City Council - workshop

Good afternoon. The time is now 1.39 p.m. on Wednesday, September 16th, 2026, and the City of San Antonio budget work session is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Council Member Kaur. Council Member McKee-Rodriguez. Council Member Villagran. Here. Council Member Munguia.

Present.

Council Member Castillo. Here. Council Member Galvan.

Here.

Council Member Alderete-Gavito. Oh, here. Council Member Mesa-Gonzalez. Here. Councilmember Spears here councilmember white Mary Jones here Mary, we have quorum great.

Thank you All right time is now Eric over to you if you want to review the budget amendments as proposed Thank You Mary, so Justine is gonna get a short PowerPoint on the memo that we issued you all last night and then part two of that are i committed to bringing back to you some of the items in scenario a that that gave me a little bit of pause and so we'll present that to you this afternoon and then hand it back over to you all for the conversation

Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Justina Tate. I'm the Assistant City Manager. And today, as Eric mentioned, we want to review the proposed or potential amendments that were included in the memo that was sent last night, as well as potential revenue adjustments and expenses to maintain a balanced budget. And finally, we'll go over those reductions that are included in Alternative A that we may reconsider if a tax rate is not included. A tax rate increase is not included. So in terms of the potential amendments, there includes eight items for a total of about $6.1 million over two years. This includes restoring the funding for the part-time nutrition site at Darner. This provides for after-school challenge for the southwest independent school districts of about $50,000 each year. It restores tuition reimbursement for city employees. And it also adds 10 San Antonio fear-free environment or safe police officers. This would be one safe officer for each council district. Number five restores the San Antonio education partnership scholarships for one semester at about $1.1 million for one in fiscal year 2027. It also restores funding for one position that supports cultural initiatives and the office of history and preservation and restores the funding for the gastronomy program for world heritage. And finally, through Council Carry-Forwards, it's proposed to reinstate the funding for DSC SACE, and this would be funded through Carry-Forwards from Mayor and City Council. So the next two slides will show how we'll fund those additions to the budget. So first I'll talk about potential revenue increases. So the first would increase the booting fee from $60 to 120, and that would generate about $16,000 over two years. The second is to increase vacant lot and dangerous premise abatement administrative fees from 250 to 400, which would generate an additional about $170,000 over the two years. Number three increases parking fines, which generates almost a half a million over two years, and increasing the river barge ticket fees for adult non-residents from 15 to $20, generating about 2.8 million over two years. The last two are to increase the hazmat fees for retail gas stations from 150 to 173 for those that have 30,000 or less gallons, and from 600 to 690 for those that have more than 30,001 gallons. And this generates about $60,000 over the two years. And finally, the non-resident fee for library card would increase the proposed budget includes a new revenue of $20 per library card for non City of San Antonio residents. This would increase it to $30, generating about a million dollars over the two years. So in order to balance, we also are reducing some expenses that are included in the proposed budget of about $1.6 million and seven items. It eliminates funding for the following programs for local initiative support corporation. It would eliminate funding for childcare for board members during their respective board commissions. It would eliminate funding for customer analytics offer at the library. and as well for Biomed SA, and it would also eliminate funding for Build San Antonio Green. There are two items that funding would be reduced, and this includes for the Ambassador Program as well as for Dream Week. The final two amendments are related to restricted funds or the capital budget. So the amendment list included $500,000 for two years for a total of $1 million for women's health programs for the reproductive justice. And this would be funded through the Medicaid waiver reserves. And then the capital budget includes the proposed amendment is $8 million, which would increase capital improvement projects for each council district from two two hundred thousand to a million dollars and this amendment will be funded through the use of debt capacity now as discussed during yesterday's B session if a proposed property tax rate is not approved the city manager has the authority to amend the budget as necessary and to maintain a balanced budget. If needed, those reductions would start with alternative A as presented on August 19th with some slight modifications. On the table to your right, you can see those reductions that would change from alternative one, or that could change from what was presented in the alternate A. This includes the quality assurance team at 311, the community animal support and assistance, Downtown activations now a portion of this could be reduced But we would maintain the six we would consider maintaining about seven hundred thousand of that month of that funding We would maintain or consider maintaining the closure of one part-time nutrition center We would consider maintaining the library hours summer youth programs park stewardship Wheatley Heights, non-service alleys, and pavement markings. So over the two years, this equates to about 23 million in reductions that could change from that alternative scenario that was provided on August 19th. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to take any questions.

Eric, do you have any comments? No, ma'am. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Justina. Colleagues, I've always said that raising property taxes during this difficult time on our neighbors is my last resort. I think we have an opportunity to avoid raising property taxes in FY27 and in FY28 if we do the following. one reduce expenses across the board by 1.6 percent in FY 27 and then reduce expenses again across the board 2% in FY 28 and Make the necessary adjustments to the reserves this achieves the 75 million the city manager Said we needed to solve for across the two years colleagues. I'd welcome your feedback on this Please sign in

Mayor, can you repeat that?

Sure.

So to avoid raising property taxes and FY 27 and FY 28, we would do the following reduce expenses across the board by 1.6% in 27 and 2% in 28. This avoids a property tax increase in FY 27 and in FY 28.

Mayor one clarification question so those would be those you're proposing to reduce permanent revenue and those would be permanent reductions in spending correct okay and then for fiscal year 28 that would be part of our plan for 28 that's right okay I mean yes as you know as is always the opportunity right we have a really hot summer a CPS does really well but as we

We've talked about here. We have to solve across two years. So this would be the plan going in and give our Residents some comfort at least that we are thinking across two years Not just one and have looked at an opportunity to reduce to eliminate the opportunity or need for a property tax increase Not just once but twice One point six percent and twenty seven two percent and twenty eight, okay councilman McKee Rodriguez, please

Thank you, Mayor. And ultimately, I think in this, I'm going to say a couple things and then I'm going to respond to that question. So one, I want to notify Eric and team and colleagues. I just found out a couple days ago that the Boys and Girls Club intends to close on the 30th, disrupting services for a number of my residents. The Boys and Girls Club does fall within the inter-city TERS. So I would ask that as a part of this budget, we pre-authorize some emergency funding for three months of operating expenses with an additional three months contingent upon a plan for the Boys and Girls Club to get into a better financial situation. position and in the event that they are not, we begin planning for an alternative where either the Parks and Recreation Department operate the facility or we do a solicitation for another organization. But I would ask for my colleagues' support in that and then I can schedule a tourist board meeting as soon as possible so that we can address that issue. Second, which is not as fun, I do appreciate, I mean that was not fun at all actually, Another not fun thing. I do appreciate the balanced approach y'all took to the amendments and the proposal that y'all have put forth. I do struggle a little bit with the 10 additional safe officers as that is another recurring expense. There wasn't consensus for that in any of these previous meetings. I've only heard it mentioned a couple times. and I feel as though it would be a better look if I would be a better I would have a better outlook if we instead replace added back the filled library positions and the filled maternal health Metro health positions with that dollars than anything else can go towards whatever amendments there's consensus for but that's what i would personally like to see in response to the mayor's proposal i think it is going to put us in a bad position over the next three five to three four five years if we don't do a rate increase so that would be i think i'm at that point where as a council we should be voting on that tomorrow and i think that's the direction that we should move in or else it is going to have a terrible impact on those of us in districts one through five, some of seven, some of six, every part of the city, but largely those of our community who are most vulnerable. On top of that, though, I do think we should look at that across the board cut for this year and next year, and any additional revenue we have should be used to balance over 29, 30, 31, because the five-year forecast is extremely bleak, and we're not just solving for these two years. We have to solve for every year for which we know there's going to be a deficit. and so that would be i guess my compromise there in the event that we don't do the rate increase then i think we have to do the across the board cut that the mayor mentioned and i think that's probably the approach that i would recommend in that scenario thank you mayor thank you councilman um please

Thank you, Mayor. So I think it is time for a rate increase. I don't think this is an investment in the city of San Antonio. And I want to thank Cops Metro and others who have said that they'd be willing to move forward with a rate increase that it's a cup of coffee or an internet subscription or a streaming channel subscription for the month or for a year if and Justina brought up that slideshow so I think it's time to invest and that is through a property tax increase I think San Antonio had a very interesting summer. 5,000 jobs coming to San Antonio through IEM and Toyota. Jobs, economic growth and development, that is how we are going to solve this deficit. Bringing more people here, helping more people get into homes, helping more people understand what their budget is and what they can spend. But right now, we knew that it was going to be tough. we didn't because we were coming out of a pandemic and we were running out of we needed to spend these spend these arpa dollars we didn't expect to be in multiple wars we didn't expect inflation to go up the way it did we were promised reductions we were promised lower prices and that did not happen so here we are And after 33 years of the city using what we had with CPS and our tax revenue, after having growth, we built parks, we built high schools. Councilman Munguia and Councilman Galvan weren't even around 33 years ago. I wasn't either. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilman McKee Rodriguez wasn't either. Councilman Castillo? She was here. All right, got to get them all. So here's the thing we're here and we're asking them and some of them their first term But we're like let's raise the property tax increase Why to invest in San Antonio and the people in San Antonio? Eric I want to thank you and your team for their efforts in putting together a balanced budget and Taking look at amendments when I was at the point where I was like we just go with what the city manager put forward and Because I don't see where the dollars are going to come. But my council colleagues made amendments, were okay with increasing fines, increasing fees, and here we are today with the proposed amendments. But I believe before we take on additional recurring personnel costs within the San Antonio Police Department, which I am a huge advocate for, we have a new substation coming online in the fall of 2027. I worked there for seven years. I know how hard they work. I don't think now is the time to add costs. any more additional personnel safe or otherwise and let me tell you why one we just passed a budget where our police are getting well compensated and they agreed to look at eight hour shifts and ten hour shifts so i think we need to look and see how that works on the load the other thing is we have we are under a new chief and that is chief salome who i know is here and i believe it's important that we give him the opportunity to lead and to coordinate with the over 40 entities that are law enforcement organizations here in the city of san antonio and see how we cooperate with each other to make the streets safer to patrol more to get those vehicles out there and this does not so we have over five thousand officers and this doesn't even include the state troopers are working in this area and i know they're working in this area because they guard the alamo right now and the park rangers that are at the missions the national park rangers so i think it's important that we do that for at least a year if not to you and then we come back when the economy is stronger when we've seen more job development in growth com and when we are no longer losing any headquarters or businesses And we talk about where we really need the personnel because I know it's easy to say safe officers and everybody loves their safe officers, but we may need it in traffic. We may need it in patrol. We may need to create another specialized unit. to deal with white collar crimes that are patrol officers so this is what we need to do the other thing that we asked that the majority of this council asked for was an audit of overtime and i think that needs to be done before we move any further in increasing that so with that said and with the amendments you've put forward um... justina is it possible that we can eliminate that i believe it's item number four on the amendment list can we eliminate item number four as the proposed amendments and use that so that we can for a one-time fee uh... keep on the last page attachment to revenue increases If we can keep that fiscal year 2027 budget for those seven organizations, especially those that we plan to eliminate so we can give them time to see what their need is, is that possible that we can do that?

