And this difference is not a result of Hurricane Harvey, it’s been a trend for the past several years. Houston, which has been hard hit by the drop in oil prices, is grappling with a sharp drop-off in sales tax and fee revenue that has left the city with a deficit of almost $170 million. Brown’s test found that under a worst-case recession, the city would face a $331 million general fund shortfall by fiscal 2023. RELATED: 3,000 city employees could face furloughs under proposed Houston budget. I went and got tested today. “So, the time to start preparing for this is now.”. Our rainy day fund—we’re pulling the entire amount from that. It hasn’t just been a health care crisis; it’s been an economic crisis, all at the same time. People that work in parks. And then I think you’ll see a continued hit to the budget the following year, so it will be at least two to two and a half years.”. At a time when newsroom resources and revenue across the country are declining, The Texas Tribune remains committed to sustaining our mission: creating a more engaged and informed Texas with every story we cover, every event we convene and every newsletter we send. But unlike the other two cities, Houston does not charge residents a trash collection fee. The mayor said the projected $169 million budget shortfall is tied to increased personnel costs, including police and municipal pay raises, health benefits and pensions, Turner said. “But unfortunately, we have not had a structurally balanced budget, so any increase we’ve seen in property or sales tax has been scooped up to pay deficits for the following fiscal year.”. It's not a perfect solution for the city of Houston, because we were proactive, and we shut down the revenue-producing events in the city of Houston, to the detriment of what we're looking at now in the 2021 budget.". And it has challenged us in every aspect of our life. The economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic has left some of Texas’ biggest cities facing a difficult choice: cutting services like libraries, pools and parks, or raising taxes on their residents in the middle of the worst economy in a generation.

If you’re still having trouble, please contact us here and we’ll try to get you set up. The mayor said it's the fifth consecutive year that his administration has struggled to close a gap.

Unlike Houston, Harris County depends almost entirely on property taxes for its revenues. "Sales tax is going to be a dramatic difference this year, because no one is consuming goods," Martin said. In San Antonio, for example, the fire department has been trained in transportation of COVID-19 patients, decontamination of equipment used in COVID-19 responses and surveillance of health-related data. They all spend about the same amount of money per capita on police services, but with different outcomes: Houston has the best police response times. KHOU has just upgraded its technology.

People of different perspectives inevitably will have different views about Houston’s chronic budget problems.

The city's. And then, especially, in light of councilmember Letitia Plummer testing positive. “It’s the toughest budget we’ve … RELATED: Houston City Councilwoman tests positive for COVID-19. Last month, Turner briefly spoke about the city's budget deficit due to COVID-19. Turner has expressed skepticism that the approach will yield significant savings, noting that personnel costs make up about 92 percent of the combined costs of the police and fire departments. And for whatever reason, Houstonians generate far more trash than their counterparts in Dallas and San Antonio — about 1.6 tons per person each year, compared with about 1 ton per year for each resident in the other two cities. It was important for me to get tested myself and to be an example.

Houston Public Media is supported with your gifts to the Houston Public Media Foundation and is licensed to the University of Houston, , Exxon, Chevron To Cut US Jobs As Oil Industry Struggles, Another Bad Week In The Energy Sector (Oct. 23, 2020), 6 Months Into The Oil Market Crash, Still No End In Sight, Community Advocates Oppose Increasing Houston Police Budget At City Council, Live 2020 Election Updates From NPR: Watching Very Tight Races, Texas AG Ken Paxton’s Affair Tied To Criminal Allegations, AP Reports, 5 Election Takeways From The Houston Area, Kevin Cole Becomes Pearland’s First New Mayor In More Than Two Decades, GOP Candidate Troy Nehls Wins TX-22 In A Closely-Watched Race, Michael McCaul Wins Race For Houston-Austin Congressional District. "So, we're going to have a significant loss of revenue, and that's not even looking at the loss of revenue from conventions that we're not having, hotel nights that we're not filling. That’s my greatest concern. The low ending balance is one indication of just how stressed the city's finances will be in the year ahead.

However, much of this revenue is devoted to capital improvements, not operations, and because many parks conservancies are devoted to a single park, the private funds are not equitably distributed across Houston’s park system. If you already see KHOU on 11.1, you may now ALSO see it on 11.11 – it’s the exact same programming. In the past 30 years, all three cities have cut their parks budgets dramatically as other pressures — including pension costs and pressure to maintain police and fire service — have taken precedence. City officials warn of across-the-board layoffs in the face of a deficit likely to surpass $200 million. Subscribe to the Kinder Institute newsletter. Show us with your support. “I can't speak for any particular city, but I think it’s going to be a deeper, far deeper recession than what we saw 12 years ago.”. Mayor Turner attributes the $95 million deficit to the city’s ongoing pension problems.

