Arlington’s proposed city budget required officials to reorganize city departments and reduce spending to account for flattening or declining property values – a theme City Manager Trey Yelverton sees repeating in 2026.
The city’s $722 million budget represents a roughly 7% increase from last year's, as well as growth in property and sales tax revenues. However, new and existing city services – coupled with slower economic growth and recently approved changes to the Tarrant Appraisal District’s reappraisal process – require officials to find ways to fund the difference.
“We realize there’s a balance of what taxpayers are willing to invest in services and how we need to make it affordable for them, given how the system works between state, appraisal district and local taxation,” Yelverton said. “We’re going to work to keep all that very affordable and I’m highly confident in the value of services that we bring to the city, to the residents.”
Department reductions and reallocations, as well as changes to the city’s health care plan for employees, account for $5.8 million of the revenue. The budget also calls for a proposed 1-cent property tax increase – the city’s first since 2004 if approved. The increase is projected to bring in $4.1 million.
Earlier this month, the Tarrant Appraisal District board voted to freeze residential property tax values in 2025; set appraisals for once every two years; and enact greater requirements to raise appraisals by more than 5%.
Projections for 2026 with frozen residential values could spell a projected $5 million shortfall for the city’s budget, according to a presentation to Arlington City Council members Tuesday.
“We’re going to have to kind of rinse, lather, repeat in the sense of identifying mergers, spans of control, positional eliminations, optimization,” Yelverton said. “We’re just going to do more and more of that starting now for next year.”
New and expanded services include operational costs for the ACTIV center for older adults; a nearly $500,000 “Clean Team;” and the fire department’s ongoing transition to four-person staffing. The city's police and fire departments will also take on costs originally funded through American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
Yelverton said the new TAD processes are part of the equation, as are local homestead exemptions and exemptions for residents over 65.
“It’s been a generation that taxpayers in town have enjoyed that homestead exemption, and it’s been a good 20 years that seniors have enjoyed those freezes. That’s just part of the math, it’s part of the arithmetic,” he said.
Where are the cuts happening?
Yelverton said he did not approach department heads with a specific dollar amount in mind for reductions.
“We didn’t put out, really, an edict that said you cut 2%, cut 5%, cut 10% … it’s a little more of a hybrid, zero-base type exercise where they would just say we need to take a look at items, and they know their budgets better than anybody,” he said.
The $3.1 million in cuts affect 13 departments, as well as one non-departmental cut of around $653,000 for Lawson Savings software.
The city’s information technology and police department brought forth the highest dollar amount in departmental reductions, including around $535,000 for the police department and $585,484 from IT.
The police department’s reductions include a cellular software plan that Yelverton described as a “legacy-type” product, as well as cuts to the reserve unit and a crime analyst position.
The police department’s budget will ultimately increase by nearly $6.7 million – a point Yelverton said he doesn’t want lost in the reduction discussion.
“I don’t want anybody to come away with the perception that we’ve defunded the police or we’ve reduced the police department budget in any kind of significant way,” he said.
Information technology cuts include the shedding of licenses not in use, as well as a deferred online jury service that would change the way people are summoned for jury duty.
“We’re not quite in the 21st Century on that. We won’t be at least until next year when we can reconsider this,” Yelverton said.
The city manager’s office also deferred or delayed over half of city department requests for 2025 for a year totaling $24 million. Some of the requests – including those for fire department equipment including radio replacements, alerting system and new aircraft rescue and firefighting truck – may end up on voters’ ballots next year as the city prepares for a bond election next spring.
The city is in the process of chairing a citizens bond committee that will consider projects to bring forward to voters. Yelverton said the election will primarily focus on road improvement projects.
“Clearly now we’re going to be looking at a public safety piece. We’ll be looking to add in some things that we need to do, and they may want to add in some park elements or some stuff like that, but the lion’s share, a good three quarters of what we’ll end up (asking voters to do) will be roads,” Yelverton said.
Animal Control, Code Compliance reorganized
Twenty-two mostly-vacant positions will be cut from the budget if approved, including the code compliance director post. The position will not be refilled, and code compliance and animal services will be reorganized under different city departments.
Code compliance will fall under asset management, which oversees areas including trash collection services and the city’s vehicle fleet. Animal services will move under parks and recreation – a move that Yelverton said could help animal services harness more resources.
“The parks department’s a fairly large department, so I hope that the animal team might actually feel lifted up a little bit with some additional partners, if you will, and just a fresh perspective,” Yelverton said.
Yelverton said he doesn’t see the changes substantially impact either code compliance or animal services.
“As long as their span of control can be measured and be reasonable so that we don’t overburden them, and that we keep things balanced, then there shouldn’t be any material impact there,” Yelverton said. “And if we start to see that there is, we’ll make an adjustment.”
KERA News asked for comment from Nora Coronado of asset management; Alex Busken, interim code compliance services director; and James Orloski of parks and recreation.
A city spokesperson said the department heads did not want to comment prior to the Sept. 10 vote.
This story was updated at 5 p.m. Sept. 10, 2024, to correct the overall city budget amount.
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