Just to make sure I understand, so eliminate the funding for the SAFE officers, which is about $1.7 million?

Yes.

And then restore the $800 million?

Oh, no, the whole $3 million.

$3.3 million. And restore one year of funding for the agencies that are listed on the attachment, too?

Yes. so we could do that and and then could we take the remaining balance and try and see what positions we could still because i really think after passing the budget that we did which i'm very proud of the budget that we have for the police department but i think we need to take care of our sit civilian employees right now is it possible that we can still some of the field positions maintain restore some of those filled positions uh for the library or metro health or things like that with the remaining balance of that 3.1 million we're uh we can pull that and i can get that to eric and we can get that answered yeah it probably wouldn't do them all but but i think your intent is to do as many as possible do as many as possible and the other is I know some people were like I some people are getting moved around and they may want to move but I really want to especially where the library is concerned make making sure we're staffed so that we're not back here next year trying to move trying to get more employees but I think we have We have opportunity there to do that. Those are my amendments. I know I didn't put any forward because I knew this was going to be a tight budget, but I believe now is the time to invest. I believe we have the opportunity with the job that the team has done, and our budget team works really hard and has done this for many years, and I look forward to seeing what you guys come up and taking the vote tomorrow. Thank you.

Councilman Alderete-Gavito, please.

Thank you. Thank you, Eric, and Justina, for the proposed amendments. You know, I appreciate the thought of not raising and the mayor's sentiment for not raising taxes on our residents. I feel that's what Councilman Wyden, Councilwoman Spears, and myself have been saying all along, that we can find the cuts because we absolutely can. They're going to be hard decisions. They're going to mean just shifting things around. They're going to mean thinking differently. But we've been pushing on this notion for a while. And when I hear the proposal about cutting 1.6%, you know, scratching my head a bit because I think Councilman White and his team have talked about cutting overall 2% across all departments. So I'm wondering why we're doing this all at the last minute. Because I do think in talking to some of my colleagues earlier, You know, that is cutting 2%, cutting 1.6% is a totally reasonable plan, but we could have been spending this time looking at the implications that it's going to have. You know, what do the implications look like when we cut 2% of the Public Works Department, and are we okay with that? You know, what does it look like when we cut 2% of the World Heritage Office, and are we okay with that? again I'm pushing for us not to have a tax rate increase and I'm pushing for us to make those tough decisions and make those cuts but you know again we've heard this plan from councilman mark white about cutting 2% from councilman mark white and his team and so I'm wondering why we're why we're doing this right now at the last minute so those are all my comments things yeah I mean I haven't seen a list from councilman white to 2% unless was that part of your memo I I

That was yesterday, so less than 24 hours ago. But this solves for a property tax increase across two years. No, no, no. What it does, though, is make this fair across the board. It makes it across the board. Yeah, and thank you for sharing it yesterday. So that was also kind of 24 hours ago, right? No, you have not been talking about it. No, you presented this memo yesterday. You said you'd send me a list, and you never did.

Mayor, we've talked about it for six weeks, doing this without raising taxes.

Yes, no, no, no, I know.

And at the 11th hour, here's the plan that we literally presented to you.

No, I understand that. Okay, sure, sure. 1.6% and then another 2% in 28 avoids a property tax increase in the two years so Appreciate the the memo that we received yesterday and the clarification the other things that have to be done in order to achieve that Councilwoman was that all your comments?

Well, yes, but I'll continue after that whole thing. I mean, I think the point is, too, that we have been putting forward the plans. We have been putting forward the ideas. I think all of our intent is the same, is not to have a property tax rate increase. That's why, you know, as painful as it was, I wasn't for any of the amendments yesterday. $65 million, we're going in the wrong way. We need to be finding the reductions instead of adding on to our budget. And, you know, I appreciated D10's effort in doing the 2% reduction across the board. I think it is an idea worth flushing through. So that's why, again, I'm scratching my head because we're hearing a slightly different version of the exact same plan that we heard yesterday.

Council Member Kaur. Thank you, Mayor. I was just trying to go through and remember exactly what we've done over the last several months to get to today. We've known about tomorrow, the third week of September always, to vote on our budget, and that's kind of the pathway that we take every year. And so highlighting dates for how we've got here, just for everyone's memory, I asked my team to go back and look at that. So on May 14th, we did our six plus six budget amendment, or year budget adjustment, and we talked about how we had spent six months of dollars. And Justina, correct me if I get any of this wrong. We then, after that following week, did a budget goal setting session where we talked about what our priorities were, and we all went around and said these were the things that were really big priorities for us. on June 17th we had a trial budget and at that point we all had a discussion about what would be we willing to do to ensure that our most vulnerable and all of our residents are getting the programs that they need as my colleague mentioned a lot of the programs that potentially on the chopping block if we go across the board because of the smaller departments could affect most vulnerable but at the end of the day we just don't know what those are and city staff has been working all summer under the direction that we provided in June and at that time there was a lot of discussion around what would possibly be a tax increase and I believe what city staff heard was there was some consensus around doing something to ensure that that our residents get the services that they need. And that is why they went back, tried their hardest, had significant amount of cuts, and got us to a proposed budget on August 13th that didn't include all of what is possible by state law, but the increment that we are able to use to still have positions that we are still forced to being cut that I have reviewed. Thank you team for putting this list of positions together. Those are really tough positions that we are losing in several departments and those individuals are taking on other roles because they know it's what the city needs right now. And so we're already making really tough It's not like we did this very flippantly where we didn't actually look at any of the departments, didn't see where there could be reductions. I think city staff did a great job negotiating for the CBA and trying to make sure we were as judicious as possible while still making our officers feel heard. So all of that to be said, since August 13th, we have been talking about the proposed budget. And so I understand Council Member White proposed this 2% increase yesterday. I also remember at the beginning of the meeting yesterday, we heard a discussion about if we don't approve this tax rate tomorrow, I was gonna say next week, if we don't approve this tax rate tomorrow, The team has to then go back and figure out what's going to be cut. And I don't know what 1.6% of every department looks like. I had to quickly try to go back and see what that would mean. I don't know if any director feels courageous enough to come up and say what they would cut. What does that look like for DSD? What does that look like for public works? Those are huge departments. What does 1.6% even mean? Who are we cutting? We have no idea. We're barely fighting over the 14 employees that haven't accepted their jobs. We have no idea what 1.6% means across the board. Eric, do you have any color to what that would look like?

Well, so we can read off some of the numbers. We calculated what 1.6% is in departments. And in some departments, it's going to be harder than others.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So 1.6%, based on the 27 proposed budget, is roughly $28.2 million, which is the equivalent of the proposed tax rate increase that we have in the proposed budget. The majority of that is police and fire. Close to $12 million is police and fire, followed by public works at $1.8 million. We also have animal care services, 600,000, parks and recreation. $1.1 million, and then the library close to a million to mention a few. So that would be the majority of the cuts. I don't know the specific impact to those apartments. We'll have to work with them to come up with what specifically we would be reducing in those areas. I appreciate that color.

$1.6 million of public works would, especially if that was coming from sidewalks, would be really frustrating for my residents. I have been talking about this all summer with my residents and explaining to them, this is what our community needs right now. It is tough, it is really tough, I understand. But for a median, average median home of 220K for $3 a month. I've been telling people if your home value is double that, double what that would cost. And realize that that is putting dollars into programs that really need it into Public Works into library that's already had so many I don't we've already cut we just did an entire comprehensive budget review on the library I have no idea what a million dollars would look like from the library right now so I all I'm saying is that this is I feel like we've done a lot of hard work to get to this point and I would really encourage my colleagues to think about what is it that we what message do we want to send to our residents about what we feel the importance of our city and our city budget is and make sure that we're thinking about that for the next 24 hours as far as the amendments that you came up with when I read them last night I was like wow you guys creatively really put this together I do have some of the similar sentiment of my colleagues about the officers and I threw this out to some of my colleagues before the meeting today so I'm just going to share it publicly in case anybody who wants to add feedback onto it, but I know our Northside colleagues have really requested additional patrol, so rather than doing 10 safe officers across the board, Proposal is to reduce that to two or three for the north side folks that feel like they need an additional patrol at their substation. That way we don't have to cut all of the additional funding that's listed in additional revenue, particularly from list fund. The zero percent loans are really helpful for our organizations. So the LISC fund, all of the things that are from one to seven, I would like to keep in the budget. I think Biomed SA does really great work. I know some of my colleagues feel the same. And childcare for board members, we already don't pay our board members. It's not a position that's paid and that's eliminating one thing that creates access. As well as the ambassador program, I had some really great ambassadors this summer, but I understand if we all have to give up. But I think we should try to, keep those programs and figure out a compromise within those amendments. But thank you all for staying and figuring out a way to move that forward. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you.

Excuse me. Thank you. Council Member Castillo, please.

