Maybe John Whitmire should get out more to see that it is an outright lie. Drive around the neighborhoods, and you’ll find heavy trash still on the curbs for months.
Even the HPOU union guy says heavy trash isn’t being picked up. I believe Whitmire is stating that our budget shows the heavy trash is being picked up on time and on schedule. Like Donald Trump, he lives in an alternate-reality world.
Houston is now facing a $174 million general fund deficit, and adoption is scheduled in June. Whitmire has said he will present a proposed budget on May 5, and Budget and Financial Affairs Committee Chair Sallie Alcorn is accepting feedback online via a survey.
Alice Liu, co-director of West Street Recovery, an organization that formed in 2017 to assist northwest Houston residents who were trapped in their homes during Hurricane Harvey, says the People’s Budget campaign aims to engage flood survivors and immigrants by proposing initiatives they believe need funding and areas that can be cut.
“The budget impacts so many different issues that cut to the core of what it means to be living in this city and to continue to live in this city for not just our lifetimes but for generations to come,” she says.
While the April meeting on the People’s Budget primarily included members of Pure Justice, West Street Recovery and its subsidiary Northeast Action Collective, several individuals have also raised concerns about the city’s debt and what appear to be diminishing services.
After last year’s budget was adopted, Houston Democracy Project founder Neil Aquino said, “The budget cut essential services on behalf of over-generous public safety union contracts, did not plan for the inevitable costs of our next disaster and left the city vulnerable to substantial future budget shortfalls.”
Whitmire has maintained that he’s done what he promised on the campaign trail: address long-standing inefficiencies and financial mismanagement. The FY 2026 budget was informed by an efficiency study that “exposed waste, duplication and conflicts of interest that undermined the services Houstonians rely on,” Whitmire says, adding that no services were cut and no taxes were raised last year.
Liu says that last year’s budget raised police pay by $67 million, underfunded drainage by $9.5 million, and cut social services — including public health, libraries and parks — by $122 million. “Unfortunately, this year, the forecast shows us only sinking deeper into this fiscal crisis,” she says.
Whitmire said at the adoption of the 2026 budget last year that he was proud of the document and that there were no cuts to services or tax increases. Hollins, in an extensive report, refuted those claims, saying, for example, that an increased water rate would cause residents’ bills to go up, even if it’s not labeled a new fee.
The mayor has also said he doesn’t want to politicize the budget. Liu claims that everyone at the People’s Budget meeting this month hopes to do just that. “The budget is fundamentally political,” she says. “The budget is a means by which wealth is being further concentrated, by which democracy is being threatened and by which power is being further concentrated for special interests instead of the people. So yes, the budget is political.”
Liu’s research shows 36,000 complaints about Solid Waste were registered in 2025. More than two dozen department employees retired recently and few have been replaced, she says. Additionally, some of the department’s equipment is inoperable and the workers make about 20 percent less than the national average. Public Works lost 249 employees last year, according to Liu, and the department was already understaffed.
“There is no more room to cut,” she says. “It is a lie that the city is overstaffed. The very opposite is true. Workers are being asked to do more with less funding and fewer resources.”
Let me end this by stating that the very large pay raises that the Fire and Police obtained were also supposed to increase the number of officers on the street.
If you listen very carefully, what you won’t find is that John Whitmire crowing that so many more recruits are joining the ranks of police officers. John Whitmire is a braggart, and he would be bragging about it if it were so.
He did crow, but the numbers suggest we gained about 250 officers over a two-year period. Maybe, maybe not, numbers can be fudged. According to the HPOU, they lose about 250 officers per year, so if you bring in 750 over two years, then you gain 250 new officers. Again, Whitmire is known to stretch the truth.
Meanwhile, Whitmire managed to fine $60,000 city dollars to start a podcast to promote himself.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s office paid up to $60,000 for his new podcast, “901 Bagby: Inside The Mayor’s Office,” according to records obtained by Houston Public Media.
In a purchase order, the work provided by podcast host Owen Conflenti — owner of Conflenti Media and former KPRC 2 news anchor — was described as “advertising services.”
The podcast is intended to foster “public engagement,” Whitmire told Houston Public Media on Friday.
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