Harris County Emergency Services District No. 9, which funds fire suppression and EMS operations for the Cy-Fair Fire Department, is projecting an $8.1 million shortfall for fiscal year 2026-27, driven largely by the personnel needed to open two new fire stations. Commissioners are now weighing a property tax increase, pay-raise adjustments, and even selling off unused land to close the gap before a final budget vote later this month.
The draft budget, presented by Assistant Chief of Administration Mike Clements, projects $117.8 million in expenditures against $109.6 million in revenue, according to Community Impact. Clements attributed the projected shortfall to the roughly 49 new full-time employees required for two upcoming fire stations. The board met Sept. 10 at the district's administration building on Telge Road to review the numbers.
The budget draft calls for completing design and starting construction on Stations 14 and 16, while opening, hiring for, and staffing Stations 15 and 17. That construction pipeline follows a March 2026 board vote approving a guaranteed maximum price of $12,858,338 to build Station 15 near FM 529, the first of eight new stations planned to keep pace with population growth across northwest Harris County, as reported by Community Impact in a separate report on the station's groundbreaking.
A Tax Rate Debate With Statutory Limits
To help close the gap, the board has floated raising the property tax rate from $0.04 to $0.045 per $100 of valuation. Commissioner Cameron Dickey said the department has maintained a low tax rate compared with other Texas districts, and argued the rate should move proportionately with community and department growth. Commissioner Naressa MacKinnon said the community should be protected as it grows and that raising taxes by a small amount may be necessary.
The proposed rate would reportedly cost the average homeowner less than two coffees per month. Fire Chief Amy Ramon said emergency services districts were intended to be sustained by property tax revenue in the first place. Any rate increase, however, runs up against a statutory ceiling: under Chapter 775 of the Texas Health and Safety Code and Article III, Section 48-e of the Texas Constitution, Texas emergency services districts are capped at $0.10 per $100 of valuation, according to SAFE-D.
There's a second, tighter constraint at play too. Under Texas Tax Code Section 26.07, districts that want to exceed the voter-approval tax rate — which limits property tax revenue growth to 3.5% over the prior year's no-new-revenue maintenance and operations rate — must first win approval at the ballot box, per the Texas Municipal League. The FY 2026-27 budget is built around a no-new-revenue tax rate of $0.038548 per $100 of valuation. Notably, the board had lowered its rate to $0.04 for FY 2024-25, down from $0.04436, after holding rates flat since 2019.
Commissioners Weigh Land Sales and Pay-Raise Cuts
Beyond the tax rate, commissioners are looking at other levers. Commissioner Jaime Martinez suggested selling unused district land to combat the projected shortfall, and separately floated negotiating with special-purpose and limited-purpose annexations for a share of their sales tax revenue. Martinez also suggested lowering the proposed 4.2% compensation increase for employees to help offset the gap.
The savings tied to a smaller raise are notable: a 3.2% increase would save $730,119, a 2.2% increase would save $1.5 million, and no compensation increase at all would save $3 million. Clements said the budgeted compensation increase reflects a rolling five-year Social Security cost-of-living-adjustment average.
Growth Pressures Behind the Numbers
The district's staffing and infrastructure demands trace back to a bigger structural shift. ESD 9 merged with the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department on January 1, 2020, launching a 10-year expansion plan that grew the full-time firefighter workforce to 350 career personnel by 2025, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters. That shift mirrors a nationwide trend: volunteer firefighter numbers dropped 6% between 2019 and 2020, pushing fast-growing suburbs like Cy-Fair toward career staffing.
The district now serves an estimated population of more than 650,000 residents across 164 square miles of unincorporated northwest Harris County, per the Cy-Fair Fire Department. Emergency call volume reached 46,543 responses in 2024, handled by 17 ambulances, 15 large suppression apparatus, and 13 active stations — up from roughly 40,000 calls in 2019. Emergency medical calls to assisted living facilities in the department's service area surged 91% between 2020 and 2025, climbing from 1,383 to 2,642 calls, largely tied to fall-related injuries and acute illness among elderly residents, as reported by Community Impact in a June report on the trend.
Two of the department's newest stations, Station 1 on Country View Drive and Station 6 on West Little York Road, officially opened in updated facilities in May 2025 as part of the broader capital expansion, per My Neighborhood News. The department has also earned the Government Finance Officers Association's Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for three consecutive years, 2024 through 2026.
Next Steps and Ongoing Board Tensions
The FY 2026-27 budget draft also includes several non-construction priorities: implementing a department-wide employee evaluation program, continuing officer training and development, completing training facility planning, finishing enterprise resource planning implementation, developing a community-driven five-year strategic plan, and determining administrative and logistical workforce projections tied to future growth.
Clements plans to have demographers join the next budgeting workshop to provide insight into community demographic projections related to growth and budgeting decisions. The board is slated to hold a budget workshop at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 17, ahead of a planned Sept. 24 vote to adopt the FY 2026-27 budget. Ramon said the budget document will be posted on the Cy-Fair Fire Department website once it is adopted. The district is projected to continue experiencing shortfalls in future fiscal years as the department continues adding stations and personnel to keep pace with growth.
The budget debate arrives against a backdrop of governance friction between commissioners and Ramon, whose job status has faced scrutiny from the board, as Hoodline reported in a story on the chief's job status review. That tension followed community turnout in support of Ramon amid what supporters called board inaction on a complaint, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of the community rally.
