For many San Antonians, any questions about the need for a new $1.3 billion Spurs arena went out the window the day the team launched into the NBA Finals.
But one high-profile San Antonian who’s been fighting the arena deal since day one is still wrestling with the roughly $800 million in public funding the arena leans on — at a time when the city faces a ballooning budget deficit.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones was one of the few holdouts on a contract that most of the city and county’s elected leaders considered their only leverage to prevent the emotional and economic hardship of losing the Spurs to another city.
Now as the NBA basketball team steps into the national spotlight, Jones is still trying to convince San Antonians that it’s possible for her to be both a fan and a shrewd negotiator.
Despite her public feuds with the teams’ owners and fans over the past year, Jones said Wednesday that she’s been getting into the spirit for the playoffs, wearing her Spurs shirt to work, accepting tickets to sit courtside at Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and cracking jokes with Charles Barkley on ESPN.
“God forbid I’m excited,” Jones said of the critics scrutinizing her visible fandom.
Once the playoffs are over, however, Jones said she believes taxpayers will still hold city leaders accountable for cuts to city services and potential tax increases coming down the pipeline.
“I think we have to cheer hard for the team and be cognizant of [the fact that] they will very likely be champions — I’m knocking on wood — and the day afterwards, we will still have a $131 million budget gap going into [fiscal year] 2028,” Jones said in an interview Wednesday — before the Spurs’ crushing defeat in Game 4 against the Knicks.
Though San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, it’s facing an unusual decline in property tax revenue this year as home values cool, residential and business exemptions are expanded and many high-value properties remain in reinvestment zones that effectively keep them off the tax rolls.
City officials are proposing their first tax rate increase in 33 years to cover expenses that are rising faster than revenue.
They could also ask taxpayers to pitch in more to increase their bond capacity in 2027, when the sports and entertainment district known as Project Marvel is competing for funding with other critical infrastructure projects.
Seeking help from a billionaire
Against that backdrop, Jones is trying to use the Spurs’ playoff run to squeeze more money out of the people most likely to profit from their success.
“I hear about it probably on a weekly basis, when I’m at H-E-B or public comment, [there’s] a real desire to have people pay their fair share,” Jones said.
Headed into the series against the Thunder last month, she wrote to both the Spurs’ Chairman Peter J. Holt and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, an investor in the team, seeking help with the city’s budget woes.
Jones said her office had arranged a meeting with Dell several months ago, after it was reported that he and his wife donated $6.25 million to President Donald Trump’s savings account program for kids.
Following that conversation, she asked Dell to pick up the tab on the city’s $489 million portion of the arena — much of which is supposed to come from property taxes that the city agreed to forgo on new development in the entertainment district.
“Of course, the mayor of the third-poorest major city in the country would ask for some help from the seventh-richest person on this planet, who happens to be a minority owner in the Spurs,” Jones said. “I mean, $489 million, to him, is frankly a drop in the bucket. It is not for our community.”
Dell’s estimated net worth is $233 billion, and he’s actually become the sixth wealthiest person in the world since Jones sent her letter on May 2, according to Forbes.
Jones hasn’t heard back from Dell on her request.
But she does expect a response to her second letter, asking Holt for Spurs Sports & Entertainment to pay the city roughly $2 million still owed from failed efforts to bring a Major League Soccer team to San Antonio several years ago.
The soccer deal fell through because of a clause in the team’s contract that local leaders and Spurs officials didn’t know about, causing Bexar County leaders not to pursue payment they were also owed.
But Jones has pushed the issue at City Hall and said Wednesday that City Manager Erik Walsh met with the Spurs’ attorney about recouping the money. She anticipates an update from the team’s owners by the end of next week.
“[When] we’re looking at the scale of [budget] cuts that we are, and then on top of that, talking to people about, ‘Hey, we may have to raise your property taxes,’ I think we owe it to the people to say, ‘We’ve done everything possible to keep this number as low as possible,’” Jones said. “That does require collecting all the things that [we] are owed.”
Spurs Sports & Entertainment confirmed there are ongoing discussions about the old agreement but declined say whether they’re considering paying the city.
‘You either trust this team … or you don’t’
Among Jones’ colleagues and the local business community, many have found her tactics appalling.
They believe San Antonio will have a bad reputation as a business partner if she keeps trying to renegotiate a deal the council already agreed to in August — while Jones contends her colleagues let emotion about the Spurs cloud their judgement about what a good deal looks like for their city.
As Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) said memorably ahead of that vote: “You either trust this team … or you don’t … I’ve heard so many people say, ‘We all love the Spurs.’ … But do you really?”
Jones said Wednesday that the challenges haven’t gotten any easier, and she’s trying to balance the emotion of the playoffs with the answers she’ll have to give residents in the coming months.
City Council could be approving higher property taxes, at the same time gas is getting more expensive, inflation continues, and San Antonians’ water and electric utilities are also considering raising their rates.
“I always want to be able to defend what we are doing, because I understand the most vulnerable in our community are already having a hard time,” Jones said. “… I’m trying to balance all the things as we cheer on our team but also fight hard for our city.”
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.