Jump to meetings using the links.

5/12/2026 Finance Department Budget Workshop
5/13/2026 Housing and Community Development Budget Workshop
5/13 Airports Budget Workshop
5/14/2026 Planning Development Budget Workshop
5/14 Health Department Budget Workshop
5/14 Municipal Courts Budget Workshop
5/14 Administration and Regulatory Affairs Budget Workshop
5/15 Parks And Rec Budget Workshop
5/16 Budget Town Hall
May 18 City Council Budget Workshop
May 18 Solid Waste and Public Works Workshop
5/18 Mayor’s Office Budget Workshop
5/18 Office of Business Opportunity Workshop
5/18 Fire Department Workshop
5/19 Police Workshop

5/12/2026 Finance Department Budget Workshop
Notes taken by Elissa C.

CM Alcorn begins the meeting by reminding those in attendance that the department budget workshops will be continuing from May 12-19, and that this Saturday at 10am there will be a budget town hall meeting at the Fonde Rec Center at 110 Sabine St. 77007.

She also mentions that there will be a change to the budget hearing and vote schedule- 

(Dubowski later clarifies the public hearing originally set for May 20th will be moved to June 3rd, 9am at City Hall. The budget will remain on the agenda for June 3rd, with the expectation that CMs will submit their budget amendments by that date and tag the budget for a vote on June 10th.)

In attendance: CMs Alcorn, Flickinger, Ramirez, Carter, Davis, Castex-Tatum, Martinez, and staff from the rest. 

Melissa Dubowski, Finance Director begins the presentation by referencing some of the work the finance department does year-round, in their regular operations, including monthly finance reports and financial services for other city-client departments. 

Dubowski describes the Finance Department’s expenditures as divided between the General Fund and the Central Service Revolving Fund. The Central Service Revolving Fund is described as “a fund that’s used by central service area departments, like finance, IT, H.R., fleet management, that is used by departments that provide services to other client departments. It is used to keep track of the work done on behalf of other departments and then ultimately revolve those costs back to those departments.” 

She says that the budget estimate for expenditures from this Central Service Revolving Fund have increased from FY26 because of some consolidation of personnel into the Finance Department and increased activity serving client departments. 

Personnel make up the majority of the Finance Department’s costs in both the Gen Fund and the Central Service Revolving Fund. The second largest share of their costs are related to the external financial audit contract and funding to compensate the Harris County tax office for billing and collection of property taxes which the County does on behalf of the city after the city sets the property tax rate.

Dubowski notes that a decrease in the department’s expenditures in the Financial Management Program represents employees consolidated from other departments in FY26 being put into this program and then moved into programs that more closely aligned with the duties they fulfilled in other departments. 

She then gives a quick overview for all the programs within the Finance Department, including any major changes in expenditures, personnel, performance metrics. There don’t seem to be any major changes, although HOPE comes up a couple times. I think this is a reference to the pay increases that HOPE secured in 2024? Also mentioned are some ongoing efforts to incorporate cost saving/consolidation recommendations from the Ernst and Young study. 

Outlining some revenue highlights of the proposed budget, Dubowski says the FY27 projects $1.5 billion in property tax revenue, assuming no increase to the tax rate. (The $50.8 million increase due to a growth in taxable value set by the appraisal districts). 

Projected sales tax revenue for FY27 is estimated at $920 million which is a 2.4% increase from FY26 estimates. 

Questions from Council:

CM Alcorn asks about the city’s $640 million contract for electricity, inquiring whether there is enough money to cover costs until there is a new contract. Dubowski explains that when the maximum contract amount was decided on in FY26, it was based on assumptions about what electricity rates are going to be, which have turned out to be higher than expected. She goes on to say that the finance department may have to come back to council to get approval for an increase in the maximum contract amount. 

CM Flickinger asks about a 15% overall increase in expenses for finance department. Dubowski explains the increase is due to additional consolidation/centralization of about 30 employees into the finance department from other departments, and also partially because of the “HOPE increase”. Again, I think this is a reference to increased wages negotiated by HOPE.

Flickinger also asks why there was a large discrepancy between the FY26 utility rebate targets and the actual rebates received. (This is referring to utility rebates received from Centerpoint Energy for implementing energy efficiency projects, the city received far fewer than projected). Dubowski replies that she will have to follow up and get back to him about that. 

Dubowski also backtracks to CM Alcorn’s question about paying more than the maximum contract amount in FY26 and explains that there is a difference between the maximum contract amount and the budgeted amount and although the city is paying more than expected for electricity, the costs have been fully budgeted for. 

CM Martinez asks about the category management initiative and when the city can expect to see the savings from consolidating procurement of contracts. Dubowski responds that the FY27 budget has a much more conservative projection for these savings and that they are hoping that this initiative will bring savings this year in city contracts for the following: portable rest room rentals, ground maintenance, janitorial, security, I.T. contracts, vehicle replacement parts contracts. 

CM Martinez, asks about the proposed decision to keep the property tax rate flat, asks how much the city would be able to raise the rate, while still being in compliance with both the state and local property tax caps. Dubowski responds that the allowed rate increase would be less than a penny. 

CM Ramirez asks about the process for the Finance Department getting various city department heads ready for how much money they’ll have in the next fiscal year. Dubowski says it usually begins with a “kickoff” meeting in January and then continues through to the budget process in the spring. Ramirez asks a follow up and Dubowski then gives a long, detailed explanation of the Finance’s process for determining how much each department needs, and then deciding what their budgets will ultimately be in the proposed budget, that I am so sorry but I am just not going to even try and explain. 

Ramirez asks if the Finance Department play a role in determining the budgets for the LGCs (the Local Government Corporations). Dubowski responds that yes, the LGCs’ boards submit their budgets (to the finance department???). These are taken into account in the city’s budgeting process and the LGC budgets are sent to council for approval along with the budget. 

Ramirez asks if the TIRZ budgets go through the same process. Dubowski says no, the TIRZ budgets are handled by the Economic Development group, which I think is a separate department under the Mayor’s Office. Broadstrokes, Economic Development reviews the TIRZ budgets, they’re approved by the TIRZ boards, and then they come to the city council individually for approval. 

return to top of page

5/13/2026 Housing and Community Development Budget Workshop
Notes taken by Elissa C.

In attendance: Alcorn, Davis, Huffman, Thomas, Castex-Tatum, Martinez, Castillo Ramirez, Peck. Staff from I think Flickinger, Kamin, and Evans-Shabazz.

Director Mike Nichols, begins by saying the housing department does not take much of their budget from the general fund, but he believes the department’s finances are one of their strengths. 

Nichols lays out the department’s personnel structure. He says that the department has reduced its number of FTE’s within the department by 27 people, and positions within other city departments by 16. He attributes these reductions to the closeout of disaster grant funding. He says the Housing Department has been trying to reduce staff in the name of efficiency and is still reviewing whether these reductions have impacted the timeliness of the department’s work.

CFO Tamika Jones, dedcribes how the housing department is allocating funds to align with the mayor’s priorities in the proposed FY27 budget. 

Jones says that the department is contributing to the city’s PEG initiative (questionable name choice there, y’all) by seeking reimbursement for rent through federal or state grants. This is a shift of about $24,000 in costs from the amount allocated from the general fund to those federal/state grants, or a reduction of about 8%. 

Jones compares the department’s expenditures by fund for FY27 to FY26. She indicates a decrease in expenditures from the general fund by about 31% (when compared with previous fiscal year) and an increase in expenditures from the ‘End Street Homelessness” special revenue fund by about 108%.

She then lays out expenditures from the general fund by category, including personnel costs, “employee exit costs”, a portion of the director’s salary, and other services/charges that are not reimbursable through grant awards. She reminds listeners that the Housing Department is 99.9% grant funded, and these expenditures represent what the department must fund through the limited general fund allocation. 

The proposed general fund allocation to the department this year is about $1.3 million (was about $1.9 million last year). Jones says they anticipate about $37 million in revenue from the end street homelessness fund. 

They move on to cover the estimated new grants. Jones says the only change in grants received from the previous year is DR24, which was accounted for in last year’s budget and awarded $314 million. All the other grant awards from this year are the same as the last fiscal year. Nichols says that the combined dollar amount of money from all awards is about the same as previous years, with the big difference again being the additional $314 million from DR24 in FY26. 

QUESTIONS

CM Alcorn asks a question about the limitations of funding administrative costs through grants. Jones explains that the rules vary from grant to grant. For instance no more than 5% of the DR-24 grant can be put towards paying administrative costs. The housing department therefore supplements administrative costs with money from TIRZs. 

CM Alcorn asks about how the department receives the money from the grants. Jones says it again varies, but then lists 3 grants that function as reimbursement-only grants. (The city spends the money first, and then is reimbursed.) This includes money for staff salaries. Jones also says that it can be “difficult to get reimbursement” depending on the grantor. In previous efforts to get reimbursement it took a long time and work with “partners at the GLO” but eventually the housing department was “successful in getting reimbursed for the majority of those costs”.

Alcorn and Jones then enter into a long and complicated discussion about expected reimbursements for staff costs from grants, the required amount of funding from TIRZ affordable housing programs, and the allocation from the general fund for admin costs…My best effort to parse through it is something like- 

It’s extremely complicated to predict how much in staffing costs can be reimbursed through grant funds because not only are there variations from grant to grant in how much is allowed for admin expenses, there are also multiple rules within grants that dictate what type of work/activities you can seek reimbursement for. For example under DR-24, in addition to the 5% allowed for admin, there is additional money for staff costs within individual programs. 

Nichols adds that under HUD rules, the housing employees themselves have to go in and record every hour of work and how its spent every day, and so making sure this is done accurately and that employees are not just going in and logging time spent as “CDBG admin”, for which the funding is limited and has to last 6 years. 

Jones says that in previous years the housing department has used about a third of their TIRZ funding to supplement admin costs. 

CM Martinez asks what other revenue sources could come in to help support the housing department that might be more stable or consistent. He mentions seeking support from the county. 

Nichols talks about county support for 419 Emancipation Navigation Center. He gives as an example, the county providing employees and funding for 419 Emancipation through Harris Health. He says the sheriff’s department is contributing to the center as well. The department is also in discussions with county officials about their investing in exit housing (I think from 419) which he says is a “weakness for us, going forward.”  He says that Housing Dept has applications for grants with federal agencies (gives as examples HHS, the DOJ), says they’re “working through it, just haven’t seen those dollars yet.”

Martinez points to the difficulty in recouping costs from federal/state grants and the strings attached to these agreements and asks (the seemingly rhetorical question) how do we become self-sufficient as a city, and how to we have “that realistic conversation with the community – if you wanna end homelessness, or if you wanna move toward housing, specifically…how do we make sure that community understands that those tax dollars need to go somewhere, or where do we find that extra funding stream?” 

Nichols mentions that CM Thomas has been asking about the city’s bonding capacity for housing, through the city, or through Houston Housing Finance Corporation, Housing Alliance, or Houston Housing Authority. “We need additional dollars on housing…” Houston is number 2 from the bottom on housing for low-income folks. (He uses the phrase “for people with 30% below AMIs) “I’m not optimistic about the federal government helping in that area.”

Dir. Nichols says in his department they are keenly aware that every dollar spent on staff salaries is one less for housing for the community. He says that the department is all hands on deck and that employees sometimes feel they need additional help, but with the funding that they’ve got “efficiency is very important”.

CM Thomas says the city and county are “entitlement municipalities”, meaning they receive direct allocations from HUD, and she believes that council members have an opportunity to leverage their relationships to ensure that the funding stays in place. She mentions that in the president’s fiscal 27 plan, he “proposes a zero-out of CDBG, he proposes a zero-out of HOME” (these are grants) She points out the housing department has to meet huge need, not only for housing, but also in the aftermath of disasters. She advocates for coordinating more partnerships with the county, as well as private partnerships to fill Houston’s housing need. 

Nichols concludes by saying it is important to keep pressure on county commissioners to put more money into housing not just in the unincorporated part of the county, but also here in Houston. He addresses CM Alcorn specifically, pointing to funding available in HGAC and saying “we’ve got to figure out how to move that [funding] in a way that meets the population needs. And the same thing in the state government, the rural counties and cities have been taken care of, it’s time.

Return to top of page.

5/13 Airports Budget Workshop
Notes take by Elissa C.

In attendance: CMs Davis, Flickinger, Huffman, Ramirez, Castex-Tatum, Peck, Castillo, staff from others

Director Jim Szczesniak, and Clint Stephens presenting 

CM Alcorn begins by asking that those presenting not spend too much time on the information they’d already received on another committee.

Dir. Szczesniak obliges and quickly runs through some metrics on passenger traffic and satisfaction, airport economic impact, the growth of the airport system and the growth of the budget to reflect that. He also mentions some airline development projects, including the Terminal B Transformation, the Hobby West Concourse Expansion, and the UA Flight Kitchen, a new Terminal E ticketing lobby and other improvements. 

He then runs through some of the airports’ accomplishments from the last year, says he is particularly proud of Hobby’s being named as the cleanest airport in North America this year. 

