Last year San Antonio tightened its belt to balance the city budget, this year it searched “between the cushions of the sofa” for extra revenue.

Facing a budget deficit for the second year in a row, city leaders again avoided a tax rate increase.

But rather than making the tough cuts some members have been calling for to solve a ballooning problem, city leaders raised fees elsewhere — including more expensive parking tickets and an increased parks fee on residents’ utility bills.

They also back-tracked on a plan to reinvest CPS Energy revenue in utility projects — a move that was intended to help mitigate a rate increase that would be passed on to the utility’s ratepayers next year.

“The [budget] team brought us … an opportunity to raise taxes, and we said, ‘No.’ Now we have increased fees,” Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) said at a budget work session Wednesday. “We have to deal with the reality that we are going to need to ask for an increase somewhere.”

Last year City Council considered using CPS Energy revenue to make up for a budget deficit instead of reinvesting it, but then-Mayor Ron Nirenberg was among the biggest opponents of the idea, arguing that higher energy bills “fall hardest on those who are lower income.”

Thursday’s budget was approved 11-0, with two proposed amendments to add more than the budgeted 40 additional police officers failing 4-7.

Council approved the fee increases unanimously on a separate vote.

A council divided

Anticipating a budget deficit, this year city staff looked high and low for potential savings, including asking department leaders to lay out how they would approach across-the-board cuts.

When the scaled-down budget came back before the council this week, however, many of the proposed cuts were restored by council members who couldn’t agree on their top priorities.

Some felt supporting nonprofits has never been more critical than now, when the support the federal government gives them is threatened and big cuts are coming for the social safety net.

Others argued that it was unacceptable not to increase the police force at the rate they’d previously planned — and that a consultant the city hired advised was necessary.

Councilman Marc Whyte (D10), for example, said he was disappointed to see increased fees on residents take the place of meaningful cuts, but also fought to get more officers into the budget.

“We found $27.1 million in budget inefficiencies, … but the fact that we’re raising fees in certain areas this year in lieu of finding other places to cut and to downsize bothers me,” Whyte said Thursday.

Credit: Amber Esparza / San Antonio Report

Almost all of the council supported bigger raises for city staff, and also added an across-the-board $750 base salary increase to the already proposed 2% cost of living increase during the budget amendment process.

To fund the council’s last-minute additions, city staff increased the Parks Environmental Fee on residents’ CPS Energy bill by 50 cents per month, maxed out the food establishment fee and increased a vacant building registration fee.

Those changes will add $9.1 million in revenue over two years, in addition to roughly $4 million from other fee increases council approved Thursday.

Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who was overseeing her first budget, said the city’s needs will only increase when federal cuts come down the pipeline.

Nodding to the ongoing push to squeeze more money out of a potential revenue-sharing agreement through the Spurs’ arena deal, she said council should be thinking harder about how to expand revenue coming in.

“We cannot think about the budget gap and not think about… how do you get additional money into the general fund?” Jones said. “That’s why [we’ve got to be thoughtful about] things like naming rights, … a fair share from parking, concessions, etc.”