City Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. The time is now 9.15 a.m. on September 17th, 2026, and the meeting of the San Antonio City Council is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Great. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'd like to recognize Council Member Spears to introduce today's invocateur.

Well, I'm honored to have Pastor Will Davis here with us today. He is a fifth-generation San Antonio resident and has deep roots in our community, and he serves at Christ Community Church in Stone Oak. He has dedicated his ministry to serving families, strengthening the community, and helping people grow in their faith. Will also has deep ties to San Antonio beyond his ministry. He and his wife Kara are raising five children here, giving him a strong connection to the families and community he serves. And he has a pretty cool connection to the NBA. Will co-hosts the Coaching for Life podcast w

Thank you, Pastor. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Item 3 is approval of the minutes for the City Council meetings of September 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, 2026. Is there a motion and second for approval of the minutes?

Okay. It is moved and seconded to approve the minutes. Please vote. The motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. As mentioned today, we have special guests with us to celebrate the 79th birthday of our United States Air Force. Representing the Air Force today is Colonel John Farmer, commander of the 502nd Security Forces Group and Chief Master Sergeant Fukui. Thank you for your leadership and service to our Airmen and Joint Base San Antonio community. As a proud Air Force veteran and having served as the 27th Undersecretary of the Air Force, I'm thankful for your work and certainly the Air Force'

Before we cut the cake, we're gonna sing, right? All right, we're gonna take this shot. Oh, we're gonna, okay.

Okay, on three. One, two, three. Off we go.

Thank you again and happy birthday to our United States Air Force. Tomorrow, September 18th, marks Prisoner of War and Missing in Action Day, which is observed each year. And so today we'll honor those brave Americans who endured captivity as prisoners of war. Remember those who remain missing in action and stand with the families who continue to wait for answers. Here in Military City USA, we understand the profound sacrifices of military service. We stand with their families, honor their service, and reaffirm our promise that no one will ever be forgotten. Please join me in a moment of silen

It's moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda are there items or questions about the consent agenda from my colleagues Okay Hearing none there being no further discussion. There's a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Please vote. I The motion carries, thank you. The next item is the city manager's report. Eric, over to you.

All right, thank you. So items five through 10 are the budget items. I believe staff has a presentation for all six items, so if there's no objection, we'll take public comment and discussion for all six items together. However, these items will have individual votes, okay? Madam Clerk, please read the captions for items

Okay. Thank you. Oh, Eric's talking. Okay. Eric, over to you.

Justina, just for clarification, the gastronomy we discussed yesterday, that would be absorbed by Visit San Antonio. So even though it's identified as restored, that's how it's restored. Right.

One second. If you have questions on the presentation, please sign in. Okay, first, we'll do that. We'll move to it. Is it just a clarifying question? Okay.

Go ahead, Councilwoman. Thank you. Just a quick, quick clarifying question. Yesterday we talked about the San Antonio Education Partnership and how those funds could potentially come out of our carry forward in each district. I didn't see that reflected in the presentation, so I just wanted to clarify.

just to clarify that point go ahead I believe that district 7 9 and 10 have enough carry forward to make up that balance I know many of us have projects and whatnot so is that a decision that we would each individually make to contribute or What are you looking for there?

clarify if folks want to contribute to that to make up the difference they would they would do so individually and not as part of this budget item they could do it as part of this budget item but they need to individually kind of weigh in weigh in when they do that okay so please include that in your remarks thank you okay we'll move on to public comment we have and again this is for items five through ten and I'll call you in the order that you have signed up The first person to speak is Zachary Carrasco, followed by Ed Banas, and then Ann Acevedo. Everyone will have three minutes to speak, a

Thank you. Ed Banas, Ed Banas, followed by Ana Acevedo, then Paul Rodriguez, and then Dr. Rocha Garcia. Please make your way to the center.

Thank you. Ana Acevedo, followed by Paul Rodriguez, then Dr. Rocha Garcia, and then Father Drennan. Good morning.

Thank you. Paul Rodriguez, followed by Father Drennan, and then Father Schaefer.

