SAN ANTONIO – Several San Antonio City Council members are renewing a push to hire more police officers, pressing the city to follow through on staffing recommendations first identified in 2023 after a $140,000 study.

Council members Marina Alderete Gavito, Misty Spears and Marc Whyte filed a memo calling on fellow council members to adopt the police staffing recommendations. The city paid $140,000 for a study to examine police staffing needs, but has not fully carried out its recommendations.

The 2023 study recommended hiring 360 new San Antonio Police Department officers over a five-year period: 100 in the first year, followed by 65 each year for the next four years. After following the plan for a couple of years, this year’s budget included funding for only 40 officers, which is 25 short of the study’s recommended pace.

District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte criticized that approach, saying, “That’s just not good enough. What we should be doing is starting with public safety when we look at a budget in any year.”

District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears said early direction matters as the city heads toward budget season. “The earlier we can express our intent and our focus for budget, the better, and that way anything that we’re really focused on can be incorporated into the budget as budget season nears,” Spears said.

Whyte also called on the mayor to support the memo and “get behind the proposal,” referencing the mayor’s recent confrontation with District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur over public safety recommendations at the Bonham nightclub. That confrontation resulted in the mayor being censured by the council.

The mayor’s office was contacted for comment and a response was pending. In remarks from February 24th, the mayor said public safety was the central issue in that dispute: “Let’s never forget the issue we were talking about at the end of the day was public safety, it was public safety, so when I elevated my voice because I became passionate about public safety, our number one priority as public officials is to keep people safe.”

Not all council members agree the hiring plan will be easy to implement. Councilman Jalen McKee Rodriguez said adding officers could require cuts elsewhere. “If we’re going to address one issue, where are we going to pull from? Are we going to pull from our streets, sidewalks, drainage?” he said.

A vote on the resolution could be on the City Council agenda as early as next month, with final budget decisions coming later in the fall.