Hello Argyle friends and neighbors! As the summer months are coming to an end that means fall is just around the corner. I don’t know about you, but I am certainly looking forward to the cooler temperatures and Friday night football.
As the Town’s budget officer, I have been working tirelessly, along with council and staff, to make the 2025-2026 budget one of the most transparent budgets to date. We are combing through every line item to ensure that your tax dollars are being spent sensibly. At the end of the day, as your mayor, my main goal is to be able to provide you with more tangible amenities such as parks, much-needed road repairs, drainage repairs and updates, and many other quality of life projects around Argyle while maintaining the current tax rate.
I also propose that we mirror the recent passage of legislation in Austin that raises the school tax exemption for our residents over the age of 65 and residents that are disabled from $110,000 to $200,000, whether this year or next. We are currently at a $155,000 exemption for the town’s portion of your tax bill. In comparison, we are well above what other municipalities exempt, keeping more money in your pocket. I aim to do more for our seniors and disabled to help them deal with the ever-growing cost of living. I am pleased to say that we should be able to do all these things and hold the tax rate steady, if not lower it.
At the September 15, 2025, town council meeting, the council will hold a public hearing to approve the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Your input is very valuable to the process, so please reach out to me if there’s something you would like addressed and are not able to attend the meeting.
As many of you know, I am a tree lover and proud to announce that Argyle earned the Tree City USA designation again this year. This is now the 6th straight year. Our current tree cover canopy for the town of Argyle is more than 30% coverage and staff will be working to bring ideas to the council about how we can increase that coverage even more. We will include another $10,000 in this year’s budget for tree purchase rebates, which is a great way to offset the cost for any new trees you want to plant. The window to apply is later this year through April of next year, with information available at Town Hall or on our website.
We are also setting aside $250,000 for the Argyle Nature Trail, which we hope will be supplemented with further grants from Texas Parks and Wildlife. Our hope is that we will have it ready for use by our citizens by 2026. The Town of Argyle is also working on another park in conjunction with PointBank. Its purpose will be to serve as a Play Park for kids as it did many years ago. More to come on that.
North Texas Giving Day is September 18, which is an important date that helps our local community in exponential ways through the work of our local charities such as the Argyle Lion’s Club, Myrtle Lee Lynch Argyle Food Bank, B-Noble Farms and Rescue, Argyle Educational Foundation, Argyle Senior Citizen Organization, New Hope Equine and many others. Every dollar donated to these charities will be matched dollar for dollar by Amazon and their partners. Go to NorthTexasGivingDay.org and select one of our local nonprofit groups. Your participation is immensely appreciated.
I want to take a moment and thank our citizens for their patience while we kicked off the first of many road repair projects within the town. The Frenchtown Road repair has been completed. We are now in the process of identifying and prioritizing other needed repairs around town. The town is setting aside $1,750,000 for the 2025-26 budget for road repairs that includes fresh asphalt overlays. We have also identified several areas across town that need drainage attention and have set aside the needed dollars to make those repairs and improvements.
To all those interested in serving on a board or commission, please visit the town’s website to see available opportunities. We plan to interview applicants at our meeting on September 22.
Lastly, I want to mention that we are commissioning a traffic study which we will use to help mitigate “thru traffic” of our town. Our main focus will be to reduce and slow the traffic of our interior roads that are within the control of the town of Argyle. To that end, we have already installed five new traffic speed monitoring devices, which will collect data that our Police will use to best allocate its resources.
As always, thank you for allowing me to serve you!