Then a broad overview of revenue, Szczesniak says they anticipate an increase in revenue for FY27 to about $778 million. He attributes this to additional money from landing fees and terminal rents, as well as a projected increase in parking revenue and a modest increase in automobile concessions rental and other associated fees.

Szczesniak gives a more detailed revenue outline by fund. He highlights all categories increasing somewhat, excepting the ‘other’ category, which he says decreased because of a one-time land sale accounted for in the FY26 budget.

Szczesniak then hands it over to CFO Stephens to talk about expenditures. Stephens says that expenditures for the Houston Airport System (HAS) are increasing at a slightly higher pace than the revenue, primarily because of the aforementioned land sale. He then goes through expenditures by category, with all of the following seeing budgeted changes: O&M (+7.8%), Personnel (+11.2%), Supplies and Non-Capital Equipment (+8.6%), Contracted Services (+6.1%). Additionally, he says, HAS pays about $141.2 million to the General Fund for HPD (+10.4%), Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting / ARFF (-15.8%), HR, IT (+25%), Legal, Utilities (+5.9%) and other services. (+1.8% overall increase).

Stephens notes that debt service looks like it is down a little bit because of ‘less utilization of commercial paper’, and the Airport Improvement Fund is up and they will have more money for projects that the HAS has lined up. He also notes a $7 million carry over from last year in the HAS 8012 fund for FY27. 

He breaks down personnel vs. non-personnel spending, (33% to 67%, respectively). Then further breaks down non-personnel spending. 

Dir. Szczesniak cuts in that the HAS will be using funding to expand the number of non-stop flights out of Houston to new destinations. He runs through some projects planned for FY27, including terminal upgrades at Hobby and sustainability goals. Szczesniak mentions that the HAS is working towards ACI Carbon Accreditation, “we’re currently at level 3, and then right now we’re gonna be in level 3 for a little bit, as we work with our stakeholders”, referring to reducing carbon emissions with airlines and other airport service providers. Then he runs through some other updated amenities and airfield improvements at Hobby, and again mentions the expanded air service. 

QUESTIONS

CM Alcorn thanks those presenting for answering her questions in writing and turns it over to CM Castillo, who refers back to the ACI Carbon Accreditation efforts and asks what the next step would look like. 

Dir. Szczesniak responds that the first 2 levels were faster because they required the HAS reducing carbon emissions internally, and that level 3 is more complicated because it involves working with stakeholders to reduce their emissions. He says that going through this process is why it will take them a little longer to proceed to the next step. 

Castillo then asks if there are any initiatives to integrate new or upgrade existing technology at the airports. 

Szczesniak says “Yeah, the technology budget is robust.” He mentions they are working on upgrading the airport’s camera system. “We’ve got a software behind [the camera system], we’re trying to get a more advanced version of that…to be able to better tactically control what we can see on our camera perspective.” He also mentions work on a fail oversight for IT systems, and switching to a lidar-based system for cameras that help track wait times throughout the airport. 

Stephens jumps in to note that during the recent government shutdown and TSA staffing shortage, Houston was reported as having the longest wait times, but what wasn’t mentioned was that Houston was the only one still reporting. He reiterates that the lidar system will help them more accurately determine wait times for passengers. 

CM Ramirez asks where the Houston Airport System’s federal funding is reflected in the budget.

Stephens responds that the grants from the FAA are shown primarily as an offset to debt service. 

Ramirez asks Stephens to ballpark how much is received from the federal government. The response is that they typically forecast about $100 million a year, but that it depends on the specific projects their doing and how attractive they are to the FAA. Szczesniak then outlines the different kinds of grants that the HAS receives. 

Ramirez then refers to the budgeted increase for HPD (+10.4%) and decrease for ARFF (-15.8%) and confirms that these are interfund transfers, then asks if either of these figures includes overtime for police or fire. 

Stephens tells him they both include projections for overtime, and that some of the increase to the police may include FIFA overtime they are hedging against. He also says “until recent pay adjustments, we typically reconcile down on the police side, but lately, we’ve had some…upward adjustments.”

CM Flickinger comments “I think DC has proven they’re willing to cut off funding for security, if we could look at privatizing that, I think it would be a good thing for the future.” Szczesniak says they’ll take a look at it. 

Alcorn confirms what the HAS passenger facility charges, and asks where that is reflected in the budget. Stephens responds that similar to the grant funding, it is typically used as an offset to debt service. 

Ramirez asks about an increase in expenditures for “vehicles and rolling stock” in the presentation. Stephens attributes this increase to the replacing and cycling out old ARFF trucks that are incompatible with new fire-fighting foam, and for the purchase of a bucket truck. 

Ramirez asks about a slide in the presentation that compares the “cost per enplanement” at IAH and Hobby to other peer airports. Szczesniak explains “cost per enplanement” as an aviation term used to measure what it costs for the average person to go through airport facilities. These airline expenses are typically passed along to passengers through the price of their ticket. Stephens adds that with jet fuel prices what they are, airlines are particularly concerned with cost per enplanement, and they hope that Hobby and IAH’s relatively low cost makes them more attractive to airlines. 

CM Alcorn then references that the Fleet Management department shared that they would be pulling staff out of all airport garages and transition to having contractors operate them. Alcorn asks about how much extra it would cost the HAS to absorb this transition. Stephens replies that it is a recent change and he does not have specific numbers but that he believes it will be a win-win. 

 Stephens and Szczesniak conclude the meeting by thanking their team. 

return to top of page

5/13/2026 Planning and Development Workshop
Notes taken by anonymous.

Chair Alcorn, CMs Peck, Martinez, Ramirez, Carter, and staff from the offices of Kamin
and Thomas were present at the beginning. CMs Castex-Tatum, Huffman, Castillo,
Davis, and staff from the offices of Salinas, Flickinger, and Jackson joined during the
presentation.

Director Tran presented

The presentation was organized according to the Mayor’s Priorities – Government that
Works, Quality of Life, and Infrastructure.

The Director presented a 2% increase in budgeted expenditures to $17.25 million. This
would be an increase of $4.603 million over 2026 estimates.

Most of the budgeted expenditures go to personnel costs, including benefits.

The Development Review and Support Services Division, which includes plat, site plan,
and permit review has the most expenditures, with 53.5 Full-Time Equivalent
employees. The proposed budget would increase expenditures in this Division, and
decreases in expenditures of other Divisions.

Budgeted revenues are expected to increase from the FY 2026 budget approximately
3% to $9.554 million as a result of increased demand for GIS services to other districts,
and increased review fees.

The Director responded to questions from Councilmembers Castillo, Ramirez, and
Alcorn. She clarified that other City of Houston Departments transfer money to the
Department for GIS services, and that an unfilled position has not impacted GIS
services to other departments due to the efforts of Department staff. The Director
clarified that the fee in lieu of sidewalk construction resulted in about $700k being
transferred to public works. The Director stated that some standards and budgeted
revenues reflected projections of applications coming in and although there are
established standards, there is some subjectivity in the process.

Members of the public asked that more detailed information on line-item increases be
provided, and for notification of super neighborhoods for proposed plan changes.

return to top of page

5/14 Health Department Budget Workshop
Notes taken by Astrid L.

“We are a dept w a vision and a plan for this admin and whatever admin comes after”

Introduced org chart; 9 direct reports to Director and all w solid credentials and experience

Director still doing deep dives into restructuring

Were requested to show: Strategic guidance alignment within: a) pub safety b) qual life c) gov that works 33% un gov 23% qual 43% public safety but this structure does not allow them to shadow programs show a greater return to the city

Color coded chart showing what they bring to the city tha the city is not paying for (grant-funded)
THey did not include grant-funded stuff on the 1st slide

Expenditures by program

HHD budget is diff bec so heavily funded by grants only 22% HHD operating budget comes from gen fund

Revenue only some is rev from permitting or fee for service some of it comes from reimbursements they get from state or federal level 1390 indiv work at HHD only 218 are covered by gen fund

Restructuring is realigning where revenue goes into

One of the biggest takeaways from this presentation is how much HHD has shifted from general fund to special fund categories. Special funding is mainly grants, and mostly federal ones at that, although there are some state and local ones. General funding comes from taxpayers. Roughly 55% of the HHD budget comes from grants with strict compliance requirements. 44% are grant funds with strict compliance rules and as such need FTE to supervise.

Director Carapucci clarified revenues as not “profit from fees”.

The director noted that funding from grants cannot always move fast enough in response to outbreaks or other crises that may involve sudden large expenditures.

This past year has seen a gigantic shift in aligning outcomes with initiatives and restructuring the budget. The overall mood is determinedly optimistic about this.

Director Carapucci did include some caution, especially about __, which is due to go away in November 2027.

The director emphasized that personnel is a necessary part of the jobs done by HHD. She noted that workers are out and about at 4 a.m. if necessary to meet with families to do disease tracing. [I wonder if this is to forestall any moves to replace workers with AI?]

Only 214 staff are covered by the general fund. 398 are funded through special fund revenue. “718 individuals at HHD have to sign a document each year that they know that their job may run out due to funding. These are public servants who do a great job.”

General funds=what taxpayers are funding. They don’t generate revenue, these are public health needs. “What we need and what nobody else will do”
HHD worked hard on this realigning of their budget. For FY25 GF revenue was $15.85M. Lots of revenue left GF bec. this year GF “wasn’t ready for full alignment yet”

Program 1 – Admin Services – personnel management and facilities services for buildings, also vital statistics. They have to have places to operate in the community and fleet vehicles to investigate at, say, 4 am to meet w fams before they go to work or school, etc.

Program 2- Environmental Health – If HHD doesn’t do it, no one else in the jurisdiction will. Food, air, water, safe homes, ambulances, pools, etc.

Director Carapucci mentioned the new apartment ordinance from City Council and said it has been sorely needed for a long time. They want to focus effort on this.

Program 3- Disease Prevention and Control

“HHD is the safety net of the safety net.” The metrics on this slide are new and so do not have historical data as yet.

Need exists for dental health, family planning, immunizations. Houston needs HIV and TB clinics. The state has mandated strict controls for immediate treatment of individuals with these diseases. This tends to be a difficult-to-reach population who often needs free and reduced cost care.
Bureau of Epidemiology – Also highly dependent on grant funding. Currently prepping for the World Cup. It is also mainly grant funded but outbreaks are unpredictable. However, one doesn’t see outbreaks in Houston as much as in other places due to the hard work being done already.

Program 4 – Reentry & Youth Violence Prevention

Looking for program growth here. It is not under “law and order or public safety of some sort” but the director explains the humanistic nature of some of these programs to make an intervention that is intergenerational through the lens of healthy behaviors, healthy ways to deal with stress, stay out of violence

40,000 inmates released from prison system into Texas every year. Roughly 10,000 are released into Houston. THe HHD program releases 75-80 people every 6 months with mentorship and life skills. Because of HHD programs, the recidivism rate in Houston is 10%, compared to 20% statewide.

Program 5 – MultiService Centers – Director C wants bigger $ here and for them to become “the jewels of the city”. They need capital improvements over time. They are where people want to go and are better able to access MSCs in their neighborhoods than all come downtown. WIC, Headstart, heating and cooling centers, etc.

FY2025 FY2026 Target FY2026 Est FY 2027 Est #of visits from clients
634,502 300,000 556,836 545,800

Program 6 – Family Health & Human Services – naloxone program and Credible Messengers program successes highlighted. Support of self-sufficiency is the focus here. Credible Messengers got a very special shoutout.

Program 7 – Chronic Disease Health Education & Wellness – diverse initiatives such as a farmer’s market, diabetes self management and prevention programs

—————-
Most $ is spent in personnel costs. It is also “super expensive” to run clinics, which they have moved out of the general fund.

Trends: expenditures in general funds have gone from $58M in FY 2024 to $41M now due to realignment. Overall general fund expenditure was reduced by about $10.5M and the hope is to generate that through special fund revenue generation. They are hoping to generate that same amount from revenues in the special fund but this is not guaranteed as yet, although the description is that they “have an on ramp to succeed”.Overall spending went from $85M to $105.8M in that time.

The 2010 fund (not the year, the fund number) will run out of money in 2 years if they are expending they way they have been; this is not a “magic treasure trove of funding from the city”. They used to bring in $ under the 2010 fund under a program from the state re Medicaid. But the state funding model changed in 2023-24 and this is a consequence.This year they billed the state for $11M and their proportionate share was $8M. This is drastically different from before. “Unfortunately public health seems to be an afterthought and we are working under that” [lightly paraphrased but all these words were said].

Homelessness can maybe be somewhat addressed through medical respite via “warm handoffs and a place to stay” between ER release and the streets. (Re the homelessness ordinance, etc)

Check out the slides for lots of other numbers if interested! I don’t know if they are available other than the video.

CM response was overwhelmingly positive, with specific comments from CMs Castillo, Martinez, Ramirez, Kamin, and Alcorn.
CM Alcorn thanked them.

