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San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has just completed her first 100 days in office.
Jones became mayor after she handily beat a slate of then-council members in the first round of voting in May, and then defeated self-described fiscal conservative Rolando Pablos in a June runoff election that turned an officially nonpartisan race into one between a Republican and a Democrat.
She campaigned as a city hall outsider with experience as the Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, a former Air Force intelligence officer, and a member of former President Joe Biden’s Executive Office.
Jones also campaigned on increased transparency around Project Marvel and a proposed downtown San Antonio Spurs arena, supporting affordable housing, revitalizing the city’s major workforce development program Ready to Work (RTW), expanding Pre-K 4 SA, and improving internet connectivity across the city — all items she said she would address within her first 100 days.
The city council hasn’t gotten around to most of them yet.
“So again, any good leader, you got a plan, but you modify based on changes in the environment,” Jones said.
The city hall environment these past 100 days has included adopting the city’s 2026 budget, a wide-ranging and ongoing debate over the Spurs arena, a colleague’s DWI arrest, interpersonal tensions, bureaucratic process fights, and more.
The city navigated a $20 million deficit and ultimately balanced the budget without major impacts to core services last week.
Jones spent much of the 2026 budget conversation to highlight the even larger hurdles the city is expected to face in 2027.
“The implementation of Trump's reconciliation bill really brings into focus where we're going to see cuts, and that's why those were already top of mind for me as we think about [fiscal year] 27,” she said. “So I'm excited about the tabletop [exercise] that we will do with the council to really understand where we may have some gaps, where we need to better collaborate with the county and some of our partners, and also how we're going to communicate, how we're going to try to meet those needs in our community and what may be affected as a result of that.”
The city is looking ahead to a $150 million deficit in 2027 — a deficit as large as three of the city’s largest non-public safety departments combined — and the city’s health department is bracing to have its budget slashed by federal cuts.
“You have to give her credit, in my opinion, for addressing what is a looming budget deficit, understanding that we're about to face serious austerity issues in a city that is likely not going to be willing to raise property taxes,” UTSA Political Science Department Chair Jon Taylor said.
Jones said these budget challenges are part of why she’s pushed to get more from the Spurs in return for the city’s contribution to the downtown arena, including a share of the revenue the Spurs receive for naming rights, concessions, parking, and more.
“There's a real, obviously, aversion to property tax increases,” she said. “So how then can we talk about meeting our needs, and these economic development opportunities like the downtown Spurs arena afford us that. So we should ask.”
Jones led a failed effort to pause negotiations between the city and the Spurs until the city received an independent economic impact report about how the estimated $1.3 billion arena would impact the city’s finances. Many members of the public, including the grassroots nonprofit COPS/Metro Alliance and a coalition of other local organizations, joined her in calling for a pause.
The city has now agreed to contribute up to $489 million to the arena, and anticipates another $200 million or more for infrastructure upgrades in the downtown area, though Jones said the city’s reduced bond capacity may force that infrastructure number to come down as the city looks to address flood and drainage infrastructure as well as affordable housing.
Spurs officials and city leaders who wanted to move forward have argued that the city’s contribution primarily comes from taxes on hotel stays and new private development that wouldn’t be built if not for the arena.
City officials have cited contract language that requires that new development begins construction before any city money is used on the arena as evidence that the public isn’t getting false promises like they did when the Frost Bank Center was first built.
Jones said she still stands by her effort, and isn’t ready to give up on it, despite the city council’s 7-4 approval of the terms sheet in August.
She is now pushing for the city to have an election for its arena contribution separate from Bexar County’s venue tax election this November, saying “if you pay twice, you should vote twice.”
Jones also isn’t satisfied with other items the Spurs have offered as part of the agreement — particularly the community benefits agreement.
“I think it's short for the [community benefits agreement],” Jones said. “$75 million over 30 years? It's short.”
The current agreement gives the city council total authority to use the $75 million as they wish.
Taylor said he understood why Jones took the route she did on the Spurs arena, but that he believed it was executed poorly.
