Uyiosa Elegon

Shift Press held a webinar to explain how the budget process works and what residents can do to influence the outcome. The City of Houston’s nearly $7 billion budget affects every resident. If you drive on roads, care about waste pick-up, experience flooding in your neighborhoods, or want more programming in arts, parks, or libraries, your life is impacted by the City of Houston budget.

Real journalists wrote and edited this (not AI)—independent, community-driven journalism survives because you back it. Donate to sustain Prism’s mission and the humans behind it. Houston residents flooded the City Council chambers last year to oppose the 2026 budget that increases the Houston Police Department’s (HPD) budget by $67 million to a total $1.1 billion. But as more money is directed toward policing, other pressing issues are falling to the wayside, advocates say.

In 1961, Edythe Paige approached employees at Houston's Loews State Theater to purchase a movie ticket. Coins in hand, she was refused service and beaten by the theater's manager and white patrons. A Black student at Texas Southern University, Paige was charged with unlawful assembly, along with 22 other supporters of the Progressive Youth Association. The injuries sustained from the white segregationists' many blows landed her in the hospital for four days.