CM Castillo thanked them as a former grant-funded HHD employee. He had a comment re slide 20 See to Succeed being shifted to GF as a yes, he agreed. What if the revenue from Vital Stats isn’t bringing in the rev that they are seeking? Director Carapucci said that Vital Stats can raise fees as Houston charges considerably lower than the county. Director C mentioned oral health as $$$, or a “loss leader”, as it basically “burns money”. HHD is talking to as many orgs as possible about this, but the city needs to decide if it is something it will invest and/or partner in. There are no programs for adult oral health care and there is a huge number of kids they serve. This is partly due to dental/vision care not being included in most insurance coverage.

CM Ramirez noted that the city has truancy programs in 3 different depts and asked if there was opportunity for coordination when the director has a chance to look at them. He also asked if they had enough air quality monitors. The director had her co-presenter Roger answer this. He noted that there are gaps and they could use more. Each air monitor is about $1200 annually by subscription. Ramirez then asked if HHD is involved in TCEQ permitting processes, mentioning specifically the upcoming session re concrete batch plants and landfills. Carapucci replied that while HHD can comment on the processes, they are not involved in the decisionmaking by TCEQ. CM Ramirez asked if they needed more naloxone. Short answer: yes. CM Ramirez wondered if there was room for coordination with specific neighborhood youth programs and those done by HHD. Short answer: yes, they are looking into it.

CM Martinez thanked them a lot. Director C thanked the HHD staff and said good things trickle up.

CM Castillo with another question re CHildren’s Lead Reduction Program. O FTE for 2027 but 2 in 2026 page v37 in the budget book. So the lead program is grant funded but they have not taken it away. There was a concern last year re the procurement process but they have either caught up or are catching up. It is a national program and there are stil 12,000 homes in the Houston area that need remediation.

CM Kamin’s office rep thanked them. Do they have specific % of federal grant money and what of that may be at risk? THe director had emailed that to CM Martinez. More than ¾ of HHD grants are direct or pass through federal funding. THey get a lot less direct state funding than other big cities. A huge risk is the $65M in federal grant funding for HHD Public Health infrastructure, a grant that is due to end in November 2027.

Martinez noted that roughly 60% funding is federal, 40% is local, and 3% comes from the state. Director Carapucci noted that Houston, which is rapidly becoming the nation’s 3rd largest city, gets less state money than other big cities.

CM Alcorn asked how many standalone clinics are being pulled into Multi-Service Centers. Carapucci responded by saying that there are 3 standalone spaces, but it’s the range of services that are being pulled into the MSCs that matter. Alcorn had a question re fees. Director C said that not in the way that they should. Alcorn and Director C will follow up on that but they were at time.

A public speaker was called, who thanked HHD for their service, especially re AIDS. He reiterated that HHD needs more funding and their spaces need vast capital improvements, such as fixing the aircon.

Another public speaker told an anecdote re a personal experience of a friend with medical respite and Ben Taub that was a compliment to their care. Director C noted that this Cloudbreak program for apts is grant funded and they haven’t gotten it yet. (They do have the $ for the lease of the facility but not the services).

return to top of page

5/14 Administration and Regulatory Affairs Budget Workshop
Notes taken by anonymous.

Director Paez presented ARA’s Budget Workshop along with ARA’s CFO Valerie Berry.
Councilmembers Castillo, Peck, and Huffman participated in person, Councilmember
Martinez was online, staff from Councilmembers Kamin, Flickinger, Jackson, Thomas,
and Martinez’s offices were there.
Total expenditures across funds were estimated at $112.881 million in 2026, and the
proposed FY 2027 budget was $120.585 million, increased by about 0.2% against the
FY 2026 budget.
According to the Director, increased expenditures are due in large part to the citywide
HOPE raises and restricted account deposits, as well as the merger of ARA’s 311 and
HPW customer service and also transfers to BARC. Insurance premiums will be
reduced in FY 2027 by about $3 million.
The 311 budgeted expenditures increased by 12% in part because of filling the positions
of people who had chosen to accept the retirement incentives. The budgeted
expenditures for risk management was reduced by 9% due to lower premiums.
General fund revenues decreased mostly due to reduced franchise fees. ParkHouston
revenue in 2026 was the highest it has ever been since the pandemic, but it is projected
to decrease based on trends.
The Property & Casualty Fund and Central Services Fund are chargeback funds which
means that expenditures will equal revenues since they are charged back to the other
departments.
Audits have resulted in about $900 million in revenue.
The electricity and solid waste franchise fees, and limousine permit fees are projected
to increase. Telephone, cable, and natural gas franchise fees, burglar alarm permits are
projected to decrease.
State legislation preempting certain city fees on alcohol is projected to reduce revenues
by approximately $1.5 million.
Councilmember Castillo asked about how the per capita BARC spending compared to
other major cities. Based on 2025 numbers, per capita spending is significantly lower in
Houston.
Councilmember Peck asked about the new intake center. Negotiations with Public
Works and Parks are ongoing. They are hoping to open the new intake center in 2029
with $40 million in bond funding.

During public comment, Doug asked whether the water utility right of way payment will
go through ARA’s Debt Service and Interfund Transfers project fund.

Return to top of page.

5/15 Parks And Rec Budget Workshop
Notes taken by Melissa R.
CMs Present: Alcorn, Castillo, and Martinez

CM Alcorn kicks off meeting, introduces Director Kenneth Allen and Bridget Eickhoff, Management and Finance department lead

Dir Allen begins the presentation and notes that the “budget has not changed much from last year but is more efficient.”

Strategic Alignment: how HPARD aligns with mayor’s priorities

• 45% of budget falls under Quality of Life programs

FY27 budget reduction is a decrease of ~$300K in supplies and services-minimal impact compared to last year

Largest expenditure is $88.5 million in the general fund, total expenditure for all funds is $106.4 million (slides say thousands?)

Expenditures by Fund:

• Dir Allen referenced the Ernst & Young report several times and how it encouraged “reorganization and efficiency,” which they have implemented to an extent this fiscal year and will more so in the next fiscal year
• There are 14 programs to cover with a 12% decrease in administrative services, and a 13% increase in aquatic services
  • goal is to open all pools this year (!), thanked Prentiss Collins, Deputy Director of Recreation and Wellness for his efforts in acquiring personnel 

Program highlights:

The department is transitioning to new performance measures (KPIs) regarding service delivery, operational efficiency, and overall community impact.

• adaptive sports-calls West Gray Multi-Service center a “lifeline for many constituents”
• aquatics-plan to operate 34 pools full time this summer and increase pay by $2 with each classification 
• community center operations-59 centers
  • FY27 target is to reach over 130,000 seniors/adults and 75,000 after school participants 
• facilities maintenance-goal is 600 playground inspections, up from last year
• grounds maintenance-includes parkland, esplanades, and urban forests
  • requires a lot of resources, specific mention for assistance from partnerships and outreach to adopt esplanades and parks so grounds team can focus on core, i.e.-removing trash, taking care of trees, etc.
• park safety and security-manages security operations and dispatch
  • small budget, admits they could use more resources
• urban forestry-potential program to combine with natural resources and parks maintenance
  • manages Houston tree canopy
  • plans to plant 15,000 trees (!)

Lost “a tremendous amount” of staff due to the mayor’s incentivized retirement program and terminations.

Bridget Eickhoff: total proposed revenue FY27 is a little over 80 million, ~1% lower than FY26 estimate

Dir Allen, closing remarks: “definitely needs additional support”

Q&A begins (paraphrased)

CM Castillo:
Q: What specifically would be helpful to parks with respect to safety and security?
Dir Allen: ability to hire more rangers, especially in areas that have more problems like dumping. Over 386 parks spanning 640 mile radius and only 40 rangers. “Never really fully staffed because of high turnover.” 
Q: Could you use more resources to better maintain and remove trees?
Dir Allen: absolutely-first priority is to remove hazardous trees blocking roads

Didi Chavis with CM Castex-Tatum office:
Q: Are there any type of incentive programs to help with retention of park rangers?
Dir Allen: last year the pay was raised and it helped, turnover was even higher. Currently hiring but it’s common for new hires to get trained and then move to other departments that pay more. Increasing the pay would help with longevity and sustainability. 

CM Alcorn highlights that the maintenance renewal and replacement fund went down by half a million dollars due to expiration of contractual agreement

• Eickhoff responds that was due to conclusion of a one time 800,000 funding allocation received for property sale of North Houston Highway improvement 

CM Castillo asks about grants. FY27 goal is 25 grant applications, FY26 secured 26.9 million in grants.

• Tina Ortiz responsible for grants as well as work with the Kinders, Houston Parks Board, nonprofits, and conservancies 
• would love to apply for more but need at least 2 more staff members 

CM Ramirez:
Q: How much help do you get from TIRZs?
Dir Allen: TIRZ 8 helped with 4 parks

• with help of Park Board have identified over 186 neighborhood parks that need support and have received help with 50
• 25 on the way to get help through Mayor’s Let’s Play Houston campaign
• need additional work with TIRZ

Didi Chavis: TIRZ 25 has CIP project of parks improvement 

CM Alcorn suggested advocating for additional investments in parks when reviewing TIRZ budget 

• open space ordinance=opportunity to advocate for fee increase-fee has been same since 2007

Public Speakers:

• Taylor Valley with SEER
  • would like to see more funding allocated towards HPARD
• Stefania Thomas Kovic, Director of SEER
  • fully supports budget and asks for budget to be expanded
• Allison Bell, ex director of Heritage Society Sam Houston Park
  • mentioned need for more security at Sam Houston Park
• Jack Valinski
  • asked about status of wi-fi in park buildings, says we’re “deficient” in that area
• Laura Gallier
  • thankful for improvements made by additional park rangers at Love Park in terms of unleashed dogs-feels safer
  • removed playgrounds need to be replaced, specifically Mangum Manor Park, has been over 10 years with no replacement (CM Alcorn is familiar with park)
• Doug Smith
  • advocated for improvements to soccer fields at Hayle Neighborhood Center
• Karina Blessed
  • represents Fonde Park, not community center
  • advocates for more recreation, equitable activities; staffing; and transparency and communication with community 

Return to top of page.

5/16 Budget Town Hall
Notes taken by Jay Malone.

@Fonde Recreation Center

ATTENDEES
Joaquin Castro, Amy Peck, Julian Ramirez, Solid Waste, LWV, BakerRipley, HFD Chief, 65 + 82, Finance Director, Solid Waste, Controllers Office, Steven David (Chief Strategic and Operating Officer)

Budget Presentation (Steven David):

• 84th presentation by Steven David
  • What the City of Houston is
    • Enterprise fund – Airport
    • Enterprise fund – public works
    • General fund
  • Fiscal situation
    • Revenue caps
      • 2 caps – SB2 (2021) and Prop 1 + H (2004 + 2006)
      • “Most restrictive property tax cap in Texas”
      • 63 cents to 51 cents ad valorum over last 15 years
    • Lack of revenue diversity
      • Biggest source of revenue is property tax and sales tax
      • Other sources
        • Tax rate
        • Trash fee
        • Water utility
        • Electricity utility 
      • Houston is less resilient because of lack of revenue diversity
    • Governing milestones
      • Reviewed the scandals and challenges of the first year (7 months – police scandal, high water bills, freeze, kingwood floods, derecho, beryl 
      • Hypothesis is that city is inefficient, hired third party (E&Y) to evaluate 
      • Year 2 is action – reduced salary (forced retirement), remove $100 million in spend, cut $122 million in spending)
      • Year 3 – hypothesis is correct, but need to react to incoming fiscal cliff to address future budget challenges
    • General fund outlook
      • City expects massive increase in deficit in next 4 years
      • FY 30 – $500 million budget deficit 
      • FY 27 – 7.5% threshold breached with no action, would violate council requirements and would lead to downgrade of bond rating 
      • FY 28 – city would be upside down, would require layoffs
    • What they aren’t doing
      • Raise property taxes
      • Expand government programs
      • Rely on one time transfers
      • Defer infrastructure obligations 
      • Layoff employees 
  • Goals of budget
    • Solid Waste declared a municipal utility with an administrative fee
      • Frees up $117 million from general fund 
      • $25/household/month to provide solid waste services
      • $5 administrative fee for two years, then increase $5 every year until it reaches $25/month in 2030
      • Could include carveouts, could create fund 
    • Right of way rental fee
      • Chapter 1502 allows cities to charge utilities to occupy right of way 
      • Other cities already have this structure set up 
      • Money goes into general fund
      • 5% of total income from utilities goes into general fund
      • Water and utilities takes on responsibility for their use of right of way
      • Net improve of $220 million
    • Budget doesn’t solve problems, but lays foundation for fiscal stability
      • Maintains fund balance of 12% in FY 27
      • Avoid negative cash balance on FY 28
      • Buys time and creates predictable behavior
    • Long term goals
      • Expenditure reduction
      • Revenue generation
        • Houston is the only city in Texas that doesn’t have a garbage fee

Questions (Steven David)

• Consider scaling garbage fee or right of way fees based on use instead of flat?
  • Solid Waste fee is a fiscal maneuver, no illusion that functions are inefficient – aging fleet and 
    • Compare to Phoenix and LA
    • Quarter of fleet breaks down every day
    • “Pay as you throw” creates problems as fees scale (Austin is up to $65/month
  • Will issue debt against new revenue stream created by garbage fee to buy new trucks, create new hubs 
  • Right of way fee can be calculated by linear feet of occupancy or by KwH, challenge to charge by pipe because we don’t know the state of our pipes. Using percentage of gross revenue is best practice to avoid complications 
• Combined Utility System (CUS) Financial Considerations
  • For every $100 in debt, need to have $135 in the bank
  • Currently have $215, more liquidity than required
  • Required cash reserves – by ordinance 60 days, goals is 300 days – currently 550 days
  • New policy established in 2021 to maintain larger balances and changed policy around pipe maintenance 
    • FW consumes less water than we leak
    • PW replaces 3% of pipes in system every year
    • Changed metric for replacement of pipes from age of pipe to leakiness of pipes
    • By replacing pipes, eliminated need to patch pipes
    • Texas water development board and federal funds – opened up water infrastructure loans for 0% interest
  • Summary – new city efficiency over last 5 years and state/federal loans allows for transfer of funds from CUS to general fund
• Where will the fees go to?
  • $5 fee goes into the CUS/Enterprise Fund
  • Shows up on water bill
• What about the police?
  • State law limits our flexibility on police budget

return to top of page

5/14 Municipal Courts Budget Workshop
Notes taken by Haven B.