Thank you, Justina, for the presentation. I appreciate the budget team and all their work put into today's briefing in the past several months. A couple of weeks ago I had a conversation with a handful of small business owners and we were discussing the property tax adjustment and what that means for our community and services. And I asked what their thoughts were. And they said, well, when I'm talking about my budget for my business, and if I'm having issues in terms of expenses and costs associated, I look at what is my biggest expense within my budget, right? Is it labor? Is it cost for goods? Is it utilities? And then I take a step back while operating my business and look at the goods, right? Do I need to identify another vendor? Maybe we need to switch the brand or whatever the case may be. But ultimately, what they left me with is that no changes should be made, drastic changes, until there's an understanding with a large chunk of their budget is spent on, right? So he says what they recommended was sitting with the largest portion of our budget and potentially auditing where there could be cost savings. And I understand with public safety, it has gone through audit. There are a couple of components, but community has asked for a larger scale audit. And with that being said, I feel like it's irresponsible for us to continue to invest in a component, particularly line item four, when we're seeing a reduction in violent crime in our community and just understanding what that financial impact will be in the long term. What folks have mentioned, right, that line item four will have reoccurring costs in terms of benefits and costs associated with that. So what I would recommend with that line item, going towards reinstating the sustainability position that has been eliminated for climate adaptation. Again, we know when we experienced the extreme weather storm a couple of weeks ago, it was the resiliency hubs that sustainability has connected and educated community on the value and the importance of getting connected to those spaces. I think, again, as I said yesterday, as we experience more extreme weather conditions, we should be investing more in our sustainability team. So I see value in moving some of those funds to reinstate the climate adaptation position. I also would be remiss if I didn't highlight the value of the San Antonio Ambassador Program and seeing that as a potential reduction I see value in, again, using line item $4 to go into the San Antonio Ambassador Program. I know my colleagues have mentioned other areas that they would like to see invested beyond $4, and I would be supportive of those items. But, again, I think for us to zero out vacancies and move folks to different departments, which I'm grateful that placement was found for them, I feel like it's irresponsible to create new positions when we're expecting to address a deficit next year as well. So redirecting light item $4 for climate adaptation is what I would like to see. I appreciate Councilman Mark White's recommendation on the 2% reduction. We've had conversations about this, and what I shared with the Councilman was 2%, what that looks like for sustainability potentially is an entire position, right, versus looking at 2% for SAPD. But I appreciate the conversation. But I feel having this, not based off of your suggestion, right, but discussing this today as a consideration is irresponsible given we're voting on the budget tomorrow and we've been having these conversations since May. But I appreciate you sitting down with me talking about that recommendation, what it could look like. But to me, it looks like reducing positions for the departments that my constituents rely on. Those are all my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Maria or Justina, for everyone's edification, can you just help us understand the difference in the savings from 1.6% to 2%? So if we reduce the general fund 1.6%, $28.2 million.

If we reduce it by 2%, it's $35.3 million. Great. Thank you, Maria.

Councilman Galvan, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Justina, for the presentation and for all the work that you and your entire team have been putting together for the amendments last night and hearing us out yesterday with all the different ideas and things that we're trying to preserve, restore, and reduce in whatever we can to make this budget balanced. I want to echo a lot of what Councilor Kaur mentioned about the across-the-board positions. It's difficult for me to make that full decision. Let me just ask a couple questions, I guess, for Justina or Eric or anyone from the team. So instead of doing the tax increase, it would be this 1.6% cut. That's in addition to the current identified cuts as well, right? How much is that one? $40 million?

Yes, it would be on top of the additional cuts that were proposed in the budget.

OK. Well, first and foremost, we're talking about just cutting all the way, then we're not adding anything back in. I do not support adding anything. We're just going to cut across the board multiple departments that will be losing all kinds of incredible services that our residents rely on. I don't know what those are, and I wish I could understand that. I'm assuming, based on the scenario A, I know those are going to maybe add up to 1% or 2%, but I would assume that those would be some of the first ones to be looked at in any of the budgets that have already been identified for no tax increase. Is that a fair assumption, Eric, or

Ask your question again, Councilman.

I guess I'm assuming that if we did it 1.6% across the board for 27, that the ones that we were shown in scenario A with no tax increase, the 75 million additional cuts, would be similar, similar programs identified per department?

Similar, but there could be some overlap, yeah, because 1.6, as Maria laid out, we would need to make $1.7 million adjustment to public works. Right. For example. Yeah.

Okay, just making sure that I'm assuming that those would be likely the first ones to come up. And I'm only saying that because I think that's the best color that I have here right at this current moment on this idea. And so I think about that. I think about non-service alleyways for public works or it's pavement markings for public works that are reduced. And I get it. It may not feel like, okay, the most important things at the moment. I just struggle with the idea of making our services more of less quality in this particular moment. I get it, that's where our trade-off is at right now, about do we want to make sure that we're just reducing costs in some way, no matter how small they may be to a resident, and sacrifice quality services and public works and ACS and police and fire and all the above, all the priority services and more. Or are we going to say that, you know, after 30-plus years, maybe it's about time that we adjust a little bit for a population that's grown significantly since that time to accommodate some of these expenses in a time where we're seeing a significant economic downturn? It's a difficult one. I get it. I don't think I'm there on a 1.6 or across the board percent because I, again, can't see what it would be. But some of the ones that I have an idea of what it could be, just make me generally a bit nervous and so I mean are we gonna be able to get if majority Council today says that that's what we're gonna go forward on what how we see that displayed would it be some tonight would it be tomorrow morning preferably it'd be this afternoon fair enough okay I mean

Yeah, I mean, everybody's got to weigh in on the amendments and the proposal that the mayor laid out or Councilman White laid out yesterday. But realistically and practically, I think this is why we have these budget work sessions back to back at the end so that you guys can have a continuous conversation. and you know kind of the goal today for me would be to walk out of here with enough direction to provide you a memo you and the rest of the council memo tonight yeah what the plan is tomorrow right that way you're not that way you're not going through this exercise on Thursday's agenda that's my goal yeah so no and I appreciate that I know I guess I'm concerned too that if we're gonna

If we move this direction, tomorrow we see things that maybe we don't want to see, and we have the same conversation tomorrow. And that's, of course, our discussion here. But I just want to kind of lay that out for myself, along with the public, and with my colleagues here, that I don't know if this is the right solution at this moment. Because I don't know what it looks like. And I'd be concerned if it means certain programming from our parks are cut, or libraries are cut, in addition to what's already being proposed to be reduced. I'm not someone who enjoys looking at how we can increase revenue into our city by nickel and diming our residents. It is simply a matter of fact about our expenses are expenses, plain and simple, and there are services our residents are expecting. I heard it loud and clear by District 6 Town Hall. I've heard it in my budget survey that we've also put out to our community throughout the district. I've heard it from people calling in and sending emails to our office. We have, of course, a mixed view on it. But I also see a majority of folks telling me in District 6, look, I get it. If it means that we can make sure that the health of our community is stable, we're going to have to figure that out. If it means we're going to have to make sure that education continues to be supported in our community, we're going to have to figure that out. If it means that the basic service I'm asking for that I'm calling your office to usually complain about, that they're not doing enough, can stay at least maintained, if not a little bit improved, that's going to be okay. That's the reality that we're at right now. And so I just, I don't think I can support that. I'm more supportive of what we, the amendments laid out last night, or yesterday's meeting, and then the follow-up last night that we received from city management. I echo my colleague's statements, Council Member Castillo, on the REIS positions in particular, along with the overtime audits. I'm grateful to see SAAP getting a million for a semester. I would still like to see how we can get it to a full year, but I That's where we're at at the moment. Those are at least my initial reactions to it. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Councilwoman Mesa-Gonzalez, please.

Thank you. I guess I'll start with a thank you to everybody who's just seen on your team for getting us here and working with through those amendments yesterday. I'm sure it's pretty obvious, but I think it's important for us as a city, as an organization, and to explain to our residents that this is our new normal. I understand the highs and lows of finances and You could ask any CFO and they'll tell you, hey, what goes up comes down and opposite. But this is more than that to me. Because of the constraints we have at our state government with a 3.5% cap and on the other end, it is inflation and departments that are somewhat inflexible and rightfully so for the most part. And we're trying to squeeze every little bit between those two. And I think that we should not only adjust, obviously make adjustments with our actual budget, but even of how we are presenting that budget to the community. Because whether it's through the presentations, and I appreciate everybody's time, but whether it was through the presentations or our town halls, they looked almost exactly like the ones I would see when I was in the mayor's office. It's just not the same. Even us being here for four years is different. I think it's important that We at least are clear to residents that how we got here and why we're in this position. And so I appreciate the recommendation on the 1.6 and 2% cut. Obviously, I think like everybody else, I need more time and more information on what that looks like. I think we were all elected to make tough choices. And some of that does include an increase to taxes and a SAWS rate increase and a CPS rate increase. that I wish we didn't have to do, but as a big city, a growing city, a city that still wants to be open and inclusive to everybody that comes here, that is part of the job. And I understand that. I take that very seriously. I have 25,000 homesteads in my district. 10,000 of those homesteads are frozen. They will not be impacted by this rate increase. will I live in district 8 we have a homestead exemption but I will be impacted by that so there's so there's a lot going on I think in everybody's calculus right now and where they're trying to land but I am I'm ready to make that tough choice But I also do want to see what this 1.62% scenario looks like. And just to be clear, the 1% across the board, what does that do again? Just to be clear, Maria? The 1.6 council? No, instead of the 1.6, it was 1% across the board in 27 and 28. 1% is about $17.5 million.

Say that again? $17.5 million is 1% of the general fund. And that would also not require it? No. So in order not to have a property tax rate increase, we go back to scenario A, $75 million in cuts over two years, which is similar to what the mayor proposed, the 1.6% in fiscal year 27 and another 2% in 28. Okay. Okay.

So there's an $11 million gap between a 1% cut.

Yeah, one, yeah. Okay, those are all my comments for now, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Council Member Munguia, please.

So, Eric, just to clarify, the 1.6% reduction in 27 is every department cutting 1.6%?

That's how I understand the mayor's suggestion.

Okay.

And let me say that there obviously are elements of our budget that we couldn't do, like municipal elections. So we'd have to make it up somewhere else.

some departments will see more than 1.6% reductions. because of what statutorily, what we have to do. You kind of remember the services we talked about, right? Some things are mandated by law to do in certain departments, and so you'd have to shift that cut into other departments. So some folks, some departments, will more than likely see more than 1.6% cut if the mayor's plan was passed.

Potentially, but I don't know if that's an absolute statement. Okay. And if you want to pause the councilman's time, because I... Yeah, please. Practically speaking, as I'm thinking about the mayor's suggestion over here, practically speaking, if you all decided to do that tomorrow and adopt the budget, then everybody's budget tomorrow in the ordinance would change. And then we'd have to go back to the departments and manage down and be able to figure out what does that look like? What does that $1.7 million impact to public works look like? What does the $7 million impact to police look like and so forth? But you would adopt the budget tomorrow at that lower amount and it would be up to us to manage to that. We will not have that this afternoon or tomorrow morning. So so we would just need to manage as we go through the year. And and that would be we can't departments can't go in the budget ordinance. Departments can't go over budget. And so we would just need to practically manage to that number, that new number, if that's adjusted in the budget ordinance. But there's not going to be a list where we're going to say, well, here's how we're going to do it. Because things will come up during the year, and we're just going to need to manage to it if that's what you guys decide to do.

Yeah. And so in the proposal, as it stands on the 1.6 reduction and then fiscal year 20, there'd be another on top of that, there'd be a 2% reduction.

Yeah, but as I understand what the mayor is doing, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mayor, it would be part of the fiscal year 28 plan. Things can change. Things change and they change.

Yeah, I get that. I just want to make sure in principle all I'm understanding is correct. And so can someone explain to me what about the reserves? What's that about? You can pause the time again, please.

