SAN ANTONIO \u2013 The San Antonio City Council isn\u2019t ready to commit to adding more police officers \u2014 at least, not yet.<\/p>\n
A trio of council members<\/a> had pushed to get a non-binding resolution to support adding 65 officers in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget onto Thursday\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n But after apparently failing to sway their council colleagues on the early show of support, the group joined in the unanimous vote to push discussion of the issue to the first Public Safety Committee meeting in May.<\/p>\n One of the three council members, Councilman Marc Whyte (D10), told KSAT he wasn\u2019t concerned.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that the data is clear. Everyone knows we need the officers, right? And so we just have to get it done,\u201d Whyte said after the vote.<\/p>\n Other council members want the addition of new officers to be considered within a wider view of the budget.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there\u2019s 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 tradeoffs are if we move forward with continuing with more officers,\u201d said Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1), the chairwoman of the Public Safety Committee. <\/p>\n Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) said council members might end up supporting the addition of \u201chowever many officers, but we\u2019ll do it alongside a handful of other challenging decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that we don\u2019t know what our financial outlook is, but have a sense that it\u2019s bleak,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know how many cuts we\u2019ll have to make to Public Works, to Metro Health, to (Parks and Recreation), to libraries, Animal Care Services, our fire department, our housing programs, Code Enforcement, the nonprofits who provide essential and wraparound services to our community.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t know if we\u2019re going to have to raise property taxes alongside utility rates to afford any of this growth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The city has been trying to follow a recommendation from a 2023 staffing analysis<\/a> to add 360 patrol officers over a three- to five-year period. The idea is to give officers more time for proactive policing, like checking on regular trouble spots, traffic enforcement, or patrolling for car burglars, instead of running from call to call.<\/p>\n The city added 100 new patrol officers in FY 2024 and another 65 in FY 2025. <\/p>\n