SAN ANTONIO – Facing a yawning budget gap, San Antonio’s city council will consider raising the city’s tax rate for the first time since 1992.
The city’s plan to close a projected $158 million deficit over the next two years involves a mix of cuts, shifting around funds, raising fees, and a pair of property tax increases that would raise the city rate by about 8.5%.
Only the first hike, a 3.9% bump, is on the table for Thursday’s vote. It would mean the average homestead, with a taxable value of $231,356, would pay $49 more than if the rate were to stay flat.
However, senior and disabled homeowners with a tax freeze, which is roughly 47% of all homesteads in the city, would be unaffected.
Council members spent Tuesday and Wednesday debating — sometimes heatedly — final changes to the budget.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who had floated 29 separate budget amendments, suggested dipping into various other pots of money to free up space in the budget or bring in additional funding, including the Ready to Work job training program, Hotel Occupancy Tax funds, and TIRZs.
After that strategy appeared to get little backing, she suggested across-the-board cuts on Wednesday of 1.6% and 2% over the next two years to avoid increasing taxes.
Marc Whyte (D10), one of the council’s most conservative members and a frequent adversary of the mayor, had laid out his own plan the day before for making specific program cuts, fee increases, and 2% across-the-board cuts to non-personnel costs. While he indicated he was supportive of the mayor’s suggestion, he also got in a dig.
“For the last six weeks, we’ve been we’ve been off on these wild goose chases of moving, you know, trying to move TIRZ money and trying to move HOT money, and doing all these different things to try to avoid making the tough decisions of spending cuts,” he said.
Jones, though, argued it was important to go through the “intellectual exercise.”
“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,” she said.
Neither of their approaches appeared to have broad support, though, and weren’t included in a Wednesday night memo from City Manager Erik Walsh to council members with a list of proposed amendments based on the council’s conversations.
The amendments include a handful of moves to stave off or reduce $4.5 million worth of cuts to a scholarship program, a gastronomy program, five Metro Health positions, and employee tuition reimbursement, among other areas.
To make space for them in the budget, the city would increase a half dozen fees and fines, including for certain parking violations, raising the cost of a non-resident river barge ticket for an adult from $15 to $20, and charging $30 for the newly-proposed, non-resident library card fee, instead of $20.
Dozens of city positions would still be on the chopping block, but staff say they have enough vacant positions elsewhere in the city that no one would have to be laid off.
Passing the higher tax rate will require seven votes out of the 11-member council and it will happen after they vote on the budget.
State law requires the city to have a balanced budget, and if the councilmembers don’t pass a tax rate high enough to support the budget, it would effectively force Walsh to do their dirty work and slash his way to equilibrium.
He and city staff have said the cuts would start with some of the $75 million in possible cuts over two years they presented at an Aug. 19 meeting as an alternative to raising taxes.
The exact list could differ though, as Walsh said some of the things on the list gave him “pause” and had been included because of the tight turnaround staff had to put the list together.
Staff indicated during Wednesday’s discussions that cuts to library hours or the city’s pavement marking program, for example, could be among nearly $23 million in cuts included in the Aug. 19 list that staff might try to avoid if it comes down to it.
