City Manager Erik Walsh, left, speaks with District 10 San Antonio City Council Member Marc Whyte during a recent meeting about the proposed budget. In response to a recent editorial calling for more cuts, Walsh says the city passed a budget that balanced cuts with core services residents expect.
Katina Zentz/San Antonio Express-News
The recent Express-News editorial on the city’s 2027 budget — “City, county sidestepping gaps in budgets,” Friday — argues San Antonio raised its property tax rate without making enough difficult spending decisions.
The adopted budget shows otherwise.
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The city entered this budget cycle facing a projected $158 million general fund shortfall through fiscal 2028. The general fund covers operating expenses. To close this gap, the adopted plan includes nearly $90 million in spending reductions over two years and eliminates 92 positions, including 41 that are filled.
The cuts followed comprehensive reviews of five city departments that make up about 68.5% of the general fund.
We approached those reductions thoughtfully, protecting legally required services and the priorities of residents and City Council while cutting staffing and overhead, scaling back lower-use programs and finding savings without reducing frontline services. These are significant reductions designed to limit the impact on the services residents rely on most.
At the same time, the general fund will grow by $72.5 million in fiscal 2027. More than $65 million is for police and fire, driven largely by new officer positions, collective bargaining agreements and rising health care and equipment costs.
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Simply comparing one year’s general fund total with another without explaining what is driving the increase misses the bigger picture. We do not simply take last year’s budget and add to it.
City Council also considered a plan that would have balanced the budget without increasing the tax rate. It required making much deeper cuts. At 10 town halls, residents opposed many of those service reductions.
The resulting tax-rate adjustment — San Antonio’s first in 33 years, after reducing it nine times — will cost the average homeowner about $36 next year, or $2.95 per month.
That figure also deserves context
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In 2022 and 2023, City Council increased the homestead exemption from almost zero to 10% and then to the state maximum of 20%, saving the average homeowner about $326 this year.
City Council also increased the senior exemption from $65,000 to $85,000 and the disabled exemption from $12,500 to $85,000. San Antonio freezes property taxes for homeowners once they turn 65. As a result, about 47% of San Antonio homesteads will not be affected by this year’s rate increase.
The fiscal 2027 budget provides about $156 million in property-tax relief. Many homeowners will still pay less in city property taxes than they did five years ago.
Finally, the editorial folds so-called “double magistration” into the budget debate. That is a separate operational and criminal-justice issue that, even if changed, would contribute very little toward addressing future budget shortfalls and could increase costs if it disrupts operations.
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The roughly $5 million spent on the city’s processing center should not be viewed as $5 million that becomes available if the current process changes.
Class C arrest processing, detention, paperwork, screening and transfer functions still must occur because Bexar County cannot accept the city’s Class C arrests. That work and associated cost do not go away even if we shift all other arrests to the county. I look forward to continuing these conversations with Sheriff Javier Salazar.
Reasonable people can disagree about individual budget choices. But the city’s budget includes all the things that budget hawks desire: a focus on core services, millions of dollars in cuts, numerous operational efficiencies and consolidations, fees that recover the costs of services, and more than $150 million in property tax relief, even with a minor rate adjustment that won’t impact nearly half of all residential taxpayers.
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In the coming months, I will begin working with City Council to plan for next year’s budget.
Erik Walsh is the city manager for San Antonio.