Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
Bexar County commissioners were told this week that county spending could surpass county revenue as early as 2027 without some budget belt-tightening.
The county is headed into its 2026 budget cycle now. Officials will look at ways to cut spending or boost revenue to get ahead of a long-range budget forecast that shows a deficit is coming if they don't.
The county budget office told commissioners that home appraisals and home sales have cooled a bit, but there should still be some small revenue growth from property taxes. Those sorts of taxes make up 80% of the county's general fund revenue, county officials said.
Commissioners were also told lower interest rates mean less money from county investments.
And then there's the federal COVID relief money drying up, which has been used to fund some programs and jobs. And there's health care costs for county workers and tens of millions of dollars in overtime costs at the crowded county jail and paying other counties to house Bexar inmates.
County Judge Peter Sakai said there may be some tough decisions on spending down the road.
"This report today, it's not rosy, but it's somber. It is a projection of what we have to do in regards to revenues and what our expenditures are going to be."
Adding to the budget concerns are federal cuts to programs or threatened cuts to programs. The San Antonio Food Bank took a big hit, and local entities are looking at ways of helping to fill that funding void and others like it.
Precinct 4 County Commissioner Tommy Calvert urged his fellow commissioners not to make the immediate leap to budget cuts because property tax revenue has shown some promise in a couple of areas.
"Housing and downtown density are going to help bail us out, I think, of some of the upcoming issue," he said.
He said the county has one edge over the City of San Antonio, which is looking at much larger deficits — the space for large home subdivisions encouraged by the county's creation of Public Improvement Districts (PIDS). Those PIDS incentivize the development of bare rural property into rows of taxable homes.
The county hopes to continue its three-decade-long streak of holding the line on property taxes while funding a budget that in recent years has pushed $3 billion.
