By Alex Warmath

Why will Shenandoah spend 3.6 times more dollars per resident in the current budget year than The Woodlands Township? Are the Woodlands residents lacking quality services and if so, how is it that The Woodlands is regularly recognized as the #1 place to live in Texas?

Here are the numbers for the 2022-23 budget cycle:

The Woodlands Township — $148,400,000 – Budget
118,554 – Number of residents
$1251.70 – Expenditure per resident

City of Shenandoah — $17,000,000 – Budget
3,771 – Number of residents
$4508 – Expenditure per resident

I reviewed the annual auditor’s report for Shenandoah from 2017 to 2021 and the city raised actual expenditures by approximately 2% per year during this four-year period. However, based on this year’s budget and expenditures for the 2021-2022 period (audit report not yet available) this most recent two year period reflects an average increase in city spending of 13.25% for each of the past two years.

What this means is that the past two years’ average increase in spending compared to the prior four year period reflects an alarming increase of six times more than the historical past average rate of 2% to our city budget.

Some will say that you can’t compare apples to oranges. Shenandoah only covers about two square miles versus the 43.9 square miles of The Woodlands. Their populations are vastly different with The Woodlands’ being over 30 times that of Shenandoah. Yes, there are differences, but if The Woodlands being so much larger than Shenandoah can maintain an average $1252 spend per resident, it tells me that it’s time to put the brakes on Shenandoah spending an average of $4508 per resident.

Sources Population: World Population Review; Budget: published budget information from The Woodlands and Shenandoah.

Editor’s note: According to a Ballotpedia article entitled “Analysis of spending in America’s largest cities”, in 2015 the country’s 100 largest cities by population spent an average of $2,605 per citizen.