According to unofficial election night results, Fort Worth voters approved a 0.5% sales tax renewal for the Crime Control and Prevention District with 64% of the vote on July 14. The measure also continued the existence of the district. The district and the tax were set to expire on September 30, 2020, but will now be extended for 10 years.
The Crime Control and Prevention District and the 0.5% special sales tax were first approved by voters in 1995. Fort Worth voters have renewed the Crime Control and Prevention District sales tax four times with approval of more than 75% of voters. The last vote on the tax was in 2014. For fiscal year 2019, the 0.5% sales tax generated $78 million in revenue.
The Fort Worth City Council serves as the board of directors for the Crime Control and Prevention District. In support of the sales tax, Mayor Betsy Price (R) said, “If we don’t have this tax we don’t have the ability to take that roughly $80 million and shift a good bit of it into social services.”
U.S. Representative Marc Veasey (D) came out in opposition to renewing the tax. He said, “Whether you’re Conservative that lives in Tanglewood or a Democrat that lives in Stop Six, you should be very concerned about the fact that we’re spending this money with very little transparency and very little citizen oversight. It was supposed to be for a short amount of time, and it’s mushroomed into potentially a 35 year tax.”
The minimum sales tax rate in Fort Worth for 2020 was 8.25%.
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