Slight growth means no debate on tax increases

Tarrant County commissioners will spend this month poring through the details of a roughly $490 million proposed budget before approving it in September, but they say one thing is for sure: the county tax rate will not increase this year.

The county's official budget planning process kicked off in May with every department providing a preliminary budget to the county Budget Director Debbie Schneider. The outlook even at the time was OK financially, as commissioners were anticipating that revenues this year would mirror those of the 2012 fiscal year. But the county is currently anticipating a roughly 1.2 percent growth in taxable values this year. Just over 60 percent of the increase the county will see in taxable values this year is the result of new properties coming online, and the remainder is the result of valuations going up on existing property.

"So what does that mean? First thing it means is we are not raising our tax rate," Precinct 3 Commissioner Gary Fickes said. "The second thing is we may be able to go ahead and make some of the purchases that we've been holding off on for a long time."

Those purchases are primarily in the area of road construction equipment used to maintain not only county roads, but also many city roads through county-city partnerships. Commissioners have been holding off on large purchases like that for a number of years as they fought to stay conservative in the wake of the Great Recession, but Fickes said that at this point, repairing aging equipment is just not a good investment. Apart from a few large purchases, he predicts commissioners will simply do their best to absorb rising costs countywide.

Population pains

Tarrant County remains one of the fastest growing counties in the nation, and with that has come a number of challenges that put pressure on the county budget.

A primary concern is the rising cost of anything having to do with criminal justice. The number of court filings have increased along with the population, and that translates to a need for more staff in everything from the sheriff's and constable's offices to the courts and jails. It also means increased costs on supplies, prisoner care and trials (a single capital murder case can cost as much as $700,000).

"When I say criminal justice, that's a wide paintbrush painting a lot of things," Fickes said. "We will continue to provide those services and the safety needed for the citizens who live here, but that is getting more and more expensive."

The county is also seeing the effects of state budget cuts in the area of public safety. For example, Fickes said, when prisoners are sentenced to the state prison, the state is supposed to transport them out of the county jail within 45 days.

"But they don't come get them in 45 days," Fickes said. "Many are here 90, 120 days, and that's costing our jail a fortune to continue to provide everything that goes along with prisoner care."

Public health has been another area where commissioners have watched costs escalate. As the population grows and the recession continues to leave residents without jobs and health insurance, the public health department has had to adapt to serving more people and the county's hospital, John Peter Smith, is taking on more and more indigent cases.

Schneider said the county is also spending more on mental health services as the state has pulled back funding in that area, and Fickes points out that many surrounding counties, including Parker, Denton, Wise and Johnson, do not have their own county hospitals.

"So when their people get sick and need emergency help, they come blowing into our emergency rooms at JPS and we've got to take care of them," Fickes said, "and that's uncompensated care in most cases."

Transportation

Talk with any of the county's commissioners and a main concern that will arise is transportation. As Tarrant grows, the cities, county and state are being forced to deal with the infrastructure needs of a larger population and their vehicles. Much of the major roadwork in the county is being funded by the Texas Department of Transportation or by public-private partnerships, but Fickes said work on major highways, like Hwys. 121, 114 and 26 in this market, have additional consequences for cities and counties.

"People are avoiding the highways under construction ... in those vicinities, causing much more damage to the city and county roads than they would normally," he said. "It's causing those roads to be prematurely worn, so for example a road may need to be redone in six years instead of in 10."

In areas of the county where the oil and gas industry is also making its mark, roads are being hit especially hard. In most cases, more than 1,000 trucks travel to and from gas sites during their initial drilling startup, Fickes said, and although several of the large companies help defray the costs of road maintenance, other smaller companies do not. Highways are not the only pieces of roadwork that will need significant work in the coming years. Many of the county's bridges have received low scores by the state — in most cases for being too narrow to safely handle passing modern vehicles — and bridge reconstruction is particularly expensive.

"We're a conservative county anyway, but we've put on our ultraconservative hats since 2009," Schneider said. "While there will be some new positions that we'll recommend, those are some things that are fewer and fewer every year and we're looking to the departments to solve their own issues internally."