Thank you. Father Drennan, followed by Father Schaffer, and then Sonia Rodriguez, please.

Okay. You have nine minutes. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Jeanette McCart. Jeanette McCart. Followed by Judith Gerwitz and then Christopher Longoria, please. Please make your way to the center.

Thank you. Judith Gerwitz. Judith Gerwitz, followed by Christopher Longoria, and then Rhett Smith, please.

Thank you. Christopher Longoria, Rhett Smith, and Hope Garza, please.

Thank you. Rett Smith. Followed by Hope Garza and then Mai Ellsbury. Please make your way to the center. Thank you.

Okay, Jack Finger, come on up, and we'll just, can you just add three to this now, then? Mr. Finger, is there anyone else that's giving you their time? Okay. All right. So please. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you.

Hope Garza. Followed by May Ellsbury and then Manny Garcia, please.

Thank you. Maya Ellsbury. Maya or May Ellsbury. Okay. Followed by Manny Garcia and then John Melendez, please.

Manny Garcia, followed by John Melendez, and then Alanthius Thompson, please.

Thank you. John Melendez, followed by Alantheus Thompson, and then Rodney Kidd, please.

Thank you. Thank you. Alantheus Thompson? Alantheus Thompson? Rodney Kidd, please. Rodney Kidd, followed by Linda Thomas, and then Christian Ramirez.

Linda Thomas. Linda Thomas. Christian Ramirez. Christian Ramirez. Kathleen Vail. Followed by Debbie Benke and then Lloyd Welty, please.

Thank you. Debbie Benke. Lloyd Welty. followed by Dan Snyder, and then our final speaker, Clemente Sanchez.

Dan Schneider and then Clemente Sanchez, please.

Sir, thank you. You can submit the rest of your comments for the record.

Great. Thank you. Thank you to everybody that took the time to share your thoughts with us this morning. Councilmember Villagran is recognized to make a motion for approval of item five.

I move to approve the balance of the budget as presented today by the city manager, save and accept funding for Guardian House.

It's moved and seconded to approve the balance of the budget as presented today by the city manager save and accept funding for Guardian House We'll move on to council discussion. I remind my colleagues. This is on items 5 through 10 However, we'll vote on those individually, but this will be the one just the council discussion round To rather my you get it. Okay, so please sign in if you'd like to speak Item 5 Okay. Councilman McKee-Rodriguez, please.

I understand there are some council members who wish to make amendments. I can wait until that is all done.

Okay. Are there colleagues that would like to make amendments? Well, let me just, okay, so. Are there colleagues that would like to make amendments at this point? Okay. Councilman McKee-Rodriguez, please. Okay. Councilman Villagran, please.

Thank you, Mayor. This has been a difficult budget process. Today marks the culmination of months of hard work by City Council, the City Budget Office, and all city departments that helped shape today's $4.4 billion budget that protects our core services, invests in our neighborhoods, and reflects the collective priorities of my district. I want to start by thanking our city manager, Eric Walsh, deputy manager Maria Villa Gomez, Justina Tate, the entire finance department, especially Ben and Troy, and the many city departments who worked behind the scenes throughout this process that are here

Thank you. Let me see if Councilman McKee-Rodriguez would like to speak.

Sure. Let's start off with some happy notes. So I want to start off by sharing that this week I became the second longest serving council member in District 2's history. It is an honor and I'm humbled on days like today that my constituents have trusted me to carry the torch that was passed on by my predecessors. I am led only by our first council member, former councilman Joe Webb, who served seven terms, 14 years on city council, more than any other city elected official. This Saturday is actually Joe Web Day, and I'd love to invite you all to Pittman Sullivan Park this Saturday from noon to

Councilmember Alderete-Gavito, please. Thank you. Before I get started on my comments on the budget, I was going to do something a little bit different. I've been seeing stories about how council's fractured, and I want to show a different side of what's going on with my colleagues and I, and that is that we are unified. Whether we like it or not, we need each other. We need each other to push things through for our residents. And again, as Councilman McKee-Rodriguez noted, we were all elected. We all have the residents at the forefront. There are so many, I was talking to Councilman Castillo