So our financial reserves are a percentage, 15% of our operating revenues in the general fund. So if there is no property tax rate increase, our revenues are going to be lower than what we have in the proposed budget. So that calculation of the 15% will be made in a lower amount. So that reduces the financial reserves. That's what that meant.

Because of the operating budget being lower.

The operating revenues being lower than the proposed.

Okay, got you. And so I guess my concern, obviously, and I, of course, wouldn't expect you to have this, but not knowing what is going to be cut is what gives me pause. Only because, again, as I mentioned, we've been working on this since May, and this really hasn't been part of the conversation. And so when we had our budget town halls, which according to the staff C&E was the greatest participation ever so far, this wasn't part of it, right? What we discussed back then was the tax increase effect. And then what was the effect of cuts if there was no tax increase? And so we had those cuts. And what you're saying now is those cuts in scenario A are not necessarily taxable. what you would be doing because this mandate is a 1.6% across the board versus taking a scalpel to the different department budgets and outlining programs and taking them out. So that's what gives me a pause is that what I showed my residents as the alternative is actually not going to be accurate. It will be different. And this is, in some way, ceding authority to you to make decisions and to your departments to make decisions outside of what I think is best for my residents or what I think my residents need the most, right? So I mean, these are fine folks. All the directors are great folks. They're not going to necessarily make a cut right to say how we're going to help d4 out on this particular budget they're going to make what they believe is the right appropriate cut system wide which i don't know what the effect will be for d4 i don't think anybody up here can tell me what the effect will be on any respective council district and so this cut is it is just for general funds so it doesn't touch enterprise funds that's that's i understand the mayor's proposal is on the general fund that's correct Okay. So I just think at this point, what the amendments that we have brought forth from your team, Eric, based on the increases, is pretty balanced on interests. And so certainly there could be tweaking there. But I just... without knowing what the cuts are going to be, I don't think I could go to residents today or tomorrow or Friday and say, I did this, sure, we prevented tax increase, but you know what? I really don't know what's going to happen to you, to this community center that we're sitting in. So I just think that this is something that should have been the alternative from the get. And not having that information now is... not doing my due diligence to my residents and providing transparency on what they can expect to be reduced through the budget process. So I think us, what we've been doing is great, right? We're talking about programs, what should be eliminated, what should not be throughout departments and to other entities. So I worry about that. I worry about 1.6% cut to homeless services department you know, is that a staff person? Is that a program, the new program that they've been telling folks they're going to do? You can't tell me that now, can you? No. So, you know, there's a lot of problems in our community and I just, I don't know what it means to do all that for some of the smaller departments also are going to have the effect. So with this 1.6% reduction, will there be a COLA adjustment for city staff?

As it stands, yes, because what the mayor is proposing is to replace permanent revenue from the tax adjustment with permanent cuts. So it wouldn't impact anything else.

Okay, so there's still at least in this situation be a cost of living adjustment.

As I understand the mayor's suggestion, yes sir.

okay but you can say that for certainty now yeah that's the city manager can say for certainty for now no he was saying that's my proposal and so i want to confirm that that okay that's right okay um okay great on that so yeah i just worry that uh you know not knowing what exactly is going to be cut is a problem for me and it changing at the last minute to what residents can expect is is quite different so at this point i do not support this eric think that's a total reversal to the staff that's been working on these amendments because all of this work that was just done by the amendment process didn't have to be done if we were going to do this significant cut so you know I have questions right I I've been talking about the Southwest program so is it safe to assume that anything on this amendment list for expenditure adjustments would go away Under what scenario, Councilman? Under the mayor's proposal that she just told us.

you could still consider those amendments as part of that yeah because I yeah I think the mayor's suggestion is different than the amendments it's kind of like it's overlaid above it so the the amendments would stay exactly so we would still for example if you guys want it to stay correct yeah if we wanted to stay okay yeah but then that means the adjustment 1.6 is not gonna be felt exactly by every department because these amendments will change what the department budget will be Yeah, but it's slight. It's $6 million out of $1.7 billion.

So it won't be much. Okay. And the 1.6% increase, does that also assume the potential revenue increases that are on attachment to? Yes. So the 1.6% reduction does include the fee increases.

No, the mayor's talking about expense reductions. It would not have an impact on any revenue changes you all have discussed or that I proposed.

So the revenue increases would still continue? Yes, sir. Okay, so we're going to cut slash cutting funding and also increase the fees and the boot requirements and the vacant lots and the towing fee. All that's still going to go up, but we're going to slash their services basically.

Okay.

Yeah, without knowing all these details, I, at this point, do not support that. I think the path that's been going on has been more fair and more transparent to folks. And so at this point, I just don't support it. Thank you, Eric.

Let me, I just want to say a few things about this. And I can appreciate, you know, as some of you have been on the dais longer than I have, you all know that this is the process. You get to this point, you kind of look at everything as laid out, and then you understand kind of where folks are willing to give and where they're not willing to give. And so I can appreciate, for example, the concern with, well, how is 1.6 reduction in the homeless services and strategy going to affect them? Their FY27 proposed budget is $5.126 million. 1.6% of that is $82,000. We're talking about 1.6%. And so I honestly, you know, the reason I propose this is because I thought we would have that we had real opportunities to help ourselves both in terms of frankly using other pots of money that would have freed up the general fund. And I am surprised frankly about some of the unwillingness to do that. I am more concerned about frankly having to explain a property tax to neighbor, potential property tax increase to our neighbors because you know what's still in this budget? The $700,000 Fiesta subsidy. You know what's still in this budget? $2 million to UT Public Health. on top of the cuts to maternal mortality as well as some of the other uh... the eviction uh... prevention that I asked you know us to consider moving that from down payment assistance to eviction prevention that's still in here and so I'm much more concerned about frankly the fat that is still in this budget uh... versus some of the reductions and 1.6 across the board I think is fair and is manageable uh... and allows us to Unequivocally say to our community we have done the due diligence that we can with what we have This is a fair and a fair kind of you know sacrifice across the departments 1.6% and we can say we will not raise your property taxes in 27 and 28. That gives certainly the staff planning purposes. And again, ideally, hopefully 28 is better. But this at least allows us to say that we have... We've done the hard work of reducing where we can and moving some expenses to buckets that are eligible to cover that. But, you know, absent an unwillingness to do those things, I think we do have to reduce spending. I think we do have to change some of the spending behaviors that got us to this point. So hence the recommendation. Okay. Councilman White, please.

Thanks, Mayor. And we agree. We agree. And listen, I was ready to come here today and say that the plan that the city manager finalized last night was the way to go because I thought that The ship had sailed, honestly, because for the last six, eight weeks, I've been talking about that we need to not raise property taxes on people, but we need to do it through spending cuts. I mean, you all have been sick of me. sick of me saying it I'm sure and then we get to this week which is amendment week and that's why I put forth that proposal yesterday for two percent across the board cuts for for this year and next year to help us avoid the property tax hike now it appears that potentially this is back on the table and you know whether it's my proposal the mayor's or the man on the moon's it doesn't matter the right thing to do is to not ask our citizens to pay more and it's to make the cuts that we have to make do our jobs as elected officials stop the out of control spending and And in the end, that will be doing right by the citizens of San Antonio. For the last six weeks, we've been off on these wild goose chases of moving, you know, trying to move TERS money and trying to move HOT money and doing all these different things to try to avoid making the tough decisions of spending cuts. There's only one path forward to having our city government operating from a position of strength. And that's one, of course, long term, we have to generate more revenue as a city. through economic development activities, right? It's not about asking people to pay more. It's getting more people and businesses to pay into the system. And then, of course, it's getting spending under control. And we can start that tomorrow by voting for an across the board expense cut in every department in our city. And so I am in favor of the across the board cuts. I think that's what we need to do as a responsible city government. And the only other thing that I will say today, Eric, is something that I know I've said to you many times over the past three years and that is if our city government consistently says that public safety is number one then whenever you're putting together a budget you start with what's most important when any San Antonio family is looking at their budget, they start with paying their rent and their mortgage and food probably, right? Because those are the absolute essentials. That's what's most important. Well, when our city government budgets, we should do the same. And if public safety is number one, you put in the public safety first and then you build everything else around it. To city staff, you all have worked so hard. Eric, your team, Maria, Justina, all the work over the past two months has, longer than that, I know, has really been amazing. And regardless of how we vote tomorrow, none of that work was in vain. I mean, this was necessary work that we had to do to put us in a position to decide what's best for the city moving forward. So I truly appreciate all that work. I know that my colleagues do too, regardless of what the outcome is tomorrow. Thanks, Mayor.

Thanks. I do want to, I think it's important and I think we might be talking past each other here, but the exercise and going through how can we use hot money differently? How can we use TERS money differently? That's just called due diligence, right? Because in fact we could actually save an additional, eight million dollars almost nine million dollars in each year right if we if we were looked at different allocations and moved general things that are currently funded out of the general fund that don't to be so I can appreciate you know your your feedback but I think it is important to help to have gone through the intellectual exercise for folks to realize you know we could have paid for project quest completely and plus them up to four million dollars out of ready to work we could have covered those scholarship kids $4 million, right? So I think we had to go through that and we landed where we did or, you know, we'll see where we are tomorrow. But it is helpful and certainly helpful for the public to understand what we have considered and why we did or did not do that. But ultimately, you know, that's certainly why I am now where I am having gone through that and laid that out because my understanding is we haven't really had, this body hasn't really had a serious conversation for example, about hot and how we can better distribute that. So it wasn't nothing was meant to. I just want to know. I don't think anybody was avoiding anything, but rather let's make sure we can do our due diligence and explain to folks the work that we've done.

Well, Mayor, I do think while some of the tourist conversations and things were helpful in informing the public, you know, I would say that some of the frustration I think you're seeing up here today is the result of sort of political games being played for two months and then at the last minute coming back and saying that you're supporting this solution of across the board.

Mayor and Councilman, real quick. I want to make a point real quick because we're going to keep going on for hours and hours and we have public comment at 5 o'clock. We're not being productive right now. The reality is that the mayor has identified a number of revenue streams that she believes would supplement our budget, could help fund some of the programs that we're funding. We disagree with that as a body. There is not consensus for it. I understand that. Our job is to come up with ideas, even going into the budget. So you proposing yesterday, the amendments that you did, me, a number of us proposing amendments, even if we do that tomorrow, right before we vote, that is our job and responsibility. Us being up here, now we're discussing things that There's no consensus for it. There's no point in arguing about ready to work, hot tax, TERS. There's no point in arguing about the across the board increase because I'm hearing there's not consensus for it. I mean, not across the board cuts because there's not consensus for it. Do we even need to continue this discussion right now? Because it sounds to me like the budget is... We'll see tomorrow if the rate increase passes or not, and whether or not we cede our authority over to Eric, or if we're going to make any amendments or changes. It sounds like all the amendments and things that we are possibly going to make have already been considered and laid out by Eric and the team, save for a couple tweaks here and there. Eric, would you come back with feedback on those small tweaks, and then that be that?

