Fort Worth city officials have rolled up their sleeves to embark on the Financial Year 2025 budget planning, to enhance community services ranging from safety to infrastructure – and they're calling on residents to chime in. The city's budget staff kicked off the process in March, and they're now projecting a hefty $1.049 billion General Fund budget, a spike by $35 million from the previous fiscal year, as reported by the City of Fort Worth.

As Fort Worth operates in the dance of dollars and cents the increase is attributed to the need for competitive salaries to keep its employees in the fold and ballooning insurance costs; however, the tax rate is still a floating question mark that staff and the council will have to anchor down in the coming months. The city isn't just crunching numbers in the old-fashioned way, they're leveraging priority-based budgeting – a method that sizes up programs against the City Council's goals, and nine departments are already putting their services through this peer-reviewed wringer.

According to the City of Fort Worth, FWLab Director Christianne Simmons explained that this modern approach to budgeting ensures every dollar dovetails with the council's vision. Fort Worth's FY25 budget aims to pump life into economic development, punctuate community investment, buttress community safety, bolster infrastructure, and shape responsible growth.

The city's budget cookbook will see several iterations, with department leaders scheduled to serve their preliminary budgets this May, and with the City Council sessions slated to comb through the recommendations, the spotlight is now turning to the town’s residents, Fort Worth has slated open houses and launched the new online platform Connect Fort Worth for public engagement, lets citizens have their say starting this month, their voices to cut through the numbers and shape fiscal policies.