A group of Acres Homes residents have your taxpayer dollars in the palm of their hand.

I take a seat in a little auditorium at a multi-service center in this corner of northwest Houston, a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood, where City Controller Chris Hollins is hosting a town hall on a recent weeknight to demystify Mayor John Whitmire's $7 billion budget proposal.

Hollins starts with a thought exercise. He asks each of the roughly two dozen residents gathered here to grab a handful of marbles. The marbles are your tax dollars, he says. There's a table lined with Mason jars. In front of each jar a pink note card declares the name of a Houston city department: solid waste, public works, parks and recreation, police and so on. By putting marbles in jars, you pick which agencies have priority in the city's budget.

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After the clinking of marbles die down, Hollins announces the results. A budget based on the Acres Homes participants' choices would dedicate most of Houstonians' tax dollars toward the solid waste, library, neighborhoods and parks departments.

Then the big reveal. Hollins shows a slide with a bar graph breaking down how the city spends most of its $3 billion general fund, the part of the budget funded by property and sales taxes. The largest chunk by far — $1.1 billion — funds the police department. Next, at $660 million, the fire department. The third-largest expenditure gave me sticker shock: debt service. Roughly one out of every $6 the city spends — $508 million in total — goes to pay off bonds. Solid Waste, at $101 million, is a distant fourth.

The fundamental problem is simple: After paying for public safety and interest on old loans, there isn't room left for much else. Worse still is that the city spends more money than........

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