SAN ANTONIO – Two of San Antonio’s most popular services, parks and libraries, are among the departments expected to make cuts as the city tightens its belt.
But while if the city wants to avoid a tax increase, the taxes could go much deeper.
City staff are proposing a mix of cuts, tax increases, and higher fees over the next two years as part of an effort to close a projected $158 million budget deficit in FY 2028.
Though the city works to balance its budget over a two-year timeframe, the City Council only adopts the budget for one year at a time. So although the city is considering about $90 million in cuts or fund transfers over the course of two years, the council will only vote on the roughly $41 million in the FY 2027 budget.
While the library system and parks department are both touched by those plans, their cuts have caveats.
The library system is poised to cut 39 library aide and circulation attendant jobs in FY 2027 — 22 of which are currently filled — which would save a little under $1 million per year.
The city has framed the cuts as a way to “right-size” staffing levels as physical circulation drops and automation through services like autorenewals and self-checkout further reduces the amount of book handling.
“These branches who are going to be losing these positions, we will see that team impact,” Library Director Sukrit Goswami told KSAT. “There’s not going to be any reduction in any program, not going to be reduction in service.”
Goswami said the staff in those positions could be placed in other city jobs. Still, the mayor and several council members have supported keeping the positions in the budget.
Councilman Edward Mungia (D4) said during a Thursday budget discussion that councilmembers have heard from staff and people concerned about the cuts about the work the library employees are doing “above and beyond” their roles.
“There’s people might say, well, they need to come back and kind of do what they need do on their role, but how do we make sure that we can help accommodate if they’re going above and beyond?” he said.
The Parks & Recreation budget has a longer list of proposed and planned General Fund reductions — nearly $3 million in FY 2027 and $5 million in FY 2028 — but most of that is simply shuffling money around rather than true cuts.
Nearly $6 million worth of positions and costs over the next two years, for example, would simply be paid out of the Parks Environmental Fund instead of the General Fund, propped up by a pair of 25 cent increases to trash fees.
Others are true cuts, such as a $200,000 reduction in the $1.2 million of assistance to the San Antonio Botanical Garden or eliminating what Parks & Recreation Director Homer Garcia III says are some already vacant positions and classes with no, or very little, attendance.
He says the proposed cuts would have “minimal impact.”
Across all funds, Parks & Recreation would still have a proposed $120.4 million budget, with $71.1 million from the General Fund. The library system has a proposed $60.8 million budget across all funds, with most — $58.1 million —from the General Fund.
But the cuts in both departments have potential to be much more severe if the council wants to avoid a tax increase.
Staff members previously presented council members at an Aug. 19 budget discussion with examples of $75 million worth of additional cuts over two years, which they said would be necessary to make up for foregoing any tax rate increases while closing the projected deficit in the General Fund.
Parks and libraries would be particularly hard hit in the examples staff gave. Nearly $10 million in additional cuts to the library could include reducing library hours and eliminating adult services like help with job searches, resume building, or GED classes.
“I believe that if there’s any further cuts proposed, there will be — I believe there will an impact. And what that impact is, we will have to first see, we will to assess our services again from top to bottom,” Goswami told KSAT.
The more than $18 million in additional Parks & Recreation cuts, meanwhile, would slash numerous park programs, from centralized programming to fitness, wellness, athletics, and tennis programs.
“Relative to the line item on fitness, we have more than 6,400 classes that are serving over 72,000 participants,” Garcia said during the Aug. 19 briefing.
He declined to go into much detail when KSAT asked on Thursday though of what the deeper cuts could look like.
“And so we just need to see how next week goes with amendments and then we’ll have a better idea ultimately of what the impact is going to be beyond, if at all, what the city management proposed in this budget relative to parks,” Garcia told KSAT.
The possibility of that level of additional cuts, though, appears small.
City staff left the Aug. 19 budget discussion about possible alternatives continuing to focus on their original proposal, and a Sept. 4 list of councilmember-proposed amendments to the budget did not show any recommended additional cuts to parks or libraries.
The council will vote on a final budget on Sept. 17.
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