On Aug. 12, the Bexar County Commissioners Court heard a presentation on the proposed fiscal year 2025-26 operating and capital budgets.

The gist

According to the presentation, the county’s proposed operating budget is roughly $1 billion and includes $287.022 million for public safety, $252 million for general government expenses and $20.390 million for health and public welfare.


For the capital budget, county officials have recommended $553.075 million for investments in road, flood and capital improvements projects and $983.475 million for operating expenditures.
According to county documents, the 2025 net taxable base is roughly $245.462 billion. This is a 2.3% increase, or $5.5 billion, from last year’s certified values, which is the assessed value of property used to calculate property taxes.


Additionally, new values, such as new constructions and property improvements, have accounted for the entire $6.8 billion increase.


New values:
  • Residential: $4.7 billion
  • Commercial: $1.4 billion
  • Other: $721 million
Property protests were also lower than last year, with protests dropping from $107 billion for 163,415 properties FY 2024-25 to $97 billion for 145,918 properties this fiscal year.

Sorting out details

County officials also proposed to maintain the current tax rate of $0.299999.


Lastly, The Bexar County Tax Assessor has suggested shifting $0.009804, or $16 million, from the flood debt tax rate to the flood maintenance & operations tax rate. This is due to the rule that the county cannot collect more funds than the county’s flood debt requirement.


What’s changed

The proposed budget also includes 356 new positions and 249.5 re-classified positions throughout the county, totaling roughly $40.264 million.

New positions include:
  • 22 uniformed Bexar County Sheriff’s Department patrol officers
  • 15 office of Criminal Justice positions
  • 21 criminal district attorneys
Additional employee compensation includes a 2% cost-of-living adjustment, totaling $6 million, $4,200 in shift differential pay for employees who routinely work second and third shifts and funding $500,000 for tuition reimbursement programs.

What else?


The budget also includes 47 proposed capital improvement projects.


Projects include improvements to the adult detention center, pedestrian bridge repairs, road extensions, Next Generation Flood Sensors and victim notification enhancements.

Stay tuned

The Bexar County Budget and Finance Department will present the proposed tax rate Aug. 19 after the Bexar County Tax Assessor Collector’s Office calculates and provides the FY 2025-26 no new tax rate and voter approved tax rate. The adoption of the budget and tax rate is scheduled to take place Sept. 9.