Houston city administrators and elected officials stand with Mayor John Whitmire as he discusses details of his balanced budget in Houston in May, 2025.

It has been at least four months since 1,053 employees participated in Mayor John Whitmire's voluntary retirement program, and some of them haven't received a dime yet.

Their dreams of traveling, spending time with family or doing whatever they want are on hold until their pension checks come in.

In an April memo to city employees, the Houston Municipal Employees Pension System, which manages the city's pension program, stated that it may take 60 to 90 days to process retirement paperwork, so retirees should account for that in their budgets. The memo explains that if an employee's last payroll date was May 1, their retirement date would be June 1.

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Yet it is unclear how much notice the pension office was given to prepare for........

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