Fort Worth Site Shows Taxpayers How City Spends Their Money

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – Fort Worth has launched a new website to show taxpayers where their money is spent.

Residents can type in their exact home valuation, which brings up a break-out box that tracks where their money goes.

"One of my goals was to provide additional transparency for all the tax dollars that Joe Citizen/Sue Citizen pays to all the taxing entities here in the Metroplex," said Fort Worth Budget Officer Horatio Porter. "I think they'll be surprised to see how much they pay in taxes and how much goes to all the different entities."

Running an example break-out with a home worth $150,000, Fort Worth City Hall visitor and city resident Juan Carranza was surprised to see nearly half of the $4,000 in taxes go toward the school district.

"Well that's pretty crazy right there!" Carranza said with surprise when he saw the figure. "Half of it goes to the school?"

The city takes about a third of the taxes, or $1,000 from the example home.

Most of that money is spent on public safety, about $517 a year. And, in the example, just under $300 a year of that public safety expenditure goes for police protection.

"Man," Carranza said, somewhat in disbelief as he read the numbers.

By comparison, less than $30 a year from the example goes to libraries.

"That's probably the cost of a book they're spending on the entire library system," Porter said.

"That's not much!" Carranza said. "That's not much at all."

And nearly $185 a year is used to pay off the city's debt.

The details online go into far more detail. And the city hopes other taxpayers will be just as enlightened as Carranza was.

"I never knew about it," Carranza said. "It opened my eyes on it, that's for sure!"