This story has been updated.
Just a week out from the city’s budget vote, the San Antonio City Council remains divided on major top-line spending issues that could radically shape the size and direction of city government.
The council has approved several budgets without the support of dissenting members in recent years.
But a tax increase — something the city hasn’t done in more than 30 years — requires 60% support, Budget Director Freddie Martinez said Thursday.
Three council members have already said they won’t support raising taxes to close a budget deficit, voting against a procedural measure that gave staff the authority to even explore such a move on Aug. 13.
If they can get two more members on their side next week, the rate hike would be off the table, triggering major cuts across the board.
“We would have to go back and revise the budget,” Martinez said. “Without the seven votes, the property tax would stay at the current rate.”
City Council has been meeting for months now to strategize their way out of a massive $158 million budget deficit over the next two years.
In August, city staff pitched a formal budget proposal that calls for a combination of $90 million in spending cuts, $30 million from increased fees — plus a 3.9% property tax increase that council members across the political spectrum have expressed concern about.
Against that backdrop, the city’s normal budget calendar was adjusted last minute to explore alternate scenarios, showing the council what services it’d be losing without a tax increase.
Casualties listed in that Aug. 19 exercise included summer youth programs, pavement markings, home repair programs and others cuts so painful that Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7) — one of the biggest rate hike skeptics — accused city staff of purposefully turning council members against one another to shut it down.
Now that unpopular plan could become the city’s budget blueprint.
City Manager Erik Walsh said in the Aug. 19 meeting that staff has limited options of where to cut when it comes to the general fund, which pays for day-to-day city operations, including many public-facing services.
He asked the council whether staff should pivot to one of its alternative budget proposals so that it can do the necessary risk analysis, something they hadn’t had time to do for all of the potential scenarios.
“I don’t want to create parallel budget processes,” Walsh said at the time. “We have too many work sessions that we’re planning, and and it’s going to get really confusing.”
Weeks later, however, the council looks poised to debate major spending decisions right down to the wire.
Members have two budget work sessions left next week before the Sept. 17 budget vote, and on Wednesday night, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said she’d already proposed several big changes to avoid some of the most painful cuts.
She spent the past two months pushing the council to free up other resources by reconsidering funding for a new $1.3 billion Spurs arena and sunsetting a major Nirenberg-era workforce development program — both of which fell flat.
On Wednesday night, she presented budget proposals that would restore library funding by cutting city spending on Fiesta events, keep a maternal health program by canceling a $2 million contribution to UTSA’s school of public health, and move some public art funding to pay for programs at senior centers.
“Is all this going to be successful? I don’t know,” she said.
Still, Jones faced questions about a tax increase that some residents consider worse than the budget cuts.
Raising taxes would hit wealthier parts of the city harder, according to a city analysis, which has swayed some of the council’s more progressive members against voting it down.
Meanwhile, Northside Councilmembers Alderete Gavito, Marc Whyte (D10) and Misty Spears (D9) have all stood by their Aug. 13 vote to stop it.
Asked about the issue Wednesday, Jones said council owed it to residents to explore every option.
“I have always said that [raising taxes was] my last resort. This is my last resort. We’ve got to cut the fat,” Jones told residents at the Northeast Senior Center on Wednesday night. ” … But if we’re asking you to consider raising your property taxes, I think we have to go through the intellectual exercise to show how we’ve been as judicious as possible.”
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that five council members would need to vote against the tax rate hike for it to fail.
