Houston City Council Postpones Budget Adoption

Antonieta Cadiz was trapped in her home during Hurricane Harvey. It took days for strangers from a nearby neighborhood to rescue her and get her and her children, ages 3 and 5, to a safe place.

"The storm destroyed the first floor of our home and displaced us for nearly a year," she says. "Our house sat underwater for eight days. When we finally returned, we found a devastated home overrun with mold, making it completely uninhabitable. People think a flood is temporary, that the water just comes and goes, but for my family, the toll was financial, physical and psychological."

Cadiz didn't have flood insurance and took out a Small Business Administration loan, a debt she says she's still paying.

Not everyone returned home after Harvey. At least 88 people died and more than 9,000 homes were destroyed.

Cadiz was one of two dozen Texans who testified at a May 30 "people's hearing" on extreme weather. A few of the panelists were from the Hill Country, where 135 people died in a catastrophic flood last July, but most talked about disasters that hit Houston, including Harvey in 2017, Winter Storm Uri in 2021, and the derecho and Hurricane Beryl in 2024.

The public session, hosted by Air Alliance Houston, wasn't directly tied to the pending $7.5 billion city budget set for adoption this month, but critics — including some speakers at the people's hearing — have said that Mayor John Whitmire's proposed budget funnels too much money toward law enforcement and not enough toward flood mitigation and drainage.

It was no coincidence that Council Member Tiffany Thomas, who voted against last year's budget and says she'll do the same again this year, was in attendance. Thomas shared about losing her childhood home in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina and noted that her current Houston home still has a leaky roof from Beryl.

"For me, particularly as we look at the budget, we have to move from practice to policy to true financial investment," Thomas said. "We have to fund the future of the city that we believe we deserve. You have my full support in making sure that we match our money to our mission with our city budget."

Other speakers included City Controller Chris Hollins, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia and Texas Sen. Molly Cook, all of whom addressed the need for more attention to be given to severe weather threats in the city budget.

But the budget wasn't adopted as planned on Wednesday. Council members agreed to "tag," or postpone, the budget and associated amendments for a vote on June 10.

Proposed Amendments

Advocates launched a campaign in April called "Houston People's Budget" and submitted four budget demands this week: make the garbage fee affordable, preserve money for flood and water infrastructure, properly staff Public Works and tap progressive revenue sources.

"In a city like Houston, to divert funding away from life-saving flood prevention projects is a slap in the face of every Houstonian who has ever fought to save their home or their loved ones from dangerous flood waters," People's Budget spokesman Chris Valdez said in a statement. "Last year, Houston voters saw their mandate ignored by Whitmire as he prioritized unprecedented expenditures in public safety at the expense of every other social service, including flood infrastructure funding."

Council Members Alejandra Salinas and Tarsha Jackson filed a budget amendment to invest $3 million in illegal dumping cleanup, prevention, and enforcement efforts across chronic dump sites in Houston neighborhoods. Salinas also proposed to transfer $500,000 currently set aside for vacant Public Works positions and "use those dollars to hire additional temporary workers to facilitate the onboarding of more workers."

A third amendment from Salinas would change the language of an ordinance on Whitmire's proposed $5 monthly administrative garbage fee to allow relief assistance from those who need it.

Council Members Julian Ramirez, Mario Castillo and Salinas offered an amendment to fully fund the critical Crisis Call Diversion program, a public safety initiative in collaboration with the Houston Health Department, the Houston Police Department (HPD), and the 911 call center.

Other potential amendments were briefly discussed and council members said they would elaborate at next week's meeting.

Many spoke during a public comment session on Tuesday asking that the city's ditch re-establishment program be fully funded at $45 million.

Becky Selle, a co-director for the advocacy group West Street Recovery, said she spent the morning collecting water samples from ditches. She's been doing this for years and said she believes the water is contaminated, but she's had difficulty getting answers from City Hall about what can be done to remedy the situation.

"Y'all don't seem to understand the urgency of what we're talking about," she said. "I had two sites to go to. Between those two sites, a seven-minute drive, I passed 10 other sites with standing water in the ditches. It hasn't rained in five days. That means the ditches are not working."

