The sad truth is that Whitmire’s incompetent governance will make Houston more expensive to live and build in, worsens the city’s financial crisis, and ultimately will pass the buck to the next administration.
Budget and HPD raise
Whitmire’s budget slashes services, cuts staff and underfunds key departments. With the $7 billion budget, despite the promise in no reduction in service, Houstonians can expect nearly $290 million in budget cuts, notably $4M from health, $7M from neighborhoods, $1.8M from libraries, $4M from parks in the name of “efficiency.”
Whitmire also cut many staffers in the name of “efficiency.” There’s been a hiring Freeze since March 10th In addition, thanks to the Retirement Incentive, over 1000 employees (5% of city staff) retired early. 882 of these positions will not be backfilled, instead relying on contractors. These forced retirements have cost the city decades of expertise and knowledge and, worse, the pension payments these people were promised have not been fulfilled. We have retirees in this city who are now scrambling since they’ve been let go because of a plan the city can’t follow through on.
While city services and departments are being cut, this new budget gives HPD a near billion dollar raise over the next five years. This new change comes at the expense of many essential services, including drainage maintenance. Despite protests, Whitmire and most of the city council voted to pass the bill. This budget makes no attempt to account for cuts that are coming our way from President Trump. Thousands of Houstonians are one step closer to losing Medicare and SNAP. The Houston Health Department is losing 42 million dollars in federal funding. After weeks of protesting and advocacy from community groups, that Whitmire famously despises, City Council and Whitmire voted to fund improvements and home repairs post-Beryl and the Derecho by $100 million. However, current drainage repair and maintenance needs as well as future needs have been largely ignored by the mayor. Yes, he struck a deal to reallocate money to the drainage fund, but it is still drastically underfunded for Houston’s needs. With no plan drainage plan and no policy to prevent development in flood zones, Whitmire sets up Houston for expensive responses to disasters, higher insurance costs or insurers refusing to cover, and future financial crises.
Whitmire’s budget deal takes a page out of Trump’s DOGE playbook, slashing essential services while bloating the already bloated police budget. This budget will be disastrous for Houstonians for years to come.
More on police: Whitmire has participated in photo-ops and unnecessary overtime pay for police. During the peak of the
budgeting session, Whitmire was going on photo-op outings with police and
holding several task force meetings outside of regular hours. Both of these
are unnecessary and a waste of the city’s dwindling funds.
The Cost of Car-Centric Policies
Houston has a budget crisis. This was something that Whitmire constantly talked about, but hasn’t put forward any solutions to fixing. Instead, his policies have worsened our budget crisis. A recent Houston Chronicle Article purports that Whitmire has no plan to address a looming $237 million deficit. Whitmire declined a request for comment.
Under Whitmire’s administration, we have seen numerous street improvement projects cancelled and reversed, as well as a disregard for sensibly managing projects. As of October 11th, 15 street improvement and safety projects have been paused, cancelled, ripped out or redesigned to be less safe and mobile by Whitmire. We cannot tell you the total cost of these actions because the city refuses to release that information to the public. The little information we do have already puts the cost over $30 million, a gross undercalculation of the actual costs.
The poster child for how Whitmire burns your money is Houston Avenue. The avenue was redesigned to be safer for pedestrian and drivers, adding medians and changing its lane structure, the total cost of this was $100,000. This project was fully completed, then Whitmire came to office and ordered it to be completely torn up. This demolition and redesigning the avenue back to its original five-lane structure cost around $700,000. This figure does not include the repairs that had to be made from crews hitting gas lines and water mains. In total, Houston Avenue’s cost ballooned to 1000 times the cost of the original project, going from $100,000 to $1,000,000. A million dollars was spent on a 0.28 mile stretch of road. That is not responsible nor pragmatic.
Whitmire’s approach to infrastructure is one that makes your lives more dangerous and more expensive. Why would a mayor would govern like this, especially one who ran on being the mayor of public safety? Whitmire backtracking or pausing projects has also threatened grants and federal funding. Ripping out the Austin Street bike lane, funded by Harris County Precinct 1, puts future collaboration at risk as well. Why would the county, state, or federal government want to work with a city that reverses approved projects and increases construction costs with unnecessary redesigns and pauses. Even local land developers that work with the city are unable to find a good reason as to why Whitmire keeps pushing pro-traffic policies. This uncertainty and policy shift away from safety and mobility discourages developers from building here, further impacting the city’s economic status. This is a huge driver of the local economy that Whitmire is recklessly disrupting.
In 2024, Houston saw its highest recorded amount of traffic deaths, reaching 301 after two years of decline. The number of deaths so far in 2025 are on track to surpass that number. Early into Whitmire’s administration, he abandoned Vision Zero, a program established to make our roads safer and to have fatalities decline. It’s no surprise that under Whitmire, our roads have become more dangerous. This makes life in Houston deadlier and more expensive. Car insurance companies factor in if an area has a high rate of fatalities. Whitmire’s dangerous incompetence will raise your auto insurance rates and make life more expensive.
Whitmire’s treatment and use of Metro has also cost the city money. By rejecting VOTER APPROVED MetroNext, The city turned down millions in federal funding to expand bus rapid transit that would link the universities across the city as well as expand access to areas like Katy, Gulfton, and Sharpstown. Yes, Metro made the decision, but it was under the direction and appointees of Mayor Whitmire. Metro has also become a second public works department, another one of Whitmire’s short-term “fixes” that short-change Houston in the long run. If Whitmire responsibility balanced the city budget and fully funded Public Works, Metro would not have to take on the responsibilities repaving roads and filling pot holes and could focus on expanding and improving the city transit system.
Bad Investments
The GRB expansion is a Houston First (Whitmire appointed chair) pet project that he has told will bring in revenue from the city. The city did not pay to have a consultant run the cost-benefit analysis for him to be able to make that claim with any honesty. If we look at the financial return on convention center expansions in other cities in the state and country…there is no financial return. It won’t be any different here. This will result in the short-term and long-term loss of billions of dollars. The convention industry is a dying. Cities across the country have already expanded their centers and have consistently lost money quarter over quarter because of it. We will have to pay organizations to use the center. Instead the money from Hotel occupancy taxes can be used to fund arts in the citylike Ireland has done, hosting more cultural events and festivals, or anything that the city considers encourages tourism (could be transportation and multi-modal infrastructure).
Whitmire’s policies have huge costs. He’s shown that he doesn’t know how to manage our streets, promotes costly and ineffective projects, and confuses local businesses and developers. Whitmire’s politics carry a financial burden that we cannot afford.
Houston, incompetence is expensive. As the fourth-largest city in the country, we cannot have a mayor who endangers our city, especially as our city’s deficit grows. Mayor Whitmire is leading Houston to a fiscal crisis and his ineptitude will make life more expensive and dangerous for all of Houston.
Recall for Houston 