The city of Laredo has officially approved its over $1 billion budget for fiscal year 2025-2026, the most expensive budget in city history. The city council also discussed the coming year’s $525.8 million Capital Improvements Plan (CIP), slated for approval at a later date.
Budget allocations include:
- Enterprise Fund – $393 million.
- General Fund – $287.8 million.
- Special Revenue – $163 million.
- Internal Service – $104 million.
- Debt Service – $41 million.
- Capital Projects – $17 million.
- Other – $5 million.
The Enterprise Fund will primarily go toward supporting infrastructure, housing and transportation initiatives over the next year. These components include dedicated funding for bridge, municipal housing, sewer system, solid waste, waterworks, transit and the city’s El Metro transit system.
By comparison, the General Fund covers additional critical city departments, including public safety, parks and recreation, animal care, libraries, code enforcement and street maintenance. Out of the available funds, public safety will receive the lion’s share of the General Fund. A total of $174.3 million will be split between the police and fire departments, with the police receiving $93.9 million and the fire departments receiving $80.4 million.
Outside of the approved budget, discussions for the finalized draft of the proposed $525.8 million CIP are ongoing. The breakdown of the allocated funding will include:
- Mobility Infrastructure – $199.8 million.
- Utilities Infrastructure – $131.1 million.
- Facility Improvements – $70.8 million.
- Public Health and Safety – $63.4 million.
- Culture and Recreation – $37.1 million.
- Port Laredo – $23.3 million.
- Neighborhood Improvements – $6.6 million.
- Information Technology – $3.7 million.
Mobility infrastructure projects will receive the largest sum, which the city plans to use to improve road connectivity, traffic flow and multimodal accessibility. The plan covers significant investments into these efforts, including major projects primarily centered around building, extending, improving and realigning critical roadways and corridors.
The city will emphasize improvements for its utilities infrastructure as well, targeting the water and wastewater systems. Some of the projects include building a one-million-gallon booster station and elevated storage tank, improving the raw water pump station and making several waterline extensions and relocations.
Laredo will use the $70.8 million allotted for facility projects to restore and modernize city-owned structures. The city will focus on making essential enhancements to its water and wastewater treatment plants, ensuring they are up-to-code with current policies and operational standards.
In addition, the $63.4 million dedicated to the city’s public health and safety sector will go toward expanding the capacity of its emergency and health services. These will include building police and fire stations, renovating a recharge center and developing a master plan for the Animal Care Services’ surgical facility.
Photo by Miguel Angel Omaña Rojas, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, from Wikimedia Commons