*Alcorn starts with issue about inability to contact online for questions for those watching online- email atlarge5@houstontx.gov – there is not going to be an ability to call in on this particular workshop 

Nelly Treviño Santos Presenting . Shanessa Brousard (sp?) next to her but not presenting

MC – municipal court 
PM – performance measures

Slideshow starts with table of contents – the presentation is different views of MC budget by fund and program

Strategic Alignment Slide: 

Reflects how MC programs align with mayors key initiatives – “our courts primarily work under the categories of public safety and of course government that works” 

Comparisons of all MC funds by fiscal year 

Expendatures by Fund Slide: 

Made up of Gen fund and 4 special funds – gen fund has 5% increase for FY27 when compared to 26 budget, a majority of increase is due to hope (?) pension and health insurance increases 

Comparison of expendatures by fiscal year – for FY27, Proposed expendature budget for Gen fund is $26,913,000, special fund $2,756,000 

Comparison between Personnel vs. Non personnel costs 

FY 27 gen fund is composed primarily of 77% personnel and 23% non-personnel costs – non-personnel costs include costs associated with court interpreters, mailing of notices, citation books, and contract security guards. 

Special funds – 3% of building security fund is personnel and 97% non-personnel. 92% of local diversion fund is personnel and 8% is non-personnel. Technology fund is 100% non-personnel costs.

MC courts is comprised of 8 programs. 

For FY27 there is a 4% overall increase in expenditures across MC programs. Says they worked closely with finance and earsnton young team to refine performance measures and create new more ‘meaningful measures that reflect the hard work we do at the courts’ 

Next slides go through programs with new performance measures 

Prog 1: Admin services

Includes oversight of budgeting, procurement, audit compliance, contract admin, and safety and security

New PM include: 1) Monitoring of expenditures and revenue of both with spec fund and gen fund to ensure compliance with specific statutory requirements.

Prog 2: Cash management services

Oversight of cashier services at all court locations. They handle other ctitical cash related functions. 

New PM include: 1) average number of hours to drop off a surity bond and 2) the percentage of court case resets to be published in 72 hours 

Prog 3: collections and compliance program

Responsible for internal and external collection efforts and oversees deferred payment program which allows with people to comply with court orders through payment plan 

New Initiative Aug 2025 – allows certain court related requests by email – says they have processed 7963 email requests between aug 1 2025 and april 30 2026 – average of 884 per month. 

New PM includes: 1) ability to track mail and email requests to ensure court compliance 

Prog 4: Court operations 

Oversight of various responsibilities including pre court, court room services, and post court services

New PM Include: 1) Average number of days to process an expungement and 2) the number of court case records securely deleted from the case management system to protect personal privacy and to comply with legal record retention requirements 

Prog 5: Judicial operations

Provides public oversight with regular and special dockets, wedding service, and parking and ordinance hearings, 

New PM Include: 1) Percentage of total course cases adjudicated through specialized court dockets – dockets such as homeless court, veterans court, youth diversion and prostitution diversion docket and 2) the number of court cases provided with interpretor services

Prog 6: Public information services 

Oversight of clearance letters which are requests for employment and for military purposes the timely response to open records requests, media inquiries, community outreach initiatives such as court tours and other outreach programs and they also serve as the city council and legislative liason

New PM: 1) percentage of individuals requesting open records who report positive experience with in person services based on survey responses and 2) average number of public info requests reviewed and processed.

Prog 7: Truancy prevention and youth engagement

Provides youth services and support at partner middle and high school campuses, assists with teen court, provides meaningful youth engagement during school breaks

“Super proud of these programs” “These programs are special to us” 

“We have holiday activities where all MC employees donate and adopt families” 

New PM: 1) the percentage of participants to successfully complete youth diversion program and 2) the average number of student cases managed by each juvenile case manager during the year

Prog 8: debt service and interfund transfers

FY27 budget does not include debt allocation services – this is probably a program that’s going to drop off by the next fiscal year. 

Revenue highlights:

• General fund FY27 reflects 2% increase from FY26 revenue budget and the MC continue to provide services to expand and enhance revenue – says they don’t make a lot of money of wedding and passport services but it is a fantastic way to bring in the public to our court house and allow them to experience working with judges and response, it’s a happy time, they’re getting to know our courthouse, “it’s a great PR opportunity for our court to see these services” wedding program and passport program are expected to continue to generate revenue 
• Revenue by fund
  • FY27 revenue budget for all 4 special funds reflects 13% increase from FY26 estimate
  • FY27 proposed revenue reflects 3% increase from FY26 estimate across all funds 
• Revenue by program
  • Comparison of revenue by program by fiscal year – the majority of MC revenue can be found in the admin program

Next slides are quickly shown but not gone through – 

Appendix table of contents

Muni court department org chart 

Dept demographics – 66% female, 34% male; 50% Black African American, 36% Hispanic, 9% white, 4% Asian, <1% Pacific Islander.

“We continue to reflect the diversity that can be found in Houston”

Accomplishments: some of FY26 accomplishments, 4 highlighted

• special dockets continue to offer equitable case resolutions options to most vulnerable populations, homeless docket is held 3 times per month and through march 26 it had 524 individuals 2284 cases resolved
• teen court continues to grow past year had over 150 student participants
  • night before meeting they held the teen court graduation where 46 seniors were recognized in teen court – Martinez served as guest speaker
• jury management system implemented fy26 – provides more efficient process including paperless system and debit card payment instead of mail check payment
• working closely with admin partner departments and architects on site selection, design, and core space needs for the new MC building of a new muni court. ‘Excited for progress on iconic MC building that all houstonians will be proud of’. Wants to present to pub safety committee to Peck
• In the court they performed the annual customer satisfaction survey – 99.6% favorable rating. Because MC is the first point of contact as far as a courthouse for Houstonians, the team understands how important customer service is and we want that experience to be a positive and pleasant experience for Houstonians. 

“Restricted Account Details” slide shown but skipped 

Questions: 

Castillo – appreciates youth programs, homeless docket, and customer service satisfaction survey 

Question around Revenue by fund – what is driving the 29% increase in the MC tech fund?

Answer: “that’s a unique fund in the sense that from the vendors, we get collections venders, where they provide funding to enhance the technology so we can focus on connection efforts, so we do get money from vendors and it’s just some realignment of some costs so therefore the revenue it looks like it’s a little higher, but all court costs are the same, this is a realignment of some of the costs”

Question: So it isn’t from an increase in collections? 

Answer: “No, all of these special funds are court costs that citizens pay when they pay a citation. There are certain amounts that go into each fund. This one looks a bit higher because of this additional funding it gets from collection vendors” 

Ramirqez – Shares experience at MC when he was subpeonad as a witness – had a great customer service experience 

Question: Mentioned use of email to help courts be more efficienct – do you use email to remind people of court sentence or jurty duty assignments? 

Answer: No, because email is not captured through the citation, but we do send text messages if the number was taken by the officer. Now they have ability to send reminders to citizens to remind them that they have a court date but even the new jury system not yet using email but phone numbers yes can communicate with jury – for those who have opted in to tell people that the court is closed for example for a freeze or a flood.

Question: On your 2026 accomplishments, may have missed it but see here that courts recieved traffic safety award, can you go over that? 

Answer: Public information officers, traffic safety is important, we should be educating the public about distracted driving – we have initiatives at the court for students for tours – mobil unit where you’re distracted driving. 

Martinez – 

Question/Comment: Most of the funding comes from the county office, but he wants better programing if city council, health dept and muni court can work together more

Answer: Says they do collaborate with the dept of neighborhoods – anti-gang office. Juvenile case manager fund can only be used in certain ways – they were involved with my brothers keeper – just yesterday Santos got an email asking if she would serve on the exec board revolving around that. “So we are around that – we will collaborate more”

Question: In terms of finding ways to increase revenue, when is the last time you did a study for the cost of weddings? Wants to increase the fees

Answer: There has not been a recent study done. They should probably do this and it would be a good idea to raise fees but acknowledges that many likely find it nice to only have to pay $100 or so for the wedding costs.

return to top of page

May 18 City Council Budget Workshop Notes
Notes taken by Aris B

Presented by Vernita Jones who serves as Division Manager for the Administrative Office of City Council

approx. 91.6 staffers, FY27 $16,965,724 proposed budget, split across 16 council office $666,510 + health benefits and Council District Service Funds (CDSF) she broke down staffing demographics

the priorities aligned with whitmire: infrastructure, quality of life, public safety and government that works

adopted budget FY26 was $19,246,137 with $682,141 council district split (which includes the $3 million SWAT budget amendment) with the current budget being $22,566,698 (including a $4,423,451 carry forward budget of CDSF)

Carry forward budgets are ones not completed within the fiscal year (all submitted and approved.)

Increases: full time and part time allowance, elected official pay, pensions, IT and health benefits
decreases: IT services, SWAT and CDSF carry forward funds
93% of budget is personnel (49% of the 7% non-personnel budget is restricted accounts they cannot touch – IT charges)

CDSF: proposed is $5,500,000, don’t yet know the carry forward amount for this year
CDSF target is 300 projects, not including 100+ more projects with METRO funds

proposed office budget $11,000,466: health benefits, pension, HOPE (municipal employees union) contracts and pay increases, trying to stay within the budget

sidewalks, ditch maintenance, park amenities, credible messenger programs, pet adoptions, police overtime, pride festival, monuments, gang prevention – CDSF breakdown showed the #1 place funds went to were HPD, HPARD, HPW, SWD, DON

metro projects – sidewalks and panel replacements
breakdown of district priorities and at large priorities
breakdown of IT costs

Julian Ramirez asked about employee count accuracy and Jones responded they were averaged since it fluctuates throughout the year. He also asked about if there was a restriction on carry forward funds, but Jones assured him that CMs typically work to have these projects completed by the next FY.

Castillo thanks the team for their hard work.

one public speaker asks about health insurance increases due to general increases in the Marketplace.

CM Sallie Alcorn gives “Emily Takes Notes” a sweet shoutout!

another speaker asks about the $500k in METRO funds given to city council since 2015 not being spent towards public transit, and Alcorn clarifies its usage towards general mobility funding, street and traffic expenses.

she presses about the transparency of district funds, noting the highest line item of funds is HPD, and the public process for application for projects. CM Huffman offers that funds in her office are used to respond specifically to constituents. Joaquin Martinez expresses that every project requested by constituents be tied to a city department.

CM Joaquin Martinez is asked about an outlier of $400k for the golf course in District I and he expresses that specific issue comes from calls in his district about increased activity in that area.

CM Carter shares at large offices can use excess funding for specific projects.

a third public speaker asks about translation services and how frequently they’re used, which they say come from the Office of New Americans. she also asks about city council office space in community centers so funds from CDSF aren’t used for office or rental space.

HOT funds being taken from HPW or DSW to free up funds to be used for community.

return to top of page

May 18 Solid Waste and Public Works Workshop
Notes taken by Elissa C.

In attendance: Castillo, staff from Evans Shabazz, Carter, Salinas, Martinez, staff from Castex Tatum, Alcorn, Ramirez, Huffman, staff from Kamin, Flickinger, Peck, Thomas.

Director Randi Macchi presenting
Samir Solanki CFO, also presenting.

Dir. Macchi goes through the PW program leads in great detail. He describes an executive team of 8 people with a lot of varied responsibilities. Lastly Macchi introduces Larius Hassen, the director of Solid Waste, which, in the proposed FY27 budget would be a part of public works. Macchi says he’s glad to welcome Dir. Hassen. The slide visual has Hassen as a direct report of Macchi. Hassen is not presenting.

He then lays out the ongoing reorganization efforts, and progress towards ‘operational efficiency’. The director says A LOT of things here, sorta amounts to ‘we had a lot of managers with only a few direct reports under them’. 

Says they had a focus on larger teams under one manager, and they significantly reduced the number of managers with 3 or fewer direct reports. Says its gone from 60%, to 40%, to 18% with 3 or fewer direct reports. Says that number will never be zero, some of their teams are highly specialized.

