{"id":416662,"date":"2026-08-25T22:53:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/416662\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T22:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:53:27","slug":"tarrant-county-includes-raises-reduced-tax-rate-in-proposed-834m-budget-grapevine-colleyville-southlake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/416662\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarrant County includes raises, reduced tax rate in proposed $834M budget | Grapevine – Colleyville – Southlake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tarrant County\u2019s<\/a> proposed fiscal year 2026-27 budget is projected to increase by nearly $10.6 million from last fiscal year. Commissioners<\/a> discussed the FY 2026-27 budget, which totals close to $834.1 million, during an Aug. 13 meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The details<\/p>\n

The overall proposed county budget is balanced, meaning revenues and expenditures are the same.<\/p>\n

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

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

Breaking it down<\/p>\n

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 county documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"chart<\/p>\n

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

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

\u201cThis is something that Tarrant County has really worked over the past 10 years to decrease that ratio of M&O to debt service, making more M&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

What\u2019s next<\/p>\n

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…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,2050,122,145175],"class_list":["post-416662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-budget","tag-tarrant-county","tag-tarrant-county-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}