Do you value our journalism? Dallas and San Antonio are much smaller than Houston in population, and San Antonio has a different “revenue mix” because the city owns its electric utility. Nearly a third of the city's revenue comes from sales tax. The three cities are not directly comparable in all respects. U.S. crude tumbled to $31.13 a barrel, its lowest point since the oil bust of 2015 and 2016. FBCSO gives Fulshear Police Department new K9 after theirs died unexpectedly, Harris County is still counting votes: Here's how workers officially count more than 1.6 million votes, Tropics update: Not done with Eta yet as Cuba and Florida watch forecast track closely, Tropical Depression Eta update: Heading back into open waters, Cuba and Florida watching closely, Red Sox bringing Alex Cora back as manager, reports say, 3 Texans linebackers out at Jaguars after positive COVID-19 test, AP sources: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's affair tied to criminal allegations, Houston City Councilwoman tests positive for COVID-19, 3,000 city employees could face furloughs under proposed Houston budget, It's not hurricane season yet, but something's brewing in the Atlantic, TEA provides changes to 2020-21 school calendars, prepares for 'devastating impact' on students, Map: Keeping track of Houston-area coronavirus cases. Follow the Kinder Institute on social media. The 2021 plan includes municipal employee furloughs, five deferred police cadet classes, and an ending general fund balance below the required minimum 7.5%.

We’ve gone through these storms before—we’ve faced huge challenges.

Budget BootCamp; BudPrep Manual; FY2021 Operating Budget - Raw Data (.xlsx) By law, Houston can't run a budget deficit. Other concerns, Brown said, include the city’s $2.3 billion unfunded liability for retiree health care costs, pending litigation over the Proposition B firefighter “pay parity” measure, ongoing storm recovery costs and the hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance the city has deferred on its aging facilities. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said a city budget deficit of $169 million that’s been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic will force the city … Cities could increase property taxes to avoid revenue shortfalls, but few have indicated they are planning to do so. “These three cities, like most local governments, are going to be in enormously difficult financial trouble if they don’t get a bailout from the feds, which right now looks like they’re not going to,” Fulton said.

If there's a bright spot in local finances, it's on the county side.

“This is not going to go away very quickly,” Sandlin said. Houston has a locally imposed property tax revenue cap, which, according to City Controller Chris Brown, has limited the city’s property tax collections by more than $100 million per year in each of the past few years.

Dallas also provides more-frequent special pickups for brush and other large waste. While Houston’s deficit is due in part to revenue drops related to COVID-19 — for example, the city lost $25 million in expected sales-tax revenue in March alone — part of it is what budget nerds call a “structural” problem. A new Kinder Institute report compares the revenue sources and service levels among the three largest cities in Texas — Houston, Dallas and San Antonio — all of which are expected to see COVID-19-related revenue losses of between 10 and 15%. In a statement issues on Friday, he said. Most of the other 60% comes from property taxes, which are the most important source of revenue for cities in Texas. "This CARES Act was a perfect solution for New York City. Best case, the city’s operating deficit would be $156 million. 2. "We estimated that the worst-case scenario, if we saw a 2008-2009-type recession, we could see a budget gap in the future as large as $300 million," Brown said. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. A global recession would hit Houston particularly hard, Brown noted, due to its economic dependence on global oil demand. local sales tax allocations for cities in June dropped by 11.1%, a report analyzing the fiscal scenarios for Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, which would include $1 trillion for local governments, cities could waive this limit under a disaster declaration, $150 billion for state, local and tribal governments.

Houston maintains its own health department at an annual cost of $60 million, though a large portion of that cost is offset by Medicaid reimbursements and grants.

Just today, the mayor announced Houston is facing a $169 million budget gap that could lead to 3,000 city employees being furloughed. In Houston, the city is planning to avoid furloughs by redirecting employees to tasks like taking the temperature of workers at municipal offices to identify those who might be infected. Last year, amid the ongoing debate over Proposition B voter-mandated pay increases for firefighters, Turner, including 300 employee layoffs, though those layoffs didn’t make it into, COVID-19 Forced Clinics To Adopt Telehealth. But during the pandemic, the border has been closed to nonessential travel, effectively stopping most visitors from Mexico. The Houston City Council did recently pass a once-a-year trash bin fee of $1.14 per household that’s expected to generate $5 million annually. “It’s the toughest budget we’ve had to put together since I’ve been mayor in January of 2016,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in May.

As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cut into its revenue, the City of Houston appears to be on the brink of yet another budget crisis.

Budget Officer Bill Jackson said Harris County socked away funds to deal with two emergencies at once – one a natural disaster, one an economic crisis. He frequently acknowledges the annual struggle of closing the city’s budget gap, and last year formed a working group of city employees to study possible fixes for the growing retiree health costs. Houston City Controller Chris Brown says the city was already facing a $100-million shortfall even before the coronavirus shut down the economy and the price of oil collapsed.

Greg Abbott has disputed that conclusion. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was initially opposed to that.