SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
HARLINGEN — In a triumph of fiscal discipline, the Harlingen City Commission voted 4-1 this week to heroically reject a proposed half-cent tax increase before unanimously approving a $72 million general fund budget that sources confirmed was still warm from the printer and, by several accounts, ‘still kind of moving.’
Mayor Norma Sepulveda called the moment a victory for every taxpayer in Harlingen. ‘We looked that half cent dead in the eye and said no,’ Sepulveda declared, clutching the 400-page budget document that witnesses say made a faint rustling noise, like a Whataburger bag in the wind off the Arroyo. ‘Once the tax hike was dead, the numbers stopped mattering. That’s just how math works at this altitude of leadership.’
The lone dissenting vote, Commissioner Ricardo ‘Ricky’ Treviño Jr. (no relation to any real commissioner, living or precincted), explained he voted no on the tax hike because he ‘wanted to vote no on something bigger.’ He then voted yes on the $72 million budget because ‘everyone else was already raising their hands.’
‘We Read the Parts With the Numbers We Liked’
City officials stressed that the budget process was rigorous. ‘We read the cover, the tab dividers, and page 34, which had a nice chart,’ said interim budget director Gus Plemmons, a fictional man sweating through a guayabera. ‘The other $71.4 million is basically the same money as last year wearing a different hat. A sombrero of continuity, if you will.’
When an auditor asked where the funds for street repairs would come from without the half-cent hike, Plemmons pointed at a line item labeled simply ‘HARLINGEN STUFF’ and shrugged in a way that made three reporters take notes.
The vote took eleven minutes, eight of which were spent deciding whether to table the tax hike or ‘just kind of set it on the windowsill and let it die naturally,’ per one commissioner.
Residents Celebrate Their Half Cent
Outside City Hall, locals celebrated their windfall. ‘That’s half a cent I’m keeping,’ said one man doing donuts in the McKelvey Park parking lot. ‘I’m thinking about it constantly. Haven’t decided what I’ll do with it. Maybe let it grow.’ By press time, the $72 million budget had been signed, notarized, and placed in a filing cabinet labeled ‘FISCAL YEAR THAT WILL WORK OUT.’ The half-cent tax increase was buried at sea, off the shores of South Padre, with full honors.
