SAN ANTONIO – Even in a cash-strapped year, some San Antonio council members say the city needs to dig into its pockets to pay for more police officers.
As the city council begins to work through a $4 billion spending plan, policing was an early point of focus in a Tuesday work session. The proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 includes 25 new patrol officers among the San Antonio Police Department’s 2,893 uniformed positions.
However, a group of North and Northwest Side council members says it’s still not enough.
“We can make sure that we get to the 65 officers that was the plan,” said Councilman Marc Whyte (D10). “We can make sure that we do that ourselves through the general fund right now.”
Whyte was one of four council members who signed a memo asking staff for “at least” 65 additional patrol officers in the upcoming year. Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8) and Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) also signed on.
Since 2023, the city has been trying to add 360 patrol officers over the course of three to five years. According to a staffing analysis, the additional officers would allow patrol officers to spend 40% of their time responding to calls and 60% doing “proactive” policing, like checking on regular trouble spots, traffic enforcement, or patrolling for car burglars.
“My district is screaming at me for this,“ Spears told SAPD Chief William McManus at Tuesday’s meeting. ”They need it. We are not a walkable district. It is driving. Y’all being around impacts speeding, street racing, thefts, everything.”
The city has already added 100 patrol positions in FY 2024 and plans to add another 65 in FY 2025.
At one point, city staff had planned for another 65 in FY 2026, but a yawning budget deficit prompted them to scale back their plans.
The city is trying to close a $173 million hole in its general fund — essentially the city’s checking account that covers most city services — over the next two years.
When city staff first presented a “trial budget” to council members in June, they didn’t include any new patrol officers. But after council pushback, they included 25 in the budget proposal they presented to council members on Aug. 14.
Adding 40 officers to the budget would cost $2.1 million in FY 2026 and $5.9 million in FY 2027.
It’s not clear where the money would come from, though Whyte has suggested dipping into money meant to help keep a low-barrier homeless shelter open an extra year.
Not everyone on the council is convinced that more officers are the answer.
“When we add another police officer, we have to remember that we’re beholden to salary increases mandated by the CBA (police union contract), right?” said Councilman Leo Castillo-Anguiano (D2). “And also enough police cars and equipment for each officer. And believe it or not, researchers have observed diminishing returns when we add more and more police officers to the force.”
He suggested addressing the root causes of crime, such as adding more lighting, as an alternative to more officers.
SAPD’s $630 million budget is, by far, the largest within the city’s $1.69 billion general fund.
Councilman Edward Mungia (D4) asked McManus whether adding officers to the multi-disciplinary mental health team, SA CORE, or the popular community policing SAFFE units could help drive down the number of calls officers have to respond to.
McManus said those units help reduce the number of eventual calls, but he did not know what the exact effects would be.
Answering questions from Whyte during the meeting, McManus said having more proactive policing time would hopefully deter more crime and agreed that the quicker SAPD could get to 360 patrol officers, the better.
But as the meeting neared its end, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones questioned “this assumption of more cops, faster.”
“The assumption of that is that the things that are defunded in the course of getting there faster are not in fact increasing things that are making our community less safe, right? That’s a critical assumption of the argument,” Jones said.
Beyond the patrol officers, SAPD is expected to add another 97 uniformed positions in FY 2026.
However, 65 of those spots are due simply to filling vacant parks and airport police positions with SAPD officers as part of the city’s plan to absorb the smaller departments into SAPD gradually.
Another 28 officers will be added for supervisory positions at a new South Side substation.
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