Where is the money going?

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Houston’s budget has become too opaque, too reactive, and too disconnected from results. Year after year, core spending decisions are driven by short-term fixes, emergency overtime, and delayed capital projects instead of long-term planning and follow-through. Voter-approved funds sit unspent, essential infrastructure projects stall, and departments roll forward the same line items without proving they work. Right now, nearly 37 percent of Houston’s General Fund goes to the Houston Police Department, roughly $1.1 billion in the current budget. Yet, while the budget balloons, the results stay stagnant. 

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That scale of spending demands tighter management, not blank checks.  The pattern repeats itself elsewhere. Voters approved dedicated funding for drainage and street repair, only to see transportation and drainage dollars redirected or delayed, leaving roads unrepaired and flood-mitigation projects unfinished years after approval. After major disasters, including Harvey, resilience projects stalled while funds sat unspent or were reshuffled, even as neighborhoods continued to flood. In early 2026, the city shifted $30 million from the stormwater budget to blight remediation, while flood-prevention projects remained incomplete and underfunded. At the same time, the current mayor spent millions on removing critical bike lane infrastructure that had cost millions to build in the first place, most notably, a two-way protected bikeway on Austin Street that cost roughly $2 million to build and an estimated $2.5 million to remove and reconfigure. Yeah, great use of the city budget (sarcasm).

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The plan.

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Investing in what keeps families working

Houston’s budget should reflect the real costs families face, not just the services City Hall has always funded. A mayor, Neeloy will propose that the annual budget to include a clearly named, standalone child-care line item, treating child care as economic infrastructure on par with roads and drainage. That means directing city resources toward expanding affordable slots, stabilizing the child-care workforce, and coordinating funding with employers, nonprofits, Harris County, and philanthropic partners to maximize impact. Today, child care is scattered across departments or omitted entirely from high-level budget documents, making it invisible and easy to underfund. Bringing it into the open allows outcomes to be tracked and scaled, strengthening workforce participation and public safety at the same time.

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Accountability, transparency, and follow-through

Budgets break down when spending is hard to track and no one is clearly responsible for results. Stronger controls start with real-time public reporting on overtime, beginning with HPD, paired with clear departmental caps so short-term emergencies do not quietly become permanent spending commitments. Capital dollars should be tracked at the project level, showing when funds are approved, obligated, spent, and completed, so residents can see progress instead of promises. When voter-approved funds are diverted from their intended purpose, existing legal and administrative tools should be used to require repayment, correction, or reprogramming. 

 

Growing revenue without overburdening residents

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• Re-Assess Property Tax Caps

Houston should modernize its property tax revenue cap by replacing the current charter formula that limits annual property tax revenue growth to the lower of population growth plus inflation or 4.5 percent. The formula was adopted in 2004 to protect taxpayers from sharp increases in property tax collections, but it no longer reflects the financial realities of a modern city. Construction costs, infrastructure maintenance, employee health care, public safety equipment, and contractual obligations have consistently grown faster than the formula allows. As a result, Houston has repeatedly been forced to lower its property tax rate even as residents expect reliable city services and the city's costs continue to rise.

Since the revenue cap became binding in 2015, the City of Houston estimates that it has forgone more than $2.2 billion in property tax revenue that otherwise could have been invested in neighborhood services and infrastructure. On average, that represents approximately $220 million per year, enough to meaningfully expand library hours, improve parks, repair sidewalks and streets, increase bus infrastructure, strengthen flood resilience, and address deferred maintenance throughout the city.

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Neeloy's administration would ask Houston voters to replace the current population growth and inflation formula with a simpler, more flexible revenue framework that preserves meaningful taxpayer protections while allowing the city to keep pace with rising costs. Any change would be paired with strict fiscal accountability, including zero based budgeting, independent performance audits, and full public transparency on how every additional dollar is spent. Before asking taxpayers to contribute more, City Hall should demonstrate that it is spending existing resources wisely. The result would be a budget that is both fiscally responsible and capable of sustaining the essential public services that Houstonians rely upon.

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• Reducing Corporate Abatements

If you're paying taxes, why shouldn't corporations? By reexamining the scope and terms of corporate tax abatements granted by the current mayor and city council, Houston can recover large amounts of potential revenue that is currently being foregone. These agreements, often extended to attract or retain businesses, reduce the property tax base and shift the burden onto residents and small businesses that receive no such relief. To the extent permitted under state law and existing contractual obligations, Neeloy's administration would work with city council to let poorly performing or expired abatements lapse, renegotiate terms where leverage exists, and apply stricter standards to any new agreements, including enforceable job creation benchmarks and clawback provisions if commitments go unmet. Houston currently has hundreds of millions of dollars in active abatement agreements on its books, and even a partial rollback of those arrangements could return tens of millions annually to the General Fund, reducing pressure on services without asking more of ordinary taxpayers who have no equivalent deal with the city.