The City of San Antonio is considering raising the tax rate and cutting some programs as it faces a $158 million budget deficit.<\/p>\n
The News 4 I-Team Waste Watch digs into the proposed budget to uncover questionable programs you probably didn’t know you were paying for.<\/p>\n
The proposed budget has pages upon pages of programs it spends your money on, from a gastronomy program to a fitness council, to traffic studies.<\/p>\n
Some of the programs are so obscure you might not know about them unless you go to the city’s website and watch videos it’s produced about them.<\/p>\n
Like the Gastronomy Program which promotes San Antonio\u2019s designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the hell is that?\u201d asked taxpayer Brenda Torres.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re wasting money, taxpayers\u2019 money.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city says: “The Chef Ambassadors represent San Antonio internationally and locally providing mentorship to culinary students and free culinary workshops.”<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d said taxpayer Betty Warren, \u201cThey can cook their food at home their self. I would cut it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city staff is now proposing cuts to the program to save $83 thousand.<\/p>\n
Then there’s something called the Mayor’s Fitness Council.<\/p>\n
The website says its mission is “to increase awareness and connect San Antonio residents to opportunities for improved emotional well-being, physical activity, and healthy eating.”<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, if you want to exercise you should exercise on your own,\u201d Torres said.<\/p>\n
City staff is recommending cuts to the council to save $180 thousand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it probably should be cut because i think money should be going to more important things around the city,\u201d another taxpayer, Keith Robinson said.<\/p>\n
But here’s one thing the city wants to keep: a $400 thousand consultant study on changing the speed limit on some city streets from 30 miles per hour down to 25 miles per hour.<\/p>\n
Council members requested the study as part of the city’s Vision Zero program to end all traffic deaths.<\/p>\n
The city told us: “Before the city can post a lower speed limit, it must complete an engineering study showing why the change is needed.”<\/p>\n
The city is currently getting community input on the proposed cuts and will adopt a budget in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The City of San Antonio is considering raising the tax rate and cutting some programs as it faces…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-411779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411779","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=411779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}