After city staffers from three departments outlined their detailed budgets and plans for 2025, council members zeroed in on the most basic of city services.
Streets and sidewalk maintenance dominated a budget work session Tuesday, with council members asking for help to expedite certain projects in their districts and some suggesting the city put more money in the budget to get construction and related roadwork projects done faster.
“Are we allocating enough dollars to public works?” said District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte. “This is what our residents want. They want these projects done well and done quickly, and rather than spending money on a bunch of other things, our money needs to be spent here.”
A briefing by the finance department on the city’s debt management plan and capital budget was also on the agenda as the council prepares to consider the nearly $4 billion fiscal year 2025 budget on Sept 19.
In that presentation, Deputy Chief Financial Officer Troy Elliott said that credit rating agencies have given the City of San Antonio some of the highest ratings compared to other municipalities and organizations of similar size.
“These ratings allow us to borrow at the lowest interest rate and the lowest cost of borrowing,” he said.
The city’s total outstanding debt through general obligation bonds, certificates of obligation, tax notes and revenue bonds is currently at $3.8 billion.
Elliott said his department plans to bring to the council in the coming year proposed financing plans for convention center improvements, a new airport terminal and a downtown baseball stadium.
Transportation and safety
While Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the debt management briefing was “the most exciting part” of the day’s presentation, most of the conversation centered around briefings about San Antonio’s transportation infrastructure.
In addition to the public works briefing, Transportation Department Director Cat Hernandez also presented an update on its work, including 50 projects in various stages of completion, and the Vision Zero Action Plan and Complete Streets projects.
Adopted in 2016, Vision Zero is a plan for eliminating all fatalities on San Antonio roadways through education, enforcement and engineering.
Since then, the department has created a list of 20 high-impact corridors to focus its efforts in improving safety. A copy of the plan will be made available in September, Hernandez said.
Complete Streets, adopted in 2011, is a project intended to make streets and roads safer and easier for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. It can include improved lighting and sidewalks and designated lanes for bikes and public transit.
In 2025, the department will begin to implement Complete Streets goals and start updating the city development code.
Hernandez said it will also use 2025 budget funding of $250,000 to create a strategic plan for implementing transit-oriented development policy in VIA’s Advanced Rapid Transit corridors. The council is scheduled to consider that policy in December.
But more than half of the transportation department’s $6.1 million proposed 2025 budget will go toward implementing a bike network plan and maintaining existing facilities.
Of the 1,890 miles of safe bike facilities proposed in the bike network plan, 505 miles of bike paths have been built so far and another 15 will be added in 2025.
Public works and streets
The largest piece of the public works department’s $595 million budget for fiscal year 2025 includes almost $169 million for everything from streets and sidewalks to traffic signal construction and school pedestrian safety.
In 2025, the city will spend $122 million on 1,618 street maintenance projects alone. Most of those dollars come from the annual budget and $20 million from the 2022 bond.
Public Works Director and City Engineer Razi Hosseini said that of the 187 projects in the bond, nine will be completed or almost complete in September and 122 will be under construction by next year.
The city is proposing to spend another $21.5 million on sidewalks — making repairs and working to close the 1,416 miles of gaps between them. In 2025, public works will close 30 miles of that gap.
Public works also oversees the maintenance of non-service alleys, the Cool Pavement program, traffic signals and drainage projects.
In 2025, the city will spend an estimated $4 million maintaining non-service alleys. Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran said she’s “at her wit’s end” with asking for help to pave alleys in District 3 and asked what could be done about it.
Hosseini said there are many challenges to overcome when it comes to eliminating alleys and the costs. Expanding backyards would require agreement from all property owners who might then bear the cost of new fencing and increased property taxes.
Concerned about dangerous traffic conditions in District 7, Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito said she wants the city to expedite timelines for traffic signals, especially where there are repeated accidents, “where it is a matter of life and death.”
“For us, going back to residents saying … we’re going to get a light in three years, it’s unacceptable, because that’s what we have to answer to them,” Gavito said.
Public works is going to start prioritizing its 5,000 annual requests by changing how 311 calls are processed, said City Manager Erik Walsh. And for the backlog of requests, the city is adding money to the budget to work through those.
Construction woes
Council members also asked Hosseini about construction contracts and the number of delayed road construction projects throughout the city.
“What can we do to get these things to move quicker?” said Whyte. “In my district, for instance, the Bulverde Road project was supposed to be done almost a year ago.”
Hosseini said public works is planning to improve its processes by enhancing due diligence in the design phase of projects, broadening how it puts projects out for bid — including offering incentives for early completion — and creating a dashboard for capital projects to update stakeholders during construction.
District 9 Councilman John Courage said he is concerned about how competitive the city is when hiring contractors and if there are enough to go around.
Nirenberg agreed with Courage. “I do think we are starting to bump up against our capacity in the community in terms of how many projects we can move forward,” he said.
But when it comes to compensating commercial businesses that are affected by road construction, Nirenberg said small business disruption grants are not the best use of city dollars.
“Rather than trying to compensate for the lost time, I would rather see those dollars … go into some sort of incentive,” he said, for contractors to work 24/7 or complete a job before the deadline.
The streets budget has more than doubled since Nirenberg began serving on City Council in 2013, he said, while the property tax rate has declined.
“So the notion that we’re somehow going in the opposite direction of basic services and core services belies the truth about how we’ve handled this budget,” Nirenberg said. But the city needs to do better than 30 miles of sidewalk in a year, he said.
“We need to continue to double down but also recognize there’s a lot of other things that are priorities for this council and for our community that we’ve got to balance,” he said.
