{"id":140386,"date":"2025-08-12T18:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140386\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T18:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T18:57:10","slug":"fort-worth-texas-budget-lower-tax-rate-higher-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/140386\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Worth, Texas budget: Lower tax rate, higher fees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A homeowner with the average taxable home value will pay about $20 less on their tax bill. But that reduction will be more than made up for by higher service fees.<\/p>\n<p>FORT WORTH, Texas \u2014 The City of Fort Worth proposed a budget exceeding $4.5 billion, with a smaller tax rate and higher fees.<\/p>\n<p>The proposed budget outlines over $3.06 billion in operating fund expenditures, and the general fund will total about $1.1 billion, a $43 million increase compared with last year.<\/p>\n<p>After the Tarrant Appraisal District voted to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wfaa.com\/article\/news\/local\/tarrant-county\/tarrant-property-tax-appraisals-appraisal-district\/287-b1863da4-c348-4713-9df8-c680f716c64a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">\u00a0keep property appraisals stagnant<\/a> in 2026, Fort Worth staff were expecting a reduction in revenue that would have required budget cuts.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, revenue is projected to increase by 4.56% compared with last year.<\/p>\n<p>In light of that, newly appointed city manager Jay Chapa recommended a quarter-cent reduction to the tax rate, $0.6700 per $100 in valuation.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, a homeowner with the average taxable home value will pay about $20 less on their tax bill annually, according to the city. However, that reduction will be more than made up for by higher service fees.<\/p>\n<p>Residents will pay $56.88 more per year, bringing the total yearly fee bill to $1,294.03.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of my goals was to have as little impact on the taxpayer as possible,\u201d Chapa said. \u201cBy us reducing our tax rate a little bit, you&#8217;ll have a smaller bill from the city of Fort Worth, which will be offset by the rate increases.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The public safety allocation in the 2026 budget will increase by about $35.4 million as the city works to integrate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wfaa.com\/article\/news\/local\/fort-worth-fire-department-will-take-over-ems-services-as-medstar-dissolves\/287-df748cf2-2a21-4285-a2e2-b6607d8aaa89\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a new EMS structure<\/a> into the city budget.<\/p>\n<p>The city\u2019s workforce budget will also increase by $11.9 million to accommodate wage increases.<\/p>\n<p>The city plans to adopt its 2026 tax rate, operating budget and fee ordinance on Sept. 16 and will hold several public meetings ahead of the final vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A homeowner with the average taxable home value will pay about $20 less on their tax bill. But&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":102886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,7371,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-140386","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fort-worth","10":"tag-fortworth","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-tx","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115017327885614926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140386","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=140386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}