Council holds public hearings on FY26 budget and proposed 1¢ debt-service tax increase; hotel-tax allocations put partly in contingency

The Denton City Council held public hearings Sept. 9 on the city manager’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget and the proposed property-tax rate. The manager’s proposed tax rate is 0.59542 per $100 of assessed value — unchanged for maintenance and operations at 0.33478 and a proposed one-cent increase on the debt-service rate to 0.26064 per $100. Staff estimated the proposed change would raise about $1.94 million for debt service and would increase the typical homestead’s tax bill by roughly $84 annually (about $7 per month).

Council and staff reiterated why the debt-service increase was proposed: recent debt service obligations from the city’s capital program produce new annual payments that must be funded, and the debt-service portion of the rate is set to match those scheduled payments. Finance…