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The San Antonio City Council at the Sept. 18, 2026, meeting, when members adopted the new budget in a split vote.<\/p>\n
Katina Zentz\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones immediately went on the offensive after voting against next year\u2019s city budget.<\/p>\n
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She blamed her City Council colleagues for adopting a $4.4 billion budget that in her view was beyond city government\u2019s means\u00a0\u2014 and for approving a 3.9% property tax rate hike to help pay for it. She also criticized City Manager Erik Walsh and his staff for not offering up a more fiscally responsible\u00a0spending plan.<\/p>\n
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\u201cUltimately, there wasn\u2019t a big enough appetite to do things differently,\u201d Jones said at the Metro SA Chamber\u2019s City Vision event Monday<\/a>, which five of City Council\u2019s 10 members attended.<\/p>\n City budget writers, with direction from council, had to close a $158 million gap between revenue and expenses over the next two years.<\/p>\n As Jones puts it, few council members were willing to consider her spate of proposals to tap sales and hotel tax dollars to pay for a handful of programs and grants for San Antonio\u00a0nonprofits. The idea was to stop paying for them out of the city\u2019s $1.76 billion general fund, which funds street repairs, fire and police protection, and other basic services.<\/p>\n But she didn\u2019t try to rally a majority of council members to support her vision for city spending\u00a0\u2014 which is a basic move for a mayor. Instead, she largely laid out her ideas in memos, brief conversations with a few members and news conferences.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Her approach to City Council boiled down to \u201ctake it or leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones told the San Antonio Express-News that if council had been focused on not raising taxes, rethinking general-fund expenses and helping as many residents as possible, \u201cthen we can have some substantive conversations about paths forward.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s my going-in position,\u201d she added. \u201cAt the end of the day, I can only control myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Councilwoman Teri Castillo said Jones\u2019 conversations with her largely amounted to the mayor telling her about a budget proposal instead of asking for her feedback.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cAt most, it\u2019s to check a box to say she called someone,\u201d the West Side councilwoman said.<\/p>\n City Council appeared to be fractured and directionless as the budget vote approached, and Jones caught nearly everyone by surprise when she pitched 1.6% across-the-board cuts to save $28 million and avoid a take hike \u2014 which the council\u2019s progressive members criticized as irresponsible.<\/p>\n But nothing came of her proposal because Walsh said his staff didn\u2019t have enough time to identify what would be on the chopping block.<\/p>\n The next day, Jones joined North Side council members Marina\u00a0Alderete Gavito, Misty Spears and Marc Whyte in voting against both the budget and the tax increase. City Council\u2019s other seven representatives voted for both.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The mayor and council are responsible for devising a budget \u201cthat is good for the city,\u201d said political consultant Brielle Insler, who ran then-Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda\u2019s 2025 mayoral campaign against Jones and more than 20 other candidates. \u201cA mayor voting against it means that you didn\u2019t accomplish that task.\u201d<\/p>\n Economic divide<\/p>\n Jones said at the chamber event that City Council \u201cpunted on important allocations and reasonable cuts that could have saved our neighbors from a property tax increase during this affordability crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n The city had not raised its property tax rate since 1992. The new budget raises it by two cents, to just over 56 cents per $100 of assessed value. That will cost the average homeowner with a homestead exemption about $35 more on their annual tax bill.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The new budget and tax rate kick in Oct. 1, the start of fiscal year 2027.<\/p>\n Councilman Edward\u00a0Mungia said Jones\u2019 characterization was unfair to City Council members who weighed the costs of cutting services many of their residents rely on versus asking them to pay a few dollars more in property taxes a month.<\/p>\n \u201cThe perception that we didn\u2019t do enough doesn\u2019t sit well with me\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s not a team message,\u201d said Mungia, who represents District 4 on the Southwest Side. \u201cTo criticize our vote as we didn\u2019t care or we were lazy is not a productive conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, it was the council members from San Antonio\u2019s poorest districts<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 including Mungia\u2019s\u00a0\u2014 who supported the tax hike.