Okay, so now now on to back to the serious stuff and it sounds like there's going to be a lot more fun amendments going on today. So once again, I just wanted to add some lightheartedness because there there is so much work that the budget team has done. So Thank you again to Eric and Maria and Justina and Freddie and Troy and Ben and every single person on y'all's team who has done so much work to get us to this point. I also want to shout out my amazing team, all in blue, all back there, yay! They've done such amazing work as well. Like Councilman McKee-Rodriguez was saying, listening to our

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to all the staff, from every single person who does the frontline work, to the folks who do the budget, to the folks who do the supervising, and every single person in between. I want to thank my team and each of my colleagues for all the hard work on this budget. We knew this was going to be difficult since last year and even a little bit before when we looked at what we're looking at the horizon with our five-year forecast. And despite all the arguments had here, I know that each of us has put in a lot of effort to come to the best conclusion possible to addre

Thank you. Councilmember Ivalice Mesa-Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. I want to start off by thanking city staff for the work that they've done over the last five months to develop this budget to answer questions and provide the information to get us here today. I see a lot of the. baby accountants here. This is usually where Eric tells you that you will be him one day. I also want to, if we can remember back in May during our goal setting session, I want to recognize the work that our PFM did. I thought it was really a helpful framework. I thought that was a valuable framework to categorize that budget with mandated priority and other

Thank you, Mayor. I do want to thank our city staff, the budget office, and the finance team, and all the folks in the city manager's office. I've kind of asked a few of you, has this been the toughest budget year in your career here? Without reluctance, you all have said yes. And so I think we owe a lot to you. You've had to follow a lot of directional change from this council and you've gotten us so much information that we've asked so quickly to make our decisions hopefully easier. So thank you all for the hard work that you do and the work that goes unrecognized. Also want to thank the d4

Thank you very much Thank You council member white, please

Thanks, Mayor. Begin by thanking city staff for all of the work over the past, I guess, since the summer. It does not go unnoticed, and so thank you for all of that. I want to thank my team, of course, led by Raul, But especially my policy director, Rebecca, who has worked tireless hours over the past few months on this budget. I truly, truly appreciate everything that you have done. To my colleagues, thank you all as well. We've been able to have open dialogue over the past, again, a couple of months, and especially over the past few weeks, you all have listened, you've considered, I think, t

There's a motion and a second for an amendment as read. We'll move on to council discussion on the amendment. At this point, let's just raise your hand if you'd like to comment on the amendment. Councilman Kaur, would you like to? No, nothing, okay. So I'm just gonna go around, no. Councilman, I'll take a veto.

Thank you. Quick clarification. So with the cuts with it. Well, first off, thank you for I do appreciate the effort and and thinking creatively on how to add 10 safe officers. I agree. I think we all know that our residents do say public safety is top priority. So I appreciate I appreciate the creativity in doing this. For the essay tomorrow sub area planning is that the 947 is that jobs and if so, how many?

Councilmember white Yeah, I would have to defer to city staff. The total program is 1.6 Million dollars over the two years. So this cuts nine hundred and forty seven thousand I don't know if that would result in in anybody a job transfer or moving or what?

Thank you and put another quick. Thank you clarifying question mandated.

Thank you for that clarification. So this does equal, there were some vacancies, so this would equal for people's position?

Thank you. Are there any other comments on this amendment? Go ahead, Councilman Galvan, please.

Just really quick to clarify, I don't know if Maria could help answer somebody. How many police officer positions have we added over the last three to five years?

Okay, great. I'm sorry, really quick. We're also adding, we've also put the CBA last week, so that's another $102 million over the next three years that we're approving for police resources, primarily through pay. How much are we adding in this budget for police resources or SAPD's budget?

Okay. And then we're also adding nine fire positions this year. Okay. Just wanted to make that clear for about the public safety budget that we have this upcoming year and have what we had historically as well as other budgets and departments are not seeing any increases and apparently seeing tremendously more decreases as well. Thank you, Maria. Thank you, Mary.

Thank you. Councilman White, to clarify as well, the Northeast Corridor Revitalization Program, my understanding is that program is already cut by $250,000 in the budget. And so there was only $250,000 left. So this $200,000 would leave that program at $50,000. Is that correct?

