At-Large Position 5
About the Council Member
Sallie Alcorn is currently serving her second four-year term on Houston City Council. As an at-large council member, she works on initiatives and policies affecting the entire city – city finances, public safety, flood mitigation, street and sidewalk improvements, transportation, and quality of life.
In her first term, Sallie advocated for outcome-based budgeting, a form of budgeting which ties spending to public priorities and departmental performance measures. She pushed for efficiencies and measures to address the city’s structural deficit including retiree health benefit reforms and funding for deferred maintenance of city facilities. In 2020, she launched the city’s first annual budget survey, YOUR TWO CENTS, aimed at increasing resident engagement and input in the city’s budgeting process. Sallie is currently the chair of the Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee.
Sallie previously chaired the Regulatory and Neighborhood Affairs Committee, where she led the charge to revise and strengthen Houston’s animal welfare and noise ordinances. She has brought attention to problems and delays at city permitting and remains committed to streamlining processes to shorten permit wait times. Sallie also initiated the city’s first-ever food waste drop off/composting pilot program to give Houstonians the option to divert waste from municipal landfills.
Sallie is currently focused on improving the city’s financial outlook. She holds monthly Budget and Fiscal Affairs Committee meetings on topics related to increasing operating efficiencies, exploring cost-saving and revenue-generating measures, promoting transparency, and planning for long-term obligations. During the city’s budget season, she presides over 23 departmental workshops and prepares hundreds of questions about line-item spending and performance measures. She continues her annual public budget survey and holds budget town hall meetings to encourage citizen participation.
Also in her second term, Sallie is working to expand efforts to divert food waste from city landfills. She started a pumpkin composting program which is in its fourth year and most recently collected over 25,000 pounds of Halloween and Thanksgiving pumpkins from participating Houstonians. Sallie also hopes to increase awareness of opioid misuse and overdose, a problem growing at an alarming rate in Houston and across the nation. Further, she continues to advocate for Houstonians affected by noise and other nuisance and criminal activities stemming from bad-actor nightclubs and bars.
Sallie represents the city on regional issues on the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC), where she served as the 2024 board chair. She also serves on H-GAC’s Transportation Policy Council which directs federal and state transportation funding to mobility projects across the eight-county region.
Prior to running for office, Sallie was a longtime City Hall staffer. She helped develop the city’s comprehensive financial policies and orchestrated five years of budget hearings. She was heavily involved in initial Harvey recovery efforts and obtained grant funding to advance green stormwater infrastructure initiatives. She assembled and managed a task force to tackle redevelopment and flooding policies, spearheaded the city’s Adopt-A-Drain Program, and worked with council members to identify neighborhood drainage projects.
Sallie has a long history of serving her community. She has worked with offenders as a volunteer facilitator for Bridges to Life, a restorative justice prison program aimed at reducing recidivism rates. She serves on board of Family to Family Adoptions and on the advisory boards of the San Jose Clinic and the Houston Maritime Center and Museum. Sallie previously served on the boards of Holocaust Museum Houston and the Houston READ Commission.
Away from City Hall, Sallie spends time visiting her grown children – a daughter, son-in-law, and son in New York, a daughter in San Francisco, and another daughter in Houston (thankfully)! Sallie enjoys a good hike, a movie and popcorn at the refurbished River Oaks Theatre, the beef fajita nachos at Ninfa’s on Navigation, a kind and gentle yoga class, pickleball, and a run around her beloved Memorial Park. She’s been married to native Houstonian George Alcorn for 36 years and they attend St. Michael’s and St. Theresa’s Catholic Churches.
