San Antonio faces a major budget deficit and Friday new Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and council members were told it could reach $151 million in 2027.<\/p>\n
That’s unless they make some tough choices.<\/p>\n
Among the options, dramatic cuts in spending and potentially raising the property tax rate for the first time in years.<\/p>\n
Several council members said they could not support increasing the tax burden for San Antonians.<\/p>\n
But the city manager and his staff presented the increase as one of three options they could choose to reduce the deficit.<\/p>\n
The previous council was warned in May that property tax revenue is flat causing a big imbalance in budgets for the next two years.<\/p>\n
Today city staff presented the council with three scenarios.<\/p>\n
The first: they can cut spending on everything but core services.<\/p>\n
The second option: spending cuts plus holding back $59 million the city would normally give to CPS Energy. That money comes from surplus energy CPS sells to the Texas power grid.<\/p>\n
The third option includes some cuts, CPS energy money, and an increase to the property tax rate.<\/p>\n
\u201cScenario three is an absolute nonstarter. No new tax hikes on our citizens,” said District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now council is stuck between a rock and a hard place, we’re up here knowing that we’re going to have to make hard decisions on how these cuts are going to have to happen,” said District 7 Councilmember Marina Alderete Gavito.<\/p>\n
Here’s what the city says the estimated impact would be to homeowners’ tax bills if the council chooses the tax hike.<\/p>\n
An increase of between $57 and $67 in 2026.<\/p>\n
And a $28 or $29 increase in fiscal year 2027.<\/p>\n
Some council members said they’re worried about using the CPS Energy money because it might cause the city owned utility to seek a rate increase.<\/p>\n
There will be budget work sessions and community town halls over the summer and a budget will have to be adopted in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Antonio faces a major budget deficit and Friday new Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and council members were…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,13236,5310,21468,21469,11189,7202,7203,21467,21466,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-23756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-budget-deficit","10":"tag-city-council","11":"tag-cps-energy","12":"tag-mayor-gina-ortiz-jones","13":"tag-property-tax","14":"tag-san-antonio","15":"tag-sanantonio","16":"tag-spending-cuts","17":"tag-tax-rate-hike","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-united-states-of-america","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114765117107847266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}