The Northeast Corridor Revitalization Program. Okay.

Okay. Got it. Thank you. Councilman White, is that a field position or?

There's no position with that. Okay. Thank you.

And listen, we've, you know, the Northeast Corridor is obviously my area. We have a good handle on where we're going to revitalize that corridor. This is really an attempt just to not grab money again for my own district, but to say here is, I think, a balanced and fair way to get each of our districts another safe officer, which I know that our residents are appreciate and that I think our districts all need.

Councilman Spears, please. What chapter of the local government code did you reference? Is it 211?

211 says we may have a zoning comprehensive plan.

And we're required to have a department to enact the plan?

But that's not required, the department.

I just need a clarity because of how the local government code reads. It doesn't say specifically we need a specific department to enact the plan.

I just wonder if it's not something that could be taken on by another area that we already have pre-existing department, another department, or if we need a specific department for enacting this plan.

Thanks, Eric. Councilman White, does that modify your amendment at all? It's short $327,000.

We're sticking with what I have on here Okay, so then Eric just to clarify You get to 620 Just actually just recap what the entire cut looks like from in order to get to 947, please Well, I think he wants to keep it as is so one as is is 1.6 well then we'll eliminate seven positions and

Okay. And Andy, would we still be in compliance with our city charter?

Okay. My God, dude. Did you want to say something, Eric? Okay. So cutting seven positions, the lawyer's going to find a way to make sure we're in compliance with our city charter as a result of this. That is the amendment as read. Okay. Any other discussion on this amendment as read? Okay. There's a motion and a second. Please vote. Okay, the motion fails. Okay, so we'll go to the main motion. Council Member Cora, please.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to thank everyone that's been here all morning with us and for the last several months as we've gone through some really tough conversations about where we are putting our values as a city as a community we always say that your budget really shows what you truly care about and there was just a lot of discussion that just happened about public safety and at the end of the day public safety will and forever be the biggest part of our budget so there is no doubt I think in any of ours mind that public safety is a huge part of what we do and it'll continue to be that way a

Council Member Castillo, please. Thank you, Justina, and the budget team and finance team for all your continued due diligence leading up to today. Really value your work and the time that you put into responding to our various questions and, of course, navigating the 10 perspectives in terms of Direction with this proposed budget. This is a really critical conversation and that as folks have shared none of us take lightly and I'm just a bit Humored by the buffoonery of the last-minute amendment to essentially contribute to the city's unemployment rate by putting amendment that would put some

Thank you. Council Member Spears, please.

Thank you, Mayor. Yes, I also want to say thank you to city staff for all of your hard work and your late nights. I know it's been it's been a really rough time and I know you're you're looking at this trying to do this in the least impactful way to the to all of us. So I really appreciate that. And I also appreciate how hard my team has been working as well. And my colleagues, I know all of you have been working really hard to try to find the best path forward for your district. However, I just feel that raising taxes without taking steep cuts in our own budget is just a slap in the face for

There's a motion and a second for the amendment as read. I'll just go around to see who would like to speak on this. Councilman McKee-Rodriguez, please.

Thank you. Unfortunately, due to the cuts that you've identified, I will not be able to support this amendment today. If instead, Councilmember White, Councilmember Spears, if you would like to remove an FTE from your office budget and transfer those over to SAPD and consider using any amount of your carry forward to make up the balance, I would be happy to support that amendment. Thank you.

One second. Council Member Spears or Council Member White, would you like to entertain that? Would you like to answer that just so folks know as they're providing feedback?

Well, I'll just say, Eric, is that something that has to be decided upon today? I mean, we sort of brought it up for the first time yesterday. And previously, I think we weren't clear on if this was something we could do or not. And if it is, do we have to do it today? Or can we work with you to make that change within our office? To do to do what specifically councilman to to essentially add another safe officer or police officer for our districts In lieu of some of our own district budget money is what you're saying If I understand though the amendment was specifically was not even just fund

It doesn't have to be the full 10. It's whatever number they would be able to do.

