October 1, 2025, marks the beginning of the 2025-2026 fiscal year. Each year, the budget is adopted following an extensive process that includes soliciting citizen feedback through a citizen survey and a Town Hall Forum. Community feedback is the basis for the City Council’s annual strategic retreat, providing direction for staff to develop their annual budget plan. Council then reviews the plan in a budget workshop before meeting to hold a budget hearing and consider adoption of the final budget and tax rate. Each of these steps is governed by the City of Hurst’s Charter and the State of Texas Local Government Code and Truth in Taxation requirements.
Considerable attention is paid to the tax rate, which provides about 47% of our General Fund operating revenue and has a direct impact on all our residents and businesses. This year, the budget was funded by a tax rate of $0.611882, which is just below the calculated Voter Approval Tax Rate. This means that the average household in Hurst will pay about $4.03 per day for the public service they rely on and value. This includes primary city services such as police, fire, public works, and community services operations. For the City budget, property taxes remain the most reliable and stable revenue source for our General Fund, which supports essential services such as police and fire operations. The Fiscal Year 25 general fund budget was increased by 4.15%, totaling $46.48 million.
The budget also aligns with the City Council’s strategic priorities of Public Safety, Infrastructure, Community & Economic Vitality, Leadership, and Innovation. This shows up on how the budget dollars are spent. About 60% of the general fund budget is spent in support of public safety. In fact, if all General Fund property tax revenue were dedicated to public safety, we would still have a shortfall of $5.3 million or about $0.115 in additional property tax rate. This is why the City also relies upon sales tax revenue and other revenue sources such as direct charges, fees, and permits. In the current economic climate, sales tax continues to face challenges from regional competition and broader economic trends. Sales taxes have leveled off in recent years and support our conservative approach to sales tax through the addition of a sales tax contingency to mitigate any significant loss in sales tax revenue.
When considering the larger budget picture, we continue to be challenged by increasing costs and demand for services, driven in part by expanding State legislation impacting cities. This year, we faced upward pressure on wages, especially in public safety, as well as upward pressure in fleet and Information Technology replacement costs, infrastructure costs, health insurance, property insurance, workers’ compensation coverage, and utility costs. Even with these pressures, the City remains conservative in our budget with an average increase of 3.35% over the last 10 years. Over this same time frame, inflation costs facing cities have been around 3.66% on average over the same time period. This reflects the Council's and staff's commitment to long-term financial sustainability while maintaining excellent services. Hurst continues to be a desirable location for homes and businesses.
The adopted budget also includes a 2% increase in water and wastewater rates. This increase is driven in large part by increases in wholesale costs passed through the City from the City of Fort Worth and the Trinity River Authority. These costs are largely beyond our control and represent about 44% of total costs in our Utility Fund. This increase follows the City’s long-standing “rate smoothing” policy, which includes modest adjustments year over year to avoid a larger increase in any given year. With our smart meter program funded through strategic reserves made available through the Federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) program, the rate increase is solely needed to fund wholesale costs and other operational needs driven by inflation. We are excited about the progress on our smart meter system and look forward to closing out the project in 2026 and rolling out the customer portal. The available data will allow for an expanded and improved customer service while also assisting the City in reporting on and managing water consumption.
As a service-based organization, our dedicated employees are key to providing services that are responsive to the community’s needs. Hurst employees are committed to providing exceptional customer service while following our framework of the Hurst Way. This framework encourages employees to provide excellent customer service while being passionate about public service balanced against financial sustainability. The adopted budget includes a citywide pay adjustment of 2.5% for all employees, plus an additional 2.5% for sworn public police and fire employees and is based upon a study of the local municipal employment market. The City of Hurst remains committed to attracting and retaining top municipal talent. This helps us reach our goal of providing excellent customer service as a return on your investment. In fact, the majority of our services are directly provided by our employees, which account for about 75% of general fund expenditures. Of this amount, the greatest portion is spent on public safety in alignment with the Council’s strategic priorities and citizen input.
In order to provide responsive customer service to the public, this year’s budget includes some key investments, such as fleet replacements, additional detection cameras that support our license plate reader program to help leverage technology in support of public safety, replacement of personal protective equipment for public safety, and various facility improvements at the recreation center, library, and parks. The budget also includes one-time expenditures to aid the City in managing traffic flow around high-traffic areas and a study and evaluation of our pavement condition to help target future repair budgets. Finally, this budget also includes about $4 million in bond-funded improvements for our streets, water, and waste water infrastructure.
The Council’s mission for the City of Hurst is to “provide responsive services and effective programs to ensure that Hurst remains a vibrant community”. In order for this to become a reality, we must continually invest in our workforce and our infrastructure to help ensure Hurst remains a business-friendly environment. This includes our proactive approach to partnering with business owners, developers, and other influential members of our business community. The City is in the midst of a strategic partnership with the North Central Texas Council of Governments to develop a visionary plan for Highway 10 redevelopment. It has gathered industry experts to provide feedback and ideas about the future of the Highway 10 corridor, which will take advantage of the new Trinity Lakes TRE station. We also remain connected to the North East Mall and work with Simon Properties for future mall redevelopment. Our economic development efforts also included discussions with Bell Flight to plan for future development that will support their expanded business needs associated with their recently awarded military contract.
Throughout Fiscal Year 26, staff is focused on priority-based budget and management to increase a business-minded approach to ensure operations and expenditures are consistently aligned with the Council’s strategic priorities. Our priority-based approach is being used through our operations to address resource allocation, including generations of additional revenues, and consider service delivery methods. We are certain to face challenges associated with a mature city that is nearly built out; however, we remain confident in the Council’s leadership and staff’s commitment to ensuring Hurst remains a vibrant community by providing responsive services and effective programs.
Click to learn more.