District 2 FY27 Budget Town Hall - August 25, 2026
District 2 FY27 Budget Town Hall - August 25, 2026
Councilmember Carlos Soros (District 2) convened the meeting at approximately 6:15 p.m. on Monday, August 25, 2026, to present and discuss the City of Fort Worth's proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget. City Manager Jay Chapa and Christian Simmons, Director of the Fort Worth Lab, led the presentation. The meeting featured public questions on tax rates, spending priorities, and city services.
Presentation & Discussion Items
- Budget Challenge & Revenue Gap: Councilmember Soros noted that this budget cycle is especially challenging due to Tarrant Appraisal District's (TAD) reappraisal plan, which froze most residential values from 2024 and allowed unprecedented protests and litigation, resulting in a loss of property tax revenue. The city faced a projected gap that peaked at $94 million.
- Proposed Tax Rate Increase: The recommended budget proposed a 3.2 cent increase in the property tax rate (from 67.0 cents to 70.2 cents per $100 valuation). This was the first rate increase in several years. The increase was needed to balance the general fund without deeper service cuts.
- Balancing Actions: Departments were asked to cut 1% of their budgets and submit an additional 3% in reductions, generating about $22 million in savings. The city also reduced general employee performance raises from 4% to 1.5%, froze vacant positions, and eliminated some unfilled positions. A $5 million transfer to the Economic Development Initiatives Fund was paused (reduced to $500,000).
- Service Restoration Discussions: On August 21, 2026, the City Council expressed concern over certain cuts—such as closing the Alliance PetSmart adoption site, reducing code enforcement, parks maintenance, library staffing, and transportation positions. To restore these, staff proposed raising the tax rate an additional 0.36 cents (to 70.56 cents), which would reduce the average homeowner's tax bill decrease from $16 to about $8 year-over-year.
- Public Safety Priority: Public safety (police, fire, EMS) remains the top priority. The budget adds 76 patrol officers, corporal positions within patrol, and funds the Axon 911 AI call-taking technology for non-emergency calls. The Homeless Outreach and Prevention Team (HOPE) is shifted from firefighters to EMS personnel to save overtime costs.
- Infrastructure & Fees: The pavement management fee (street maintenance fee) is authorized but not implemented until FY28. The pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) capital rate remains at 7.25 cents, but revenue declines by $2.8 million due to falling values. Water, solid waste, and stormwater rates increase modestly; total monthly impact on an average household bill (including property tax) is about $5.70 less than current year.
- Five-Year Capital Plan: The FY27 capital plan totals $1.03 billion, with water accounting for $800 million.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Joe Ponza (longtime District 2 resident): Expressed frustration over city spending, specifically the new city hall (Pier 1 building) and the Main Street bridge. He argued that better decisions could have avoided the budget shortfall and that street repairs in his area have been neglected for years. Councilmember Soros responded that water infrastructure must be replaced before road work, and City Manager Chapa corrected that the Pier 1 project cost about $220 million (less than the $300M Joe cited) and that the North Main bridge was funded regionally, not by city dollars.
- Resident (unidentified, female): Asked why the city did not raise the tax rate higher to avoid cuts, noting the legal ceiling is about 9 cents above the current rate without a public vote. City Manager Chapa explained that the goal was to balance service impacts and taxpayer burden, and that a larger increase could trigger a rollback election and hurt those on fixed incomes.
- Resident (small business owner): Questioned the state's business personal property (BPP) exemption increase (from $2,500 to $125,000), noting that it eliminated her tax contribution. City Manager Chapa confirmed the city lost about $8 million annually from that change, and that larger corporations (like Walmart) benefit disproportionately.
- Resident (male, earlier questioner): Criticized tax incentives for corporations, claiming they do not benefit Fort Worth residents. Councilmember Soros and City Manager Chapa defended the incentive policy, stating that projects must meet job and wage thresholds before receiving abatements, and that without incentives, the city would lose high-value employers (e.g., Lockheed Martin, which pays no property taxes but has a massive economic impact).
- Resident (female, later): Inquired about funding for a new downtown library and about fines for unpermitted short-term rentals (Airbnb). Staff clarified that capital projects are in a separate fund, and that Code Compliance uses a service (Rental Escape) to identify unpermitted rentals and issue citations, with fines going to the general fund.
Key Outcomes
- The city manager's recommended budget (with a 3.2 cent increase) was presented; council feedback on August 21 led to potential restoration of some cuts at a slightly higher rate (70.56 cents). The final budget will be voted on September 15, 2026. A public hearing is scheduled for September 1, 2026.
- The city will continue to monitor TAD's reappraisal cycle and plans to treat its budget as biennial, expecting a value increase in 2028 that may be used for one-time capital or to avoid future cuts.
- No formal votes were taken at this town hall; it served as a community engagement session.
Meeting Transcript
All right, we're a few minutes past six o'clock, so let's get started. Everyone's settled in. I think I see uh let's see one person signing in. Great. Thank you, everyone, for coming. It's hot out there. Oh here. You don't want camera. Come on. All right. Is this better? Yeah, I got the lights in front of me. Okay, how's that? Is that good, Paul? All right, perfect. All right. Well, thanks everyone for being here. I'm Carlos Soros, a district two city council member. And welcome to uh District 2's uh FY27 meeting on our city budget. This budget is a document that affects us all at the city level, at the resident level, and it determines really the course of action that the city's gonna take with the available amount of funding that we have. And each budget cycle is different. Certainly, this one is a more challenging budget than what we've experienced in years past, and much of that resides in the way TAD has done its tax appraisals. It's held uh most of the residential properties uh fixed to the 2024 values, and that affects us, especially when they alternate in taxing years and appraisal years. That's gonna have a bottom line impact on our general fund, which again supplies necessary funding to many of the services and departments that the city has. And we're gonna get into more detail on that. What have we done leading up to this meeting? What the city has done is it's taken concerted efforts to hear and get feedback from its residents. How many here have done uh the surveys that went out electronically and responded to those show of hands? A few of you, yes. We try to do that again. Um, you know, we've had uh input given at our neighborhood association meetings. Council members have taken that back and supplied it to Jay and his staff. And I know that Christiane Simmons, who's uh with our uh data and analytics department, you know, with uh Fort Worth Lab as we call it, they've collected this data and have uh reduced it for council members to discern what's important to you all. Not just important to us, but important to you all because ultimately this budget serves you. And there were really five categories that came out after we did this budget. Started out with you know, public safety police, and you know, was certainly at the top of that list, followed by fire and EMS. Uh then we had streets and mobility being the third, got a fourth category, which uh you know pertained to parks and recreation, and then the fifth category uh you know, we had uh libraries. Those are the services, those categories that were important to you. And Jay and his staff will delve a little more deeply into what we're you know talking about, what we're proposing in this budget, but we sincerely want your input. Uh Jay's taking a balanced approach. We're looking at not filling some uh outstanding positions that uh haven't been filled, and that's very important to know. We're not eliminating people, we're eliminating positions that haven't been filled. That's a cost saver in itself. He's also proposing uh 3.2 cent increase in our tax rate. We haven't had a tax rate increase in several years. It's been a policy that the city council has followed. But to be realistic, we cannot continue to deliver these services that you all expect and want from your city government unless we take a balanced approach. We have certainly visited our expenditures, cut back on those. Each department has submitted their own proposed cuts. So we're doing what we can to get a blended approach to get us to where we need to be because Jay and his staff need to submit a balanced budget, you know, under state statute.
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