Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones wants the City Council to consider redirecting millions of sales tax dollars raised for Ready to Work, the job training program initiated by predecessor Ron Nirenberg, to make up for a dire budget shortfall.
Such a move could allow City Council to avoid voting to increase San Antonio’s property tax rate to close the nearly $158 million budget deficit the city’s faces over the next two fiscal years because of rising expenses, shrinking property tax revenue and slowing sales tax collections.
“As I have shared, raising our neighbors’ property taxes during this time is my last resort,” Jones wrote in a Tuesday memo to the City Council. “Before we pursue such an option — to either close the $158 million budget gap and/or to raise the 2027 bond capacity — we owe it to our neighbors to explain how we have reduced costs and redirected existing funds to higher priority efforts.”
Jones told the council in her Tuesday memo that she has asked City Manager Erik Walsh and City Attorney Andy Segovia “to help frame a discussion about potentially redirecting the remaining Ready to Work funds to priority projects that we originally envisioned funding in either the General Fund or in the 2027 bond.”
The city collected $235.8 million for the program, according to the program dashboard. Of that, $123.8 million remains to be spent.
San Antonians would have to vote to redirect the Ready to Work dollars — an election that Jones said could take place as early as November. A majority of council members would have to vote to call such an election.
In November 2020, 77% of San Antonio voters approved devoting 1/8-cent of city sales tax from December 2021 through December 2025 to fund Ready to Work, a job-training program geared toward unemployed and underemployed workers — with the broader goal of making a dent in generational poverty in San Antonio.
The ballot language said the taxes would be used “for the purpose of financing authorized programs related to job training and the awarding of scholarships.”
The initiative, which is the largest such effort ever attempted among U.S. cities, is one of Nirenberg’s legacy projects. He termed out in June 2026 after eight years in office, and he will likely succeed Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai in January.
Since Ready to Work launched in spring 2022, it has struggled to meet its goal of placing 80% of participants into jobs paying at least $15 an hour within six months of finishing their city-funding training, which entails completing a bachelor’s degree or an industry-recognized certificate. That rate was 63% as of Tuesday, according to the dashboard.
To date, close to 17,000 people have enrolled in the program. Of those, just over 5,750 have found an approved job and are earning an average annual salary of nearly $45,000, up from the average $11,300 salary they earned before.