The torrential March 2025 rains that soaked the Rio Grande Valley provided local residents with a perspective of what could await them as this year’s hurricane season began on June 1. “Those heavy March rains were a wakeup call,” Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza said. “It was a powerful reminder that we can’t afford to be complacent.” Garza made those remarks during a recent Hurricane Preparedness Joint Regional Conference that was…
The City of McAllen has shattered its all-time sales tax record, receiving an unprecedented $11.9 million in February’s sales tax allocation for the same month of December (2024 vs 2023). This is a 12.3 percent increase over last year’s collection for the same period. The milestone surpasses the previous high of $10.6 million collected last year. “McAllen’s long-term strategy of becoming a destination city, encouraging booming residential and commercial development, facilitating international…
The South Texas Alliance of Cities launched in 2023 with the goal of fostering greater cooperation and collaboration among communities in addressing key issues. The partnership appears to be off to a good start. The majority of the communities in the pact are in the Rio Grande Valley although it does extend to San Antonio. That city’s mayor, Ron Nirenberg, has attended some of the alliance’s quarterly meetings. The focus…
McAllen’s inclusion on a national top-20 list for small businesses reaffirms the city’s long-standing support for entrepreneurship and development. McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos made that assessment after learning of CoworkingCafe listing his city as the ninth best place for small businesses among 136 southern U.S. cities surveyed. Coworking Café is a listing service for flex workplace solutions in supporting remote workers, freelancers and employees from all fields seeking user-friendly platforms.…
The $83 million project to transform the Anzalduas International Bridge into a full-service cross-border commercial port is entering its final stages of construction. A first quarter completion in 2025 is now anticipated. In late July, the governor of San Luis Potosi, Ricardo Gallardo Cardona, visited the bridge south of Mission to see the work being done and to meet with city leaders from Mission, McAllen and Hidalgo. The bridge opened…
The grouping of trees bunched on the frontage road of Bicentennial Boulevard and Expressway 83 are just above sapling size and draw little attention from motorists buzzing by on a busy McAllen intersection. But there they are, breaking up the concrete and urban life of a growing city. They add greenery with the benefits of a sound barrier and deep roots that will absorb stormwater when heavy rains come. McAllen’s…
McAllen is the third ranking safest city in the country for 2023 according to SmartAsset.com’s Top 10 Safest Cities list. The financial website analyzed a core set of common safety factors to identify and rank the safest cities in America, looking at data from 200 of the largest cities. The fiver metrics taken into consideration for rankings are violent crime, property crime, vehicular mortality rate, drug poisoning mortality rate and…
South Texas College continues to expand its partnerships across the border with a new letter of intent for collaboration with the Universidad Tecnológica de Matamoros that could promote the economic development of the region. “Texas and the Valley, like the rest of the country, are facing a manpower shortage and Mexico and the border partnerships we forge may well be the solution to the continued prosperity of our region,” said…
Javier Villalobos set out clear priorities when elected McAllen’s new mayor in mid-2021. “Water, sewer, public safety and the police department,” he said, recalling some of the key issues of his campaign. What Villalobos didn’t figure is that education would emerge early on as a pressing issue in his tenure. More than 20,000 students in the McAllen school district were suddenly put into remote learning situations. Public health concerns in…
The City of McAllen Transit Department and South Texas College has begun a new transit academy. STC will now offer training for prospective drivers of the city’s Metro Bus System, as an effort to address a severe driver shortage affecting the industry locally as well as nationwide. The interlocal agreement between the city and the college came with approval by city commissioners. The city is donating a 2011 Gillig 35’…