Many details were still being hammered out down to the wire this budget season as leaders debated whether to cut their way out of a deficit or raise taxes.
In the end, the San Antonio City Council approved a 3.9% tax increase to make ends meet, while Bexar County Commissioners used reserve funds to avoid a rate hike.
Even with those additional funds, big changes were still needed to adjust to softening property values and rising inflation.
The choices made this budget cycle marked some of the biggest strategy decisions local officials have had to face in recent years, with more still to come if Texas’ economy doesn’t turn around.
Tense public discussions put popular Fiesta events, a Ron Nirenberg-era job training program and the county’s health department all on the chopping block.
Thousands of city and county employees watched officials debate whether their pay and benefits should be mined for potential savings — meanwhile higher ticket prices and fees will soon account for millions in new revenue.
Roughly a week after the budgets were approved, neither the city nor the county have posted the final documents online.
The San Antonio Report rounded up what we know about where things landed on some of the budget’s top sticking points — as well as other decisions that may have flown under the radar.
1. A major change in the property tax debate
San Antonio City Council wound up approving its first tax rate increase since 1992, going nearly as high as legally allowed without having to seek voters’ permission.
Even without the increase, property tax bills had still been rising in previous years, garnering more revenue through higher property valuations.
Now valuations are staying even or declining after state and local policymakers effectively froze tax rates for many seniors, veterans, and people who own their primary residence.
As a result, a majority of the City Council decided that a tax increase would actually be less disruptive to their residents that the budget cuts they’d have to make to avoid it.
Critics say that still leaves out some important groups who will wind up absorbing the costs.
“Yes, we have our homeowners that have the homestead exemption … [but] those don’t affect your renters and small business owners,” said Rich Acosta, founder of the nonprofit My City Is My Home.
After years spent trying to rein in property taxes through new exemptions and valuation buffers, Acosta said Texas has left local leaders with few levers to pull.
That’s why so many cities are going for a rate hike this year, which will eventually negate the exemptions.
“Your small businesses, your landlords and low-income homeowners are going to say ‘Oh, my property taxes didn’t really increase this year … [then] all of a sudden, my taxes have increased by 10% to 30%'” Acosta said. “All the legislation has done is make us happy now to piss us off later.”
Alternatively, Bexar County kept its property tax rate even this year, using reserve funds to close a revenue gap.
That could mean an even bigger shock down the line when leaders have to fund an overdue county infrastructure program and haven’t even balanced their budget to cover daily operations.
2. Higher tickets and new fees
Property taxes sucked most of the oxygen out of the room in city budget discussions, but other residents may soon notice fees going up on everything from ambulance rides to lost library books.
San Antonio’s budget relies on tens of millions of dollars of new revenue from changes that take effect at the beginning of the new fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.
According to city budget documents, prices are going up on park pavilion rentals, development permits, garage sale permits, fees on booted vehicles, parking violations, HAZMAT fees for gas stations, dangerous dog permits and fees on e-citations among others.
City Manager Erik Walsh said the city can only charge the amount it costs to provide a service, but those costs are growing rapidly with inflation.
“Recovering the cost of service is allowed under state law,” Walsh said. “We can’t make a profit on that stuff, and so [we’re] updating that cost of service, [which] go up all the time, whether they’re labor or equipment.”
In the final days, a handful of additional fees were thrown in to cover council’s proposed amendments, which can’t legally be considered without a way to balance them in the budget.
Bexar County leaders went the opposite direction, saying they didn’t want to burden residents who are already paying more for gas and groceries. They voted down a plan to issue more speeding tickets and kept the price to use county facilities the same.
“Everything else is going up, we can’t control that, but we can control the county,” Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores (Pct. 1) said at a July 1 budget town hall.
3. A spotlight on libraries
Among the City Council’s toughest decisions was a staff proposal that would have cut 101 staff positions. It drew tremendous pushback, particularly for the ones at public libraries.
“What did we just see with the [Aug. 29 wind] storm? That’s not just a library … That’s a cooling center. During the winter freeze, that was also a heating center … that library is also childcare for some,” Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said at a Sept. 9 budget town hall, where she called the idea of library job cuts a “nonstarter.”
In the end, the council saved just one of the 101 positions: a cultural historian who works on projects preserving San Antonio’s multicultural history, such as securing historic designations like the one in the works for the St. Mary’s Strip.
Critics said it didn’t make sense to lose that role as the city is gearing up to spend big on economic development projects — many of which have the explicit goal of highlighting historic cultural assets.
The other 100 were cut in the final budget. The San Antonio Public Library took the biggest hit, with 39 positions eliminated across the system.
While the city budget includes a 4% overall increase in the library’s budget for fiscal year 2027, city staff said the changes are being made to align with an increase in digital circulation — versus physical circulation — since 2019.
Funding for the library’s customer analytics software also was eliminated.
San Antonio is also starting to charge residents who don’t live in the city a new $30 per year library card fee for access to its services. That’s in addition to bumping the processing fee for lost library items from $5 per item to $10, plus the cost of replacing the item.
