A view of downtown San Antonio from Alamo Stadium on Friday night, Sept. 20, 2024.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
City Council members brawled Wednesday over the question of which would be worse for San Antonians: deep cuts to basic services or the city’s first property tax rate hike in three decades.
City Manager Erik Walsh has proposed cuts totaling more than $90 million over the next two years, with $41 million outlined in spending plan for fiscal year 2027, and a property tax rate increase to help fill a $158 million deficit.
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On Wednesday, Walsh and his staff previewed an additional $75 million in cuts that would kick in if City Council rejects a tax rate hike. The reductions would be necessary to balance the budget.
Then the fighting started.
Three council members — Marina Alderete Gavito, Misty Spears and Marc Whyte — dug their heels in, refusing to entertain the possibility of a rate hike after being presented with cuts that would reduce library hours, eliminate jobs, shutdown a home repair program and jettison a slew of parks department programing.
Whyte noted a tax rate increase would still leave the city with a multimillion-dollar deficit over the next five years.
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“The cycle goes on and on and on,” Whyte said. “What the hell is the point of that? We’re going to continue to raise property taxes on the people of San Antonio. It doesn’t work. Why don’t we actually address the real issue right now, which is that we spend way too much damn money. We cannot do all of these things. Nobody is saying these aren’t all good programs, but you can’t do them all.”
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and the 10-member council must adopt a budget for fiscal year 2027, which starts Oct. 1, and property tax rate next month.
Walsh recommended raising the tax rate by two cents, to just over 56 cents per $100 assessed value. That could raise the city tax bill for the average homeowner with a homestead exemption by just under $3 each month, or a little more than $35 each year.
The three council members’ reluctance to consider a rate increase drew the ire of several colleagues, including Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez.
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“I’m really, really exhausted at this high ground that certain folk were taking — this ‘I cannot fathom that we would increase property taxes for people,’” McKee-Rodriguez said, taking on a regal tone as he mocked his colleagues’ stance. “That is ridiculous because the alternative is that you can fathom that we’re going to cut 171 additional people and that we’re going to cut all of these programs that my constituents rely on. You can fathom that. You can fathom people being unemployed and having to rely on social services that we’re no longer going to provide.”
At one point in the meeting, McKee-Rodriguez floated the idea of reevaluating a tentative contract with the police union, which bakes in pay increases for the officers. The trio that’s against the tax rate hike is pushing for the budget to include money for more patrol officers.
Whyte shook his head as McKee-Rodriguez spoke.
Councilman Ric Galvan sarcastically suggested the city make more cuts in the districts whose representatives are not OK with a tax increase, an idea that Walsh later said —at Whyte’s insistence — that he would not consider.
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Galvan said the additional $75 million in cuts to avoid a rate increase go too far.
“These are real cuts, man,” he said. “These are real things for people’s lives that they rely upon.”
Alderete Gavito accused city staff of purposefully selecting service cuts that would hit residents hard to pit council members against each other, which Walsh denied.
“I think it’s interesting that y’all put up these line items that really impact residents and start riling us up against each other,” she said. “The argument is not against each other for our residents. I think the argument should be ‘How do we cut the fat internally?’”
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But only cutting items that don’t affect residents wouldn’t be enough to dig the city out of its fiscal hole, Walsh said.
“We are a rather lean organization administratively,” he said. “We are not going to be able to solve our issue with administrative cuts. Period.”
Nevertheless, Alderete Gavito asked city staff to flesh out an alternative $75 million in cuts, ones that target internal city structures instead of services.
Next year’s proposed general fund, which supports basic city services, totals $1.76 billion. The city’s overall proposed budget is $4.4 billion.
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Residents can attend town halls across the city over the next two weeks to weigh in on the proposed budget.
Saving programs
City Council also considered a budget scenario that would essentially double the property tax rate increase that Walsh proposed in an effort to salvage some city services that are currently on the chopping block.
But that got little attention from council members. Only Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran said she was open to that spending plan.
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Earlier this week, several members asked the city staff to find away around cutting 39 positions from local libraries.
Viagran opposed cutting 15 staffers from the city’s Metropolitan Health District. Losing the workers would kill a pilot program aimed at reducing maternal mortality and end another group within the health department that’s working to improve prenatal care.
The city is looking to cut 101 positions from its payroll, 54 of which are currently filled. Walsh has said he doesn’t anticipate layoffs because his staffers are trying to find new positions for each affected employees. But Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said this week that their jobs should be left alone, in part because shuffling people around could lead to greater inefficiencies down the road.