Macchi gives the highlights. Talks about the 30 day permit pilot program. This was an effort to speed up the single-family home permitting process. Says its been so successful that it has now become a permanent practice. The water main leak backlog is improved. “At one point we had close to 1900 active water main leaks, today we’re closer to 100.” It’s not uncommon to get 60 or 70 a day. That number fluctuates, he says, but is on a downward trend.

Moves on to workforce replenishment. Under voluntary retirement program, public works lost about 400-500 employees. It brought public works down to the smallest the department had been in many years. He says the number of administrative employees was out of balance previously and the voluntary retirement program offered them the opportunity to (he says something nearly incomprehensible to me that I think means) replace them with more day-to-day operations folks.

Moves on to how the department is aligning their ‘Key Performance Indicators’ (KPIs) with the mayor’s priorities. 

He then lays out the specific KPI’s, beginning with infrastructure. A study said that 6% of the city’s water lines were responsible for nearly two-thirds of water main breaks that happen all over the city. So last year they added as a KPI to replace 3% of 7,199 miles of line, annually. Haven’t hit this goal, “but we’re moving in the right direction.”

Another KPI, rehab 1000 lane miles of road annually. To that end, they have moved from a practice of selecting a number of segments of roadway and replacing them, to focus on patching larger swaths of the street network.

Macchi reports that the Ditch Reestablishment program, which began 2-years ago has shortened the timeline from 10 years to 5 years. The ‘laboring ore and ditch evaluation has taken place, and now we’re focused on the rehabilitation and reestablilshment of open ditches throughout the city.” There’s a focus in the northeast part of the town, because that is where 80% of the ditches are.

More KPIs: re-stripe 6,000,000 linear ft of pavement markings. Lastly, to replace 25,000 water meters with smart meters. The director says this has been a big pain point for many years.

Gov that works KPIs. The director describes a number of KPIs, mostly aimed at improving the timeline for permitting, approving and execution of construction projects, floodplain inspections and response to 311 calls. Also in here, resolving 99% of utility bill requests for relief within 30 days, and maintain 99% accuracy on billing.

Quality of Life KPIs he lays out. He goes through these quite quickly, but mentioned are getting faster at resolving water line repairs, SSO service requests, traffic signal malfuncitons, collection of tree and yard waste, and replacement / repair of the green and black bins.

He describes some KPIs for solid waste and commits to coming back to council within the next 60 days with some refined, outcome-based performance indicators.

CFO Samir Solanki presents

Solanki talks more about how the department is putting money towards the mayor’s priorities. Majority of it (85%) is put towards infrastructure.

Gives an overview of expenditures by program. There are reductions in a couple of areas, including the following: Debt Service and Interfund Transfers (-3%), Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (-13%), Transportation & Drainage Operations (-9%), and Utility Billing (-1%).

He very quickly lays out the budget for administration and support services, this includes funds for purchase and buildout of 1600 Smith, and the new 5% Right of Way Fee, which transfers roughly $104 million into the general fund.

Moving on to Houston water, the largest part of PW. On the slide, the general amount budgeted by fund is laid out as well as the KPIs again. Significant budget items include funding for “operational needs as well as additional capital improvement.” I have no clue what that means.

Utility Billing, covers billing and collection for water and wastewater. There are no significant budget items listed here.

Solanki is asked to slow down by CM Alcorn.

Transportation and Drainage Operations. Significant budget items: continuing to fund ditch reestablishment. And FY27 includes additional $25,000 in contracting capacity for that program.

Engineering and Construction. Solanki notes that this program includes funding for CIP projects. The total CIP is probably the largest the city’s ever had so far. $10.8 billion for PW. That breaks out into about $2.7 billion for street and drainage and $8 billion for water and sewer.

Next the Houston Permitting Center. Solanki notes HPW has absorbed several functions of the Dept. of Neighborhoods. This includes dangerous buildings, neighborhood nuisances & investigations, site administration, and bandit(?) signs.

Houston Transtar, the smallest group, funds maintenance and upkeep to the Houston Transtar Center. One funding source, budgeted around $3.8 million

Then the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. Included under ‘Significant Budget Items’ is funding for ADA Transition Plan. One fund source, with $869,700 budgeted. One KPI for linear feet of sidewalks improved through PAR.

Solanki moves on to Solid Waste Management. One significant budget item- in FY27 the SW department will be funded out of Combined Utility System fund. Several new KPIs.

Then the Debt Service and Interfund Transfers program. This program includes the payment of infrastructure-related debt, transfer to fund CIP projects, and interfund transfers.

He breaks down revenue by program. Then gives a high-level summary overview of all funds for PW in the proposed budget. These are compared to all funds for FY26.

Another high-level overview to show what the expenditures are by fund, followed by revenues by fund. He highlights how the Combined Utility System fund has grown over previous few years.

Solanki moves on to a breakdown of expenditures by category for each fund.

GENERAL FUND

Solanki says the pub works department pulls a very small portion of the general fund. Mainly for real estate group that does a ‘fairly good job of raising revenue by disposing of unwanted real estate throughout the city’. About 8 or 9 FTEs. Anticipate about 3 million revenue generated for FY26

PROJECT COST RECOVERY

This is a revolving fund for personnel and other operation / maintenance costs for supporting Capital Improvement Projects. All expenditures are revolved back to the various funds within PW. There’s a reduction attributable to 42 FTEs being moved to the Water and Sewer Operating Fund.

BUILDING INSPECTION FUND / HOUSTON PERMITTING CENTER

This fund is using fund balance to meet its expenditures. Revenue is increasing to $119 million mainly thanks to higher construction permit revenues. Expenditures are also increasing to about $128 million, mainly because of increase in personnel costs, support costs, and CUS allocation.

TRANSPORTATION & DRAINAGE 
This includes funds for Build Houston Forward, and the Stormwater Fund. The Stormwater Fund is mainly allocated from the CUS. There are decreases to revenue from this fund for various reasons which he lays out. The first, is a decrease because of a one-time council budget amendment for the Ditch Reestablishment Program in last year’s budget. Second, is a move of $16 million expenditure for Ditch Reestablishment from the DDSRF to the CIP fund. Third, is lower maintenance and operations needs in FY27.

He is asked for a second time to slow down, this time by CM Huffman.

Dir Machi interjects that it might look like they’re spending less on drainage, but they are actually spending significantly more. He says this is because they are moving expenditures from one fund to another to set it up to be more clear in the future.

Honestly hard for me to follow all this in here, but one thing is clear, there is a lot of movement.

HOUSTON TRANSTAR

Houston has responsibility of 24% of this budget, there’s a slight increase because Harris County and METRO are contributing more to this. Expenditures increasing slightly for facility maintenance.

COMBINED UTILITY SYSTEM

Revenue first- Water and Sewer Fund shows a budgeted increase, mainly because of the transfer in of Solid Waste and the new $5 solid waste fee. The CUS Fund revenue decreasing primarily because of lower anticipated debt service.

Water & Sewer expenditures increasing by about $200 million. A bit over half is attributable to transfer of SW Dept. This was offset by a lower transfer from Water & Sewer to CUS Fund of about $15.3 million.

Expenditures from CUS Gen Purpose Fund budgeted to increase mostly because of the Right of Way Fee (about $104 million), the 1600 Smith buildout (about $83 million), and because of $17 million in Solid Waste debt taken on by public works. This is offset by reducing amount paid to Pay As You Go debt service from the CUS Gen Purpose Fund. 

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

Revenues from Solid Waste include $24 million for the new fee. Total revenue is about $35.2 million. 

Total expenditures are about $134 million. 

Questions:

Thomas asks if its safe to say all of this is pending the vote. She asks if the restructuring of solid waste is already in.

Machi replies that a number of things are already in flight, but the restructuring of solid waste is a part of the budget package to be voted on. If this budget is not voted in, then the restructuring of solid waste would not take place.

Thomas asks about the ‘change in average active water leaks per day’ figure cited, mentions that in summer of 2023 she thinks they reached 500 on the westside alone. Macchi responds that the number represents progress made in the last 15 months.

Thomas, referring to the KPIs, asks why there’s no comparison to where the departments are at today. Macchi responds that these are brand new KPIs and they have only been tracking them for a few months. Thomas asks for confirmation that Public Works will continue to come to council and report on these new KPIs, Macchi says they will.

Thomas asks about the concentration of Ditch Reestablishment efforts in districts B, C, D, & I. Macchi responds that 450 miles of ditch reestablishment efforts will be targeted in these districts. (This is out of 500) Thomas reminds listeners that PW needs the eyes of residents, who can put in 311 requests to flag ditches they believe need maintenance. Macchi reaffirms this and says they are also testing interactive maps for people to view the status of various Public Works projects, including ditch reestablishment, mowing, water line repairs.

Thomas asks about PW comfortability with absorbing Solid Waste, with the new Right of Way fee, and with PW infrastructure responsibilities.

Macchi says first they’re very comfortable. He gives a very long explanation for why, the broadstrokes of which seem to be:

PW has 550 days of cash on hand in the reserves. Internal policy is 300 days of operating expenses cash on hand, much higher than city policy of 60 days. Says he thinks 300 days may be a little too high.

The planned moves in the PW budget will not delay or stop any planned infrastructure projects, for instance the East Water Plant, or consent decree obligations.

They are conducting a water rate study to investigate how the costs for the water system are borne across their customer base. He says many commercial and industrial customers get really good deals, and they are making efforts to make sure that their rates are structured more equitably, and that higher users bear a proportional responsibility for costs.

Castillo asks about the final budgeted amount for the Ditch Reestablishment Program. Macchi replies the department has a better ability to control program costs, and that in the past they have overbudgeted for it. He says this has allowed them to shift funding over to other drainage needs such as the local drainage program. The Ditch Reestablishment budget sits at $25 million, and Local Drainage is budgeted at $50 million.

Castillo asks if there has been a change to the container lease fee. Macchi and Solanki tell him that the only change is the fee has been collapsed into the CUS, but this fee will remain and will not change.

Castillo asks where PW is at with replenishing lost numbers to the Voluntary Retirement Program. Macchi says they’ve got about 900 vacancies, 500 of which they are actively working to fill. He says this is about their capacity for adding people when considering training and adding equipment.

CM Peck inquires whether Rubicon (now Waste Tech) technology for routing, as well as other Solid Waste technologies will be paid for by the CUS in the proposed budget. Macchi says yes. She also asks if this system is currently being used. Macchi asks for a thumbs up or down from dir. Hassen, who stands and gives a thumbs up.

Peck asks with that new system, will there be improvements to the routing system (of solid waste vehicles) throughout the city?

Macchi again gives a long response, so just the broad strokes:

He says PW’s strategic initiatives team has been digging in to understand the operations of solid waste, and have ‘a wonderful list of things to tackle’. He says every idea for improvements / efficiencies are on the table. He then brings up the 2/5 operable transfer stations, says that bringing more of these online will help, and may help with revenue generation. To CM Thomas’ he says that they may not ever have to raise the fee above $5, because Solid Waste is a ‘revenue-generating machine,’ but that it can’t do that in the general fund. And he seems to imply here that the SW dept can take in revenue for the use of its transfer stations that it could not do while in the general fund. He implies that the results of the Burns & Macdonald study are not wholly accurate, because it assumed the department was efficient at the time of the study, he says ‘if we introduce efficiency, naturally we know that will drive down costs as well’.

CM Salinas asks about a $145 million reduction in the CIP Pay As You Go Fund, she notes that the answer to a previous question was that reduction will not lead to a reduction in water and sewer maintenance projects and asks if the department is seeking $145 million in additional debt to cover that gap. She also asks if this is reflected in the current budget proposal. Solanki’s reaffirms that they will not be reducing projects. He says they may be utilizing more debt, but that that $145 million is the overall debt service payment spread out over 30 years. So what is included in the FY27 budget is just the portion of that additional debt payment for this year. He estimates about $5-10 million.

Salinas notes the discontinuance of about $17.8 million in funding for illegal dumping projects, and asks what projects if any will be going away as a result of that loss. She also asks how much the department currently plans to allocate towards education regarding illegal dumping. Macchi responds to the former that he doesn’t know and will get back and to the former that he doesn’t know, but that education is one of those items they will be considering as they push for efficiencies in the future.

Martinez encourages Houston residents to report to 311 as the city increases the LDP and ditch maintenance projects. ‘The more you continue to report, the easier it is to improve drainage across the city.’

Martinez says he also plans to introduce an amendment for a one-time fee for the green and black cans. He floats a fee of about $28 for new solid waste customers. He emphasizes the need to find ways to bring in new revenue.

CM Huffman brings up reduction to the number of active water leaks throughout the city, asks what the reduction of 1900 leaks to 100 equates to in terms of gallons of water lost. Macchi responds that although the answer to that question would be very technical, he can tell her that one indicator of the change is the evaluation of water pressure across the city. He says from 2024 to now, they get much fewer calls about low water pressure from residents.