Despite the job cuts, all public library facilities will remain open and operating hours have not changed.
Of the 100 city staff positions that will be eliminated starting Oct. 1, 53 are currently filled. Fifteen of the positions are in the city’s Health Department and eight are in Human Services.
A city spokesman has said the city has identified existing vacant positions for any current employees who have lost their jobs.
4. City staff got raises, county employees didn’t
In a tough budget year, Bexar County’s budget proposal strangely called for a cost of living increase for elected officials — but not for the county’s 5,000 employees.
Commissioners quickly voted down their own raises, but some hoped to revive a raise for staff, which didn’t wind up happening either.
On the city side, San Antonio set elected officials’ salaries to rise with the cost of median household incomes several years ago, meaning they go up without a public discussion.
Their budget proposal included cost of living increases for staff too, which some members tried to strip at the last minute to avoid raising taxes.
That idea didn’t gain traction in the budget amendments, however, and some members wound up apologizing for the way staff had been treated during the final horse-trading.
5. Fiesta, flowers and the Book Festival
A number of cultural institutions and nonprofits found themselves in the crosshairs of the city’s budget fight when Jones called them out from the dais as line items she’d like to cut.
In the end, most of that didn’t happen.
The 2027 fiscal year budget provides $1 million for the nonprofit San Antonio Botanical Gardens — a reduction from past years, but not zeroed out, as Jones proposed.
Funding for the gardens from the general fund follows a recent commitment from the Midtown Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone to provide the Botanical Gardens and the San Antonio Zoo with $10 million each for improvements. The city owns the land and buildings.
The city’s adopted budget also includes $700,000 for Fiesta and $80,000 for Síclovía, San Antonio’s free bike and cycling community event. The San Antonio Book Festival collected petition signatures to save its funding, which was also included in the final budget.
The mayor viewed the council’s reluctance to cut those line items as a failure in the budget process.
“This budget still subsidizes Fiesta … still gives the Botanical Garden, which charges a ticket fee to enter, $1 million … we couldn’t even cut $80,000 from a bike festival,” Jones said. “This is a business-as-usual budget, but this time business-as-usual comes with a property tax increase on our neighbors during an affordability crisis.”
(The popular Fiesta event NIOSA has been cancelled for financial reasons, but they’re unrelated to the city budget.)
Jones also sought to reprogram funding from the Ready to Work job training program, which started under her predecessor Nirenberg.
Of all of her budget ideas, this one seemed to have the most legs, since a slower-than-expected rollout has left the program with many critics.
But the cuts didn’t wind up happening and council members don’t have to make any tactical decisions about its future, since its sales tax funding was always scheduled to go to VIA Metropolitan Transit.
Ready to Work collected its funding over five years, and will likely have another five years before that funding is exhausted.
At that point, city leaders who are now going big on early childhood educationwill have to decide whether they want to keep funding a workforce development program.
6. A major airport investment
One surprising figure in the city budget discussions was the amount being spent on improvements to the San Antonio International Airport.
The city’s $4.4 billion proposed budget came in a whopping 8.6% larger than the 2025-2026 budget, which Walsh chalked up to the start of a $2.5 billion airport redevelopment that’s expected to be completed in 2028.
Airport construction alone accounts for 6.3% of this year’s budget growth, he said, while the city’s overall operating expenses rose by a more modest 2.3%.
The city budget includes almost $186 million for the airport’s operating budget, a 3% increase over last year.
And while the San Antonio Police Department didn’t get a single new patrol officer this year, the new $1.4 billion terminal is slated to get 27 officers.
7. Reviving the Reproductive Health Fund
City Council voted to resurrect a $500,000 women’s reproductive health fund that pays for contraceptives, STI tests and doula training.
The so-called Reproductive Justice Fund was added at the last minute during the 2023 budget process when council was flush with cash from its revenue sharing agreement with CPS Energy.
Since then, anti-abortion groups sued the city over that spending — part of which went to groups helping women access abortions across state lines.
The state’s near-total abortion ban went into effect in 2021, and state lawmakers followed up last year to ban municipal governments from aiding people seeking to leave the state for abortions.
Now money from the most recently approved reproductive justice fund won’t go toward abortion access. Rather, the dollars may be used to support organizations providing health resources for women, like HIV and STI testing, breast and cervical cancer screenings, emergency contraceptives and other health resources.
City Council members used money from the federal Medicaid waiver to fund the initiative, which wasn’t included in city staff’s original proposal.
8. Big cuts at the county’s health department
Bexar County made significant cuts to its public health and domestic abuse services, much of which was stood up using expiring American Rescue Plan Act dollars following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The county preventive health division had a $10 million budget last fiscal year. Now, the division will run on a $1.1 million budget that includes enough funding to keep its domestic violence prevention program running, but not much else.
Eliminated in the cuts were several administrative and coordination roles, a nutrition specialist and dietitians, as well as about half of the domestic violence case manager positions.
