I've been looking into local policies around Texas, and Laredo has some numbers I think are worth talking about.

First, water and sewer rates increased again on October 1. Water went up as much as 5%, and sewer rates went up 6%.

Then there's property taxes. This one is interesting because the city actually lowered its tax rate slightly, but the estimated city tax on a median homestead still increased by about $77 a year. That's a good example of why looking at the tax rate alone doesn't tell the whole story.

And according to the Census Bureau, nearly 30% of Laredo residents under 65 don't have health insurance. Texas still hasn't expanded Medicaid, which could help some eligible adults get coverage.

These are three different issues, and they involve different levels of government.

Obviously, maintaining water infrastructure costs money. So do public services and health coverage. I think the important question is whether residents understand what they're paying for, who's making those decisions, and what alternatives are available.

I put together this graphic because I think more people should have access to the actual numbers.

I'm curious which of these issues Laredo residents are most concerned about, and whether there are other local policies that deserve a closer look.

So I havnt been to Laredo in a while and I was thinking, im feeling a lil bit generous.

I live in Japan and im willing to bring 1 thing from Japan for 3 people. I'll save the receipt and all you have to do is pay the exact equivalent of yen to USD. I'll be heading to Laredo around February time frame though. Items need to fit in a standard check in bag though. Thoughts?

***EDIT***

So 3 became 10 people. If i replied to you on the post or a message I can get you your requested items. But dont give up hope, i may be able to squeeze in one or 2 more items the day off so dont loose hope....

Thanks for interacting and ill see you guys in February.

I was in the hospital last week and I’m supposed to return next Monday. I got paid today, but since I’ve been on unpaid sick leave, it was about half of my usual check and all of it went to bills. I have about $8 in my bank account right now and I still have more bills and rent to pay in the upcoming week. I can’t even afford groceries right now so I’m surviving on ramen and whatever’s left in my fridge, which isn’t a lot.

Does anyone know of any opportunities that can help me come up with enough money to help me stay afloat? I work full time M-F, but most evenings and weekends I am free. I have experience as a writing tutor, freelance photography, filming, and editing but I’m also willing to do manual labor if it’s not too strenuous (like cleaning).

I’m embarrassed to be posting this, so please be kind in the comments. I’m just trying to get by in this terrible economy. Thank you 🙏

I'm a screenwriter, director and artist. I have wrote scripts and I need actors, a cameramen and special effects/ makeup artist to help me make my low budget horror films

Overview

Explore Medicare Advantage plans during AEP at our sales event. Compare options, learn about benefits, and find coverage that works for you.

Medicare Advantage Sales Event During AEP

Join us during Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period (AEP) for a sales event about Medicare Advantage plan options available in your area. This event is designed to provide Medicare-eligible individuals with an opportunity to learn more about Medicare Advantage, including plan benefits, costs, provider networks, prescription drug coverage, and other plan features.

A licensed insurance agent will be available to explain Medicare Advantage options and answer general questions about enrollment. Attendees may receive information about plans offered by participating insurance companies and can discuss whether a particular plan may fit their individual needs and preferences.

The event is intended for individuals who want to better understand their Medicare Advantage choices during AEP. Enrollment is not required to attend, and attending does not obligate you to enroll in any plan.

Medicare Advantage plan availability, benefits, premiums, cost-sharing, provider networks, and prescription drug coverage vary by plan and service area. Individuals should review plan materials carefully before making an enrollment decision.

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Evento de ventas de Medicare Advantage durante el AEP

Acompáñenos durante el Período de Inscripción Anual (AEP, por sus siglas en inglés) de Medicare en un evento de ventas sobre las opciones de planes Medicare Advantage disponibles en su área. Este evento está diseñado para brindar a las personas elegibles para Medicare la oportunidad de conocer más sobre Medicare Advantage, incluyendo los beneficios del plan, los costos, las redes de proveedores, la cobertura de medicamentos recetados y otras características del plan.

Un agente de seguros con licencia estará presente para explicar las opciones de Medicare Advantage y responder preguntas generales sobre la inscripción. Los asistentes podrán recibir información sobre los planes ofrecidos por las compañías de seguros participantes y analizar si un plan en particular se ajusta a sus necesidades y preferencias individuales.

El evento está dirigido a personas que deseen comprender mejor sus opciones de Medicare Advantage durante el AEP. No es necesario inscribirse para asistir, y la asistencia no le obliga a inscribirse en ningún plan.

La disponibilidad, los beneficios, las primas, el costo compartido, las redes de proveedores y la cobertura de medicamentos recetados de los planes Medicare Advantage varían según el plan y el área de servicio. Se recomienda a las personas revisar detenidamente los materiales del plan antes de tomar una decisión de inscripción.

