MCALLEN, Texas — The City of McAllen’s proposed $647 million combined budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes funding to add 12 new full-time positions across several city departments, City Manager Isaac “Ike” J. Tawil announced during a recent McAllen City Commission public hearing.
The expanded workforce is largely driven by the impending opening of the Center for Urban Ecology at Quinta Mazatlán, which requires a new slate of operational staff.
Presenting the recommended budget following weeks of commission workshops, Tawil outlined a fiscal plan designed to maintain the city's current tax rate while accelerating capital infrastructure projects to better compete for state and federal grant funding.
“After conducting a series of workshops with the City Commission, we are very proud to present your now recommended budget to the community,” Tawil told commissioners. “After a very robust discussion, we landed to recommend the adoption of the same tax rate that we had last year, and so that's 44.89 cents per $100 of valuation.”
The 12 new full-time General Fund positions cover municipal operations ranging from public communications and traffic engineering to facility management.
Among the new personnel, Quinta Mazatlán will see several additions to support operations at the new Center for Urban Ecology, including irrigation technicians, a custodian, a groundskeeper, a nature interpreter, and administrative support.
Other key additions include:
Tawil noted that the budget also incorporates a 3% Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for current city staff, aligning with recent compensation study recommendations. The COLA carries a $2.4 million impact on the General Fund.
“They work very, very hard... The COLA is in line with what our compensation study, most recently presented to the commission, recommends this year,” Tawil said, adding that current economic conditions justify the increase.
The proposed total budget of $647,224,565 combines municipal operations with the city’s water and wastewater system budgets. General Fund appropriations account for $180 million, leaving an unassigned ending fund balance of $109 million—representing 235 days of working capital. This reserve sits 95 days above the city’s mandatory 140-day minimum requirement.
While the property tax rate remains steady at $0.4489 per $100 evaluation, Tawil pointed out that re-examinations of non-homestead properties by the appraisal district and new business personal property tax exemptions resulted in generating roughly $675,000 less revenue from existing properties on the tax roll. However, new property added to the tax roll this year will generate approximately $1.5 million in new revenue.
In compliance with recently enacted state legislative disclosures under Section 551.043C of the Texas Government Code, the presentation highlighted median homestead values and specific tax impacts to ensure public transparency.
Daily operational costs for the city are projected to rise slightly from $439,000 per day in the previous fiscal year to $464,000 per day under the new proposal.
McAllen has budgeted $258 million in capital outlay and $359 million in operations. Tawil emphasized a strategic shift in how the city budgets and executes infrastructure developments.
Rather than concentrating tens of millions of dollars into single, isolated projects while waiting for environmental and legal clearances, the city is moving multiple projects forward incrementally.
“Incremental project progress on those projects is critical to us competing for various categories of federal and state dollars that can help us leverage our efforts,” Tawil explained. “If we're not moving projects to shovel ready, then we have a harder time doing that... We're trying to move projects incrementally together, so that we're making progress a little bit more broadly.”
The city manager highlighted the Top 10 capital projects outlined in the budget, which include:
Tawil noted that McAllen maintains a low debt service footprint ($30.4 million) compared to peer cities across the state, giving leadership flexibility to analyze debt capacity for future major projects.
The City Commission is scheduled to formally consider the final adoption of the tax rate and budget at its next regular meeting.
