San Antonio City Council rejects public vote on $489M Spurs arena contribution
By Andrea Drusch | San Antonio Report
August 17, 2026 at 1:06 PM CDT
This story has been updated.
San Antonio City Council rejected calls to hold a public vote on its $489 million Spurs arena contribution on Monday, voting down a proposal to put it on the Nov. 3 midterm ballot.
The move means that last November’s election approving $311 million in Bexar County venue tax dollars for the arena, known as Proposition B, could be both the first and only time voters are asked about a public investment that totals more than $800 million.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones called Monday’s meeting knowing she likely lacked the support from colleagues to get a city vote on the ballot.
Now that the council is facing a ballooning budget deficit, Jones said that investment of this scale deserved its own public hearing.
The majority of her colleagues disagreed, saying it was bad for business to invite the public to weigh in on major spending decisions that don’t legally require it.
“We should be very careful about establishing a precedent that every significant revenue bond decision requires another election simply because the dollar amount is large,” said Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9), one of the nonpartisan panel’s two most conservative members.
During public comment, the packed chamber was split between those who said voters are being shut out of the process and those who believe a county vote last year should suffice.
The 5-6 vote marked a slight decline in support since the council approved its tentative agreement with the team last year.
At that point, Jones wanted to pause negotiations so that the city could get an independent economic analysis on the sports and entertainment district. Five council members who supported the deal went around the mayor to put it on the agenda anyway, moving the project forward with a 7-4 vote.
On Monday, Councilman Edward Mungia (D4) was the only member to change sides, aligning with Jones’ call for a November election.
Mungia and the council’s progressives, Jones, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), Teri Castillo (D5) and Ric Galvan (D6), accounted for the five “yea” votes.
The six “nays” included the more business-centric members: Spears, Sukh Kaur (D1), Phyllis Viagran (D3), Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8) and Marc Whyte (D10).
City vs. county funds
The concept of a new arena originated with city leaders, who spent years quietly exploring the possibility of how it could anchor a major downtown redevelopment effort known as Project Marvel.
But the $1.3 billion arena’s biggest political hurdle was securing money from Bexar County, which owns the team’s existing Eastside home, and was expected to put up $311 million of the $800 million in public funding.
County leaders came on board with the idea after negotiating an agreement to renovate the team’s existing home at Frost Bank Center, and helped secure support for both proposals on the November 2025 ballot, known as Propositions A and B.
Now nearly nine months later, the city is the one rallying support for its own deal, while the county’s East Side plans also seem to face some headwinds.
The San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo — expected to lead the redevelopment of the Spurs’ East Side home — has cast doubt on whether the vision voters embraced will ever come to fruition because private developers were promised some of the rodeo’s parking lots and barns.
Many changes have also been made to the City of San Antonio’s development vision surrounding the new arena site, including canceling plans for a new convention center hotel and scrapping a land bridge that lacks the originally expected federal funding.
This week City Manager Erik Walsh sought to tamp down on those concerns with a letter slamming “misinformation” circulating in the media, and insisting that the overall vision remains similar to when it was first proposed.
“As with any major project as complex and multifaceted as the sports and entertainment district, the initial plan is preliminary and has been, and will continue to be, subject to further evaluation, refinement, and potential modification as feasibility is assessed and additional information becomes available,” Walsh wrote.
Meanwhile, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said the county hasn’t started collecting the venue taxes expected to fund its portion of the arena funding because its still determining whether it’s “protecting the public’s interest.”
Sakai also told KSAT this week that the county could face litigation if the city doesn’t produce its portion of the arena funding.
On Monday, San Antonio Spurs Sports & Entertainment CEO RC (RC or R.C.) Buford said the council vote was a reaffirmation of support to a project years in the works.
“We can now turn our full attention to delivering on that shared vision and the transformational opportunity ahead for our city,” Buford said.
A ‘do-over’ vote or ‘voter suppression’?
