{"id":1024026,"date":"2026-08-25T22:48:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1024026\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T22:48:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:48:16","slug":"tarrant-county-includes-raises-reduced-tax-rate-in-proposed-834m-budget-grapevine-colleyville-southlake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1024026\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarrant County includes raises, reduced tax rate in proposed $834M budget | Grapevine &#8211; Colleyville &#8211; Southlake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarrantcountytx.gov\/en.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tarrant County\u2019s<\/a> proposed fiscal year 2026-27 budget is projected to increase by nearly $10.6 million from last fiscal year. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarrantcountytx.gov\/en\/commissioners-court.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Commissioners<\/a> discussed the FY 2026-27 budget, which totals close to $834.1 million, during an Aug. 13 <a href=\"https:\/\/horizon.agendalink.app\/engage\/tarrantcountytx\/6a7636b779ac7fc0c5b52c71\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The details<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The overall proposed county budget is balanced, meaning revenues and expenditures are the same.<\/p>\n<p>Within the budget, non-law enforcement county employees are set to receive a 3% raise. Law enforcement officers will get a 4% raise while detention officers are set to receive a 2.5% raise, said Matthew Jones, deputy director of budget and risk management for Tarrant County.<\/p>\n<p>The cost of raises is projected at around $13.98 million, Jones said. Overall, Tarrant County is slated to pay $494.33 million in salaries for FY 2026-27, a nearly $30 million increase from the $465.33 million appropriated for fiscal year 2025-26, per county documents.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Breaking it down<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The proposed tax rate for FY 2026-27 is $0.186 per $100 valuation, which is a decrease from $0.1862 per $100 valuation in FY 2025-26. The proposed tax rate also falls below the no-new-revenue rate, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarrantcountytx.gov\/en\/commissioners-court\/commissioners-court-agenda-videos.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">county documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The average home value in Tarrant County is $277,637, which would result in an average annual tax bill to the county of $516.40 for FY 2026-27, compared to $515.68 for the average home value of $276,948 in FY 2025-26.<\/p>\n<p>Within the proposed tax rate for FY 2026-27, the maintenance and operations component, which covers salaries and other general expenditures, is $0.1816 per $100 valuation, and the interest and sinking component, which is used to repay debt, is $0.0044 per $100 valuation. Chandler Merrritt, the county\u2019s administrator, said the interest and sinking rate has steadily declined over several years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is something that Tarrant County has really worked over the past 10 years to decrease that ratio of M&amp;O to debt service, making more M&amp;O funds available\u201d Merritt said. \u201cBack in 2017, the ratio was about 90 to 10, and with this proposed budget, it takes it down to 98 to 2.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s next<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Commissioners are set to adopt the tax rate and budget at a Sept. 15 meeting. FY 2026-27 begins Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30, 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tarrant County\u2019s proposed fiscal year 2026-27 budget is projected to increase by nearly $10.6 million from last fiscal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1024027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,3232,7371,7372,7375,409672,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1024026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-america","tag-budget","tag-fort-worth","tag-fortworth","tag-tarrant-county","tag-tarrant-county-budget","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}