Sheryl Henderson asked the council to fully fund the ditch re-establishment program so people in her Third Ward community wouldn't be stuck in their homes when it floods.

"A few years ago, the city promised to improve the ditches because they were neglected for over 20 years," she said. "When it rains, it floods out. That water looks so nasty. We don't know what's floating in the water, chemical-wise. We are scared for our kids."

Houston artist and teacher Sarah Reman addressed the nationwide affordability crisis and said she rode the bus to City Hall because it costs too much to put gas in her car.

"The city says we're broke but the city council created a pot of gold filled with $1.2 billion for HPD," she said. "I urge the city council to support budget amendments to control overspending. This budget chooses to fatten up cops rather than universal childcare or flood drainage. The HPD overtime spending has historically exceeded budget projections by tens of millions, and this is an ongoing challenge that really needs to be addressed."

Before a public hearing on Wednesday morning, Whitmire announced that misinformation had been spread the day prior regarding the ditch re-establishment program, and he wanted to clarify that $31.9 million is being spent to re-establish ditches along 500 miles for the 2026 fiscal year that ends this month.

"Ditches have pretty much disappeared and will have to be re-established," he said. "Certainly, there are areas across Houston that deserve attention after many years of neglect. The program was not passed until '23 and we started it in '24. If you look at the proposed budget [for Fiscal Year 2027], the $20 million that was requested yesterday is in the budget for a total of $50.5 million. We are responding to the needs."

Critics Within City Hall

When Whitmire revealed his budget proposal on May 5, he announced plans for an administrative fee for trash service that immediately raised questions. The proposed $5 monthly fee is manageable for many but critics say there are no guarantees that service would improve or that the fee wouldn't be increased annually. They also want an exemption to be offered for low-income families.

Whitmire, however, said the fee would generate $24 million in its first year of operation to cover administrative costs. Public Works Director Randy Macchi said on the 901 Bagby Street podcast that solid waste service "is going to improve, I promise you. That's our mandate; that's our mission."

But the critics aren't buying it, and the backlash isn't just coming from advocacy groups and disaster survivors.

Hollins, the controller, has been critical of Whitmire and what he deems a structurally imbalanced budget for the past two cycles but notes that it's not his job to propose a budget, vote on it or offer amendments. What he is responsible for, he says, is ensuring that taxpayers know how their money is being spent and raising awareness about Houston's $174 million deficit.

The controller claims that Whitmire's proposal to move Solid Waste out of the general fund and into the utility system just relabels expenses rather than solving the budget deficit. The gap would be covered by water and sewer funds, which could mean higher water bills or less investment in infrastructure in the future, Hollins has said.

The controller hosted a series of town hall meetings and has been criticized by some council members for posts from his official city social media accounts that appear to be mocking the mayor's budget and using bleeped-out profanity.

The unconventional approach has also gained Hollins some fans, many of whom are encouraging him to run against Whitmire for mayor next year.

At the people's hearing on extreme weather, Hollins pointed out that Hurricane Ike cost the region $43 billion and Hurricane Harvey cost $160 billion. "We're not keeping pace in our efforts to address it, to get ahead of it and to protect ourselves," Hollins said. "That's the truth."

"Our city is financially constrained," he added. "Our general fund, which pays for a lot of the stuff that we care about, three out of every five dollars goes to police and fire. The very next line item after police and fire is debt service. It's just paying the bill for stuff that we did a long time ago. Between those three things, that's 75 percent of the budget spoken for. That leaves 25 percent for literally everything else."

The city of Houston is not financially prepared for the next big storm, Hollins says. "Houston maintains less than half of the recommended reserves that best practices would have us keep," he said.

Edward Pollard, who joined Thomas and former Council Member Abbie Kamin in voting against last year's budget, made a video last week illustrating how he believes the city is just moving money around rather than reducing spending or closing the deficit.

