{"id":440312,"date":"2026-09-18T20:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T20:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/440312\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T20:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T20:02:09","slug":"tarrant-county-approves-budget-tax-rate-cut-and-raises-grapevine-colleyville-southlake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/440312\/","title":{"rendered":"Tarrant County approves budget, tax rate cut and raises | Grapevine – Colleyville – Southlake"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the Tarrant County<\/a> fiscal year 2026-27 budget, county employees and police officers are set to get a raise.<\/p>\n

The Tarrant County Commissioners Court<\/a> approved the nearly $843.08 million FY 2026-27 budget and the tax rate of $0.186 per $100 valuation by a 3-2 vote with County Judge Tim O\u2019Hare and commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez voting to approve during the Sept. 15 meeting<\/a>. Commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr. voted against.<\/p>\n

The details<\/p>\n

The budget is broken into three funds: the general fund, the road and bridge fund and the debt service fund, according to county documents<\/a>. Both revenues and expenditures in the FY 2026-27 budget are $843.08 million, representing a balanced budget. Expenditures and revenues both increased by $10.59 million.<\/p>\n

The general fund, which is used to cover most of the county\u2019s operating expenses, has revenues totaling $751.47 million. Expenditures are the same amount.<\/p>\n

Within the general fund, non-law enforcement county employees will receive up to a 3% merit increase, per county documents. There is also a 4% increase for county police officers and other law enforcement personnel, a 2.5% structure increase for county jail personnel and a 3% raise for members of the commissioners court.<\/p>\n

Other expenditures within the county budget include $45.16 million for the road and bridge fund and $37.45 million for the debt service fund. The road and bridge fund is used to maintain public roads and bridges across Tarrant County.<\/p>\n

Diving deeper<\/p>\n

For the fourth consecutive year, county commissioners approved reducing the property tax rate.<\/p>\n

The adopted rate for FY 2026-27 is $0.186 per $100 valuation, a decrease from $0.1862 per $100 valuation for FY 2025-26. The maintenance and operations component of the new tax rate is $0.1815 per $100 valuation and the interest and sinking component of the rate is $0.0045 per $100 valuation.<\/p>\n

Taxpayers are projected to save around $1 annually on property taxes under the approved rate. 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

What they\u2019re saying<\/p>\n

Krause said he appreciated the work of county staff and departments working together to balance the FY 2026-27 budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it wasn\u2019t easy to get to where we balance this budget [and] come under the no-new-revenue rate,\u201d Krause said. \u201cThis is a team effort, and it took a lot of not just staff, but also other agencies and departments in the county to make this happen today for the benefit of Tarrant County taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Simmons said she would have liked to see the impacts of continued cuts to the tax rate, along with seeing different options for future budgets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis proposed tax rate is going to look good on paper because y\u2019all jumped through a whole bunch of hoops, but it is not sustainable,\u201d Simmons said. \u201cI wish we could get to a point where we are forecasting, where you are presenting this court a look at maintaining the current rate, looking at the no-new-revenue rate, looking at below the no-new-revenue rate [and] looking at maybe increasing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What else<\/p>\n

The county\u2019s new fiscal year begins Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30, 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As part of the Tarrant County fiscal year 2026-27 budget, county employees and police officers are set to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[39870,2050,42069,116,118,117,12018,125245,146479,122,145175,39871,152418,25538,31455],"class_list":["post-440312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-alisa-simmons","tag-budget","tag-county-employees","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-manny-ramirez","tag-matt-krause","tag-roderick-miles-jr","tag-tarrant-county","tag-tarrant-county-budget","tag-tarrant-county-commissioners-court","tag-tarrant-county-tax-rate","tag-tax-rate","tag-tim-ohare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440312","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=440312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}