city charter to limit the annual growth of property tax revenue to the combined rates of inflation and population growth, or 4.5 percent, whichever is lower. Voters tweaked the cap in 2006, allowing the city to raise an additional $90 million for public safety spending.

Houston exhausted that breathing room in 2014, and, with property values still on the rise, typically has had to trim its tax rate each fall to avoid collecting more revenue than allowed.

The rate was able to rise this year because property values rose by only 1.1 percent while inflation and population growth combined to record an increase of 2.4 percent.

City officials had set the budget for the current fiscal year, which started July 1, expecting this year's population estimate to show Houston had grown by 30,400 people, but the May estimate from the Census Bureau came in at just 9,200. The city’s appeal of that figure is still pending, forcing the council to set a tax rate that incorporates the lower figure. As a result, Turner said, the city will need to pull about $17 million from reserves.

The owner of the average Houston house with a standard 20 percent homestead exemption has saved a cumulative $436 thanks to the rate adjustments driven by the revenue cap since 2014. The same rate adjustments have prevented the city from collecting $533 million from all taxpayers during that time.

Though the proposed tax rate would remain 5 cents lower than it was during most of former mayor Annise Parker’s tenure, that does not mean residents’ tax bills are falling. That is because the tax rate is applied to the value of each property, and most Houstonians' home values have been rising.

The average Houston homestead increased in value by about 1 percent from last year, and, with the rate increase adopted Wednesday, will have a city tax bill come Jan. 1 of $1,342, about $9 more than this year.