"You can't fix a spending problem by shifting money from account to account," Pollard said. "When you keep dipping into savings to cover daily expenses, without replacing it, eventually you go broke. Here's a simple solution: instead of relying on accounting gimmicks to claim the budget is balanced, stick to the original approved budget and stop overspending."

But nxot everyone is opposed to the budget or the trash fee. Bill Kelly, a spokesman for Environment Texas, said that moving Solid Waste under Public Works to be funded under the combined utility system "has the potential to provide more resources for this underfunded department."

"Giving them more resources like newer trucks, better infrastructure for cleaning those trucks and transfer stations that can cut down on the miles driven are a big part of improving service," Kelly said. "Solid waste needs funding and we support this administrative fee as a very good start."

AFL-CIO union leader Hany Khalil said the 75 unions he represents reviewed the budget and support its adoption. "This budget takes long overdue first steps to putting the city on a sustainable financial footing while protecting the hard-working city employees who deliver essential services to this city."

HOPE Local 123 union president Jason Evans said his daughter has six children and lives paycheck to paycheck and would be happy to pay a $5 monthly administrative fee "as long as her garbage gets picked up."

"If this is going to improve things, if this is going to get us better trucks for Solid Waste, great," he said.

Police vs. Flood Mitigation

Whitmire says that public safety is his top priority. Last year the Houston City Council entered an unprecedented five-year $832 million contract with HPD. It'll cost the city $122 million this year.

But the budget critics, who wave a banner that says, "You can't shoot a flood," argue that flood mitigation is public safety. West Street Recovery co-director Alice Liu claims that while police salaries went up $67 million last year, drainage projects were underfunded by $9.5 million and social services — including public health, libraries and parks — were cut by $122 million.

The budget cuts made in recent years — including buyouts or voluntary retirement packages for more than 1,000 employees — didn't create efficiencies but rather damaged the ability to provide services, Liu said.

"As always, we will be fighting for the city to adequately and equitably invest in flood mitigation infrastructure," Liu says. "Climate change means we're getting more rain and more flooding. We are billions of dollars short from drainage infrastructure that can keep up with this increased flood risk."

Last year, Whitmire took issue with the narrative that he'd robbed the city's drainage fund to pay for police. In a May 2025 memo, the mayor explained that he inherited a lawsuit brought by two engineers "who alleged — rightly — that Houston had not been allocating the full amount required by our charter for streets and drainage."

"For eight years, the city diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from our voter-approved dedication to street and drainage work," the memo states. The Whitmire administration reached a settlement with the engineers and agreed to honor the will of the voters and fully comply with the city charter. "This means allocating hundreds of millions more toward the repairs and replacement of our broken and aging infrastructure," the mayor said at the time.

But instead of paying out the money in a lump sum of $100 million, the city agreed to spread it out over a three-year period. And in January, the council voted to divert $30 million from the city's stormwater fund to demolish blighted buildings. The targeted properties include structures in flood plains and areas that impede effective drainage, according to a city press release. Crews demolished eight properties on May 15 and 16.

Advocates at the time said they disagreed with how the drainage fund dollars were being used.

"The $30 million was taken from a stormwater maintenance fund made of utility charges and property taxes that are explicitly collected from taxpayers to be set aside, in a protected account, for drainage and stormwater infrastructure," Liu said. "There is both a legal and moral impetus for the city to use those tax dollars as voters mandated."

While dozens of residents have spoken out against the budget as proposed — and the People's Budget group is hoping that at least some of their amendments will be adopted — many Houstonians just want to make sure their families will be safe when the heavy rains come.

Cadiz said at the severe weather public hearing that since her home flooded in 2017, her monthly insurance premium has gone up by about 40 percent. "Every single time it rains intensely, I relive the flood again," she said. "I live with the constant fear of another disaster because our weather is becoming increasingly extreme. Yet we aren't tackling the root causes."

She said she has flashbacks of seeing her children "soaked, terrified and trembling during the flood" and feeling helpless to keep them safe. "I couldn't protect them then, and that is exactly why I am here today," she said. "No matter how much politicians want to deny that we are facing a crisis, our experiences prove the opposite with undeniable facts."

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