<\/p>\n
San Antonio police officers respond to the scene of a shooting at a Travelodge\/Ramada Inn motel near the intersection of Military Drive West and U.S. 90 in this Oct. 15, 2025, file photo. A man was killed and two officers were wounded during a shootout.<\/p>\n
Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
Three City Council members wanted to secure a public commitment that their colleagues would support hiring 65 police officers next year, but what they got was the brush-off.<\/p>\n
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Council members Marina Alderete Gavito, Misty Spears and Marc Whyte last month\u00a0pitched a resolution<\/a> \u201caffirming City Council support for hiring 65 police officers in FY 2027.\u201d But they had no takers among\u00a0their seven colleagues or Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones during Thursday\u2019s council meeting.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Instead, Jones and the City Council voted 11-0 to send the resolution to council\u2019s five-member Public Safety Committee to discuss at its first meeting in May, ahead of budget talks that are set to start later that month.<\/p>\n But this much was clear Thursday: a council majority appears unwilling to increase San\u00a0Antonio\u2019s\u00a0police force at the expense of other city programs and departments.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always trade-offs when we decide to fund one thing over the other, and we just have to make sure we very well understand what those trade-offs are if we move forward with continuing with more officers,\u201d said District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur, who\u00a0chairs the Public Safety Committee.<\/p>\n Not every council member agrees that paying for up to 65 news officers in the city\u2019s next budget is a good idea, especially with declining violent crime rates and the health department, which supports violence prevention programs, facing steep federal funding cuts.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The city is also expected to soon increase spending on its existing force.\u00a0The police union is negotiating a new multi-year labor contract<\/a> with the city, which will include a series of yet-to-be-determined annual pay raises for\u00a0potentially the next three years.<\/p>\n \u201cNone of us are debating whether we should hire more officers,\u201d said District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, who supports increasing city spending on other efforts that prevent crime, such as installing streetlights or expanding access to after-school\u00a0programs.<\/p>\n \u201cThat discussion will happen in the budget, and we may very well support the addition of however many officers,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we do it alongside a handful of other challenging decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Alderete Gavito, Spears and Whyte want the city to stick to a hiring plan it adopted in 2023<\/a> after receiving a partial staffing study from consultant Alexander Weiss, who died before he could finish his report. The city hired his consulting partner to complete the study<\/a>.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Before he died, Weiss had\u00a0determined the number of officers the\u00a0SAPD would need to achieve a 60%-40% split between the time officers spend on \u201cproactive policing\u201d\u00a0\u2014 or crime prevention\u00a0\u2014 and responding to calls for service. From there, city staff determined that SAPD needed 360 additional patrol officers, which they aimed to hire within\u00a0the next five years.<\/p>\n The fiscal year 2024 budget that council adopted in September 2023 funded 100 of those positions. The following year\u2019s budget added another 65, with the goal of continuing to add 65 over each of the next three fiscal years.<\/p>\n But slowing property and sales tax collections led budget writers to initially include money\u00a0for just 25 patrol officers in the current budget. After council backlash, especially from Alderete Gavito, Spears and Whyte, the city settled on 40 positions.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unknown how many officers the city\u2019s budget writers will include in the early version of the next budget, which council will adopt in late September.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The city will continue to face a shortfall between rising expenses and shrinking revenues, which will require spending cuts.<\/p>\n Police spending takes the highest share\u00a0\u2014 37%\u00a0\u2014 of the city\u2019s $1.7 billion general fund, which pays for public safety, parks, libraries and other city services.<\/p>\n Whyte said Thursday that he believes funding additional patrol positions versus spending on crime prevention programs \u201cis not an either\/or\u201d decision.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can address the roots of crime\u00a0\u2014 we can fund various programs that will help us do that\u00a0\u2014 but that does not alleviate the need to put officers on the street now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n District 6 Councilman\u00a0Ric Galvan disagreed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is either\/or. It\u2019s easy to say it\u2019s not, but that\u2019s just fiscally irresponsible to say that\u00a0\u2014 and unrealistic,\u201d\u00a0Galvan said.<\/p>\n Each police hire requires revenue to pay their wages and benefits year after year.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThey require permanent cuts to programs, too,\u201d Galvan added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Antonio police officers respond to the scene of a shooting at a Travelodge\/Ramada Inn motel near the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-232402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-san-antonio","9":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","10":"tag-san-antonio-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}