the mayor-elect speaks

Houston mayor-elect John Whitmire plans to make City Hall 'user-friendly'

John Whitmire stands with "grandmother of Juneteenth" Opal Lee.

Twitter/John Whitmire

As the city now knows, John Whitmire will be Houston's 63rd mayor. The 74-year-old won in a landslide over Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee late Saturday November 9.

Whitmire spoke with Tom Abrahams of ABC13, CultureMap's news partner, about getting to work. He inherits a city government with an uncertain financial future and admitted he is unsure of how much of a fiscal challenge the nation's fourth-largest city faces. Its fiscal year 2023 budget was $5.7 billion. Its current budget is roughly a billion more at $6.2 billion.

"I know for a fact we don't have a $400 million surplus," Whitmire said. "No reasonable person would call that a surplus, when you haven't paid your bills, you don't have a contract with the firefighters. You're paying them with one-time COVID funding. That's another issue where we need total transparency."

"What you'll notice immediately is the transparency of City Hall. I am going to share all of this with the public because I need the public to be informed, and build up the credibility of my administration, so when we need help from the public they will cooperate. Additional resources, bond issues, cutting out duplication. I'll need them to help be on my team so when we approach the county for some of their resources, we'll remind the county that Houston is in Harris County."

And what about the county? Whitmire made a career in Austin working across the aisle, but he faced potential challenges working within his own party, despite the non-partisan nature of the job. The incoming City Controller, Chris Hollins; Harris County County Judge Lina Hidalgo; and Harris County Commissioner, Rodney Ellis all endorsed Whitmire's mayoral opponent, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee — as did outgoing mayor Sylvester Turner, of whose administration Whitmire has been critical.

"I have no choice but to work with them," said Whitmire. "We all represent the same people. So I will be reaching out to work with them. Commissioner Briones called me this morning wanting to work together. I would hope that same attitude and atmosphere of cooperation will permeate itself from the county."

He'll need cooperation and buy-in if he wants to fulfill campaign promises of better streets, improved infrastructure, and less crime.

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Continue reading this story on our news partner ABC13.

safe suburbs

Houston neighbor shines on new 2025 list of safest American cities

Photo courtesy of Visit Pearland

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New Year's resolutions can come in many forms, and if relocating to a safe Houston-area suburb is high on the list for 2025, Pearland is the place to be.

Pearland was declared the No. 13 safest city in America for 2025 in a new study by personal finance advisors MoneyGeek. The website's experts examined the most recent FBI crime statistics (from 2023) to determine the cost of crime in 292 U.S. cities with populations over 100,000 residents.

The estimated cost of crime in this Houston suburb – which the study calculated as the "societal cost of crime per resident" – was $471 in 2023.

Pearland's crime cost per capita is far lower the national crime cost, which was $2,178 per resident.

The report also analyzed the city's violent crime and property crime rates, and Pearland had the 11th lowest rate of violent crime in 2023 with only 106 crimes committed for every 100,000 residents.

The city didn't fare as well with its property crime rate; there were 1,669 property crimes committed in 2023 per 100,000 residents, which was the 68th lowest rate out of all 292 U.S. cities.

However, that's still a better rate than most places in the country. Pearland residents can be smug that they don't live in Oakland, California, which had the highest property crime rate in the nation with 10,117 crimes committed per 100,000 residents.

Finally, MoneyGeek determined each city's total cost of crime, which the study defines as the "economic losses attributed to crime and its cost to society (individuals, community and nationally) in millions."

In this metric, Pearland had the seventh-lowest total crime cost, which was less than $60 million in 2023.

While some of these statistics may seem scary, Tulane University associate professor of political science Geoffrey T. Dancy warns it is unwise to make assumptions about a city based solely on its crime rates.

"We live in an unequal society," said Dancy in the report. "One often overlooked indicator of that inequality is who gets to engage in the politics of safety. Those who are objectively safe often fear crime and act on it in the counterproductive policies they support. Those who are actually victimized by crime and terrorized by gun violence pay the price and are rarely heard."

Elsewhere in Texas, the Dallas suburb of Frisco nearly topped the list as the No. 2 safest city in America with a $287 crime cost per capita. Other safe Texas cities in the report include Plano (No. 18), Sugar Land (No. 20), McKinney (No. 22), Round Rock (No. 26), Grand Prairie (No. 42), and League City (No. 48).

The top 10 safest American cities for 2025 are:

No. 1 – Ramapo Town, New York
No. 2 – Frisco, Texas
No. 3 – Irvine, California
No. 4 – Fishers, Indiana
No. 5 – Lakewood Township, New Jersey
No. 6 – Cary, North Carolina
No. 7 – Pembroke Pines, Florida
No. 8 – Elk Grove, California
No. 9 – Surprise, Arizona
No. 10 – Sterling Heights, Michigan

For the purpose of the study, violent crime rates were determined based on the number of murders and non-negligent manslaughters, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults per 100,000 residents; and property crimes were defined as the rates of burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft offenses per 100,000 residents.