Yeah, well, my intention is to try to summarize at the conclusion of this conversation what that memo is going to look like tonight so that we're not doing that tomorrow morning. So I'm trying to, I hope to do that here.

We're not, yeah. I get that. All we're doing right now is stressing each other out. All we're doing is adding to more tension. So if we're going to continue debating things that we already know there's no consensus for, and that's going to dominate our discussion, it is pointless, and it continues to make us look like fools. I think that was your second round. Hold on, hold on, hold on. That was your second round of comments.

Councilman White, please. Call to question. Please. Call to question. There's no vote, but thank you. We're going to go back to council discussion. Councilman Spears, please. Thank you.

Thanks, Mayor. I'd like to start out by saying that I am supportive of Councilman McKee's Rodriguez's need for Boys and Girls Club. That's 7,000 kids. So yes, I'm supportive of that entirely in the inner-city terms. obviously I am supportive of the safe officers as well it's the only thing I asked for and it's the only thing I really need and it's it's essential for my district and I see things here that is important for everyone in their district and I'm I'm glad of that. I feel like this was very balanced, Eric, and I appreciate that. I know this is a lot of work and very hard, and that's where we're coming from. Everyone's having a hard time because it's hard. It's really hard. also just will add that i would like to see biomed added back in and i do feel some concern still about the library card and i'm feeling concerned about it but i would um i'm supportive of the mayor's uh suggestion that we do the cuts of 1.6 and two percent and I appreciate that my colleagues, Councilman Aldereteke-Vito and Councilman White, we have been saying that we want to keep the tax rate down, and I know that we've talked about it, and you presented yesterday, and I appreciate that this pivot, I mean, it's a moving discussion, and that's what we've been doing, and I appreciate what you're presenting today, Mayor, and so I'm supportive of that. I think that's basically all I got. Thanks. Thank you.

Councilwoman Vanessa Gonzalez, please.

Just a quick question. I don't think I stated the question correctly, but how much would a 1% across the board reduce the recommended tax rate?

Give us two minutes to calculate it for you.

Got it calculated that big?

Maybe less. Mayor, while they're doing that, it would also be helpful as you go into the second round, as several of you kind of voiced it, but how do you feel about the list we issued last night to Councilman McKee-Rodriguez's point? Several of you have made suggestions on other things, but I'd like to hear from everybody so that we make sure we get it close to the X.

Thank you. And we were actually, Councilman Rodriguez and I were talking about this earlier. Can you clarify where you got the 500 on the Medicaid 1115 waiver? I think both of our amendments were a million each in 27 and 28 amendments.

So there was a conversation about a million.

A million, right.

And based on some of the concern about using Medicare waiver money, we split it over two years. And then thirdly, the last time we did it, did this three years ago, we set aside a half a million dollars and it took us two years to spend it. So I didn't quite think that we could actually spend a million dollars in one year.

Okay. Well, while we've got some time while they're doing the math, can you give us some color on why it took so long to spend?

I mean, based on what you remember, we went through a solicitation that had to be redone. And then once those contracts were awarded, it did not. The spend and the activity was not as great as we anticipated.

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. We'll just go around the circle then for those that would like to provide feedback on the list that was provided yesterday evening. Councilman core, please.

Thanks mayor. I wanted to also express support for the Boys and Girls Club I did ask Justina what we looked at when we did the delegate agency funding because I know we gave them funding So I just wanted to make sure I better understood what financials that we looked at when we provided that as well From the list specifically Oh, I wanted to mention a couple things that I forgot for item number seven for the gastronomy program I think we can take that out because I spoke with visit I say and I think they're going to take that right mark Eric and

Yeah. From our contribution to them? Is that right? Hold on.

They were going to absorb it, right?

Yeah, that's what I thought. But is that not? But Eric, to be clear. How about we follow up about that after? One second, one second. Eric, to be clear, would that be from our contribution to them though?

Well, let's let Mario come up to them. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That way we're all square.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Council. What we had talked about was it falls in line with our current mission of bringing the world to San Antonio. We already do an element of that as we take our culinary chefs to our media missions to tell the story, the culinary story. So that particular element of the World Heritage programming, I guess, fits in the marketing aspect of what we do. So we would be open to that conversation.

And you would take private philanthropy and try to go fundraise for it?

That actually would probably just fall under our marketing, under our current marketing. So open to that conversation.

so just to clarify that would be absorbed it would not be it would not affect the allocation it would it would be absorbed out that's right it would stay within our market so it does not so it does not affect the allocation it would be absorbed it would be absorbed okay then we'll remove it from the list okay thank you Mario I appreciate that I know the chefs are going to really appreciate that as well

if that is possible there was one position that I think Councilman Castillo also mentioned but it was the I mentioned it yesterday but I'm just going to reiterate in case any of my colleagues it's the climate ready neighborhoods position in the resiliency and sustainability department so if there's any way we can swap that out I think that would be really appreciated the additional amendments I don't remember what this customer analytics software program was. Was that the program that Councilman was asking about?

I feel like that was the checkout software. What's the customer analytics software?

I know it's a really small amount, but.

It's not the same thing that Councilwoman Castillo was asking about. Secretary, do you want to?

Good afternoon, Councilmember.

The customer analytical software is a program which we use for our marketing and communication purpose with our patrons. This is connected to our integrated library system. So with that, for example, if we have a change of service, if one of our branches lose power, so we are able to reach all of those patrons who are using that branch.

So what would we use instead?

So we are looking into some options. We are looking into some other funding opportunities.

Okay, yeah. It's 50K. Let's just keep it until you guys find another opportunity and then we can replace it. thanks secret yeah so I would say go back to my initial which is let's not do the additional reductions and I think that would still leave you enough to do some of the patrol that I had mentioned earlier whatever else my colleagues differ to the rest of my colleagues not not do what additional reductions one through seven the additional 800k that y'all found last night don't do those correct if we don't do those then we're gonna reduce the amendment list Right, and my point was a safe officer.

Got it.

But you could still, you might still be able to do some patrol within that if you just took out 800k from that. That's my, okay, I'm done.

Eric, to clarify the, your memo yesterday, it's not in the It's not in the chart, but it is in the text, so I wanna make sure I understand. You said, it says, based on staff review, the World Heritage activities are an eligible expense under the HOT. Reallocating the general fund expense to the HOT would require a reduction to the Visit San Antonio contract. Is that the, are there other things that Visit San Antonio is absorbing as part of that? There were three things that were zeroed out So they just talked about the gastronomy program, but the World Heritage outdoor exhibits and the World Heritage work plan That's a hundred and sixty Plus there's also the World Heritage Office just general fund allotment of three million is can they take all of that and

No, they can't. They can't absorb that. That would have to be a reduction in the reallocation. I'm sorry, not reallocation, a reduction in the allocation.

Understood. And so right now they're at $25 million, is that right?

Roughly.

Okay, so we would have to reduce their allocation by $3 million in order for them to pick up all of the World Heritage Office activities? Yes. Okay. And that would free up another $3 million in the general fund?

Yes.

Okay. And allow us to, how does that help us potentially with, so that's $3 million, $6 million total across the two years. Okay. I would ask for my colleagues to consider that as that helps us free up an additional $6 million. Councilman Kaur, do you have thoughts on that?

Mario, can you come up and talk a little bit about what that would mean for our ROI when it comes to how many people are coming, how that affects HOT?

so what you're talking about is a material impact uh to visitation uh what we're charged with at visit san antonio is selling and marketing the destination promoting right not programming the destination every dollar that we receive we return to the city of san antonio 45 in return So even a $250,000 reduction in marketing to the destination would equate to a $11.2 million reduction in economic impact to the city. And then that gets extrapolated through marketing and visitation. You take $250,000 out, for instance, you would lose about 80,000 attributable visitors to the city, which would reduce 3.5 million in hot tax and another 800,000 in sales tax. So it's material. It's really about economic impact that we're talking about.

Thanks, Mario.

So of the $25 million, reducing you by $3 million, it's about 12%-ish of your budget. Is that right-ish? That's just math. That sounds about right. Thanks.

just to follow up you that keep to the councilman corps remove the seven agencies offset that with the safe officers use you said use the balance for for officers got it okay and then councilwoman mesa gonzalez we got an answer to your question oh great

Councilwoman, so your question about reducing 1% in the general fund would generate $17.8 million. That would reduce the proposed property tax rate increase from $0.02 down to $0.08. That reduces the monthly impact on the average homestead of $231,000 from $2.95 a month to $1.54 a month.

One other thing I would really appreciate my colleague's feedback on. We can also free up money in the general fund by looking at if the arts agencies received a little bit, as noted in the memo, if they received 13% reduction, then we could include in there, for example, the MLK commission, some of the other things that we're currently funding out of the general fund. It's not in the table, but it is noted in there as what it allows us to do. so if my colleagues would please comment on whether that's something that they would support doing so we could move some of those arts related things from the general fund into the arts you can see there what it would mean if we capped some of those agencies as well at 250 000 okay councilman mckay rodriguez did you have anything else yeah thank you so it looks like in the chart that eric provided we would be getting back

the part-time nutrition site at Darner, the after-school challenge for us at Southwest ISD, tuition reimbursements, SAFE officers, the SAP scholarships for one year, the culture initiatives, the gastronomy program, which I think now is being moved elsewhere, the SCCA East Commission, Medicaid waivers, the women's health programs, increased CIP, like there's a lot of things there that I think are good and and that we've been asking for and quite honestly some of us like those were our only amendments in addition all of the fees I think I'm supportive of I do wonder I worry about those additional reductions that we've listed at the very bottom one through seven in attachment two But at this point, if that is what we need, then it is what it is. I maintain my stance that with the safe officers, those are recurring costs. And not only just a flat rate, they're now tied to the CBA. And so those would be increased costs year after year after year. And so I still challenge that. So that's where I'm at the moment with the 10 safe officers. I also will pose this for my colleagues, is if there is an indication that how I have felt at times, if it is believed that Jalen is going to vote no on an item, why would we negotiate with Jalen? Why would we listen? Why would we concede to Jalen for whatever this thing is? And so in the event that we have council members who are saying, under no circumstances are we going to entertain our revenue increase, we're not going to vote for the budget, why would we entertain whatever it is? Why would we do that? And so I would like to hear that from my colleagues. Because ultimately, if the goal is for us all to get to a yes, if we need six people, if we need a starting lineup of six, I kid. I just wanna hear like, what is the path forward together? I don't think I don't think we're I will add with regard to the hot tax with regard to ready to work I think right now we did those conversations I think that as soon as we finish this but let's wait a few months as soon as October comes around let's have a conversation about hot tax let's talk about policy let's talk about doing a solicitation for the organizations that are to be funded there let's talk about departments that we could fund let's do all of that let's ask that because the mayor might be there already there's a lot of questions a lot of information that we have that we have to get that I don't think we'll have by tomorrow in order to make those decisions. Let's commit to having that discussion as a body. Let's do that then. But for now, I think focus entirely on this. I think that's where I'm at. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm sorry mayor. So your earlier comments You talked about the safe officers and using that money to restore health filled health and library positions And now you just mentioned the seven agencies, which which is your preference?

