SAN ANTONIO \u2013 San Antonio District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito joined KSAT on Wednesday to push back on Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones\u2019 proposal to hold another public vote this November on city funding for a downtown Spurs arena as part of Project Marvel.<\/p>\n
Jones issued a memo last Friday calling for a new ballot measure on the $489 million city investment in the arena project. That move would require approval from at least six of the 11 council members \u2014 including the mayor \u2014 to make the November ballot. <\/p>\n
Alderete Gavito said the votes simply aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, a lot of us are frustrated because there\u2019s a lot of misinformation being told to residents,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have already voted, they were fully educated on the vote, and we need to move forward with this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The councilwoman also addressed the city\u2019s $158 million budget deficit, which Jones has cited as part of her rationale for revisiting the project. Alderete Gavito said the arena funding cannot be redirected to close that gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is restricted funds,\u201d she said. \u201cIt cannot go to police officers. It cannot go to sidewalks. It cannot go to senior centers. It has to go \u2014 it is restricted by the state to go to conventions and arenas and stadiums downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added if San Antonio does not use the funds, the money would revert to the state.<\/p>\n
Watch the full interview in the video player above.<\/p>\n
Read also:<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 San Antonio District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito joined KSAT on Wednesday to push back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3084,2112,12132,13350,82,84,83,7392],"class_list":["post-399033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-city-hall","tag-gina-ortiz-jones","tag-ksat-qa","tag-marina-alderete-gavito","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-saq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399033","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=399033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}