Welcome to another thrilling episode of “How is This City Still Functioning?” The Lubbock City Council recently gathered for a budget work session to discover that money doesn’t actually grow on cotton fields. It turns out city revenue is growing at a pathetic 1 percent, which is completely losing the race against “municipal inflation”. City Manager Jarrett Atkinson had to gently explain to our elected officials that the Federal Reserve’s neat little inflation numbers don’t actually apply to the things Lubbock buys. While the Fed pretends everything is fine, the year-over-year cost of a fire truck jumped 15 percent, and the price of hot mix asphalt has nearly doubled in four years.
If you thought getting the city to fix a pothole was already a mythical event, wait until you hear about the police fleet. Atkinson revealed that putting a single patrol car on the street now costs a staggering $110,000. If Lubbock wants to add just nine new officers, it requires a cool $1 million just to buy their cars. This financial reality check follows a sluggish sales tax period in early 2025 that forced a city hiring freeze, leaving us with fewer city employees per capita than we had four years ago. Naturally, Councilman Tim Collins noted they face “appropriate pressure” to keep taxes as low as possible, perfectly balancing the classic Lubbock paradox of wanting endless municipal services without actually paying for them.
But the crown jewel of small-town logistics has to be the fuel crisis. Atkinson pointed out that the city doesn’t own a single municipal fuel pump west of Avenue P. That means as the city aggressively expands westward into infinity, our city vehicles are wasting valuable time and taxpayer dollars driving all the way back to the east side just to fill up their tanks. Meanwhile, a consultant was brought in to perform a SWOT analysis, concluding that our weaknesses include a massive inequity between the shiny new parts of town and the neglected older neighborhoods. But don’t worry, everyone is super “encouraged” by the energy downtown, because expanding the Civic Center will surely make everyone forget that the city’s actual infrastructure is ancient and crumbling.
Who needs a functional fuel strategy or affordable asphalt when you have a U-shaped table, a PowerPoint presentation, and the unwavering Lubbock tradition of driving ten miles east just to pump gas into a hundred-thousand-dollar cop car?
Source:
