Posted on 03/27/2024 2:05:50 PM PDT by george76
Mayor John Whitmire proposing a 5% cut across the board, except for fire and police departments..
Tax hikes and increased fees for parking and city services are likely ..
The Mayor of Houston says the city is 'broke' after overspending for decades.
Experts say the problem has existed for years, but COVID handouts from the federal government helped mask them.
...
A tax hike through a bond is expected in November.
...
The city has been struggling to make firefighters whole, from meeting its contractual obligation to their pension, to paying backpay and wage hikes that have been promised years ago.
Whitmire's plan to settle with the first responders will cost taxpayers $650 million for over the next five years.
'I don't like a five percent cut now, but you have to make tough decisions, and folks put me in this position to make tough decisions, and I'm going to do my job,' Whitmire stated.
The city also gave away some of its revenue to the public transit system in the 70s.
'They spent $3 billion on light rail system that is performing horribly,' Democrat John Whitmire, who was elected in December, gave the bleak warning at a City Hill meeting this week where he proposed a five percent cut across all city spending to alleviate the cash-flow problem.
'I think we can all agree that we're broke,' Whitmire said, before proposing the planned cuts.
'This gives us a chance to discuss the financial picture of this City. It is broken! It was broken when I got here, ' he said.
America's fourth largest city is spending more money than it's taking in, leaving it with a $160 million deficit,
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
If you kick the can down the road for decades then eventually the can rusts and falls apart. When you hire employees based upon the color of their skin or their sex instead of their experience and abilities then soon no one is doing the jobs that need to be done to make a city successful.
When a city gives money away to favored parties and gets nothing in return but votes and favorable treatment in tax-funded contracts, then you later have to spend more funds to get the job actually done. Eventually, you can raise taxes no more and infrastructures and city services start to fail.
Every Democrat-controlled city is facing the same reality. What is worse is that our federal government is on the same path. I expect soon we will see those that have destroyed our nation pack up their bags and escape to the hidey-holes on private islands that they have purchased with our tax dollars. They will leave the burning debris behind for someone else to clean up.
If they give up and allow Trump to be elected this fall, suddenly the true state of the economy will be on the front pages of every media site. On day one they will blame conservatives for inflation, the debt, crime, etc. The democrats that brought us to this point will be phoning in their comments from their bunkers on Epstein’s Island.
Oh, by the way, although the Democrats have abandoned the term “Bidenomics” after conservatives started using it in memes, etc to criticize the Biden administration’s economic policies, Democrats created the term hoping it would catch on in popularity. However, they forgot to purchase the .com site (DEI hires strike once again). Americans for Prosperity grabbed the site and now that URL goes to a site that perfectly describes ‘Bidenomics’.
When illegals receive $15,000 per capita in government benefits (money/food-stamps/medical/housing) and you increase their minimum wage taxes 5% from $2000 to $2050 / yr / capita - how does the 5% tax increase on illegals solve the problem?
Ok so there’s no place else to cut, it’s gotta’ be firefighters! Same old lying bullshit. This tactic should be illegal due to natural priorities. You DON’T cut firefighters or cops or jails until you cut EVERYTHING ELSE!
why is it welfare never gets cut???
“This is probably why parking tickets were down. People got laid off and moved away from Houston.”
If the population was dropping why the need to increase the number of Meter Maids from four to 17?
I was there lived there during most of the 80s and never saw an excuse for why 4 white Meter maids became a huge number of 17 black women and why that resulted in less work being done.
The Houston Chronicle also ran an article of why everyone, blacks included, had more difficulty in identifying/describing black criminals.
Hubris. The first paragraph that I excerpted spoke to the city thinking they were in fine shape. There was a building boom going on, so they were expecting an increase in traffic and workers downtown.
As to the white/black change, I can't say. This was during the Kathy Whitmire administration.
-PJ
Where’s that smart aleck Houston lady who cursed me out for saying the previous mayor wasn’t taking care of Houston?
I kept up with the city news in the next five years because my old neighborhood (energy corridor south of Westheimer) was decimated by worker flight. Much of the housing was taken over by the government (foreclosures) and used for low-income housing.
The area now is crime-ridden, but back then it was just beginning to make the change as corporate workers relocated to other states.
-PJ
I was born and raised in Houston, home delivered and sold on downtown street corners all three newspapers at different times and have always read all of them, it is my hometown.
I moved back to Houston from about 82 on of the 1980s before taking off again and know what you are talking about, and part of that time I was surveying residential properties for resales.
The Councilman was right to ask the questions and want to know what happened to that office, both in hiring and production.
You nailed it.
TFB Houston! I love Texas, but the libtards are destroying it.
Liberals destroy everything they touch.
Forced federal integration followed by the mass immigration that really started to show about 1970 destroyed it, and it was shocking how quickly it went.
Exactly what happens when you put DEI (didn’t earn it) people in charge.
Half the downtown office buildings were empty. I bet they still did not lay off any downtown meter maids.
[Houston Mayor John Whitmire says city is ‘broke’ after decades of overspending]
KEEP VOTING DEMOCRAT!! IT’S WORKING!!!
Bkmk
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