Fort Worth stayed relatively on budget during the last fiscal year, undercollecting and underspending roughly the same amounts of its $2.79 billion spending plan and ending the year with a $2.1 million shortfall.<\/p>\n
Officials are auditing how much money the city brought in and spent over the 2025 fiscal year, which ended in October. Unaudited estimates were presented to the City Council at a work session on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Of the money budgeted, nearly $1.06 billion<\/a> went into the city\u2019s general fund, which is used to pay for most public-facing city services.<\/p>\n Fort Worth brought in roughly $1.07 billion in revenue over the fiscal year for its general fund \u2014 about $13.9 million less than planned, Chief Transformation Officer Christianne Simmons told City Council.<\/p>\n To balance that out, the city spent about $11.8 million less than planned, Simmons said, with those expenses totaling $963.1 million.<\/p>\n That left Fort Worth\u2019s general fund with a shortfall that the city covered with its over $300 million in reserve funds.<\/p>\n What impacted revenue and spending?<\/p>\n Smaller than expected property tax and sales tax revenue drove much of the shortfall as those are the city\u2019s biggest revenue sources. Those sources underperformed by about 2%, which added up to a shortfall of about $16.9 million, Simmons said.<\/p>\n This was slightly offset by higher revenue from other sources, including licensing and permitting.<\/p>\n The city also owed more than expected on residents\u2019 delinquent tax cases, which happen when a resident\u2019s property value is under dispute. The city expected to earn a net positive from outstanding cases but ended up owing more to residents.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, city officials said revenue was also short because of the Tarrant Appraisal District\u2019s shift to a two-year appraisal cycle<\/a>, which started this year and froze property tax values for 2025.<\/p>\n People spent less than expected in Fort Worth over the summer, negatively impacting the city\u2019s sales tax revenue, Simmons said, tracing the movement to the year\u2019s general economic uncertainty<\/a>.<\/p>\n From 2022 through 2024, Fort Worth\u2019s sales tax revenue grew an average of 8.3% each year. This summer, however, growth slowed to an average of 0.55%, Simmons said. The fiscal year ended seeing 4.1% growth, 2 percentage points shy of what was expected.<\/p>\n Simmons said the 2026 budget is based on a 6.17% growth, and her team is monitoring and forecasting the revenue each month.<\/p>\n The police and fire departments overspent by $2.5 million and $1.2 million, respectively, Simmons said.<\/p>\n The police department\u2019s overspending is primarily due to higher-than-expected overtime payments<\/a> as it struggles with staffing shortages, while the fire department\u2019s was due to deployments to Central Texas<\/a> in July to help with search and rescue efforts during disastrous flooding. The fire department\u2019s overtime will be reimbursed by the state.<\/p>\n The city saved money on expenses mid-year as it became apparent that revenue would come up short, she said.<\/p>\n In the summer, Fort Worth rolled out a hiring freeze<\/a> for all positions except those related to public safety. City departments had to cut back discretionary spending as well.<\/p>\n Simmons said city staff are using lessons learned and surprises that came up in the last year to manage the 2026<\/a> budget and plan out 2027.<\/p>\n Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org<\/a> or @shawlings601<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article<\/a> first appeared on Fort Worth Report<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Worth stayed relatively on budget during the last fiscal year, undercollecting and underspending roughly the same amounts…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":499058,"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-499057","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\/115854237205951714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499057","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=499057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}