Everything Gabe Gonzalez said at the Leadership Harlingen graduation ceremony event

Rio Grande Guardian's Podcast

HARLINGEN, Texas - Harlingen City Manager Gabriel “Gabe” Gonzalez has outlined the likely city budget for the upcoming year.

“The budget we're looking at for this upcoming year is $110 million in revenue with $108 million in expenditures. That's a big budget,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez made his comments at a graduation ceremony for the Leadership Harlingen Class of 2023-2024. The event was hosted by the Greater Chamber of Harlingen and held at Stefano’s Brooklyn Pizza.

Gonzalez was introduced by Javier De Leon, the Greater Chamber of Harlingen’s president and CEO. De Leon described Gonzalez as “Harlingen’s rock star.”

Gonzalez said city administrators have “done our best” to keep tax rates low.

“In fact, I was talking to Commissioner (Ford) Kinsley and explained to him that this year, we're going to propose having the lowest tax rate in the City of Harlingen in the past 22 years,” Gonzalez said. “That's not easy to do when you've got so many needs.”

Gonzalez then ran through some of those needs.

“This year we gave the firefighters their three-year collective bargaining agreement. We’re in year two for the police department. And we're giving the employees who are earning less than $75,000 a year their second raise.”

Gonzalez said the city administration utilized the services of a consultancy firm before deciding to give those earning less than $75,000 a year a second pay raise.

“The Commission felt the best (thing was) to look at those employees earning less than $75,000 and make an adjustment to their salaries to give them an increase. This is year two of that increase. So that's going to be included in the budget. Without a tax increase to our property taxes.”

Gonzalez also highlighted a huge jump in building permits.

“Our highest year for building permits was in 2012. That year we had $116 million in building permits. And ever since then, it had been below that number, which is really not that good because you want to try to exceed those dollar amounts every year,” Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez then explained how the jump in the value of building permits came about.

“A couple of years ago, the city commission and the mayor called me and said we want to have a meeting with the developers. We want to hear what we are doing wrong. And my first reaction was, oh my God, it's going to be a complaint session,” Gonzalez said.

“And so, we did. We sat down. The mayor and commissioners were troopers because they listened to every complaint that was leveled against the city regarding building permits.”

Coming out of that meeting, city leaders changed tack, Gonzalez explained.

“We made a few changes, and they weren't easy. And in 2023 we had $176 million in building permits issued that year. And that was a great number. But it just didn't happen by itself. It happened because of the collaboration with the City Commission and the changes they were willing to make in our processes.”

Gonzalez said this year, the value of the building permits are on schedule to beat the 2023 number.

“This year, through this month, we're at $119 million for building permits. We've surpassed that number from 2012. Two years in a row (we have beaten the 2012 number) and we still have two more months to go reporting for building permits. So, again, the changes that the Commission did were in valuable to having economic prosperity in the city.”

Editor’s Note: Here is an audio recording of Gabe Gonzalez’s entire remarks at the Leadership Harlingen event.

Go to www.riograndeguardian.com to read the latest border news stories and watch the latest news videos.