Montgomery County Commissioners Court approved the fiscal year 2026-27 budget in a 3-2 vote during its Sept. 8 special session.
Some of the provisions adopted in the $546.8 million budget include pay parity for law enforcement, a 5% across-the-board raise for non-law enforcement employees and funding for the new 523rd District Court.
By the numbers
The recently approved tax rate was set at $0.3860 per $100 of home value, an increase of $0.009 over the previous budget cycle’s tax rate of $0.3770. This new rate was put on the preliminary budget during an Aug. 14 budget workshop.
According to a taxpayer impact statement, the median homestead in Montgomery County will pay just over $30 more in property taxes from the county.
What they’re saying
“This has probably been one of the hardest budgets I’ve ever been through. I’ve been here six years,” Precinct 1 Commissioner Robert Walker said. “It’s hard on all five of us up here as well as the department heads coming to ask for money. We have to try to live within our means of what we bring in and the only other way to get above that is to raise that [tax] number to have extra income.”
The main point of disagreement in the budget was a 5% across the board raise for non-law enforcement Montgomery County employees and pay parity for law enforcement beginning June 5.
Precinct 3 Commissioner Ritch Wheeler stated his preference for a merit-based raise.
“I don’t believe in across-the-board pay raises. I believe in merit-based pay raises so that if somebody’s doing a good job they see that there’s a differentiator between them and the person that’s sitting next to them that’s not doing as good a job. It motivates people to do a good job,” Wheeler said.
Judge Mark Keough stressed to Wheeler that he believes the budget accomplishes more than the blanket raise for county employees.
“There’s a whole lot more to talk about in a budget than just raises, so you’re going to say ‘I’m against the whole budget because I’m off by 2.5%,’” Keough said. “There has to be at some level where we say let’s agree to disagree, but I’m going to go with you on that because this is a worthwhile budget. We’re taking care of the things we need to take care of; the people, our CIP, everything that we’ve been doing with our facilities and everything else.”
After discussion, the commissioners voted 3-2 to pass the budget with Wheeler and Precinct 4 Commissioner Matt Grey opposed.