I'd prioritize the positions the field positions that we have and if at this point I have said the library and Metro Health are my priorities I think the office of resilience and sustainability there's not a department that I don't want to see restored and so whatever the will of this body is if we can prioritize field positions whatever those may be I'm open that's that's what I would like to hear from my colleagues is what departments works for you that's Thank you.

Great. And if Councilman White or Councilwoman Spears or Councilwoman Alderete Gavito would like to speak to the point that he just made.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor. I'm glad you said that because we were just talking about it with Terry and some others earlier. There is one pot of money. Regardless of whether we do the new or not, at the end of the day, there's going to be one pot of city money. A lot of people that want the revenue increase want $28 million of that pot of money to come from additional taxes. Whereas I say the better method is cutting out $28 million somewhere else rather than the taxes. So you've got that one pot of money. It's not police officers. It's not the 10 safe officers that are causing us to need the increased dollars. That's not how I view it at all. It's that in that one pot of money that this city government is going to spend next year, I believe the police officers should be in it. So to tie an amendment request to needing an increase in revenue from the citizens, I reject. We don't need an increase in revenue from the citizens to ask the officers because we can cut from somewhere else in the budget. So that, I think, is where we have a disconnect. The increased revenue you want from a tax hike is not directly related to one specific item in the budget. That just gives us more money as a whole to spend on all the other things that we want to do.

Sure. I just want to change my request. I'm going to go with what Councilmember McHugh-Rodriguez said, reuse that money for Metro Health and other positions.

Councilman Munguia, please. You can go after him. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Do you want to go?

Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. So, Eric, real quick, I was asking you this earlier. I wanted to ask you this. So the 1.6% across the board would probably maybe mean staff reductions of filled positions?

yeah yes but but practically speaking we you guys adopt the personnel complement in the budget um and so it wouldn't it's not like we would eliminate positions mid-year or we would we would likely have to hold positions vacant over and above what we currently have which means we wouldn't fill those positions

So I just work in some of the smaller departments, though. I mean, where you may not be able to cut the programming, you might end up cutting a position.

We or we wouldn't cut the positions mid-year. We would manage it and keep those positions vacant. If they're in a small office where they're in a vacancy, we would need to make other expenditure cuts.

And other departments. Yes. Okay. So even with this reduction, you would keep all the filled positions currently.

We would, but as soon as they become vacant, that would be one of the taps we would hit to hit a 1.6% decrease.

Yeah, and I think that's a little interesting, and it's hard for me to go with this not knowing where that would go, right? So for just an example, I'm going to take you, for example, the city manager's office, you have a budget. You would get this 1.6% increase. You have all your field positions. You can't cut anything. That cut's going to be felt in another area, another department, another program. So, you know, to say that it's... across the board is not necessarily accurate. And I also don't think across the board is necessarily fair. I think equity is fair. I don't know that equality in cuts is fair. So that does give me pause not knowing. And I think there are employees watching this meeting right now. that are don't know where they stand with this new proposal and I don't know if that this is related HR I heard in HR HR meetings are getting cancelled for this Friday so folks don't know what that means if that means they're gonna have a position to go into or their their job is now going to be vacant so they don't need to meet with HR anymore so it's given a lot of uncertainty to employees who are in their office right now watching this unsure what's going to happen to them so that level of uncertainty is not good for employees and i don't think that's necessarily fair the delegate agencies the discretionary funding that would also probably have a cut as a result of this 1.6 across the board cut yes sir And would you propose that those cuts be felt equally amongst every single nonprofit that has a contract in discretionary funding?

Likely.

Even though that cut, would it be like the percentage or would it be a number? Percentage. Okay. So, yeah, I see a lot of folks here today, you know, big brothers, big sisters. and some other folks here today, educational nonprofits and nonprofits that help homeless communities and schools, education partnerships. So I just, again, right, when we did this analysis, when y'all proposed the out-year cuts in 28, you were able to tell us, based on the cut you propose, how the effect would be felt across the community. You showed us that 70% of those cuts would come from districts one through five. going this route, I don't know that. You don't know that right now yet. But I imagine if it was extrapolated or brought back down in percentage-wise, it would still be, no matter what the cut was, mostly Districts 1 through 5 affected if you're bringing all these nonprofits down. Is that correct? Does that make sense?

Well sitting here thinking about it while y'all are talking if the majority of that expenses public safety we'd have to think through how those adjustments are made from a public safety standpoint there obviously are different call loads and different types of calls in different parts of the city the approach there probably wouldn't be across the board. It would be a little bit more surgical. It would need to be a little bit more surgical because we wouldn't be recognizing the EMS hotspots that we have.

Right, and I guess my concern on that too, and I mentioned this earlier, is it's In my opinion, it is seeding that authority over to you when it should be on us to come up with that. I mean, we've been going through programs. We've been saying, hey, this doesn't align. We can cut this. We can sacrifice that. But now I'm going to have to go to my community and say, well, the city manager decided that this was a cut. And it's kind of like, well, where were you, Councilman, right when this happened? I just don't like ceding that over to you, to be honest with you.

You're making me sound like a bad guy.

No, but you have to make cuts. Every department is going to have to make a cut somewhere, and I will not have an ability to influence that like the way we are with this amendment process now and the way we've been going. It is a very uncomfortable feeling to tell folks and not even to say hey, you know, we were to raise your taxes This is everything here transparently what would happen? We're not going to raise taxes We're gonna increase fees, but we're gonna reduce services and won't be able to tell you where so again It's just it's not very productive or transparent for the community. So Thank you.

How do you how do you feel generally about the amendment list? I

Generally with the list it is good. I think there are some tweaks based on my colleagues recommendations that can be made But I think this is a good path forward Councilman be good on please

Thank you. So let me be more specific, Eric. On the amendment list, one, two, three, cut four, five, six, seven, I'd like the fiscal year 2027 to remain with the city. Fiscal year 2028, I believe, I like the idea of moving it into the marketing for Visit San Antonio. However, I think there's opportunity at the state level to get some funding from there. I'd like to explore that before we move it fully over. And number eight, of course, I would like my council colleagues to voluntarily donate the $3,636 for DSCCS, because I think that that's important. Again, I will restate from items one through seven, I'd like to keep fiscal year 2027 intact, because I do not like the idea of eliminating Funding for organizations that are in the middle of making their budgets and for organizations that we need to help raise their funds if they were going to ask them to do that personally. So that's my for the amendments in terms of the art agency impact. I think anything receiving over $100,000 from the city of San Antonio. we can talk with, but I don't think we should reduce anything permanently. I think these are conversations we need to have next year and for future regarding what we move over to the arts, because anything we move over to the arts takes from their hot fund, because the only thing they get from the general fund is that $500,000 for art maintenance. If we start reducing from the arts community, again, we could get ourselves in a COVID predicament where arts is basically out of money and unable to do things. So I think we need to be very careful when we look at let's just move things over to the arts because they've worked really hard in becoming an economic generator for the city of San Antonio. So I am not for that. Eric, why didn't you come to us at the beginning of the budget and tell us to do 2% or 1.6% or 1%? Well, because

When we go through exercises like this, we are looking at it from a programmatic standpoint, not an across the board standpoint. And now in years past, the city has done that. And under the prior city manager, we did that. And I think it loses, it can be an inequitable way of making reductions.

It is an inequitable way of making reductions.

It can be in some cases. In some cases, I think it's acceptable. But my approach to this has been to look at programs to reduce if we have to reduce or scale back rather than peanut butter.

Because here's the thing is I've been in this city for a very long time, the majority of my life except for college. And you come in and we talk about could be and it is inequitable. That's why we had council colleagues and council members starting with Hardburger trying to move us forward towards a more equitable society, trying to make amends for the evils done in the past to certain parts of this town. So to come in and ask like a 2% across the board and a 1.6 across the board is not inequitable. It is. And this council worked really hard. Councilwoman Gonzalez, Councilwoman Villagran, Councilwoman Rocha-Garcia, Councilman Ray Lopez worked really hard to get us at that point, including Councilman Cryer. So I am not about to tank generations worth of work because we don't want to raise a property tax increase. And again, this is about investment. And to say that this isn't related, we did something for the police this budget. We passed their contract. 66% of our budget goes to public safety. Don't tell me we don't do for our officers. So I get it would be nice if we had 10 extra officers or have money, but we're asking for a hiring freeze across the board, but then we want to create 10 new positions? I hope you have what you need, Eric. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

I have one question, Councilwoman. Your suggestion around the gastro program in World Heritage, you said leave it with the city in 27. Do you mean leave the reduction or fund it?

Funded in 27, in 28. And then 28 VSA. Yes.

Got it.

And here's the thing. It is time for us as council members, and I put this out to the arts agencies too. Y'all need me in front of your donors. You need me to talk about what y'all impact the other delegate agencies. I'm there for y'all to tell them. you are critical to how this city moves forward. So I'll do the same for World Heritage, and that's why I think with this gastronomy program, we can get that funding at a state level. The other thing I want to say with my 56 seconds left is the governor has made it clear that he wants any property tax increase to be a super majority from this point forward. We are already looking at how many votes Everybody is trying to look at how many team members we need. But the thing is, with that conversation, with the conversation that is having at the state level about whether or not they come after our CPS, where is San Antonio going to be? So we really need to get past this budget and start thinking about the challenges that lie ahead. And Jalen wants to wait until October. I'll wait until Friday of next week. So thank you very much.