Unlike the county’s venue tax, San Antonio’s arena contribution comes from sources that don’t require the city to hold an election.
In a nod to the high emotions surrounding the project, however, about half of the packed council chamber on Monday believed that not holding one amounts to “voter suppression.”
The other half said that a city election would be anti-democratic, aimed at repeating last November’s Prop B vote in hopes of achieving a different result.
As the deal was presented to council last year, the city’s $489 million is set to come from a combination of state business taxes captured in a Project Finance Zone, property taxes captured in a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone and ground leases on city-owned property in the sports and entertainment district.
Since those sources don’t need voter approval, the council made its term sheet with the Spurs dependent on the results of the county election, in which about 51.7% of San Antonio voters approved of Prop B.
“The voters have spoken,” said Martin Gutierrez, director of governmental affairs for the San Antonio Board of Realtors, who signed up to speak at Monday’s meeting. “More than 178,000 registered city of San Antonio voters voted for Prop B in 2025, therefore we do not believe another election is necessary.”
Leading up to that vote, however, critics point out that a PAC aligned with the Spurs spent $9.2 million on a campaign that only described the county’s portion of the money — giving voters a warped perception.
Monica Cruz, who signed up to speak in favor of a city vote, said the Spurs’ campaign specifically told voters that the money wouldn’t come from property taxes, only taxes on tourists.
“In the 10 community conversation meetings that the Spurs had across the city … all of those slides said that it was only paid for by visitor hotel occupancy taxes, which is a half-truth,” Cruz said. “I think that’s important to know.”
Mary Cabral, a retired high school teacher, said that voters were hit with a “massive propaganda” campaign on the part of the Spurs, and that if the deal is truly as good as it sounds, it shouldn’t have a problem passing again this November.
“Why are you afraid to let us vote?” Cabral asked the council on Monday. “Do you know that that is called voter suppression?”
Supporters of the arena deal said they also felt the other side was cheating by using the second vote to go back on a deal they never liked in the first place.
“The mayor wishes that this project would just go away, that something would kill it — an election, an economic study — so she wouldn’t have to manage it,” said Aram Meraz, whose LinkedIn says he’s a management analyst at City of San Antonio. “… I speak for a lot of San Antonians when I say that there is an election that we would like to get a do-over on, and it’s the election of the mayor.”
Politics aside, many business interests in the chamber stressed that the unusual nature of this arena deal wasn’t great for a city trying to attract investment.
Bartlett Cocke General Contractors, for example, brought a group of nearly 50 people to speak as a group on behalf of the construction industry, which the company’s Chairman and CEO James Anderson said can’t execute big projects when the funding and political will is up in the air.
“Those of us in construction understand something very practical about projects of this scale: Uncertainty has cost. Companies plan for years in advance. … People are hired and trained. Design teams are at work. Material and equipment decisions are made,” Anderson said.
“When the path moving forward changes, schedules and costs change along with it, and businesses become cautious about bringing on people and resources, and will begin to look for other opportunities to pursue.”
Another vote to come?
Despite Monday’s vote, residents in the city of San Antonio could still see another sports and entertainment district-related measure on their ballots in 2027.
The city projected last year that the arena would require between $220 million and $250 million in surrounding infrastructure, expected to come from the city’s bond program.
Some council members want those projects to appear in a single line item that voters can approve or reject, while city staff is proposing spreading them across bond proposals with other city projects.
Bond programs require voters’ approval, and they typically involve careful project selection and expensive political campaigns aimed at bringing enough of them on board.
Jones has been warning that Project Marvel could consume as much as half of the bond capacity, leaving little budget for parks, libraries, drainage and other projects residents want.
Last week Walsh said in a budget briefing that Project Marvel’s infrastructure requirements would come in lower than the initial estimate, but the city’s bond capacity has also been shrinking with slowed economic growth.
He’s counting on the council approving an increase to the debt service portion of residents’ tax bill to allow enough money for projects outside of downtown — in addition to a tax increase staff is already proposing to cover day-to-day operations.
