Bexar County’s first scientific budget survey indicated that residents aren’t necessarily opposed to a tax increase, but they want to see the county reduce its spending to pay down its debt.
The county is projecting its worst financial year since the 2008 crash, thanks to sinking property values and new state policies exempting some business taxes.
Commissioners face tough spending decisions in the coming months — as they also decide which pandemic-era programs to continue now that federal pandemic relief funding is coming to an end.
Against that backdrop, Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3) pushed the county to commission a survey of residents’ spending priorities.
The UTSA Center for Public Opinion Research poll was conducted online from May 1-12, and received responses from 1,300 residents, with a +/- 2.7% margin of error.
Bryan Gervais, the center’s director and an associate professor in UTSA’s Department of Political Science and Geography, presented results Tuesday that surprised some commissioners.
Asked how the county should address a potential budget gap in the 2026-2027 fiscal year, 46.8% of respondents said cut spending, while 47.2% said they’d support either raising taxes or a combination of higher taxes and spending cuts.
But when asked about the county’s $2.4 billion in total debt, which equals roughly
$1,651 per resident, about 64% of residents said they wanted leaders to reduce spending to pay it down.
Roughly 25% of respondents said they were ok with keeping the current spending and debt plan as it is, while 10.5% weren’t sure.
With roughly $2.4 billion in outstanding debt, Bexar County has the highest debt per capita among Texas counties.
County Manager David Smith has said in the past that issuing debt was smart policy, because the county has long been able to borrow at such low interest rates.
But two years ago he also called for a pause on new debt, to keep the county’s credit rating in check.
Assistant County Manager Tina Smith-Dean said Tuesday that the county had been working toward that goal, and had not issued any new bonds in two or three years.
But Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said commissioners who’ve avoided tough conversations about a long list of outstanding projects should prepare themselves for potentially bigger changes this fall.
The county’s capital backlog is sensitive because it includes some projects like The Link, which are important to a commissioner, but approved so long ago they may no longer have support from the current elected officials.
“It’s going to be real tough, as [far as] big capital projects,” Sakai said. “We’re going to have our hard arguments, we’re going to have our hard questions, but I think this gives us the foundation.”
Sakai is overseeing his last budget as county judge, after losing his primary to Democrat Ron Nirenberg in March.
While the city of San Antonio is considering raising taxes for the first time in more than three decades to address its budget deficit, Sakai and Smith have both staff have signaled they don’t plan to follow suit.
“The majority of residents surveyed are not in support of a tax increase,” Sakai said Tuesday. “This court [has] not increased taxes for the last four years, and the new budget has yet to be voted [on], but I will not be supporting a tax increase, and I hope my colleagues will join me.”
Professionalizing feedback
Not all commissioners consider the budget survey to be a clear directive.
The county spent $13,700 on it at the urging of Moody, the court’s lone Republican, who also helped craft the questions.
But Commissioner Justin Rodriguez (Pct. 2) said the questions put before respondents were nuanced and complex in ways not fully captured by the survey.
The debt question in particular, he said, is a “popular talking point politically,” but doesn’t necessarily align with the public’s calls for other investments like flood control, which was also reflected in the survey.
“Residents may not know those are not pay-as-you-go projects, those are all projects you have to issue bonds for,” Rodriguez said. “The county’s done that successfully over the years, and we paid it back in a disciplined manner.”
Gervais agreed that most residents aren’t coming to these questions with much expertise in how a municipal budget works.
“What sometimes seems like contradictions like that is just how people make sense of these ideas and in their heads,” he said. “Budget issues aren’t things that people think about constantly … they probably don’t have refined opinions from the get-go.”
Broadly speaking, the survey showed road maintenance and repairs, public health services, economic development programs, and affordable housing incentive programs as the top-ranked priorities.
Survey respondents also said the county should spend less on some areas that have been big budget lines in the past: creeks and trails, parks and county buildings and facilities.
Smith told commissioners that the budget priorities were helpful feedback, since some of the programs residents said they care most about are potentially on the chopping block this year, because they’ve been paid for with federal pandemic relief that’s drying up.
“One thing that’s important to note is that the investment that the court has made in public health and housing, was [from the American Rescue Plan Act],” Smith said. “A lot of the money that’s been invested is ARPA funds, which are going away.”
Moody said the survey results also surprised him in some ways, and that it didn’t have to be treated as gospel when they make spending decisions this fall.
In past budget seasons, he said, the county has relied on town halls, Facebook requests for information and SurveyMonkeys to seek public input.
“I thought in a county with a $3 billion budget and over 2 million people, we should try to professionalize that feedback from our community,” Moody said. ” … I’m sure there’s other questions we could have asked, there’s different ways we could have asked them. But I think for a pilot … it came out really well.”
The first town hall for the 2026-2027 budget cycle will take place on Wednesday evening at Holy Redeemer Hall on the East Side. The full schedule can be found here.
