Bellaire's proposed tax rate is up 2.25 percent. The average bill is up 7.2 percent.

Bellaire’s city council has proposed a property tax rate of $0.4268 per $100 for fiscal 2026-27, up from the $0.4174 it adopted last October. The rate goes up 2.25 percent. The bill on the average home goes up 7.2 percent.

Why it matters

The rate and the bill are different numbers, and in Bellaire the gap is wide because the values underneath are high. Nine-tenths of a cent on a $907,764 home is $259 a year.

The public hearing and the adoption vote are the same meeting, on Oct. 5. Residents who want to be heard get one date.

By the numbers

$0.4268 per $100, the proposed FY 2026-27 rate.
$0.4174 per $100, the rate Bellaire adopted for FY 2026, reported by Community Impact on Oct. 7, 2025.
0.94 cents, the increase. That is 2.25 percent, by our arithmetic on those two published rates.
$907,764, the average home value for the incoming year, up 4.80 percent from $866,157.
$3,874 in taxes on the average residence homestead under the proposed rate, which is $259 more than last year.
7.2 percent, that bill increase, against a 2.25 percent rate increase.
$0.4243, the proposed de minimis rate for the same year.
$0.4333, the rate Bellaire charged before last year’s cut.
Oct. 5, hearing and adoption, at Bellaire City Hall.

What the coverage buried

Community Impact’s Sept. 22 story prints the proposed rate, the de minimis rate, the average home value and the $259. It does not print the rate Bellaire is raising from. The headline calls the rate higher and the number it is higher than is not in the article. A reader can check that in ten seconds by opening the story and searching for $0.4174.

The prior rate is recoverable from the story’s own figures. $907,764 at $0.4268 per $100 is $3,874. Take away the $259 and last year’s bill was $3,615, which is exactly $866,157 at $0.4174 per $100. Community Impact published that rate itself last October.

Second, the same outlet now carries two different figures for last year’s average Bellaire homestead. Its October 2025 story used $835,403 and a bill of about $3,487. Its September 2026 story implies $866,157 and $3,615. The gap is $30,754, about 3.7 percent, and neither story explains it.

The other side

Bellaire did cut the rate last year, from $0.4333 to $0.4174, and this increase is going to a posted hearing rather than arriving inside a budget vote. City staff would say the 4.80 percent value increase is the appraisal district’s work and not the council’s, and that a city with a $70 million bond program and a stormwater basin still under construction has costs that do not fall when the rate does.

All of that is reasonable. It does not explain leaving the comparison number out of the announcement, and it does not answer why the proposed rate sits a quarter of a cent above the de minimis rate the same story reports.

What to watch

Oct. 5, the hearing and the adoption vote, held the same day.
Whether Bellaire publishes its no-new-revenue rate and its voter-approval rate. Neither appears in the coverage, and the voter-approval rate is the number that decides whether residents get a say.
Why $0.4268 sits above the $0.4243 de minimis rate, and what the city says that means.
Which average homestead value the city is actually using, $835,403 or $866,157.

Bottom line

Nine-tenths of a cent is a small increase and Bellaire is not hiding the hearing. The bill it produces is not small, because the base under it grew 4.8 percent, and that is the number that shows up in October’s mail. Anything calling a rate higher should say what it is higher than, in the first paragraph.