Councilmember Castillo, please. Thanks, Eric. Going back to the potential amendments again to reiterate, I'm supportive of reallocating the line item for the 1.7 and the 1.6 million to support restoring funding for the employee student loan program. restoring funding for the Center for policy and health improvement as well as restoring funding to the office of sustainability for the climate adaptation manager position and that does leave some funding available to also restore the potential amendment to the the reduction rather for the ambassador program I would like to continue to see that fully funded as last year so those are my comments I don't know if there's any clarifying questions you may have perfect thanks thanks councilman thank you

Councilmember Galvan please.

Thank you Mayor. I want to echo a lot of Councilmember Castillo's points on removing item 4 and reallocating it to Metro Health, to Reese, or St. Avila Damien. And the only difference I would say would be to the library as well, any additional or any leftover revenue from that to go towards the library positions that Councilmember Rodriguez was talking about earlier as well. Also supportive of Council Member Q Rodriguez's request on the inner city tours and the Boys and Girls Club. I guess I just want to just wrap up a couple, maybe just one thing. I mean, it is just going to be continuously difficult over the next several years to, to see if we can stave off a tax increase. And the cuts will just get deeper. There will be more programs that are going to be sacrificed. I mean, even when looking at any of these budget line items, I appreciate the conversation we've been having about potentially using different pots of funding for this. I think it makes sense to try to look at that when we're at times like this. Just for the record, I think that makes a lot of sense to do that. But there isn't the appetite for that, so we move along to the next one, and we continue doing that until we figure out the right spot. I guess it's a tough conversation and I'm sure it'll be a fun media blitz tomorrow as well and how this all came down to the wire. But I think that's worthwhile in terms of doing our own scrutiny to this budget as you're looking at potentially for the first time raising taxes in over 30 years. Again, not a fan favorite thing to do, not my favorite thing to do. But I understand its value, right? That's how all this is funded. We have some fees here and there. Primarily, a lot of this is funded by property taxes. And when it comes down to it, when our revenues are coming in less, we can do one of two things, as we talk about all the time here. Either cut it, or find a way to increase the revenue. I think increased revenue makes a lot of sense at this moment, given the fact that we made a lot of progress on so many different issues. in our community, I just do not see the way that we can keep cutting back to the bone beyond that. I will say I guess on the conversations around arts programming, around sustainability programming, around health programming, human services, we've been having those conversations at Community Health. We can have it more in detail. I'm committed to doing that. Happy to work with David and send over my Long list of what we want to see done next year as we talk about what we can look at in that committee. I can commit to doing that along with the Education Opportunities Committee wherever that seems to be fit as well with any cuts that we're seeing in this year. Happy to do that. But I also think that we've had some conversations this year. It's it's bleak. These programs are not there's no other funding for it. And so I think we should just be cognizant of that, that as we're looking at saying, okay, let's not look at any other revenues here, that next year it will just be deeper cuts at those same departments. Again, we can keep doing it across the board. I think I'll echo Councilor Villagran's points. We can keep doing it across the board. It's going to hit people disproportionately in some way. It just is. Whether it's parks programming, human service programming. I mean, and I'm grateful for the support on it because it's a crucial part of my district. But I think about next year it's a reduction to another nutrition center right we got to find a way to either fund it that again um or let our residents know that they're not going to have that next year that's what i have to deal with it that's a easy 1.6 percent or other one percent across the board for parks to look at or human service to look at it's expensive i get it that's the cost of providing services to our community Sometimes these programs are just expensive to make sure that people are able to get out of their homes, to fight Alzheimer's in their lives, and have a quality of life here in our city. Folks who typically have no other means to do so. And also, they're free to everybody else too. I think that's the crucial part of this. We're not just talking about certain groups getting something. Everyone has access to these programs. Whether you use it or not is a different issue. I get it. We always look for efficiencies there. man it's just gonna be tough next year when we look at cutting back on fitness programs for parks or cutting back on library hours or cutting back on anything else as you keep going forward and telling our community expect less from the city of San Antonio thank you mayor councilman how do you feel about the amendment list good I said that one earlier but good yeah I think you had specific comments on four did you get just comments on item for the safe officers Requested moving item for within the amendment list the safe officers to Metro health sustainability and then any other Revenue to either two libraries or what the content? Okay. I missed that.

Okay Eric in case it is is coloring others thoughts about the impact of this cut in in 28 Can you speak a little bit about the assumptions? You all are making as it relates to the fire contract. I

I'd rather not in open. Okay. But we make certain assumptions in the forecast for known or anticipated expenses, whether it's the South Florida substation or a new library coming on board. So we make certain assumptions.

Yes. Okay. So I wanted that to be clear, i.e. there's not nothing in this as it relates to what that may be, just based on logic and trajectory. Understood. Thank you. Okay.

Councilman, I'll take a veto. Thank you. So I just want to make sure that I'm clear It sounds like though one percent one point six percent or two percent cuts Not on the board not on the table Is that what you're hearing Eric?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay. So with that then looking at this list, you know, I am still Adamantly opposed to a property tax rate increase. So because of that I am NOT for any of these amendments on this list on the restricted funds you know yes still in for the the woman's health program and then the capital budget you know increasing our capital improvements project to back to a million dollars they still in for that I did have a question on the amendments list the san antonio education partnership i know that a lot of those scholarships were already previously awarded is there a way that we could work it to where they um they are getting money from each council districts carry forward because they're only asking for one year it's not um sustaining and also to again these scholarships were already awarded so is there a creative solution that we can work out for saep um that they get a chunk from our carry forwards

So the proposed amendment is 50% of what we had budgeted. So the answer to your question is yes. And we can look at what those carry forward balances are and provide them to you all. Because you all probably know what your individuals are. Their likely is capacity to be able to do another million dollars.

Well, and again, the only reason why I'm pointing them out is because, again, I don't want a property tax rate increase. So I'm not going to ask you all for more. it just doesn't make sense or it doesn't feel right to me so I but I do think that SAEP does have a you know circumstances where these scholarships were already awarded and I just feel that we need to honor that yeah let me very I don't think they've aware they started the process but they haven't awarded it

They've been selected.

They've been selected. I think families had planned for scholarships. Okay, all right, yeah, agreed. So I think families had planned for scholarships, so I feel like us taking that away is just... that's not great you know and again and that that's why I'm trying to figure out another way to to help fund it because again I don't feel I don't want an amendment that would it would. Would therefore have a property would contribute to a property tax rate increase.

We can look at that and provide that as part of tonight's memo for y'all's consideration for tomorrow.

Okay, perfect. And then on the additional reductions, I'm just not sure how this list was chosen because, you know, when I'm seeing eliminates biofunding from BiomedSA, I'm like, where did that come from? You know, I definitely want them to be their funding, BiomedSA's funding to be restored. I just didn't know how

how this list even came about so on the additional reduction the majority of those issues had been raised by council members in different settings okay I don't

I yeah surprised at biomedicine I think that you've heard a couple of my colleagues say supportive biomedicine and I'm full in full agreement with that that there should they should have their funding restored I just didn't know I don't know I didn't understand the rhyme or reason for the additional reductions but again you know stand firm and no no additional amendments you know we're going the other way we should be decreasing Finding a creative solution for San Antonio Educational partners.

Thank you.

Is that all you need for me? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you Councilman messa Gonzalez, please Thank you, I'm supportive of the Where was it the revenue increases attachment to 1 through 6, the additional reduction. On the 10 safe officers, I mean, we're in a crunch here. I know patrol officers are valuable, but if efficiency, I mean, for me, I think it's about during this conversation it's about efficiency now more than ever because of this deficit or this shortfall excuse me and so what the additional safe officers directly affect police call response time because that's what our residents talk about right reducing response time that's the one thing and to be more efficient if we add to this budget Hi.

Yeah, no, they would not affect response times. These are going to be safe officers, so they are in the patrol division, but they are not assigned to patrol functions.

Okay. And I think that's where I struggle, because I appreciate the amendment from my colleagues that want to increase, but I do think we should be- should be quality over quantity right so making sure that there is an effect to that increase right and so what we hear all the time is response time and how to bring that down then that's what we should be that's how we should be thinking about that department when we're talking about adding officers so just a concerned a little bit there because I I don't know how that helps us. What's the other? I think I am supportive of increasing the $20. I think it's the barge ticket to $20 using that $1 for the cultural officer. I think that's it for me. Is there anything else you need? Nope, that's good, thank you. Okay, thank you.

Councilman Spears, please.

Thanks, Mayor. So kind of in response to some of what my colleagues have been saying, you know, we suggested the safe officers because we thought that would be something that would be more conducive, something that you'd be more agreeable to as a body. But absolutely agree, I really wanted patrol. That's really what I need. I need more patrol officers. You know, we've talked, many of you have talked about the growing population. We're asking the police to do more with less. Fire as well, all of our public safety are doing more with less. And that's just numbers. That's just facts. And I hear a lot about the inequity, but I don't have a tourist function. I'm in a district where I don't have any ability to ask for anything other than more officers out of our general fund and my district pays a lot of taxes they're all hard-working people in the middle class and it's just raising taxes on them is gonna make it more expensive for everyone and then when I'm asking for the only thing they asked me for is public safety more officers or Happy to switch to patrol happy 10 15 patrol officers because they're less expensive in fact You know I look at each of you and I see a hundred and fifty thousand people behind you and I hope you look at me and see that 150,000 of my best friends behind me and so when you say you need something in your district, I hear you and So I'm supportive of item number four. In any fashion, more officers, whatever you want to call them, is what I would be supportive of. And that's the one item I'm truly supportive of. Oh, I also do agree with Councilwoman Adartika-Vito about biomed. They're an economic development vehicle, and I think they're needed in this city because the only way to grow this pot of money is through economic development. We can't annex our way out anymore. So thank you.

Thank you. Council Member White, please.

Thanks, Mayor. Supportive of the officers in item four, happy if they're patrol or safe officers. Supportive of the infrastructure, the capital improvements. I had suggested we not take it to a million, but we take it to $500,000 from the 200. So there'd be a little bit additional money there, but it sounds like everybody wants that to go to a million. on the reductions, I'm fine with all the reductions. The Biomed SA one is the one that would give me the most pause, but I really think we need a ton of cuts across the board. This tax cut, Eric, this proposal that you have made, it contemplates a tax, sorry, tax hike, I should say. It contemplates a tax hike this year and next year, right?

Yes, sir.