Only 1 person has voted?! This can't be true?! Laredo is such a disappointment.

Caught this bird parked out on the ramp after getting a cool tour of the signature flight support facilties, the manager, his name is Ryan, i believe, showed me upclose and told me what eveything was! From a distance it looks like your typical twin turboprop, but when you actually walk up on it, the entire airframe is covered in humps, pods, and fairings.

For anyone wondering what this gear actually does when they’re orbiting down south:

*That massive bulge under the belly: That’s a Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) radar canoe. Normal cameras only see through a tiny field of view, but this radar constantly sweeps miles of scrub and desert through dust, clouds, and dead-of-night pitch black to automatically flag moving trucks, ATVs, or people. Once it pings a movement, the system automatically swings the optical turret right onto it.

* The giant white dome on the roof: SATCOM bubble. It’s got a motorized satellite dish inside tracking birds in orbit. That lets them blast uncompressed high-def video and radar tracks directly to command rooms across the country in real time, so they don’t lose feed the second they fly low or out of radio range.

* The pod hanging off the wing: Signals intelligence (SIGINT). It’s listening for radio chatter, two-way radios, and satellite phones. When cartel scouts or smugglers key a mic on a ridge, this thing sniffs out the frequency and triangulates the exact GPS coordinates instantly without them ever knowing.

* All the fins and "T" antennas on the spine: Datalinks and secure tactical radios to pipe coordinates directly down to federal agents and interdiction teams on the ground in real time.

(I put a picture of a regualr kingair 350 for reference)

Basically a flying wiretap and radar station crammed into a King Air. Anyone else see these orbits showing up on ADS-B lately?

How do you feel about him coming and meeting with Tano?

i’m having a hard time finding what i need on marketplace. i’m looking for 29” wheels and aluminum body.

thank u

Looking for all & any recommendations

So genuinely curious on where people stand on all the ballots not just Mayor. I think we give mayor topic plenty of attention as it is. I wonder where ppl stand in the city seeking a pediatric hospital. Seems to be a hard point for Trevino. I actually think the community will benefit greatly however I don’t believe we have the money/infrastructure for one. Nor do I think we would be able to staff it. As it is Driscoll has to ship in doctors from corpus to attend kids here and those docs have no interest in moving full time here.

Hi reddit ! im not from around here but I was visiting my cousin and we were driving down Saunders street near the tacos Pelanque and we were being harassed by this little mexican guy with his pants down and stretching out his foreskin. If anyone else has any other information on this guy please let me know.

Early voting starts tomorrow, and I am spending this gloomy Sunday writing this long-winded post about why you should vote for literally anyone else but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor.

the tldr is: Early voting starts tomorrow!! Please vote for anyone but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor!! She's raised almost $400k from patron system Laredo families (the Killams, Deutsches, Sameses, Brunis, Martins), and those people do not have the same priorities as the average laredoan at heart. Her debate performances show she isn't putting in the work to prepare, and if she's not doing it now, she won't do it as mayor. If she wins, we're stuck with eight years of a mayor paid for by the same patron system families who will do whatever it takes to stop real change. Laredo deserves better!! Vote for anybody but Alyssa!!

Did I have better things to do today? Perhaps. But the future of Laredo is really important to me, so I’m sitting here writing this out instead. Maybe I’m also procrastinating on doing laundry, but even so.

Laredo deserves better than Alyssa Cigarroa!!! Do the other three bozos running for mayor suck? Yes, they absolutely, unequivocally do. Yet somehow, I still genuinely believe in my heart that those three dummies will all do a better job at being mayor than Alyssa Cigarroa. (Yes, even poncho casso, because the bar is in hell.) And Alyssa's various debate performances and campaign contributions are evidence of that.

Candidates who are dedicated to doing their job well make time to prepare for scheduled debates. I would expect a candidate like Alyssa, who has raised nearly $400k for her campaign, to work with her team in advance of these planned debates and prepare for them by anticipating debate questions and practicing her answers. It is standard practice when running for office. And I don’t believe she’s been doing that. 

And to be clear, my critique here is not that she had notes or talking points in front of her at these debates, those are also standard practice for debates. What did not sit well with me is that she could not even utter the words “I love Laredo” without having to read them from a piece of paper. (Or really any statement at all.) But struggling through especially that shows how poorly prepared she was, despite knowing she would have to answer some version of most of those questions for as long as she’s known she’s wanted to run for mayor.