Eric to have an understanding of what adding additional officers to a substation does in terms of on M.

Certainly not the electricity bill, but other things. Yeah, thanks for clarifying that.

Can we vote on this one and then give us on the second round to figure that out on the cost?

Well, so we're voting on the amendment right now. Yeah, this one. Correct. So in order for us to vote on it, unless folks don't need the information to vote on it. Okay. I think folks are ready to vote. Go ahead. Councilwoman.

So to be clear, we are voting on the amendment as stated. As stated, correct. Which is taking the money from different departments that Councilman Spears stated. The friendly amendment.

Okay, so then to be very, hold on. Councilwoman, so we're voting on the amendment then, which is 10 patrol officers. Okay. Can you please restate it, Councilwoman? Thank you.

It's wordy, I know. I move to amend the fiscal year 2027 budget to provide funding for 10 additional patrol officers at a total cost of $1,157,618 in fiscal year 27 and $1,493,586 in 2028. These positions would be funded through the following budget reductions, $750,000 reduction in adult programming and $407,618 reduction in the saws plumbers to people program in 2027 and an additional reduction in each of those two programs by $167,984 in 2028.

Second I'm gonna wait till the city manager and the attorney are finished and then we'll vote That's normal, right? Yeah Okay Andy over to you, please

This is the amendment reading the amendment as Councilwoman Spears has laid out.

Okay. So you have nothing to add to that. Eric said you were going to read something.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. So there's a motion in a second on the amendment as read by councilman Spears, please vote. Okay. The motion fails. So now we're back to the main motion. Okay. Yes, on the second round, Council Member White.

Thanks, Mayor. Again, the point of the 10 officers, regardless of what substation they're in, is it would help provide additional police efforts around our city. What I find comical is really the hypocrisy to talk about affordable housing when we're here today to make housing more expensive. The cost of living is already so high in the city. Everybody up here talks about affordable housing, yet today we are going to raise the cost of living for people living in homes. And as was stated by one of the people in public comment, again, to think this won't affect renters down the road, I think is f

There's a is there a second okay, there's a motion and a second to the continue items five through ten As described be session next week followed by a vote next week Discussion on that amendment or the the motion to continue Okay, councilman Spears go ahead

Yeah, I really appreciate this plan because I think what we'll find is that this is even less impactful than you can possibly imagine to all the programs that you're so worried about and that I'm worried about. Don't misunderstand, I'm worried about all these programs. I see value as well in all of them. But this is a very pragmatic, smart approach and that to not allow enough time to look at this and to say, well, we should have been looking at this from the whole time. We've been all trying to figure out ways to do something here to alleviate the deficit and I think we owe it to our constitu

what the impact that this will have on our our taxpayers so thank you eric in case informs anyone else's um comments though would you could you speak to a little bit about what that means because we understand the deadline is the 27th of september yeah i mean the the 27th is the following sunday so the special meeting would be on the 25th um then you're talking about a B session the day before so as long as it's done before the but by the Charter requirement of September 27th and just a reminder even if if that fails then you would have that amount of time I'm sure you're already doing some of

councilmember I'll draw take a veto please a couple of clarifying questions so I appreciate the intent of not of trying to find more to not pass the burden on of a tax rate increase on to our residents also to I mean the project manager and me knows a deadline and we stick to deadlines and we all knew this deadline was today and our budget team knew that this deadline was today so I I'm not sure, what is the additional time gonna buy us? Is this where we wanna look at what the 1.6% cut and the 2% cut would do? Yeah, exactly.

So many people yesterday, at least four, I think said, well, hey, what does it look like if we do the across the board cuts in each department? And I think if city staff has another week to look at that, maybe we can get answers on that and that may inform people and maybe they wanna make a different decision next Friday.

