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Belton ISD adopts balanced 2025–26 budget and holds tax rate steady
Summary
Trustees approved a $153.31 million general fund balanced budget, allocated state compensatory funds for accelerated instruction, and set the 2025–26 tax rate effectively equal to last year after required statutory readings.
The Belton ISD Board of Trustees on Aug. 18 adopted a balanced fiscal 2025–26 general fund budget, approved allocations for accelerated instruction and set a tax rate the district characterized as effectively unchanged from the prior year.
Melissa Lafferty, Belton ISD chief financial officer, told the board the general fund budget for 2025–26 totals $153,309,901 in both revenues and expenditures; salaries and benefits account for about 83% of expenditures. Debt-service revenue is shown at $26,404,350 with $25,233,326 in expenditures. The school nutrition budget projects $8,240,000 in revenues against $9,471,432 in expenditures.
Lafferty said the district’s revenue mix is “33% local revenues” and the remainder largely state funding; federal revenue represents about 1 percent. She described embedded compensatory education funding of $719,123 for accelerated instruction required by the Texas Education Code.
After a public hearing with no speakers, the board voted 7–0 to adopt the compensatory education plan and then adopted the full fiscal year 2025–26 budget by voice vote, 7–0. The board also adopted two statutory tax resolutions required by Texas law. One resolution incorporated a de minimis “disaster pennies” adjustment under Texas Tax Code §26.042(e) (passed 7–0). The board then read the required statutory motion on the tax-rate comparison (which uses the state’s “no new revenue” calculation) and voted 7–0 to set a combined 2025 tax rate the administration described as effectively the same as the prior year; the administration presented the split as a maintenance-and-operations rate of 78.69¢ and an interest-and-sinking rate of 36.25¢ for a combined $1.14.
Trustees and administration said reaching a balanced budget marks an improvement after multi-year deficits and credited internal planning, state support and work by the finance committee. Board members noted the district has reduced its overall tax rate over several years and emphasized the use of conservative budgeting practices.
Votes and motions recorded in the meeting: the compensatory/accelerated instruction budget passed 7–0; the fiscal 2025–26 budget passed 7–0; the disaster-pennies resolution passed 7–0; the formal tax-rate motion (read per state requirements) passed 7–0.