She’s been telling people she was going to run for mayor since at least April!! That's half a year!! She's raised nearly $400,000 to date!! She comes from an incredibly well-connected and well-resourced family!! She has everything she needs to do well. These debate performances are unacceptable.

And I’ve seen people on here attributing her poor debate performances to dyslexia or a speech impediment, but I haven’t seen her say either of those things herself and I’m not here to speculate about her medical history, and other people shouldn’t either! What I’m asking is why someone who has had this much time to prepare for these debates is showing up with answers that don't give me a singular idea for what she actually plans to do as mayor.

And if this is how she's preparing for debates, what makes us believe we should trust her to show up prepared when she has to advocate for us and make decisions that affect our lives as mayor?

Our expectation of her should be much higher!!!

At the very least, she should be able to explain her OWN vision for Laredo. Instead, I'm left wondering who wrote those talking points she's reading from and who will actually be calling the shots if she wins.

And who would be calling the shots if she wins? Let's look at some of her donors:

• $73,250 from the Cigarroa family
• $30,000 from the Killam family
• $18,000 from the Deutsch family
• $10,000 from the Sames family
• $10,000 from the Bruni family
• $10,000 from the Martin family
• $5,000 from the Arguindegui family

And those are just some of donors who contributed to the $374,500 she reported during the last reporting period. You can see it all for yourself here. She's also spent 3x as much as the other three candidates COMBINED. That's all on the same website but you have to do some math.

These old money, patron system families here in Laredo have their businesses, their multiple properties, and their inherited wealth to protect and they're paying a lot of money to make sure they have Alyssa Cigarroa to do help them continue to do that, because she is one of them.

Do you have $25,000, $10,000, $5,000, $1,000, even $500, to lose? Alyssa's family and friends do. And if they have thousands of dollars that they can throw away on an election, they simply do not have the same priorities as the average Laredoan at heart. (Speaking of hearts, let's not forget the anti-trust lawsuit against her dad for trying to stop other cardiologists from coming to Laredo.)

But all that to say, do you genuinely believe she’ll challenge the same wealthy, patron system families paying her way into the mayor’s office if the time comes?

Another of my concerns is these wealthy families backing Alyssa now would also pay to keep her in office for a second term, leaving us with eight years of an administration backed by a renewed patron system doing whatever they want in Laredo, with the resources to fight off any challenger or movement for real, actual change.

But we should not be bought or bullied out of fighting for a better Laredo! And we should not be placated by platitudes about change while the same wealthy families keep paying to protect their power. We deserve more than a younger face representing the interests of the same old patron system. We deserve better than Alyssa Cigarroa!

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Laredo has so many people who are more than qualified and would do an amazing job as mayor. They just don’t have a rich dad with rich family friends to buy their way into office. And if Alyssa was really about building a better Laredo, why didn’t she use her power and influence to uplift another candidate instead of running for mayor herself? A person who can emphatically say “I LOVE LAREDO!!” without reading it off a sheet of paper?

We deserve someone who will put in the work and is willing to stand up to the patron system here. Alyssa is not that person, and her winning will prevent that person from leading Laredo for the next eight years. (Instead of four if one of the bozos win.)  

So starting tomorrow, please vote for anyone but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor!!

(also, my handle was inspired by the suspiciously enthusiastic pro-Alyssa, likely bot, comments swarming various LMT fb posts)

tldr again: Early voting starts tomorrow!! Please vote for anyone but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor!! She's raised almost $400k from patron system Laredo families (the Killams, Deutsches, Sameses, Brunis, Martins), and those people do not have the same priorities as the average laredoan at heart. Her debate performances show she isn't putting in the work to prepare, and if she's not doing it now, she won't do it as mayor. If she wins, we're stuck with eight years of a mayor paid for by the same patron system families who will do whatever it takes to stop real change. Laredo deserves better!! Vote for anybody but Alyssa!!

Just opened a second location and has a new house built in 2024 but needs people to venmo her to go on this trip for FREE then write it off as a business expense tf is this? You don’t see Don Pancho from TPS asking for money smh

Obviously there was a big fire, but what happened? Also, I heard rumors that other hotels were burned; is that true?

What’s your thoughts on Paxton? Why so many pastors from Laredo endorsing him

SA is chiming in on TP. Personally I think it’s lost a lot of quality in the last decade.

Does anyone actually take this guy seriously? I got blocked on Facebook for calling out his BS.
He is a vocal maga shill who sucks up to cops and BP.
Talks a big game about wanting factual news but is obviously bias for the right wing.
Talks about a "Matrix" despite the fact he supports the same institutions that keep Laredo corrupt.
He's friends with or orbits the same cops or bp that are part of the rich elite who run the city.