City to vote on $3.1B budget this week
Community members debate line items in record spending plan
About a dozen people lined up behind a mic to weigh in on a proposed record $3.1 billion city budget, as Councilman Jalen Mckeerodriguez pledged to fight for areas of his East Side district that have been neglected.
“There’s going to be arguments, there’s going to be disputes and there’s going to be times when we feel like we’re not on the same page. And sometimes, that’s going to be true,” Mckee said at the budget town hall last week, vowing to hold the city to its obligation to “make up for the lack of investment.”
“How we get there is going to look very different to each and every one of us,” he said.
The city will vote Thursday on the spending plan, which goes into effect on Oct. 1.
At the town hall meeting, residents gave audible approval — “yeah,” or “that’ll work” — as City Manager Erik Walsh ticked off proposed budget highlights: an unprecedented $5.8 million for street lights citywide; $1 million to outfit a roving crew dedicated to cleaning up litter and illegal dumping; and $32.8 million in affordable housing support.
But there also was applause when Mckee-rodriguez said he opposes Walsh’s proposed $540.7 million police budget, a 3.2 percent increase. It includes $1.8 million to add three downtown bike patrol officers, up from 58, and expand the community policing program known as SAFFE — San Antonio Fear Free Environment — by 12 officers, to an existing 112.
Since the budget reassigns about 46,000 of the 2 million calls handled each year by police — loud music, barking dogs and fireworks — Mckee-rodriguez said the city could better direct more funds to social support services.
“I believe that we have an opportunity for our SAFFE officers to be in the community and to do their jobs, and for you to be able to
make that connection. I believe that we can do that with the existing officers,” Mckee said.
Ananda Tomas, executive director of Act 4 SA, which promotes compassionate public safety practices, urged the city to pull back on the plan.
“That two million dollars can go into all of these things that our community is so desperately crying for, after a pandemic and a winter storm that devastated our community. We need to rethink and re-imagine public safety,” Tomas said.
She also has criticized a planned $1.7 million pilot program to start sending a co-responder team, composed of a clinician, paramedic and police officer, to calls involving someone in a mental health crisis. Tomas wants to exclude police from the team, and she wants the city to form a community advisory board to weigh in on the program’s roll-out.
Walsh has said he wants San Antonio to have “the best police department in the country.” The city, with about 1.5 million residents, would spend about 63.5 percent of its $1.36 billion general fund on public safety, within its own 7-year-old policy threshold of 66 percent. But he said the city is growing and needs more resources in public safety and other areas such as economic development, public health and youth programs.
“Nobody in this room tonight who’s a taxpayer wants any dollar wasted,” he told the East Side residents. “But I think we all have to recognize that there are folks in the community, neighborhoods in the community, business leaders in the community, that want a safe environment.”
Council members will consider amendments on Wednesday. “There will be changes. That’s the process,” Walsh said.
Staffing and pay is another issue of concern. Council members have asked the city to consider merit and
hazard pay, and to better connect local workforce development programs with some 1,300 staff vacancies — typically skilled positions such as plumbers and electricians.
Walsh told the council the city needs to update its employee pay plan through a marketing study and staff input to remain competitive. The city is proposing a 5 percent
raise for civilian workers but will delay merit increases until next year.
“I would urge you to reconsider starting that process as soon as possible. I think that this last couple of years has been hard on all our city workers,” Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda said.
For the most part, council members have supported spending more in departments such as Animal Care Services, whose shelter had seen a rise in its live-release rate, from 32 percent in 2011 to about 92 percent this year, despite a surge in newborn puppies and kittens while some spay-neuter clinics were closed during the pandemic.
The city spends about $175,000 a year to perform 4,200 spay-neuter surgeries on feral cats through its community cat program. But it had 1,500 to 1,800 fewer surgeries in the past year because of its clinic closure. It counted fewer than 32,000 dog and cat surgeries in 2020 — almost 10,000 less than in 2019 — but is tracking 35,000 dog and cat sterilizations this year, and targeting 45,000 in 2022.
ACS plans to add two trucks and four enforcement officers, at a cost of $404,656, to work an overnight shift and assist with some of the 136,000 service calls, investigations and follow-up visits expected in fiscal 2022. In a new, $320,000 initiative touted as the first of its kind nationwide, ACS also is set to launch a fivemember case management team to help people with loose dogs and other issues.
Bethany Colonnese, ACS chief operations officer, said the program will connect pet owners at risk of becoming repeat violators with free spay-neuter or microchips service, vaccine clinics and even Boy Scouts who repair fences as community service projects.
“It is utilizing some of the programs that we’ve had in the past that are kind of scattered, and now putting them all together under one roof. It’s really going out there, helping people and getting their problems solved,” she said.
The proposed illegal dumping cleanup program will use a six-person team and an off-road vehicle to go into drainage ditches and other hard-to-reach places to remove rubbish.
“There’s a lot out there, and we do need the help,” city Solid Waste Director David Newman told the council last week.
The city is encouraging more residents to recycle, to save landfill fees and possibly trim their own household costs, up to $12 per month, by downsizing to smaller bins for regular trash. David Newman, director of solid waste, said the city’s recycling rate rose from less than 10 percent in 2007 to 40 percent projected for 2022 — still short of the city’s goal of 60 percent by 2025.