Surprise council gives informal direction to post 0.5534 property‑tax rate for FY26 budget

At a Feb. 18 Surprise City Council work session, councilmembers gave staff informal direction to post a property‑tax rate equal to the “keep levy plus growth” option — 0.5534 — for inclusion in the city’s fiscal 2026 budget, with formal adoption of the rate to occur at public hearings in June.

The discussion anchored a broader budget overview that finance staff provided, laying out that Surprise’s draft “billion‑dollar” budget includes about $415,000,000 in operating expenditures, a $137,000,000 contingency ceiling and about $11,000,000 in annual debt service. Staff told the council the general fund is roughly $260,000,000 and enterprise funds about $64,000,000; sales tax is the single largest general‑fund revenue source.

Why it matters: property‑tax choices determine how much new revenue the city captures from growth and reassessments. Staff illustrated with a worked example: for a $300,000 assessed valuation a homeowner…