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.
San Antonio City Council rejected calls to hold a public vote on its $489 million Spurs arena contribution on Monday, voting down a proposal to put it on the Nov. 3 midterm ballot.
The move means that last November’s election approving $311 million in Bexar County venue tax dollars for the arena, known as Proposition B, could be both the first and only time voters are asked about a public investment that totals more than $800 million.
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones called Monday’s meeting knowing she likely lacked the support from colleagues to get a city vote on the ballot.
Now that the council is facing a ballooning budget deficit, Jones said that investment of this scale deserved its own public hearing.
The majority of her colleagues disagreed, saying it was bad for business to invite the public to weigh in on major spending decisions that don’t legally require it.
“We should be very careful about establishing a precedent that every significant revenue bond decision requires another election simply because the dollar amount is large,” said Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9), one of the nonpartisan panel’s two most conservative members.
During public comment, the packed chamber was split between those who said voters are being shut out of the process and those who believe a county vote last year should suffice.
The 5-6 vote marked a slight decline in support since the council approved its tentative agreement with the team last year.
At that point, Jones wanted to pause negotiations so that the city could get an independent economic analysis on the sports and entertainment district. Five council members who supported the deal went around the mayor to put it on the agenda anyway, moving the project forward with a 7-4 vote.
On Monday, Councilman Edward Mungia (D4) was the only member to change sides, aligning with Jones’ call for a November election.
Mungia and the council’s progressives, Jones, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), Teri Castillo (D5) and Ric Galvan (D6), accounted for the five “yea” votes.
The six “nays” included the more business-centric members: Spears, Sukh Kaur (D1), Phyllis Viagran (D3), Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8) and Marc Whyte (D10).
City vs. county funds
The concept of a new arena originated with city leaders, who spent years quietly exploring the possibility of how it could anchor a major downtown redevelopment effort known as Project Marvel.
But the $1.3 billion arena’s biggest political hurdle was securing money from Bexar County, which owns the team’s existing Eastside home, and was expected to put up $311 million of the $800 million in public funding.
County leaders came on board with the idea after negotiating an agreement to renovate the team’s existing home at Frost Bank Center, and helped secure support for both proposals on the November 2025 ballot, known as Propositions A and B.
Now nearly nine months later, the city is the one rallying support for its own deal, while the county’s East Side plans also seem to face some headwinds.
The San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo — expected to lead the redevelopment of the Spurs’ East Side home — has cast doubt on whether the vision voters embraced will ever come to fruition because private developers were promised some of the rodeo’s parking lots and barns.
Many changes have also been made to the City of San Antonio’s development vision surrounding the new arena site, including canceling plans for a new convention center hotel and scrapping a land bridge that lacks the originally expected federal funding.
This week City Manager Erik Walsh sought to tamp down on those concerns with a letter slamming “misinformation” circulating in the media, and insisting that the overall vision remains similar to when it was first proposed.
“As with any major project as complex and multifaceted as the sports and entertainment district, the initial plan is preliminary and has been, and will continue to be, subject to further evaluation, refinement, and potential modification as feasibility is assessed and additional information becomes available,” Walsh wrote.
Meanwhile, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said the county hasn’t started collecting the venue taxes expected to fund its portion of the arena funding because its still determining whether it’s “protecting the public’s interest.”
Sakai also told KSAT this week that the county could face litigation if the city doesn’t produce its portion of the arena funding.
On Monday, San Antonio Spurs Sports & Entertainment CEO RC (RC or R.C.) Buford said the council vote was a reaffirmation of support to a project years in the works.
“We can now turn our full attention to delivering on that shared vision and the transformational opportunity ahead for our city,” Buford said.
A ‘do-over’ vote or ‘voter suppression’?
Unlike the county’s venue tax, San Antonio’s arena contribution comes from sources that don’t require the city to hold an election.
