Humble cut its tax rate 4.8 percent. Its total collection goes up $561,191.

Humble’s council adopted a 2026-27 budget on September 10 with about $1.8 million in employee raises, and the property tax rate that pays for it falls 4.8 percent. The city’s own tax notice, posted the next day, shows the total amount Humble collects from property owners going up $561,191.

Why it matters

A rate cut and a tax increase are not opposites in Texas. The rate is the multiplier, and when taxable values rise the same multiplier collects more money. Humble’s notice is titled “Notice of Public Hearing on Tax Increase” for that reason, and the rate is not adopted yet.

The average Humble homestead does save money, $9.64 a year. Every dollar of the increase comes from somewhere else in the tax base.

By the numbers

$0.245682 per $100 proposed rate for 2026, down from $0.258171, a cut of 4.8 percent. The notice rounds it to 5 percent.
$0.224838 no-new-revenue rate, the rate that would collect the same money from the same properties as last year. The proposed rate is 9.3 percent above it.
$0.240021 voter-approval rate. The proposed rate is 2.4 percent above that too.
$0.245682 de minimis rate, which is the proposed rate to the last decimal place. Because the de minimis rate exceeds the voter-approval rate, the notice states there is no election and no voter petition.
$8,354,924 collected on all property in 2025, rising to $8,916,115 in 2026. That is $561,191 more, or 6.7 percent. The notice rounds it to 7 percent.
$127,084 average homestead taxable value in 2025, rising to $129,620, up 2 percent.
$328.09 city tax on that average homestead in 2025, falling to $318.45, a difference of $9.64.
$1.8 million cost of the raises, per City Manager Jason Stuebe. The extra levy covers about 31 percent of it.
4.5 to 6 percent raises for most employees, 8 to 11 percent for sworn officers, dispatchers, crime scene investigators, jailers, firefighters, paramedics and water and wastewater staff.
$22.9 million general fund reserve going into the year.

What the coverage buried

Three stories reported the budget and the rate cut. Community Impact was careful to call the rate proposed rather than adopted. None of the three printed the no-new-revenue rate, the voter-approval rate, the de minimis rate, the total levy, or the September 24 hearing date.

Those five figures are on one page of one document the city posted on its own website on September 11. Without the no-new-revenue rate, a reader cannot tell whether 4.8 percent down is a tax cut or a tax increase, and the document’s own title answers that question.

The other side

The de minimis rate exists precisely for cities Humble’s size. It lets a small taxing unit raise a fixed $500,000 without an election, on the reasoning that percentage caps calibrated for large taxing units will not fund a single fire truck in a small one. Humble took that allowance and stopped there. The extra $561,191 is close to the $500,000 the formula is designed to yield, and the city stayed inside the law by design rather than by accident.

The spending case is also real. KPRC 2 reported in December 2025 that nearly 30 officers had left the police department over three years, out of a workforce of about 90, and that an internal survey found low morale and loss of experienced staff. A city that cannot keep patrol officers is going to pay more for them.

All of that is an argument for the increase. It is not a reason to describe the increase as a cut.

What to watch

September 24, 6:30 p.m., public hearing on the proposed rate at City Hall, 114 W. Higgins Street.
Whether council adopts $0.245682 or comes down toward the $0.240021 voter-approval rate. The notice lists six members for the proposal and none against.
Whether the adopted budget’s revenue and expenditure lines match the August proposal, which showed $44.6 million in and $43.4 million out.

Bottom line

Humble is collecting $561,191 more next year and cutting the rate at the same time. Both are true, the city documented both, and only one of them made the headlines.

Sources

Editorial