Tarrant County advances balanced FY2026 budget proposal, lowers average tax bill slightly

Tarrant County Commissioners Court on Aug. 14 advanced a proposed fiscal year 2026 budget that the county budget office said supports a proposed tax rate of 0.1862 and would produce a modest decrease in the average annual county tax bill. The court voted 3–1 to move the proposal forward to the public hearing and adoption phase. The court set a schedule to adopt a final budget and tax rate in September.

The proposal matters because it sets spending, personnel and reserve policies for the county government and affects property owners' annual bills. The budget office presented revenue estimates, changes to capital spending and personnel plans and said the drop in the projected average annual county tax bill would be about $2.92 — roughly a 0.57% decline from the prior year under the budget presented.

Budget staff told the court the county's certified net taxable value increased to about $297,000,000,000, a roughly 4.7% rise (about $13.4 billion) from the prior year. The budget proposal shows construction taxable value at about $4.9 billion, a roughly 7% increase over the prior year. The average single-family taxable value used in the presentation was $276,948. County staff said mineral values trended down and that certain mineral tax values declined about 18.1% year over year.

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