In a nod to the high emotions surrounding the project, however, about half of the packed council chamber on Monday believed that not holding one amounts to “voter suppression.”
The other half said that a city election would be anti-democratic, aimed at repeating last November’s Prop B vote in hopes of achieving a different result.
As the deal was presented to council last year, the city’s $489 million is set to come from a combination of state business taxes captured in a Project Finance Zone, property taxes captured in a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone and ground leases on city-owned property in the sports and entertainment district.
Since those sources don’t need voter approval, the council made its term sheet with the Spurs dependent on the results of the county election, in which about 51.7% of San Antonio voters approved of Prop B.
“The voters have spoken,” said Martin Gutierrez, director of governmental affairs for the San Antonio Board of Realtors, who signed up to speak at Monday’s meeting. “More than 178,000 registered city of San Antonio voters voted for Prop B in 2025, therefore we do not believe another election is necessary.”
Leading up to that vote, however, critics point out that a PAC aligned with the Spurs spent $9.2 million on a campaign that only described the county’s portion of the money — giving voters a warped perception.
Monica Cruz, who signed up to speak in favor of a city vote, said the Spurs’ campaign specifically told voters that the money wouldn’t come from property taxes, only taxes on tourists.
“In the 10 community conversation meetings that the Spurs had across the city … all of those slides said that it was only paid for by visitor hotel occupancy taxes, which is a half-truth,” Cruz said. “I think that’s important to know.”
Mary Cabral, a retired high school teacher, said that voters were hit with a “massive propaganda” campaign on the part of the Spurs, and that if the deal is truly as good as it sounds, it shouldn’t have a problem passing again this November.
“Why are you afraid to let us vote?” Cabral asked the council on Monday. “Do you know that that is called voter suppression?”
Supporters of the arena deal said they also felt the other side was cheating by using the second vote to go back on a deal they never liked in the first place.
“The mayor wishes that this project would just go away, that something would kill it — an election, an economic study — so she wouldn’t have to manage it,” said Aram Meraz, whose LinkedIn says he’s a management analyst at City of San Antonio. “… I speak for a lot of San Antonians when I say that there is an election that we would like to get a do-over on, and it’s the election of the mayor.”
Politics aside, many business interests in the chamber stressed that the unusual nature of this arena deal wasn’t great for a city trying to attract investment.
Bartlett Cocke General Contractors, for example, brought a group of nearly 50 people to speak as a group on behalf of the construction industry, which the company’s Chairman and CEO James Anderson said can’t execute big projects when the funding and political will is up in the air.
“Those of us in construction understand something very practical about projects of this scale: Uncertainty has cost. Companies plan for years in advance. … People are hired and trained. Design teams are at work. Material and equipment decisions are made,” Anderson said.
“When the path moving forward changes, schedules and costs change along with it, and businesses become cautious about bringing on people and resources, and will begin to look for other opportunities to pursue.”
Another vote to come?
Despite Monday’s vote, residents in the city of San Antonio could still see another sports and entertainment district-related measure on their ballots in 2027.
The city projected last year that the arena would require between $220 million and $250 million in surrounding infrastructure, expected to come from the city’s bond program.
Some council members want those projects to appear in a single line item that voters can approve or reject, while city staff is proposing spreading them across bond proposals with other city projects.
Bond programs require voters’ approval, and they typically involve careful project selection and expensive political campaigns aimed at bringing enough of them on board.
Jones has been warning that Project Marvel could consume as much as half of the bond capacity, leaving little budget for parks, libraries, drainage and other projects residents want.
Last week Walsh said in a budget briefing that Project Marvel’s infrastructure requirements would come in lower than the initial estimate, but the city’s bond capacity has also been shrinking with slowed economic growth.
He’s counting on the council approving an increase to the debt service portion of residents’ tax bill to allow enough money for projects outside of downtown — in addition to a tax increase staff is already proposing to cover day-to-day operations.
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.