Well, so what I heard yesterday, and Eric, I'll leave this to you, what I heard yesterday from a majority of our colleagues was that people weren't in favor of the 2% or 1.6% across the board. Eric, I see you shaking your head, so I think you're in agreement. And so that's what I'm saying. I mean, is this going to be an exercise where we're placing undue stress on our budget team just to place undue stress on our budget team? I mean, if a majority of our colleagues are saying they're not okay with the across the board cuts, either 1.6 or 2%, then I just don't know what we're doing. Are we just

I think Councilman Mark White, though, had it correct in that many folks yesterday were uncomfortable with it based on not understanding what it would look like. And while we have spent several weeks working on this, I don't think everybody assumed that we would do a property tax increase. And so now, there is an actual interest in understanding how to avoid it and it's only 1.6 percent and continuing the item and helping people understand that so we can all explain it to folks I think that's fair so there's a motion in a second to continue the item call to question we were already there yeah

Alright, I would like to amend the budget to implement moving District 9 and 10 staff positions in any necessary district budget adjustments to the Police Department budget for two safe officers for the North substation.

okay there's a motion and a second as read what is the is that I just heard a whisper is that in perpetuity what is the time frame is that forever is that a permanent thing Eric is that how we should understand that yes ma'am okay so if they're in theory if there are different council members in the future and they want to bring those positions back they would have to To do that via the budget as well in the same way that they've doing them bring them back if they wanted to add staff back to their if another district 9 person or another district 10 person in the future wanted to add Personnel

Okay. Yeah. Thank you, Andy, for that clarification. Council Member Villagran?

I understand. Do we need to adjust our policing? Yes, we do. But again, as I've stated before these last three days, we have over 5,000 law enforcement officers in the area. I've talked with Chief Salome. He can come up here, and I've asked him to coordinate with the law enforcement. uh... but before you speak i am not for unless there is a vacancy in your field offices this is the lgc staff which is managed by the entire uh... council and i am not comfortable with uh... people who have jobs losing their jobs for jobs that we don't have. So Chief Salome, can you talk to me about, could we see

Thank you. So my question to councilmember nine and ten. Do y'all have vacant positions and

I do, and I'm flexible on whether it's patrol or traffic or safe.

Councilman White, do you have a vacant position?

Yes, so we, I mean, thank you for taking.

Yes or no? Do you have a vacant position in your office?

Hold on, hold on. Please direct the questions to the chair. Hold on, please.

Councilwoman, I just want a yes or a no. This is my extra time. This is my time to speak.

So I'm the chair and that's the decorum here is that you direct those to the chair. Councilman White, please answer her question.

Thank you for taking an interest in how we run our District 10 office. We have now a couple of part-time folks and the rest of the staff, it's filled, but we are looking to potentially make some adjustments as we move into the next fiscal year. We have some people that may be leaving. And so I would respectfully say that our District 10 office should be able to manage itself how we want.

And I would respectfully say we are an LGC. And so this is an LGC decision, I feel. But I'm not for I can't support this because it would possibly take a job away. And I do feel like Chief Salome needs the opportunity to look at the department as it's run and tell us what he needs. We not tell him what he needs. Thank you, Mayor.

Councilman core, please just asking a clarifying question so the position would be from their offices in any additional fees because like For 320 is it 320 thousand dollars, so it'd be 160 from both So it just come from one position and additional funds from their offices the way I understood the amendment is that it would come from positions and or operations of the district budgets and

Okay, great. Thanks. Councilman Munguia, please.

I got just some clarifying questions. Number one, do they have enough money to cover the officer's salary? And is it covering just the salary or is it covering all of the additional benefits and things that officers get as the full package of an employee? Because it's not just the base salary for any employee. There's a lot of additional money that goes into just the base salary.

And they would also be on the hook. in their individual budgets for the increases in pay that we all just well most of us just passed last week because there's a five percent increase in officer pay so is that they're gonna have to also pay for that next fiscal year

And if those specific officers that are hired, if they have to do overtime work, are the districts 9 and 10 going to also pay for the overtime work?

Okay, because it's not a static employee 9 to 5. So my concern is that obviously officers are going to have non-traditional hours and include overtime. So it's not going to be wholly paid for by their budgets. And unless they're going to make an amendment that they're on the hook for no matter what and they can decrease their staff or their offices as time goes on, that's one thing. But also I think what Eric's point is, is just that these officers will not be officially assigned to Northside. They will be added to the police force and the police chief will make a decision on staffing levels b

So is it the chief's opinion? Maybe he might need to come up here. Is it the chief's opinion that the North side substation needs, uh, two more officers over East, Central, South West patrol?

