When you are going broke, you don’t find ways to spend more money or to get into debt, but that seems to be Mayor Whitmire’s response.

Let me begin by stating that is the mayor and council are looking for waste they need to begin with the fire and police department. There is where most waste will be found.

Many years ago, Meme was chief-of-staff for a council member and in one of the budgets he worked with the controller George Greanias. He showed me how many budget were wasteful and why they were wasteful. Some of them were slush funds that were uncovered years later, by another mayor.

The garbage fee is justified because all other major cities have it, therefore Houston should have it also. That is nonsense. The mayor and council need to remember that many residents can barely afford to survive much less find ways not to take baths. Many people are homeless because they can no longer afford to have a place to live in.

When that ninety-three year old resident of the neighborhood calls me, I will make sure that she knows that John Whitmire is the reason that she may be paying $200 a month for water.

You heard it straight from Mayor John Whitmire at last week’s city council meeting: “Houston is broke.”

“On an annual basis, we are spending somewhere between $150 million and $200 million more than is coming in,” City Controller Chris Hollins said.

One way or another, you’ll have to pay for it.

“(The COVID-19 pandemic) really silenced the conversation because we got so much money from the federal government that we were able to make our budgets work, but really, this problem started 20 years ago, almost a quarter century ago, with the pension funds,” John Diamond, the director of the Center for Public Finance at Rice University’s Baker Institute, explained.

Diamond said taxpayers should expect substantial rate and fee increases for at least five to 10 years from now.

“We’re beyond the, ‘Can we afford it? Is this a good decision?’ This is a, ‘We’re in a little bit of a crisis, and we have to do this to try to see if we can rebound,'” Diamond put it. Source

So when you are going broke the best thing to do is find a way to get more into debt. What does one expect from a politician (Whitmire) except nonsense.

A deal to give firefighters backpay and raises sparked a spirited debate from the people who will have to give it the green light.

For more than an hour on Wednesday, city council members went back and forth with Mayor John Whitmire.

“You may be their best friend, but we may not have the money for them,” Houston City Council Member Tiffany Thomas said.

The passionate debate was over a deal with Houston firefighters. Firefighters have been at odds with the city over pay for nearly a decade.

It’s a fight that’s been at the voting booth, council chamber, and courtroom. Whitmire campaigned to bring it to an end.

Last week, he announced he reached a deal regarding firefighters backpay and new raises that was discussed for the first time at council on Wednesday.

“Is the total cost going to be a billion dollars? A billion plus?” Houston City Council Member Edward Pollard asked.

“It will probably be pushing that,” Houston City Attorney Arturo Michel answered. Source

Whitmire don’t look at how much it will cost, look at how much I am saving you.

Whitmire said it could’ve cost even more. He noted that backpay, not including raises, could’ve been more than a billion dollars if it played out in court.

The deal he struck gives firefighters $650 million in backpay and 34% raises over the next five years.

That great deal that Whitmire will be making, will make most firefighters millionaires when they retire.

Generous payouts for Houston firemen come as city sues pension fund

The payouts come at a time when the city of Houston is suing the firefighters pension fund for the right to have local negotiating power over the city’s future contributions to the fund.