County leaders said that other big Texas cities running similar domestic violence prevention programs have significantly fewer case managers than Bexar County.
Andrea Guerrero, the department’s director, asked commissioners to retain 27 positions and a $2 million annual budget for the department. The county’s budget staff recommended less than half of that, instead allocating $984,000 and reducing staff to 12 positions total.
9. Public safety spending grows, but no new patrol officers
Public safety departments received some of the largest spending increases in San Antonio’s $4.4 billion budget, with the San Antonio Police Department getting a 7% boost.
But the adopted $676.5 million SAPD budget does not include additional officers for general patrol — a point of contention throughout the budget process.
A 2023 staffing analysis commissioned by the city recommended adding 360 patrol officers over several years as part of a strategy to give officers more time for proactive policing and other discretionary duties. The city funded 100 additional patrol officers in fiscal year 2024, 65 the following year and 25 in fiscal year 2026.
Council members Misty Spears (D9) and Marc Whyte (D10) continued pushing for additional patrol officers this year, but several attempts to add them during the amendment process failed to gain enough support.
Texas law prohibits cities from ever reducing law enforcement spending once its added, giving some pause about a new reoccurring expense.
The San Antonio Fire Department’s budget grew 5.3% to about $451.2 million.
The budget adds nine uniform positions, including eight firefighters the city expects will reduce its reliance on overtime and a fire inspector added to comply with a new state requirement for annual inspections of automated external defibrillators at schools.
The department is receiving the increase while also identifying $3.7 million in reductions, largely through lower overtime spending.
10. Animal Care Services still growing
The city’s Animal Care Services budget has now grown 76% since 81-year-old veteran Ramon Najera was mauled to death in 2023, sparking fresh debate over stray animals and safety.
Even as other departments were cut, this year it saw a 12.3% increase, much of which is tied to the opening of a new veterinary hospital at the department’s main campus.
The city budget adds 10 positions and $1.9 million to operate the new veterinary hospital, which is expected to open in spring 2027.
Bexar County is also continuing its animal control investments, which ramped up with the opening of its now gutted public health department.
The county just put a freeze on new capital projects, but broke ground on a new $12 million animal shelter this week.
11. A ‘power grab’ at Bexar County
This year, Bexar County leaders were passing their final budget before a new county judge and district attorney take over in January.
Against that backdrop, commissioners made some changes aimed at protecting key staff members throughout the change.
Their 2027 budget reprograms staff and funding from the District Attorney’s office to create their own general counsel who will report directly to commissioners.
The move was widely viewed as a way to keep Larry Roberson, who currently oversees the civil section of the District Attorney’s office, but could be among many division leaders tossed out after District Attorney Joe Gonzales retires.
The original budget proposal called for the entire civil section of the DA’s office to be moved under the commissioners’ court, which DA candidates said could run afoul of state law.
The final budget scaled back the change, moving about 16 staff members and $1.7 million in funding from the DA’s budget to create the new general counsel office — something Democratic District Attorney candidate Luz Elena Chapa still called a “power grab.”
County leaders are also now considering replacing retiring County Manager David Smith before the new judge takes over.
12. Rocky relationships at the forefront
Overall, tight budgets sincerely tested relationships for local leaders who’ve never really gelled as governing bodies since a new mayor was elected in 2025 and a new Bexar County judge took over in 2023.
At the city, Jones asked colleagues to reconsider big buckets of funding not typically debated as part of the annual budget, saying they should explore every option before raising taxes.
But those efforts took up considerable time in the budget calendar — and largely fell flat.
The end result was a budget with many cuts that weren’t even discussed, and that some staffers suggested council members might not have even noticed.
Several colleagues accused Jones of wasting their limited time to discuss more immediate budget decisions.
“For the last six weeks, we’ve been off on these wild goose chases,” an exasperated Whyte said in one of the city’s final budget work sessions.
On Monday, Jones said at a Metro SA Chamber event that she was disappointed by the final budget outcomes, but the “silver lining” was in the “lessons learned.”
“Together, we have the ability, the resources, and certainly the talent to come together to build the San Antonio we deserve,” Jones said. “It does require challenging assumptions about how things have been done … and we can do that — we must do that — in a respectful way, and focused on the people.”
Bexar County Commissioners also had a rough budget cycle the year after a new top leader was elected in 2022 — famously splitting their capital budget between precincts because they couldn’t agree on shared priorities.
Three years later, the court has made little progress on tough spending decisions, like what to do with positions funded by federal pandemic relief, and when to cull a capital budget that’s full of old projects.
Even without a tax increase, Bexar County passed its 2027 budget on a split vote.
“I don’t feel like we’re kicking the can,” said Commissioner Justin Rodriguez (Pct. 2), who is now among the court’s longest-serving members.
“We’re going to have a new county judge [next year] … and I think [that person is] going to have to be part of this larger conversation of, what do we need to do to make sure the next five years for the county are sound?”
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.