Following up on something the director said about some contractors getting away with not paying their full share for water usage, CM Huffman asks about how good the city is at recouping costs for should -for example- a company like AT&T hit a water line and the city then has to repair that and the street. Macchi responds they are not very good at that, and likely won’t ever have the resources to devote to “chasing all this down internally”, but seems to imply that there are other vendors who they can turn to to help with this.

CM Ramirez notes that last year PW absorbed the Dept of Neighborhoods (DON), which includes code enforcement. He also notes that in FY25 DON had 44.5 FTEs working on code enforcement, but that in the FY27 budget book he does not see any information detailing code enforcement under Pub Works. Macchi says they currently have roughly 100 inspectors on code enforcement and are looking for about 70 more. He also says that part of absorbing Dep of Neighborhoods into the Permitting Center was an attempt to make things more efficient by integrating residential and commercial enforcement into the same place.

Ramirez asks a follow up about unpermitted yard-parking which moved to PW last year. Macchi says he thinks this is going well and trending in the right direction. CM Ramirez asks about average requests for utility bill assistance per month, and how the director anticipates the new $5 fee impacting these numbers. Macchi says he does not think the fee will ‘impact operational capacity to resolve customer concerns’.

Flickinger references the fact that 6% of the city’s pipes are causing two-thirds of leaks and asks if there is any commonality between these problem pipes. Macchi says one of the things they noticed was asbestos concrete pipes were especially prone to failure as well as those buried at a shallower depth.

Then a few specific questions about an ongoing project and cost effectiveness of contractors vs in house for road striping. Macchi says that it depends on where when and how, but the dept utilizes both.

Regarding illegal dumping again, Salinas asks what specific items have been allocated funds for in FY27 budget. Macchi says there is no separate group or specific line item allocated for illegal dumping, but they hope to improve efficiencies in this area through partnerships across PW and SW, with the county, and with law enforcement.

Salinas notes the budget has funds allocated for 4 inspectors to respond to 311 calls related to waste, with 3 of those positions currently vacant. She asks if the plan is to fill those 3 vacancies for the upcoming year. Macchi gives a long response, something like -we’ll fill them if we really need to, but we also have customer service reps already working on 311 call response, so in the meantime we’ll use them and figure it out.

Huffman confirms that the $6 private trash fee subsidy is not being eliminated in FY27, and asks how many households are on private trash pickup in Houston. The response is 50,000. She then asks if the city is required to take customers back if they want to go off private trash pickup and go back to city services. Macchi responds he doesn’t know and will get back. Huffman asks and is told that theft is the number one reason for calls requesting repair/replacement of cans. Lastly Huffman notes that there is no clear map of all waterlines in Houston. The director responds that they have made tremendous improvement internally in their mapping of the lines and that as they become more aggressive about replacing pipe, they will naturally get a better picture of where the lines really are.

CM Ramirez says that the city provides water to more non-Houston residents than residents, and asks if these (non-Houston residents’) rates are going up as well. The director notes that that is a big reason for the rate study- because these rates are set by contract, the rate study allows the department to go through and make adjustments to what those rates are. He also says some of those rates -particularly for certain industrial customers-  are really, really good deals. ‘There’s a few of em…it’s almost like its free. We’ve gotta fix that.”

Ramirez asks about what progress has been made towards reevaluating some of those contract rates, and Macchi said that they expect the first draft of the rate study in the third quarter of this year. Then they anticipate council will have the opportunity to review / approve these changes at the beginning of next year.   

There are then some questions about specific KPIs from CMs Ramirez, Flickinger and Salinas. For a few of these Macchi says the department is not at their goal with these KPIs but is trending in the right direction. In the case of others, CMs note that they are completely missing from the proposed budget and Macchi pledges to get updated numbers for these and pass them along to the council members. 

Regarding 95 currently vacant inspector positions, Salinas asks if these are included in the 500 that PW hopes to fill and is told yes.  

Salinas asks if there is a timeline for repairs for Solid Waste vehicles with no AC and if there is an estimate for how many trucks this would take out of commission. Macchi responds he does not have that information, they will have to work with Fleet Management to find out.

Ramirez asks and is told that the container lease fee will not change in FY27. He also notes that recycling contamination rate is very high and asks what is being done to reduce that rate. In answer the director brings up education for the public, as well as partnerships with other departments, and Ramirez suggests that the vendor, FCC may take some responsibility as well. 

Martinez says that in the next couple months he would like to know how many refuse cans the department needs to purchase. He also says that when the department returns in 60 days with the updated KPIs, that he is excited to find out what exactly that additional money for solid waste (who have a budgeted increase of about $34 million) will be going to, and how it might address operational challenges. CM Martinez also reminds listeners about the difficult conditions that SW employees are working in and advocates for using the increase in funding to ‘bring people in, and keep people in SW as well.’

Salinas asks if Dir. Macchi anticipates the 5% Right of Way fee will necessitate a water rate increase in 5 or fewer years. Macchi says “the way we’ve looked at it, no. But that’s the purpose of going through a rate study.”

Salinas asks Macchi to clarify what makes him believe there won’t be an increase. There is some back and forth in clarifying Macchi’s answer- Macchi eventually says “we are looking at what the department’s cash retention policy is. 300 may not be the right number, remember the city’s number is 60 days. We believe it needs to be greater than 60 days. That’s part of our evaluative process, but we believe that whatever number we arrive at is going to be sufficient for operation.”

Salinas then refers to an issue with FCC not delivering income for recycled materials from the city because of the high rate of contamination. She asks if Macchi is aware of any accountability issues with the vendor and if the city is currently meeting its contract obligations with FCC. Macchi replies that he doesn’t know. 

A representative of CM Kamin’s asks if there are any funds allocated for disaster preparedness contingencies within the PW and SW department budgets. As an example she mentions storm debris. Solanki tells her that there is no fund set aside for disaster preparedness, says in the event of a disaster, sometimes they have to reallocate funding from one area to another. 

The staff member then asks about FTEs for the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities dropping from 6 to 0 in the FY27 budget, and Macchi responds that MOPD’s personnel are funded by METRO in the proposed budget. 

A staff member from CM Jackson’s office asks about KPIs for neighborhood inspections that were missing from the budget presentation. Macchi describes some of the KPIs for this program, namely responding to 100% of 311 call requests within 7 days. He says currently they’re closer to 10 or 15 days. The staff member then requests that the dept include KPIs for citation escalation/resolution and data for tracking where illegal dumping is coming from.

Lastly she asks where they found the savings in ditch reestablishment. Macchi tells her that this is reflective of the department learning what the true cost of the project is and of improving on rate and speed of contracts.

CM Alcorn then concludes this portion of the meeting by mentioning that she’ll submit her questions to PW/SW online and publish their answers if anyone would like to read them. She thanks the Macchi, Solanki, and Hassen for their service. She also mentions that there is a form on her website where the public can submit their own questions for any city department. 

return to top of page

5/18 Mayor’s Office Budget Workshop
Notes taken by Roger M.

CM Sallie Alcorn introduces schedule

Steven David, Deputy Chief of Staff to give presentation on budget

Strategic Guidance Alignment – objective – department’s alignment to Mayor’s defined priorities and initiatives as defined in his strategic guidance; all programs align to a mayoral priority – overall dept budget broken down as such into three buckets – government that works (88% – 31.65m) (executive oversight and tourism promotion and debt service and interfund transfers); quality of life (9% 3.2m) (cable television/HTV); infrastructure (3% 1.25m)(economic development)

“All of this tends to be in the eye of the beholder. I think we can make an argument for any of these things being in any of the buckets”

Expenditures (at a high level) have been reduced by 7% (10% under first year)

General fund up 4%, but cable expenditures down 33% and tourism down 5%

Trending downward in expenditures

Overwhelming majority of costs is “people costs”

So overall average is 7% down, but that’s including 33% decrease in cable television

Says streaming services are cutting into this; PEG (public, educational, governmental) funding goes down, so general fund goes up

Decreasing cable PEG fees are bringing in less revenue, so they are aligning expenditures with revenue  – thus the drop in cable television funding

CM Alcorn thanks for presentation and welcomes councilmembers and staff

Cm Ramirez: Thanks Steven; asks about slide 8 cable TV; last performance metric; how engaged citizens are with HTV

Steven: PEG, channels 16, 17, 18 are technically part of portfolio, but only use 16, and viewership has gone down/people are watching less channel 16; so they are pivoting to youtube, etc. (just moving away from cable) – diversifying viewership streams to reach more people since less people have cable tv

Cm Ramirez: Asks about the performance metric for training/deployment for tourist board members; tourist development in Houston communities

Steven: We get cold called with people interested in tourist boards; they are setting up “coffee with councilmember” type things to discuss economic opportunities; economic dev board will do this with TIRZs – they want to hold these meetings, provide info sessions for folks and identify people who would be good for tourism boards

Cm Ramirez: Past years they were targeting 5 policies but not hitting that number

Steven: The goal was to take the TIRZ analysis done by Earnst and Young and use it in the next set of fiscal policies; they went through a “rigorous attempt” to see the difference in analysis between the auditor’s office and E&Y work; did not find a compromising of analysis by E&Y, but found a large gulf between the raw data fed by zones and what the auditor’s are doing (audit’s are sound but having to do a lot of extra work), so financial policies that economic development office has been envisioning is setting standards, identifying inefficiencies internally, aligning fiscal policies and processes of TIRZs with Mayor’s office

CM Ramirez continues: Some TIRZ have good transparency, some are inadequate (“I have been beating this drum for a while” – also voices frustration at not seeing the E&Y study yet) – a lot of people don’t understand the TIRZs and their policies

CM Alcorn: Went through budget, where’s the travel budget?

Steven: Travel is booked through general govt, a city wide expenditure rather than just Mayor’s Office

CM Alcorn: Arts – decrease in number from 30 to 5  – HOT money (unsure what this is referring to) – performance measure takes us from 30 to 5 receiving civic art programs

Steven: Will get back to you

CM Alcorn continues: 2.6m in revenue on digital kiosks; some of this in past has been used in parks and some with mowing, etc.

Steven: This gets booked in general fund and spent however, no designated spot for it

Public speakers

1st: With regards to the mayor’s economic oversight, the responsibility for debt management and economic growth, but not a lot on oversight over tax abatements. Last year there was a presentation for tax abatement oversight, and many of these will sunset by Aug of this year; is this still a responsibility of the Mayor’s oversight or does it fall to someone else?

CM Alcorn: Still in the same place, was promised and will pass along comment

Follow up question from speaker: Regarding tangible penalties to the city if council chooses to deny abatement that is presented by state. Due to certain tax codes, states can provide recommendations on abatements that a city should approve of, it’s still up to council, but are there penalties to not approving them?

Steven responds: Generally whenever there is request from the state to get city to approve an abatement, if city council denies then it just removes ability to have it, no penalty; specific for TEZ (texas enterprise zone), finite amount that council can nominate, but if it gets denied by state then city loses that

2nd: Follow up question to question asked last week regarding monitoring happenings in Texas Leg and how this affects the city; we rely on the mayor’s office to track this, and is this in the budget? And how to access this info when city/mayor takes a certain position on a piece of legislation

CM Alcorn: Intergovernmental relations sits in mayor’s budget; 767k there and travel is in general; there is a link for the IGR website that lets people know, she then gives contact info for person who’s with IGR in Houston tracking this

Public Speaker: Checked the website this morning and it just had a PDF from the previous session; will be updated as things happen? – response was yes

CM Huffman: This is a great question, even though we have people tracking this, updates in real time are missed sometimes because so much is happening, even council members can have trouble tracking it; says it’s very smart to bring this up and thanks for bringing it up

3rd: Question for Steven; regarding the someone working 90 hours a week comment he made during the presentation. In an ideal world, what would make FTE/workload more sustainable?

Steven: All “around the horseshoe” recognize that the work is difficult, mayor is strongest form of strong mayor (is chair of board and executive of org) and work that gets done should be measured by outcome based performance metrics; so predictably this is the number of things we should get done and can then divide this into a reasonable work week, but can’t always get enough FTEs to satisfy this, so they do what they can with the budget they have

CM Alcorn: Closes out by thanking Steven for all these presentations (84!) and Veronica Weatherspoon, who has served 4 mayor’s offices correspondence and handling comms from the mayor’s office

return to top of page

May 18 Office of Business Opportunity Workshop
Notes taken by Aris B.

Presented by Director Cylenthia Hoyrd and Patsy Jackson, CFO

priorities aligned with whitmire: government that works and infrastructure
Mission: to provide equal representation and advocacy for all small businesses with pathways to partnerships, education, and accelerated growth

proposed FY27 budget is $1,524,000
KPIs new participation goals for purchasing categories, title VI requirements and budget actualizations

reduced vacant positions and supplies/services by $200k

expenses like business development, dept services and workforce development decreased by 100% and were consolidated into external affairs to cut duplication and reflect the filled vacancies

increase general fund and special revenue fund

only 16% were non-personnel, 67% of that supports police and fire department

they exceeded their goal of business support and development provided to over 700 small businesses and entrepreneurs

their certification and designation program costs $1.4million
processing days has been decreased from 135 to 30 days

they certify minority, women and small business enterprises (MWSBE), disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs) etc. they lowered their number for FY27 due to the local and federal pause.

contract compliance overlook payment and contracts: $2,081,000 with 17.3 full time employees

notably, one of the goals (75%) they haven’t reached is labor standards for closed construction contracts, currently at 65%, but they increase every year. They exceed their 85% goal for the amount of contracts providing “Good Faith Efforts” requisite.

added KPIs: the percentage of 90% Pay funds collected from “pay or play” contracts, minimizing non-Satisfactory ratings contracts, and increasing contracts with Satisfactory ratings at closeout.

they removed the measure to maintain a high percentage of contracts choosing the Play option that provide health benefits to their employees, since they added the ones above.

