Houston staff raise FY25 sales-tax forecast; city projects hundreds of millions in fund balance

Houston finance staff told the Budget & Fiscal Affairs Committee on June 3 that stronger-than-expected March sales-tax receipts have led them to raise the city—s FY25 sales-tax forecast and that the city expects to end the year with hundreds of millions of dollars in general-fund balance.

Deputy City Controller Will Jones, substituting for the controller—s office, told the committee the office is "projecting an ending fund balance of $354,000,000" for the general fund for FY25 and said the office raised its sales-tax estimate by $17.3 million after March receipts came in about 7.3% above the same month last year. Finance Director Melissa Dubowski presented a separate projection that the general-fund balance would be $380,800,000, or about 14.7% of expenditures excluding debt service and pay-as-you-go items.

Why it matters: the two projections differ by more than $26 million in part because of differing revenue assumptions. Both, the presenters said, are…