“And, you know, she ended up engaging with the Spurs fan, you know, ‘Spurs Jesus’ for goodness sake, which did not make her look good,” he said.
Jones also crashed District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte’s budget town hall in the summer to advocate for a pause, which was itself just one in a growing list of moments of very public tension and outright confrontation between the two.
Taylor added that she wasted political capital in a weeks-long fight with her colleagues over a key council policymaking process, the Council Consideration Request (CCR), which alongside the rapid departures of two members of her senior staff had the effect of making her new administration appear unstable.
“Perception is everything in politics, and the perception is given that there's turmoil in the mayor's office, and that the mayor is at the center of it, and therefore she is viewed as someone … who is still in the learning curve stage,” he said.
Jones had attempted to add some steps to the policymaking process that some of her colleagues found overbearing if not in violation of the existing ordinance, and kept a proposed ordinance from being voted on because she said it did not follow rules she had set out.
Jones ultimately lost the CCR fights with her colleagues — she backed down on her rule changes and was outvoted on the animal abandonment ordinance she had had withdrawn.
“When I am thinking about what we need to be focused on, it's about delivering good policies for the people of San Antonio that improve their lives, and that requires due diligence, right?” she said. “And so the things that I proposed were all in that vein.”
The council also had to deal with the DWI arrest of District 8 Councilmember Ivalis Meza Gonzalez.
The council censured Meza Gonzalez earlier this month after her blood alcohol content test results — nearly double the legal limit — were publicized, and Jones stripped her committee assignments.
Instability at the start of a mayor’s first term isn’t unique to Jones, Taylor said. Available opinion polls showed that former Mayor Ron Nirenberg was broadly liked by the last year of his final term, but he didn’t start out that way.
“Nirenberg, though, did hit his problems,” he said. “And his problems, in fact, almost led to his defeat two years later in 2019, so it's not like somehow he was, you know, a paragon of stability.”
One of Jones’ wins in the first 100 days is a new city policy regulating non-disclosure agreements, an issue she campaigned on because of its association with Project Marvel discussions that had only recently come to light.
A new policy the council approved earlier this month formally discouraged members of the city council from signing NDAs, and that if they do, they should inform the city attorney, city manager, and their colleagues.
Current and former council members and Nirenberg have repeatedly said none signed NDAs relating to Project Marvel or the Spurs arena specifically, but Jones said she believed it was important to show the public that the council was making an effort to be more transparent.
Taylor said Jones’ public communication effort has also been a major victory of her first few months in office.
She has held multiple public town halls in different districts, attended her colleagues’ public budget meetings, held press conferences, and repeatedly joined TPR’s The Source program to speak directly to residents.
He added that another win that has gone under the radar is a lack of confrontation with Governor Greg Abbott or President Donald Trump, even though Abbott came up repeatedly in Jones’ attacks on Pablos in the runoff campaign.
But Jones has not been able to address other campaign promises in her first 100 days like improving internet connectivity, expanding Pre-K 4 SA, or finding the path to drastically improve RTW’s job placement rates.
She said data collection is the biggest barrier to expand access to Pre-K 4 SA, which is what she said needs to come next.
Jones has set a goal of getting 90% of RTW graduates into approved jobs within 90 days. RTW has consistently failed to meet its much more conservative goal of placing 80% of graduates in approved jobs within 180 days.
She said she believes the program can improve if participants are pushed towards a smaller set of in-demand roles, and that recent conversations with local business leaders who are not part of the program have highlighted other ways to make the program more successful.
And Jones didn’t back down from her ambitious aims for RTW.
“I don't think 90% in an approved job within 90 days, I don't think that's impossible,” she said. “Frankly, we should strive for that.”
The most recent challenge for Jones is an ethics complaint filed against her over her solicitation of the 2028 Democratic National Convention on city letterhead.
Jones called the complaint “politically motivated” and said it was the mayor’s job to attract business to the city like the DNC. Taylor also dismissed the complaint and said it wasn’t about red or blue, but “green.”
Jones said her primary focus moving forward is preparing for the 2027 budget, followed by flood infrastructure projects and affordable housing.