Department Services Program previously worked on compliance but it has been consolidated into the contract compliance division.

External Affairs Division budget proposed is $500,000 consolidating the Business Support and Development and Workforce Development programs, to continue support services, guidance and capacity building programs for entrepreneurs. They added 5 new KPIs to track business certifications, staff hours, workforce development participation, contract readiness, and favorable perception of OBO services. These were created with community feedback.

working with Workforce Solutions to accurately track job offers once participants leave the site.

Debt Service and Interfund Transfers Program shows funds that go to HPD and the Health Department.

overall they have a 2.37% decrease in the general fund and 18.13% in the special revenue fund from FY26 to FY27. They anticipate 8.19% increased revenue for contract compliance.

CM Joaquin Martinez
He celebrated the decrease to 30 days, and shouted out the External Affairs program to help increase certifications. He requested to look at increasing external fees and increasing staffing. Hoyrd replies they had a fee study done but they’re awaiting a judicial ruling. They’re also hoping to add a directory look-up fee for external departments.

CM Ramirez
He asked about the judicial ruling. Hoyrd informed the council that the ruling will determine if MBEs (Minority Business Enterprises) will still be eligible and whether they’d be able to implement those fees and were told they’d hear updates by May, but there’s no movement.
He asked about what labor standards she referred to. Hoyrd expressed it primarily prevailing wages and potential on-site discrimination.
He also asked about contract participation measures and whether they were determined from the dollar amount awarded. He shared receiving complaints about small businesses being awarded but being told their services were no longer needed and asked about the consequences. She responds that in close out the department will detail when the scope of work changes. When its not a scope issue, they look for ratings, any pattern of non-compliance, then move to sanctions for up to five years, but it’s not common.
He asked about the Interfund Transfers with HPD, Health Department and she explained that while select program funds they collect from those contracts go through OBO, they transfer them to those department for their programs to ensure department savings. For example, the Pay or Play program saves $1.7 million to the call crisis diversion program.

CM Salinas
Chris asked about the prevailing wages, and wanted clarification on the sanctions and penalties to those businesses out of compliance with the labor standards and how the city could help. Hoyrd offers they have new policies in place to collect underpayment and sanctions to put place for companies with 3 unsatisfactory ratings.

The first speaker reiterates support for the department’s federal pushback against MBEs.
The second speaker brings up Hire Houston First and how the goal was listed as N/A as well as noticing the checkbook for Public Works was hiring consultants from Canada and Pennsylvania.

Hoyrd says they are still considering it but they’re looking at all new certifications. They may put that performance measure back.

return to top of page

May 18 Fire Department Workshop
Notetaker prefers to be anonymous.

Chief Munoz presented

The Fire Department is fully funded by the general fund. Total expenditures are expected to decrease by 2% in Fiscal Year 2027 due to a decrease in classified overtime, offset by increases in classified base and fringe benefits, and restricted accounts.

The department’s goals are retention and new recruitment.

88% of the proposed budget expenditures are afore personnel. The remaining 12% is for supplies, services, or restricted accounts.

Of the 6 department programs, the largest decrease in expenditures was in the emergency response and rescue program.

On the revenue side, fiscal year 2027 is projected at $132.852 million. 62% of revenues are from ambulance fees which are inflation-adjusted. 

After the presentation Chief Munoz emphasized performance metrics. The department has improved attrition rates, graduating more cadets and the number of paramedics is high. Overtime is decreasing and morale is high. 

The Chief also emphasized the success of the Consumer Needs Team that identifies high-call addresses and tries to find out and address the causes of high calls. 

The Department’s morale has been high with the support of Mayor Whitmire.

Councilmember Flickinger asked about tracking because performance metric numbers looked round. He also asked about why overtime is not lower to which Chief Munoz explained that the Kerrville flooding and training caused a need to backfill shifts.

Councilmember Salinas asked about the negotiations around compensation in the collective bargaining agreement, and Chief explained that the “escalator payment” numbers, which are separate from the contractual 3% raises, are not set yet.

Citizens commented on the City’s low fire insurance premiums caused by the high-performing fire department. Another citizen asked about expenses related to fire trucks being used to pick up groceries at H-E-B.

return to top of page

5/19 Police Workshop
Notes taken by Haven B.

At podium: Chief Hardin, Joanne Tran
General fund allocation – $1.2bil 

April 30, 2026 demographic numbers – overall: 76% male, 24% female; classified workforce, police – 81% male, 19% female; cadets 79% male, 21% – want more female 

“Majority minority department” – 36% Hispanic, 34% white, 21% African American, 8% Asian 

“police dept that represents the community we serve”

Strategic Guideance Alignment- 95% public safety, 5% government that works, 1% public safety, 0% infrastructure (from slide even though it adds to 101%)

“Plans to eliminate the gap”  – 

8.9mil Budget Reductions 

• Cut 8.9 mil out of this budget
  • $1.5 mil will come from canceling a program that allowed retired officers to come back and work part time (ending in July) 
  • $7.4 mil comes from freezing 91 civilian positions for this budget year. 

(overtime spending is down 22% by dollar but 27% by hours work) 

FY27 proposed revenue- projected revenue decrease $5,000 

• gen fund increase $6.3mil ( 8%)
  • includes reimbursement from metro and airport systems, revenue from open record, traffic report. 
  • $5.5 mil is related to airport system reimbursement for IAH, Hobby operations, and Ellington Airport. 
  • $2.2 mil metro general mobility program now projected $29.7 mil for FY27
  • Offset of decrease by 1.3mil time FEMA fees received for derecho storm (2026) 
• Police special services decrease by $4.2 mil – restricted use revenues – special event reimbursements, triaining grants, and donations – net decrease primarily from the removal of FIFA world cup and “end homelessness”, now part of different grant 
• Auto dealers fund – decrease of $125k – supports regulation of car auto dealers, storage lots and towing – decrease in revenue from licenses, permits, and towing fees, and unclaimed vehicles sold at auction 
• Child safety fund – pays for school crossing guard – funded by vehicle registration fees and court fines associated with related citations. HPD is passthrough for funds taken for these reasons
• Asset forfeiture decrease of $1.89 mil – asset siezure linked to criminal activity – support overtime, surveilance and specialized law enforcement.
  • Only state forfeiture funds, about $2 mil, can be budgeted, federal funds from dept of treasury and dept of justice are not allowed to be included in the budget per federal rules.
• (going away) Forensic transition fund – $37k revenue offsets costs for city employees working in forensic – HPD is reimbursed for these expenses. This fund has transitioned to 0 FTE for 27 – last year was 1 FTE
• Human trafficking recovery response fund – $110,000 decrease – to comply with changes in Texas law requiring assets/fees associated with these crimes are only to be used to support victims of those crimes. 

HPD revenue services – the total proposed rev $114.7 mil 

• gen fund for FY27 proposed revenue $87.4mil
  • $49 mil reimbursement from the airport. 
  • $30 mil reimbursement metro general mobility
  • $5mil admin and indirect cost recovery from auto fund
  • $3mil  take home vehicle fees, open records
• Special service $9.4mil projected revenue
  • $5.2 mil reimbursement for contribution for external agencies
  • $1.2 mil from business contribution supporting human trafficking prevention
    • of this $980k is for tours for downtown district, $230k is from office of business opportunity for 911 crisis call diversion program
  • $1.1 mil for mobility permits, environmental violator restitution cases, gambling seisures, law enforcement training, auto dealers fund, revenue industry licensing and towing
  • $700k law enforcement officer standards and education – police personnel training 
  • $12.5 mil auto dealers fund, auto dealers, auctions, towing, storage lots  
  • $3.3 mil child safety fund, police dept is a passthrough – 17 school districts muni courts tied to school zone and parking violations – supports 600 crossing guards
  • $2mil asset forfeiture – these come from state level actions, supports overtime, narcotics investigations, equiptment and other enforcement costs.
    • “‘We don’t budget to federal revenues’ due to legal rules”
  • Forensic transition fund is 0 for FY27
  • $104,000 for human trafficking fund 

Revenue across all funds incl: 

• Police patrol variance decrease $122,000 – due to northbelt facility rental expiration in FY27 in police services fund 
• Homeland security special events variance decrease $4.4 mil – end street homelessness and FIFA in grants instead of special services
• Investigative variance decrease of $1.8 mil bc of not allowing to budget for dept of justice or treasury to be budgeted in advance in asset forfeiture 
• Airport system increase $5.5mil due to gen fund increase reimbursement from HAS airport – increase of 8% for classified base pay for operations for meet and confer
• Traffic enforcement $2.2 mil – increase in gen mobility in gen fund
• Training variance decrease of $23k
• Mental health decrease to site inspection for police special services fund
• Strategic operations decrease of $258k due to estimate decrease in cases cleared awarded to HPD
• Admin service variance decrease $1.1 mil due to one time FEMA payment for the derecho which will not be in 27

Personnel vs. non personnel excl grants and cap improvement projects

$1.25 bil – Across all funds 87.5% FY27 is personnel, 12.5% non-personnel 

FY27 83% of $8.9mil reduction is achieved through elimination of 91 FTEs civilian positions and the remaining 17% or $1.5mil is elimination of employee program of retired officers

Expenditures – personnel cost are largest expenditure 

FY27 proposals reflect net increase of $76 mil or 7% 

• Gen fund – $87mil increase – 87%
  • $85.3 classified compensation for meet and confer – incl health and pension. 
  • $8.9 mil  resitricted acount allocations
  • $6.6mil  classified overtime 
  • $3.8mil civilian compensation for hope and health and pension
  • $8.9 mil budget redicution
  • $6.6 deduction is for approved PBJs for 26 and 27, 
• Police special services fund – decrease $10.6 mil attributed to FIFA budgeted for 2026- did not know it would be a grant from the state – it was budgeted like when HTX hosted superbowl. 
• Auto dealers – increase of $46k – supplies and services
• Child safety fund – decrease $87k – HPD middleman for fund – this is from prior balance
• Asset forfeiture – $97k increase due to overtime expentutures for unscheduled events and unallocated capital projects
• Forensic transition – decrease from 1-0 employees

Expenditures by fund overall numbers

• actuals
  • $1.09bil 2025
  • $1.18bil 2026
  • $1.67 bil estimated
  • $1.25 bil proposed for 2027

• $1.2 bil from general fund – 97% expenditures inclues personnel, patrol, investigation and admin services 
• Police special services $10.1 mil, .8% restricted purposes, joint law enforcement efforts, traffic control, personnel training and deterrence of human trafficking 
• Auto dealers – $13.4 mil – regulation and supervision of auto dealers
• Child protection to support 600 more crossing guards 
• $9.1 mil asset forfeiture – restricted use supporting drug enforcement equiptment and overtime
• Human trafficking – $196k to address immediate emergency trafficking victim short term needs

Gen fund is 97% expenditures – net increase of $76mil or 7% is driven by 8% classified base pay associated with meet and confer agreement. 

