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Pearland residents could face a lower property tax rate under a proposed fiscal year 2026-27 budget presented to City Council at its Aug. 10 workshop.

What residents need to know: The projected property tax rate is at $0.627892 per $100 home valuation. For a property with a taxable value of $361,225, the annual property tax bill is around $2,200.

Budget explained: Pearland projects nearly $137.8 million in revenues and around $138.6 million in expenses for FY 2026-27, according to city documents. Year over year, property tax revenue is projected to increase by nearly 4.2%, while sales tax revenue is projected to increase by nearly 4.5%.

Stay tuned: City council is scheduled to meet for a fourth budget workshop Aug. 24 ahead of FY 2026-27 budget and property tax rate adoption in September, according to city documents.
 

Classroom discussions, teacher and peer feedback, as well as public school funding are tied to the importance of attendance rates at Alvin and Friendswood ISDs, officials with both districts said.

What you need to know: In Texas, school districts are primarily funded through basic allotment, and additional funding is layered on for programs, such as special education, career and technical education, gifted and talented, as well as support for at-risk students.

Those formulas ultimately pay districts based on average daily attendance, or ADA, not on how many students are enrolled, AISD’s Chief Financial Officer Daniel Combs said.

Quote of note: “Theoretically, if a student is only in attendance 95% of the time, the school district only receives 95% of the funding for that student, based on what state law says the district should get,” Combs said.

Diving in deeper: FISD officials said a main challenge with attendance is students missing school, and replacing in-person learning with technology-based instruction instead.

CenterPoint Energy officials announced a new initiative which aims to provide a savings of up to $5 billion to all residential and small to medium businesses over the next decade in a Aug. 11 news release.

The big picture: The initiative stems from both the strengthening of requirements for large load energy users like data centers in the 89th Legislative Session and a project to add 14 gigawatts of energy load to CenterPoint Energy's service area.

Senate Bill 6 was authorized in the 89th Legislative Session and requires any development which expects to utilize over 75 megawatts of power at any point to pay higher overall energy costs.

In their words: "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to generate historic levels of customer savings of more than $5 billion statewide by leveraging new investment in large projects to build a more affordable, reliable and resilient electric grid for millions of customers," CenterPoint Energy Chairman and CEO Jason Wells said.
 

Harris County is facing the task of balancing a $178 million shortfall going into fiscal year 2026-27—amid several requests that would require millions more in funding.

The big picture: According to the latest update from the county’s office of budget management, Harris County is facing a $178 million shortfall in the FY 2026-27 budget. Daniel Ramos, executive director of the Harris County Office of Management and Budget, said the county has faced a roughly $150 million shortfall annually in recent years.

The discussion: Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis expressed heavy concern regarding how the county would ultimately address the shortfall, which has become a repetitive issue.

“When I was a banker, if you have a shortfall five years in a row, ... that's a structural deficit,” Ellis said.
”We’re about out of smoke and mirrors.”

Another thing: Commissioners also authorized raises for all eight elected constables, the district attorney, county attorney, district clerk, county clerk and tax assessor-collector which brought all positions to the same salary of $305,000 annually.