Well, I would hate for my colleagues to pay for officers that will serve our districts or something. So there's a lot of questions remaining on that. Thank you.

Okay. There's a motion and a second on the amendment as read. Councilwoman Mesa-Gonzalez, please.

Yeah, I just want to make a point. I think this really sets a bad precedent for our form of government, the LGC, our employees, especially at this time, at this hour. This is your third or fourth amendment, and I'm just not comfortable voting.

Councilmember Spears, go ahead. Can you clarify if we were to make this patrol officers? Is Jesse still our chief here?

the cost and then clarify how we can ensure that they're serving our area, our station.

gonna withdraw the amendment then but I will say this it isn't the 11th hour we've been asking for this I have asked for this since the day I took office so again just trying to get creative here on how I can get the needs met in my district absent any other vehicle to do so so you know I It's not, again, I've just asked for it over and over, and everyone just ignores me and doesn't care about what happens in Districts 9, 10, or 8, or 7. And that's fine, that's fine. Councilman White.

I do just want to thank Councilman McKee-Rodriguez for at least throwing that out there to see if we could do it. I mean, we may not always agree on this issue, but you know that it's important to us, and so appreciate you suggesting it.

Council member core, please. Thank you mayor chief. Would you come up real quick? I? I spoke to council member Spears about what was going on in our district with SAPD and the challenge with patrol. And I learned a little bit about how districts are set up and how substations and districts for police are different than council districts. So can you just give us a little bit of color regarding what's going on with patrol in the north side districts and how that how that is or is not different from what's happening in other areas? Just want to clear up any miscommunication.

So one thing Councilmember Spears has mentioned to me is a concern about traffic in front of schools and some of her patrol officers in, I guess, the north substation have been out for various issues. Can you commit to working with Councilmember Spears and White to ensure that they have the appropriate coverage for traffic in those areas as well?

Does anyone else like to sign up on the second round on the main motion? Okay. Thank you to the city staff that worked so hard to get us to this moment, a very difficult budget discussion. I firmly believe a budget should reflect our values, should reflect an approach that best meets the needs of our people and minimize the economic burden on our neighbors during this time. I don't believe the budget before us does that. For months, I have worked to find additional sources of revenue from community contributions to reviewing buckets of money that have previously received very little scrutiny f

That's what I just mentioned to her, yes. Okay, thank you. Okay, please vote. My screen's frozen. The motion carries. Now that the balance of the budget has been approved, we will take up funding included in the proposed budget for which council members wish to recuse. The next item is funding for Guardian House, and Council Member Munguia will be recusing. Is there a motion to approve the funding for Guardian House?

I move to approve the funding in the budget for Guardian House.

It is moved and seconded to approve the funding in the budget for Guardian House. Please vote. Okay, the motion carries. Madam Clerk, please read the caption for item six.

Council Member Villagran is recognized to make a motion.

It is moved and seconded to approve item six. Please vote. Okay, the motion carries. Madam Clerk, please read item seven.

I move that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 35.138 cents per 100 of taxable valuation, which is effectively a 2.20% increase in the tax rate.

Okay. $100. Yep. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Please vote.

Okay. So on item seven, we will do a voice vote.

The motion carries. Madam Clerk, please read item eight.

I move for the adoption of the debt service tax rate of 21.150 cents per $100 of taxable valuation, which is an increase in the tax rate.

It is moved and seconded to approve item eight. Please vote. The motion carries. On item 9, Madam Clerk, please read the caption.

Council Member Villagran, you're recognized, please.

I move to approve the fee ordinance item nine.

It is moved and seconded to approve item nine. Please vote. The motion carries. Madam Clerk, please read the caption for item 10.

I move to approve the closing ordinance item 10 It is moved and seconded to approve item 10, please vote. I Okay, the motion carries. Thank you again for the hard work. That is the conclusion of our business and the time is now 1 p.m. and this meeting is adjourned.