Programs 

• Police Patrol Program – HPD patrol regions 1, 2, and 3
  • Patrol contributes $475mil gen fund, $3.4mil asset forfeture, police special services $1.5 mil 
• Homeland security/special events programs
  • Leads in planning and coordination of intentional acts of terrorism or natural declared emergencies, also coordinates special events and staffs police resources for city sponsored special events 
  • $54mil from gen fund, police special services $2.2mil – $56.5mil for funding
• Investigations
  • Program is the second largest, city wide specialized police services – combining criminal and investigation commands 
• Airport Systems
  • IAH, Hobby, and Ellingtington – 24 police patrol at checkpoints, remaining in terminals for security breach, weapons and bombs threats
  • from gen fund $45mil, get reimbursed by aiport system 
• Traffic enforcement
  • DWI taskforce, mobility response team, motorcycle detail, radar taskforce and highway interdiction – from gen fund $29.6 mil, supported by metro mobility program
• Joint Processing Center Unit
  • Shared service with harris county – responsible for booking and processing of prisoners arrested by houston police dept. 
• Training
  • Responsible for cadets during training at police academy, recruitment, background checks, and making recs regarding suitability of applicants. Continuing education through in service training for all HPD employees.
    • Cadet salary increased $10,000 from $42-52,000 – increase in recruiting and retention
• Employee services and wellness program
  • Responsible for psychological evaluation services dept wide employee wellbeing, benefits, hiring and promotions, job posting and performance evals. 
  • 4 voluntary separation and retirement programs. 
• Mental Health
  • crisis intervention response team, homeless outreach team, collision officer remote eval, and cronic consumer stabilization initiatives.
    • ‘Daily outreach’ for unhoused community increased – 5,595 contacts
• Strategic Operations Program
  • Responsible for ensuring ‘effective and efficient’ operation of resources by divisions – records ,planning and data governance, field ops, investigative ops, stat ops, support command, emerg comm, comm center, property and detention, and fleet management
• Community Outreach and Victim Services Program
  • “Relational policing initiatives designed to facilitate public safety through HTX”
    • Victim services provides resources and referrals for crime victims based on spec needs
    • Outreach programs focus on crime prevention, community service, youth serive, and positive interactions between law enforcement and community
• Admin services program
  • Provides support for leadership and exec, legal services, risk management, and gen services.
    • Reduction of $1.5 mil from the retirement project going away 

Accomplishments – 

• 2026 – April graduating cadets are higher than attrition – 69 graduated last week – over 5400 classified – more hirings attributed to new contract
• Recruitment and retention –  added 320 new officers. Neo gov aps increased 47% since July 2025 

Operational changes 

• Tested 4 10 hour shifts in 2022 – most patrol officers worked 5 8 hour shifts 2 days off
  • more officer wellness, decreased response times, decreased injuries on duty, decrease use of force due to fatigue
• Operational support division
  • Expanded tactical capabilities to support investigation – “special response team supports high risk search warrents, high risk arrests for investigations, patrol support team works 4 10s, patrol k9 is also in this 
  • Started with evening shift – they’ve been online since oct/nov now night shift is in training
  • Operation support team are 2 man units spread throughout the city – respond to high risk calls
    • use technology such as drones and cameras, other tactical capabilities that the other officers don’t have
      • 10-12 week training
      • “the idea is to show up and help patrol officers – minimize the use of force use on the suspects, these tools and these officers we hope over time will do just that”
    • Summer 26 night shift comes on, 3 sgnts 20 officers on each shift

Questions

Castillo – 7 vacancies that are being frozen, is that the word that was used? 
Hardin – Yes
C – These are classified? 
H – No, these are civilians. 
C – hears that people do like these positions in their communities, how will this impact community engagement side? 
H – These 7 civilians werent doing any outreach, this won’t affect the community affiars division – 71 allocated positions in the community affairs – developed in 80s and 90s – “all 5400 are liaisons. Community engagement unit, field operations – others are put in the stations in the areas they worked in the most. The idea would be that the cops have enough down time to engage in the communities they work in. As we are getting more and more officers on the street – the more officers on the street the more they can engage with community outside regular calls for service” 

Peck – Victim services, prev $9mil allocated, how was this reallocated? 
Hardin – All the salaries and benefits of the officers in community affairs were moved to where they went. Supplies budget rolled into community engagement
P – Have we had to allocate any other funding to accommodate this change? 
H – No 
P – For cadet classes, how many officers are we still short?
H – Map power studies over the years suggest down 6500, 7000 – “we can never have enough as long as we stay in budget” – as attrition decreases, overtime should decrease as well. 
P – How many cadet classes are scheduled for fy27? 
H – 5
P – If we found funding for a 6th class, is that something HPD would support? 
H – “It’s difficult – it’s difficult financially and logistically but if we had the people to fill the class the more the merrier”
P -For the human trafficking revenue fund, you mentioned a decrease, why? 
H – It’s for the seizures and it’s specific for that activity meaning the seizures of assets related to human trafficking can only be used for the victims so that fund was just set up last year. So we are project fewer seizures

Ramerez – I understand that the budget must grow – Asking questions out of the big book – the rate of increase is growing as well – 2024 it was 4%, 2025 almost 5% 26 just over 6%, 27 almost 8% – do you see that continuing? If it does it has significant implications several years out as far as the overall budget – do you expect the rate of increase?
Tran – The contract for meet and confit for classified was 10% for 27 its 8%, the following year it’s 6%, so with the contractual obligations it will be increasing. July 2028, 6%, july2029 6.5% 
R – Admin services, page 51 in the big book – business area 1000 – breaks down civilian classified cadets assigned to admin services, for fy27 projection in 165 classified under admin services, 2 years ago it was 83 – it looks like on paper we’ve got more classified officers assigned to admin, is that correct? 
Hardin – It’s correct by title but not admin work, they’re not doing admin they’re in the street. 

Martinez – Community outreach.. “quite frankly I don’t agree with it” – there are some things that need to be very intentional, police activity league, not everything has to be reactive, there’s proactive work as well. For FY25 there’s 163,000 community outreach prog participation, currently in queue it’s 83,000 (assumed). The opportunities to have those interactions between officers, but even more intentional education to the community on reporting, how do we make sure spanish speaking community can collaborate with law enforcement? Suggests reaching people on social media – platforms on how to report breakins. Having more neighborhood meetings is important and seeing the decrease in engagement raises red flags, thats where trust breaks down – community policing is important to me, it’s something we have pride in across the country. I push back that every police officer on the streets is going to be able to do that community outreach. 
Hardin – Pauses… “The numbers on this slide, part of it has to do with how we were tracking these numbers before. There were some numbers that I found to be unrealistic. I believe that we are now tracking numbers more accurately. We are still doing the PIP meetings. They’re all around the city. Differential response teams at stations are still doing community work.” 
M – As that division was taken away, the thought process was it would be boots on the ground, right? Do you have a number? Are they answering calls for service as well? I want to have an understanding, are they rolled into calls for service as well or do they have other responsibilities?
H – It varied per individual – most went to a community engagement unit at a division, some to the calls for service division

Flickenger – Response time – it looks like response time actually got worse for level one calls? 
Hardin – In April it was up, today its down to 5.29
F – Overtime, Joint proccessing is that still causing issues? 
H – Yes
F – Some officers have told me that they’re spending multiple hours down there. Also on overtime, article came out at the Chronical, I know Officer Davis had been reassigned from traffic after he got about $170,000 in overtime. Chronicle states he had 2 other issues with this, suspended in 2012 for 30 days, 15 days in 2013, is this correct? 
H – Yes
F – How is it looked at when someone has multiple issues with the same type of infraction like that? Was there a feeling that he was abusing overtime?
H – There was a feeling of that potentially and that’s why he is where he is now

Castillo – Traffic enforcement slide, KPI – reduce % of vehicle, bike, and pedestrian fatalities. My concern is that we have a lot of incidents, why did we see this drop off? 
H – I’m not sure why it’s not there… there was an 8% reduction in incidents. Will get back to you

Peck – Program to allow retired officers, why are we eliminating this? 
H – It was a source of income that we could eliminate to close the gap without getting rid of any classified officers or civilian officers. It was a fund that would allow us to save 1.5 mil without impacting full time employees 
P – Following up about community liaisons, we have heard repeatedly that from Asian, Black, LGBTQ communities that they would like to have their liasons back. Have y’all thought about paring it down so that you have fewer officers that are still liasoning?
H – We still have a LGBTQ liason. “My question would be, what are they looking to gain by reaching out to that one specific human being rather than a group of officers in their area?

I don’t know if they know the individuals working at a certain shift at a certain time, I believe that there was a level of trust, I’m happy to bring some of those individuals in. My answer would be my hope would be that the individuals would build relationships with the officers at the stations near them”
P – What other specialized units, for example noise complaints, sometimes it seems like they don’t have the equipment they might need – so just to highlight that there continue to be those complaints so if we could beef up those operations that would be good. 
P – I also wanted to ask about mental health response, you touched on it a little. A reference was made to city wide mental health crisis. CIT, does that refer to specially trained officers patroling at any given time? 
H – Yes
P – At any given time, do you know how many are patrolling the city? 
H – We have over 4000 crisis trained officers
P Is that now a TCUL (?) requirement? 
H – There are also cert (?) teams that are a clinician and an officer – they respond to as many calls as they can within their time – sometimes there are calls that would benefit from a cert team but there isn’t enough staff. The mental health calls are very high frequency, understand that patience is what is required for someone in crisis. “I’m very proud of what the dept has done to make sure they know that being in crisis is not a crime.” 

Castillo – On 419 emancipation – homeless outreach team stationed there, will HPD be receiving reimbursements for the officers on sight or incur any additional costs? 
H – No to both 
C – Employee services and wellness, on PEG 6 FTEs frozen for that, 72.8 in 26 to 58 in 27 budget?
H – Need to get a written answer because their page was blank

Ramerez- We think very highly of the mental health call line that keep people out of the criminal justice system that don’t need to be there, concerned though there are not enough staff 
H – This does not fall under us – we can never have enough staffing for mental health 
R – Overtime will decrease 22% over the fiscal year?
H – The allocated money is decreased by 22%
R – What’s going to be different that will bring this down? 
H – hope to bring it down but can’t guarantee that they will. In the past it was $14mil, now its $21 – taken up by holidays and airport – everything at airport is reimbursed but its the general fund 

We’re trying to move budget to where allocations. When the city adopts additional holidays overtime pay goes up. 

H – No weather events except winter storm last year, global affairs – this last year we spent a lot of money on protests for a couple different causes that have to do with global affairs that don’t have anything to do with the city of houston

R – If an officer calls in sick, does the person who picks up the shift get overtime? 

H – No – they do not call in other officers for overtime, the other officers “pick up the slack” 

R – We’ve visited about rapid scan DNA machine possible at joint processing center, if we could find part or all of the money, this sounds like something the police dept would support? 

H – Any tool or tech that increases that speed we can catch suspects that’s great. 

Public speaker questions – Hardin and Tran seem to leave 

1. On page 19 – there was a KPI that almost doubled encounters for traffic enforcement – you’ve heard a number of calls from the community about how we’d actually like fewer encounters particularly for non safety and minor traffic stops – curious as to why this KPI increased..
2. The chief said that more cops is a safer city and I just want to mention that other depts create community safety, we heard about how libraries give public safety in different ways, resources bring safety, more cops is not the only way to make a safer city
3. In Mayor podcast there is a mention that all of the HPD at protests is coming out of overtime, I think it’s realistic to expect there to be more protests
4. 2mil dollars in district service funds that are paid to HPD and flock etc, can we get a full accounting of where extra money to HPD is in the budget besides the district service funds in the HPD budget? 
5. Chief Hardin mentioned crime is down, but wanted to ask if crime is down because immigrant communities are scared of the police. A bigger police budget does not mean more safety because immigrant communities aren’t going to the cops because they are afraid of them. HPD cannot account for its overtime hours. What progress is being made to shifting HPD to outcome based budgeting rather than outputs. Metrics such as police staffing and homelessness outreach attempts tell us nothing about whose lives are improved by this budget? Can you shift money to resources? Flickenger asked if the FIFA money could be used to support HPD, mentioning that people are scared to come to the city because of ICE and HPD collaboration. There are ways we could be spending this money better. 
6. Harrisburg trail – have felt overwhelmed by the presence of so many police officers on the trail. Have seen more presence – more often than not they are harassing the unhoused communities and I don’t think these are are mentally health trained officers. We are fearful because HPD is known to escalate encounters and known that it collaborates with ICE. Safety could look like increasing funding to our parks. This would be a much better use of our money. 
7. They are going to 4 10s, is overtime based on a daily total or a weekly total? Regarding overtime at airport, when there is a report hat shows x amount of dollars shown – reimbursed from the airport is not shown to community right now. They want to reduce number of traffic fatalities – can you get me the stats for fatalities, group A violent crimes. Regarding admin servies increased 26% proposed – I find interesting under traffic enforcement 2.3 % of total budget – I feel like there’s more need for traffic enforcement, surprising to me that only 2% goes to that. Forfeiture – entire budget is overtime, why do both of these have overtime only? Interesting on asset forgeture – 9 mil current budget, estimating spend 5.7, budget again for 27 again is 9mil – why if the estimate is 5.7 mil, are they given a budget of 9.1 mil for the coming year? Same thing happened for planning dept. Strat and admin services sound like they could be staffed by civilians instead of classified, would like breakdwon between civilian and
   1. Peck – agree we need to really take a look but if we’re getting a service reimbursed, we need to accurately show our reimbursement. 
8. Request to cancel and decommission flock cameras, flock has about 3800 in the Houston area – in 2024 there was a pager and walkie talkie attack in Lebanon. With the world cup coming – Flock doesn’t have enough people, wether it’s software or on-site audits to make sure these aren’t compromised. Redirect all the money to make metro fairs free. Let’s act like a real city. And not have eyes in the sky that can target our trans people. 
9. Go to the library and check out 1984 and have a book club – start a book club and read it together. How does more police on the street help with deeper community ties? Are the people the city, or is HPD the city? Libraries make communities safer. There have been no consequences for HPD officers who use Flock. 
10. DDSRF metro line – 29.7mil to support HPD traffic enforcement prog and gen fund- clarity on what that number is as it sits in the metro portion. End contracts with Flock, we’ve seen this council end security contracts before. There’s a 7.3mil reduction in civilian employees, what were the responsibilities of the employees and if these responsibilities are being passed on to different departments? The health dept on thurs talked about not enough dollars going to youth violence prevention listed under quality of life priority, dept of neighborhoods keeps – how do we reconcile taking away funding from youth anti-violence while saying that public safety is a top priority? How are payments for illegal settlements tracked in the budget?

return to top of page