San Antonio is staring down a budget deficit that could raise taxes for the first time in decades and take an ax to the city services many leaders hold most dear.
Yet days out from a critical budget vote, council members tasked with overseeing such matters can barely stand to be in the same room as one another — much less come together on spending priorities.
Unlike Congress, which can kick the can of such disagreements indefinitely, the City Council is legally obligated to pass a balanced budget.
Public libraries, nutrition centers and additional police officers are all on the chopping block in the plan coming before them this Thursday, but such usual sacred cows have been overshadowed by disagreements so personal that some members are no longer talking, according to Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2).
In a three-part social media video after last week’s council meeting, McKee-Rodriguez described a “culture of sabotage,” where otherwise ideologically aligned members who dug in during last year’s vote on a new NBA arena have now grown more interested in spiting one another than advancing longtime policy goals.
“If we can’t have a real conversation, if I can’t disagree with you, if I can’t make an amendment to an item that impacts my constituents without you trying to f*** me and my constituents over — I can’t work with you,” McKee-Rodriguez said in the video. “Unfortunately, that is where most people are with each other at this point.”
The posts drew an equally unconventional video response from Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1) who argued that some members are working collaboratively to build a majority coalition — while being mistreated by those who aren’t in the “starting lineup.”
“What’s been created is a toxic workplace that’s quite frankly visible to all of our residents to see,” Kaur said.
A budget collision course
In a highly unusual budget cycle, this week the council is preparing final budget amendments without ever having agreed on their topline spending numbers.
That means the council won’t know whether they need to make $89 million worth of cuts or $165 million until members vote on the tax rate — which happens in the same meeting as their budget vote this Thursday.
In early August, city staff proposed a 3.9% property tax increase to balance a $158 million deficit over the next two years and asked council for feedback.
But members have still never clearly signaled whether they’ll support the increase, which requires a 60% vote threshold.
“I’d kind of like to know from the council, which way is the ship going?” City Manager Erik Walsh implored members at an Aug. 19 budget work session. “Are we going with the proposed budget? Are we going [with an] alternative? … It’s going to get really confusing.”
Walsh never got his answer, despite weeks of grueling work sessions. Headed into the final days, confusing may be an understatement.
Slowed economic growth left many Texas cities short of their revenue projections this year — a big shift from the not-so-distant past, when council was divvying up major windfalls.
For San Antonio, city staff says the situation is so dire that balancing the budget would require about $90 million in spending cuts, plus $30 million worth of increased fees and an 8.3% tax increase over the next two years.
Against that backdrop, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones asked the city to reconsider major spending commitments: its contribution to the new Spurs arena, a job training program that started under then-Mayor Ron Nirenberg and big capital projects at the San Antonio Zoo and San Antonio Botanical Garden, among others.
“I have always said that [raising taxes was] my last resort,” Jones said at a Sept. 9 town hall. “… If we’re asking you to consider raising your property taxes, I think we have to go through the intellectual exercise to show how we’ve been as judicious as possible.”
Jones should have plenty of allies on an ideologically progressive council.
But many colleagues were on the council when it oversaw those spending commitments, and resent re-litigating what they consider settled policy.
Kaur was the first to sound alarms after council’s July recess, warning at an Aug. 7 press conference that the mayor’s plans would eat up time the council should be using to hammer out its next budget.
“We are literally coming back from break in a really tough moment — one that I have not had to experience as a council person before — [and] I don’t get to go lobby my colleagues and ask for the things that we really want,” Kaur said at the time.
“We have to make really tough decisions, and instead we’re here fighting the democratic process,” Kaur said, referring to Jones’ efforts to revisit the arena vote.
Weeks of high-intensity budget meetings later, tensions boiled over on Thursday, and a seven-hour council meeting fueled McKee-Rodriguez’s social media blitz, titled, “What the hell is wrong with City Council?”
Having hit their limit with the critics, supporters of the new Spurs arena walked off the dais when members of the public came up to speak about a $60 million land acquisition for the project.
The walkout came after one them also pulled McKee-Rodriguez’s senior center from the consent agenda, leaving seniors who attended the meeting waiting hours for a vote that was supposed to happen early in the morning.
A frustrated McKee-Rodriguez stopped the meeting to haul members back to their seats for the arena discussion, and said he found Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) “laughing and talking sh**” in a back room instead of listening to her constituents.
On Monday, he told the San Antonio Report he felt compelled to put it all in a social media video because the public hears so much about City Hall turmoil and deserves to know what’s really happening.
“I think everybody wants to be reassured that we’re all still working in their best interest,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “ … [But] it’s become increasingly challenging to ensure that that’s always the case.”
With little progress on their shared spending priorities, major decisions like nonprofit funding and workforce development remain undecided, leaving outside groups to lobby on the City Hall steps days before the budget vote.
Meanwhile, council members have no choice but to prepare budget amendments for both possible spending scenarios, and one said they’re running ragged from the prolonged discussions.
“This is our job and we want to be there … but it has been relentless, and it’s wearing on everyone in a way, whether they see it or not,” Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9) said in an interview Monday. “The frenetic pace is not sustainable, and also not always the best use of our time.”
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.
