For homeowners in Colleyville, the promise of property tax relief has been completely shattered. While state lawmakers constantly boast about tax compression and property tax reform, local municipal officials continue to find ways to extract more money from your home. If you own property in Colleyville, prepare to open your wallet, because local bureaucrats have decided that when property values dip, you must bear the financial burden of keeping their bloated municipal budget afloat. This is not public service, it is direct financial predation on homeowners.
On September 15, 2026, the Colleyville City Council officially adopted its 2026-27 municipal budget and voted to raise property tax rates. Driven by a decline in overall local property valuations and debt service requirements, the council enacted a tax rate of $0.352480 per $100 of valuation. This represents a staggering 13 percent increase over the previous year's property tax rate of $0.311931 per $100 valuation. Under this newly approved rate, the owner of an average-valued Colleyville home will face an immediate property tax increase of 8.66 percent, extracting an additional $190.72 annually. The city council justified this massive rate hike by pointing to declining valuations and debt obligations, showing that when the market fluctuates, the government always protects its own revenue streams first.
Raising tax rates by 13 percent is a direct assault on the economic security of local families and retirees on fixed incomes. Instead of adjusting municipal spending to reflect the decline in property valuations, the Colleyville City Council did the opposite, maintaining a massive $98.33 million operating budget and shifting the entire burden onto the shoulders of local homeowners. This action highlights a fundamental disregard for private property rights, treating family homes as reliable sources of revenue to finance municipal operations. When local officials refuse to cut spending in response to economic downturns, they show that their true priority is preserving bureaucratic power at the expense of their constituents.
This aggressive tax hike illustrates how local governments exploit statutory loopholes to bypass taxpayer protections. In a detailed policy report, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has shown how municipalities manipulate debt calculations and exemptions to outpace the rate of inflation and population growth. Furthermore, when local governments fail to respect the economic realities of their residents, they undermine the foundational principle that private property owners should not be subjected to arbitrary, excessive taxation. This lack of fiscal discipline at the local level effectively cancels out any tax relief provided by state-level reforms, keeping Texans trapped in a cycle of high property taxes.
Colleyville property owners must send a clear message to their elected officials: when the private sector faces economic challenges, the public sector must cut its own spending rather than hiking taxes on struggling families. A 13 percent property tax rate increase is completely unacceptable. It is time to demand that the Colleyville City Council roll back this rate hike, implement strict spending limits, and respect the property rights of the citizens they were elected to serve.