Cooke County raises property-tax rate in fiscal 2026 budget

By GvilleTX Newsroom

Cooke County's adopted fiscal 2026 budget raises the county property-tax rate to $0.3355 per $100 of taxable value, two cents above the fiscal 2025 rate of $0.3155. The budget projects about $2.5 million more in property-tax revenue than the year before, according to the adopted budget.

The budget credits about $473,000 of that projected gain to property newly added to the tax roll.

The county keeps adding residents. The Census Bureau put Cooke County's population at 44,461 on July 1, 2025, about 7% above its April 2020 estimates base, according to bureau estimates. Bureau housing estimates for 2020 to 2024 show owners living in about 72% of the county's occupied homes.

The new rate sits above the county's no-new-revenue rate of $0.3127, the budget shows. The Texas Comptroller defines that benchmark as the rate that would bring in the same property-tax revenue from properties taxed in both years. Under that definition, a rate above the benchmark raises more from those properties.

The adopted budget records a 4-1 vote. Gary Hollowell, Jason Snuggs, Adam Arendt and Matt Sicking voted for it. John Roane voted against it.

For a regional comparison, the Census Bureau estimated Grayson County's July 2025 population at 153,613, a gain of 13.3% over its April 2020 base, according to Census estimates. Grayson County held its rate at $0.3051 per $100 of taxable value in its adopted fiscal 2026 budget. That budget still projects about $1.1 million, or 1.68%, more in property-tax revenue.

In Cooke County, the rate had moved down a year earlier. The county's fiscal 2025 budget cut it from $0.3243 in fiscal 2024.

| Cooke County tax rate, per $100 of taxable value | Rate |

|---|---:|

| Fiscal 2024 | $0.3243 |

| Fiscal 2025 | $0.3155 |

| Fiscal 2026 adopted | $0.3355 |

| Fiscal 2026 no-new-revenue rate | $0.3127 |

As an illustration, take a hypothetical property with a taxable value of $240,000 in both years. At the new rate, it would owe about $48 more a year in county tax, or about $4 a month, before any exemptions. The Census Bureau puts the county's median owner-occupied home value at about $240,000.

The growth is part of a longer run. The bureau counted about 38,400 Cooke County residents in 2010 and about 41,700 in 2020. Texas as a whole grew about 1.2% between July 2024 and July 2025, more than double the national rate of 0.5%, the Census Bureau reported. The bureau tied most of the national slowdown to a drop in net international migration.

The fiscal 2026 budget projects that Cooke County will carry no net outstanding bond debt on Jan. 1, 2026.