San Antonio officials are laying the groundwork to move away from paper citations — a shift that could speed up court processing, increase payment rates and save the city time and money.
Right now, many traffic and parking citations are still processed on paper, a system officials say slows down cases, requires manual data entry and can leave residents waiting weeks for tickets to appear in the court system.
At a briefing to the Public Safety Committee on Tuesday, Deputy City Manager María Villagómez said calls from annoyed residents experiencing those delays prompted the city to begin examining its citation process.
“It was calls that I received from residents being frustrated about going to the court and not finding their ticket,” Villagómez said. “So I started working with the police department to find out how many paper tickets we were issuing and a way to use electronic devices.”
Villagómez said the effort gained momentum after vendors approached the city with potential solutions, prompting a broader analysis and Tuesday’s briefing.
In fiscal year 2025, the city issued about 181,800 tickets tied to more than 217,000 violations across multiple departments, including police, code enforcement and animal care. Of those, roughly 54% were handled electronically, while about 84,000 citations were still processed on paper.
San Antonio Police Department citations were split between electronic and paper, with about 47% issued digitally and the rest still written by hand. Other departments — including Animal Care Services and Development Services — rely almost entirely on paper citations, though they use internal electronic systems to track them.
In many cases, citations are written out in the field, handed to the recipient, then physically delivered to municipal court, where staff manually enter the information into the system — a process officials say creates delays and increases the risk of errors or lost tickets.
Those delays not only affect residents, but also carry real financial and operational costs.
The cost of paper tickets
During the analysis, SAPD identified about 22,000 citations that could have been issued electronically — a shift expected to save roughly 736 hours during traffic stops, or about $51,000 annually.
The savings are even greater for municipal court staff. A time study found it takes an average of 4 minutes and 48 seconds to manually enter a paper citation. Moving to electronic citations could save an estimated 1,746 hours of staff time, or about $61,000 annually.
Officials said the shift could potentially increase revenue for the city by increasing the amount of citations that are actually paid.
City data shows about 38% of paper citations are paid, compared to roughly 63% of electronic citations — a gap officials estimate could translate to an additional $300,000 to $500,000 in annual revenue.
Kate Kinnison, the city’s chief innovation officer, told committee members the changes would also improve the experience for residents.
“Residents receiving e-citations resolved their cases in almost half the time as those receiving paper tickets,” she said. “From 73 days on average on the paper side to 38 days on average on the electronic side.”
Timeline for changes
City officials said the shift will take an estimated 18 months to take full effect. The city is preparing to bring a budget item for fiscal year 2027 for technology replacement related to citations before starting a competitive bidding process in early 2027.
The service provider is expected to be selected and approved by city council in March 2027 with deployment of the technology expected to begin in April of next year.
In the meantime, the city is moving forward with shorter-term upgrades.
That includes the purchase of 60 additional electronic citation devices for SAPD officers — a roughly $220,000 investment that officials said is expected to pay for itself through increased revenue collection.
Council members generally supported the direction, but raised questions about how the transition will work in practice.
Some pointed to accessibility concerns, emphasizing the need to maintain paper options for residents who may not have smartphones or reliable internet access. Others questioned whether investing in additional devices now makes sense if a new system could replace them in the coming years.
Villagómez said the additional devices are expected to support the short-term conversion of about 22,000 paper citations to electronic format for SAPD — a shift she said would improve processing times, reduce delays for residents and increase payment rates.
She said the changes are intended to capture immediate gains while the city evaluates a broader overhaul of its citation system.
Future efforts are expected to focus on expanding electronic citation use in departments like ACS and Development Services, where paper-based processes are still the norm, and moving toward a more unified city-wide system.