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Human Services Director Melody Woosley told council in late August that the 48\u00a0nonprofits that will receive a total of $5.1 million in general-fund dollars next year will serve 9,300 residents, 70% of whom live in council Districts 1 through 5. Those districts include the East, West and South sides\u00a0and downtown.<\/p>\n The organizations include the Boys & Girls Club, the YWCA of San Antonio, Goodwill Industries, Meals on Wheels of San Antonio and the Alamo Area Rape Crisis Center. Not raising the property tax could have resulted in cutting city support for them in half.<\/p>\n \u201cSlashing funding doesn\u2019t do half of this city justice for the services that they need,\u201d Mungia said ahead of the council\u2019s Sept. 18 vote to adopt the budget. \u201cWhen we talk about something to lift all boats\u00a0\u2014 when half of this city is continuing to deal with poverty, drainage issues, infrastructure concerns, lack of programs for their own families and kids, the bottom will fall out of this city.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones has cast herself as a fighter for San Antonio\u2019s most vulnerable residents, whom she says city leaders have overlooked as they\u2019ve prioritized flashy development projects aimed at San Antonians and visitors with money to spare\u00a0\u2014 such as the planned $1.3 billion Spurs arena downtown.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But her decision to vote against the budget and tax increase set her against the council members who represent San Antonio\u2019s struggling neighborhoods.<\/p>\n The no vote<\/p>\n Bert Santiba\u00f1ez, a Democratic political strategist who worked on Jones\u2019 mayoral campaign last year, views her vote against the budget as political \u201cpositioning,\u201d not governing.<\/p>\n \u201cVoting no consistently gives her a record she can point to come reelection time, that she was with residents when the rest of council wasn\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The next city election isn\u2019t until November 2029, but the race is expected to draw current or former City Council members, whether or not Jones decides to seek reelection. Some political insiders speculate that Jones could launch another congressional bid, having twice sought the Congressional District 23 seat seat prior to running for local office.<\/p>\n The budget vote is one of many that Jones has lost since taking office in June 2025 \u2014 and she doesn\u2019t appear to be bothered by that record, even though a mayor who routinely loses major votes effectively isn\u2019t leading City Council.<\/p>\n A month before the budget vote, Jones\u2019 push to have San Antonio voters decide whether the city helps finance the new Spurs arena\u00a0failed in a 5-6 vote<\/a>.<\/p>\n Insler, the political consultant, said mayors and council members usually collaborate because they want to advance\u00a0the policy changes and projects they campaigned on.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThey really do want to work together because they know they were elected to serve constituents, and they all have goals of moving the city forward,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But Jones doesn\u2019t prioritize sitting down with council members to learn about their goals and sell them on hers. Instead, she regularly appears on Q&A segments on TV and radio news programs, holds news conferences on the steps of City Hall and films social media videos in which she\u00a0asks residents to contact their council members<\/a> to urge them to back her proposals. That was largely her approach to her budget proposals.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the win for (Jones) is being able to tell constituents, \u2018I pushed back on this thing I think is bad, and I was on the right side of history,\u2019\u201d said political consultant Andrew Solano, who ran tech entrepreneur Beto Altamirano\u2019s mayoral campaign last year.<\/p>\n Solano also worked as a council aide when Ron\u00a0Nirenberg was mayor and served as Mayor Ivy Taylor\u2019s council liaison, which meant working closely with members\u2019 offices on policy ideas.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Whyte said it was not until the eve of the budget vote that Jones approached him about how they could avoid a tax hike.\u00a0Whyte, Spears and\u00a0Alderete Gavito had been adamantly opposed to raising the tax rate since budget talks began in May.<\/p>\n Jones frustrated the three when she proposed cutting every city department budget by 1.6%.<\/p>\n \u201cIf she would have said, \u2018Let\u2019s do the cuts\u2019 six weeks ago, I think we would have actually avoided the tax hike,\u201d said Whyte, who had proposed cutting department budgets by 2%. \u201cRather than focus on the one path that we had to avoid the tax hike\u00a0\u2014 to make strategic and reasonable cuts\u00a0\u2014 she was doing all these other things.\u201d<\/p>\n Alderete Gavito said Jones never spoke to her one-on-one about the budget. Councilwoman\u00a0Sukh Kaur, who represents downtown and parts of the North Side, said she didn\u2019t hear from the mayor either.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t Congress<\/p>\n Jones\u2019 contrarian approach has gotten results. She\u2019s focused public attention on longstanding city practices or policies that previous mayors and councils hadn\u2019t questioned, particularly those that have benefited developers and other business interests.<\/p>\n