Residents hammered by inflation and property taxes need a bigger break in Fort Worth budget

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Brian Byrd
Fri, September 23, 2022 at 4:03 AM

Lately when I visit with folks about politics, they want to talk about the November general election. Which party will control the U.S. Senate? How will Beto O’Rourke fare against Gov. Greg Abbott’s warchest? Who will be our next county judge, now the most influential locally elected official?

Even with the election just weeks away, we shouldn’t take our eyes off the governing that’s ongoing, especially the local municipal budget process and upcoming council votes. For most of us, the city property assessment makes up about a quarter of our annual property tax bill.

On Tuesday, Fort Worth’s City Council will vote on a new tax rate. The city manager has proposed a rate of 71.25 cents per $100 of property valuation which represents a 2.7% decrease in the tax rate. That’s the good news.

The bad news for homeowners is that overall, our property values have increased by roughly 13%. So, the average homeowner’s city property tax bill will increase by a little more than 10%.

That’s too much.

When I was a council member, I voted for budgets that allowed for small increases in the overall amount of tax a property owner would pay. My requirement was that the increase should be less than or equal to the rate of inflation. That makes sense because the city’s expenses go up year-to-year.

The national inflation rate has been 8.3% over the past 12 months, and the City Council should not vote for a tax increase of more than that. Indeed, with inflation abnormally high, the council should adopt a tax increase that is significantly less than the inflation rate to give homeowners some relief.

One of the reasons the city needs more money this coming year is that the cost to fund pensions has increased to about 27% of payroll. Most businesses pay 2-6% of payroll into their employees retirement benefit.

City Manager David Cooke’s budget prioritizes safety, and that is exactly what it should do. It anticipates adding 63 people to the police department, including patrol and mental health teams and staff to improve our 911 response times.

That is particularly important given that our city’s violent crime has increased 64% since 2019 (though, fortunately, it has decreased somewhat in the past year). Cities such as Seattle that cut police budgets in 2020 are now having to build back amid low morale, diminished department censuses and climbing crime rates. Because of good policy, Fort Worth has avoided that misery.

I also applaud the city for using more pay-as-you-go funding overall. That means the city will rely less on bond packages to pay for street repair. Borrowing makes sense for new roads, bridges, and sewer systems. Maintenance costs should come out of the annual budget.

Our city’s residents pay an outsized share of the overall property tax burden because business growth in Fort Worth has not kept pace with population growth. We have just one Fortune 500 company — way too few for the 13th-largest city in America — and too many Fort Worthians leave the city to go to work everyday.

As far as business development, there are some reasons to be encouraged. The business community and local governments are sponsoring the city’s first ever accelerator program. The downtown Texas A&M University expansion will have the greatest effect on economic growth, though it will be a long time before we see its benefits.

But the city’s economic development team must show better year-to-year results, and it will need support from the county to close deals. We should also staff the permitting department better, as Cooke plans to in the new budget.

District 4 Council Member Alan Blaylock’s pledge to not support a tax increase is commendable. Council members should be digging into the proposed budget and asking management to prove the need for each expense. They are the taxpayer’s only backstop against the tendency to overspend.

Brian Byrd, a former City Council member, is a physician in Fort Worth.