Okay. So when you're thinking about this tax hike and we hear, oh, it's only going to be $35 or $40 more per the average resident, next year it will be much more. It is a tax hike. built upon another tax hike. When values start going back up on property like they will, the cost to the average resident will be even more. And again, our own staff has told us that five years from now, you can raise property taxes this year, you can raise property taxes next year. Five years from now, we still have a hundred plus million dollar deficit. So what are you going to do then? You're going to raise taxes again then. So you will have a tax hike built upon a tax hike built upon another tax hike five years from now. And values to homes and properties will be going up in five years. How much additional money is that going to cost the average San Antonian to live in this city? And it's not just going to be homeowners. If you think the folks that own the apartment complexes and all the other multifamily facilities are not going to pass that increased cost that they are feeling onto their residents, you're kidding yourselves. This is going to make cost of living more expensive on every San Antonian. It's not just $40 a year. How much will it be two years from now, five years from now? It doesn't fix the problem. We're either going to fix the problem or we're going to continue to place an additional financial burden on the cost of the citizens year after year after year. There is a proposal on the table to cut across the board. The mayor's proposal, 1.6%. Mine, 2%, trying to limit the personnel cuts that would go with the across the board cuts. It also includes some fee increases and some targeted program reductions. I would ask you all to look at this. We do not need to raise property tax rate on the citizens of San Antonio. We don't have to do it. Cost of living is too high already. Just like every San Antonio family budgets, we have to do a better job budgeting ourselves. I know we all want to do all the things that are in this proposed budget, but we can't. We've gone 33 years without doing it. We've been through COVID. We've been through the financial crash. We've been through 9-11. Haven't done it. Yet now, all of a sudden, we feel like there's no alternative but to make the citizens pay more? Come on, guys. There's still time to go to work tonight. Look at what the across-the-board cuts would mean and take a different path. Thanks, Mayor.

Mayor.

Please, go ahead.

You know, I know these are difficult conversations, but you're not alone. A lot of other councils and boards of directors of public entities are having this same conversation. And, you know, I think what gets lost here is that our general fund budget is going up $69 million net. 65 of that is public safety, whether that's pay raises or it's fire hose expense or police tires or what have you, right? The proposed budget contemplates a small adjustment in the tax rate that generates $28 million. So that doesn't even pay for the increased cost for public safety. And so what did we do? Right. Based on your feedback at the budget work session, we came back and we solved it in three different ways. A slight adjustment of the tax rate, an adjustment in fees and revenue, and a massive reduction in spending over $90 million, or not over, at $90 million over two years. And so it was a balanced approach. And so the notion that we can solve everything and do everything, we can't. We have got a financial system and financial measures and financial policies I have an obligation to manage this city Financially and you all have an obligation as the elected officials and the board of directors to give direction and make and execute decisions And so it's it's it's not it's not easy And I and I appreciate the position that we're in and that you all are in in these conversations But but don't forget that we have rising costs in two of our core areas. And it's not anybody's fault, right? The fact of the matter is is that when you take reductions in taxable value over the last three years, including 27, and you compound that going forward, that is our situation in the forecast. And hell, we're generally pretty moderate, we're moderately conservative anyway, so we're always gonna give you the worst case scenario almost. And I'm less concerned about the year five of the forecast. Because Councilman White's right. We're in a downward cycle. It will pick up. This is America, right? We run in cycles here. My concern and should be your focus is the two year balanced budget. That gives us a whole 12 months of flexibility that no other major city in this state does. Everybody's looking at it in small increments. We take a longer view and it's a little bit harder to do because we're balancing two years worth at once. but it gives us the leg room we need to be able to adjust and accommodate and pivot if we need to. And so I'm giving you a little bit of context here in these conversations because I know it's difficult and you're not alone from that perspective. Thanks, Mayor.

Mayor, may I? I would like to illustrate a math point. Please.

I can't wait.

Thank you. Audiovisual man, as Jack Finger would say. I have a paper if we can put it on the thing. I could go up there and do like a teacher, like I could do it. Do it like Jackson.

Do it like Jackson.

I will.

Remember when you did that at your first budget?

Yes, I wish I had my whiteboard. So what I have here, Ms. Audiovisual ma'am, is our budget based off of the proposed budget you had, the first year, the five-year forecast with no tax rate increase. I wish you could see these numbers, but they really don't matter. The resources are the forecast of revenue. Below that, we have every single department in the left-hand column, starting with police, fire, public works, ACS, parks and library. Please follow along. I'm going to show you what I did. Police and fire, I accounted for their existing CBAs. That is what is in the boxes next to police and fire. After that, I assume a 4% increase to the police and fire budget because we have gone well and above that every single year. And so I don't anticipate we would change that anytime soon. Public Works and ACS, I say we grow by 2% annually. It's an assumption I'm making based off of our past expenses. Parks, Library, and every other department does not grow. The reason I have Parks, Library, ACS, Public Works, Fire, and Police up there is because those have been demonstrated priorities by this council, core functions nobody can really argue with. What I then do is look at if we were to make an assumption about the next year, we kept the budget exactly the same, meaning we don't grow any departments after this. We have the balanced budget in 27. We match it in 2028. We have the increases for police, fire, public works, and ACS. After that, you know, 27, 28 look fine and dandy. We could do this year's budget next year and we would be perfectly fine, minus the fact that there would be no wage increases for employees, which is really not fun. In 2029, we would not have the money for human resources, city clerk, arrestee processing center, customer service, 311, homeless services, any of those departments down there. That's the amount of cuts we would need to make if we do not increase our revenue and if we continue to spend on police and fire in the way that we have been. I know that Eric would not make this recommendation, but the good thing is that in 2029, we wouldn't have a city manager's office. So move to 2030, we then make even more cuts, and it gets even crazier. And so by the time we get to, and this is, I'm accounting for the percentage of cuts we would have to make if this was our revenue based off of the forecast. After 2031, which is the five-year forecast, I assume a 2% growth for our revenue. So I'm not assuming it stays flat. I'm assuming 2% growth. Within these five years that we're in right now, we're not seeing 2% growth. And so I'm being very generous at the moment. You fast forward to 2041, And we don't have any departments but police, fire, ACS, public works, library, or those ones I named, those. And then we have to start cutting into those. So we're getting beyond the core services. We're making cuts until in 2049, we can no longer pay for police and fire. We will be over budget. So at some point over the next, what year are we in? Over the next 23 years, we're gonna have to do an increase to our rate. We're going to have to grow our revenue. This shows you we are not going to cut our way out of a budget deficit. So you can make the point that, oh, the structural issue is our spending. That's not the spending that is the problem, sir. And just last week, we voted to approve $102 million over three years for police enthusiastically with no question. And so the question that I have for my colleagues is at what point do you recognize that the problem is not spending by Metro Health, human resources, arts and culture. It's not that. It's not that. I think my point has been made, Mayor. Thank you.

Sure, go ahead. But you're discounting economic development and rising everyone up entirely. That's the goal. That's the whole goal. I want everybody to make more money and do better in this community. That's the goal. And then everyone's paying in more proportionately.

What tax abatements do we need to do for corporations in order to generate another billion dollars? And then also on the point of police and fire, sorry, on the point of police and safe officers, is it possible, Eric, for either Council Member Wyatt, Council Member Spears, anyone who wants to allocate funding for an additional safe officer, could they transfer a member of their staff or a full-time employee from their staff to police? Is there anything against the ordinance?

Law that it would be an adjustment to their personnel complement.

So if any of them want to do that y'all are free to do that Sure.

Yeah, I mean it's an adjustment it's an adjustment in positions and probably dollars because the Police officer is gonna be a little bit more expensive than LGC employee Okay, has everyone spoken on this issue that would like to speak I

Okay. Go ahead, Councilman Kaur.

Just something else that I would like to offer since Councilwoman Adartagavito mentioned SAEP. So if we could take some of that officer dollars and spend it towards some of the positions that Councilman Castillo laid out and SAEP, I think that would be my final point since I've changed my mind three times now. Thanks, Eric.

All right. Thank you. Thank you for the healthy discussion. I think this is exactly what the public deserves to hear as we've made this very difficult decision or potential decision. But I agree, there is still time to think through here about what is possible in our community because I continue to believe, I don't think we've done enough here to justify a rate increase. We haven't made some of the cuts some of our neighbors would expect um right there's i mean we could right still you could cut seven there's still the 700k subsidy in here for for fiesta versus using that on the part-time nutrition center at darner using that at the after-school program We're using that for the tuition reimbursement for the employees. There's a number of examples that are like that. There's still a million dollars for the botanical garden. We just did not help ourselves in a way that I think helps explain to our neighbors that this is truly the last resort. Ciclovia is still in there. We're still having a bike festival. Unfortunately, this is a budget as described that looks like business as usual. which is why it's really hard for me to support this. I do want to make sure that we are, well, actually let me go back to the feedback on the amendments, though, in case it has to be that. I don't support the capital budget amendments as described. I do support the amendments and the restricted funds. As mentioned, again, we can pay for some of the things in the general fund expenditure adjustments out of Fiesta. I think we should do that. If folks want to think about it this evening, I know Councilman Galvan mentioned supporting using the Ready to Work money to support the scholarships and funding them at the full amount of $2 million. the potential revenue increases i'm good with all of that on the additional reductions um i do not support uh the redu it's ten thousand dollars but the impact to in particular um in particular women uh but single uh parent households for the the child care elimination i mean that uh would be i think difficult for for us to when we're thinking about the diversity of lived experience we want on those boards that's a that's something i think that has a high ROI and then I don't support eliminating funding eliminating the funding for for biomed essay okay okay Eric you have what you need can you just sum up what we can expect this evening yes some of this we're gonna have to go back and figure out because

Utilizing the majority of the amendment list looks okay. It looks like we need to make tweaks to the sustainability program, the position, the safe officers, whether it's SAEP or it's restoring some of the agency reductions, the seven agencies, to include Biomed SA. we we will do the follow-up on councilwoman gavito's question about the the carry forwards for the other half of sap so that we'll include that in the memo and we'll make the necessary adjustments i think we're going to make the necessary adjustments on the gastronomy program um and maybe a couple of tweaks as we compare notes. But generally, we've got to make some tweaks to today's or to last night's memo to come in line with this afternoon's conversations. I don't think we'll be able to do all of the restorations from the SAFE money, but we'll take it in priority order of the sustainability position, the field positions in library and health, and then SAEP. Well, agencies and SAEP.

okay i think just for planning purposes i would ask that we do have a version of the budget wording um that does if one of my some a couple of my colleagues or if we do if there is support uh for that uh 1.6 reduction essentially the the the scenario that i offered if there is there may be support people may sleep on it um so i'd like us to be able to consider that um tomorrow andy yeah we can we can draft that up this evening and have it ready okay or this afternoon got it Okay. The time is now 3.54, and this meeting is adjourned. We have 34 folks for public comment. Thank you.