The City of San Antonio held a budget work session on Tuesday, September 9, 2025, at 2 p.m. to review the proposed fiscal year 2026 operating budgets for the Parks and Recreation and Solid Waste Management departments. Directors Homer Garcia and Josephine Valencia presented overviews, comprehensive budget review findings, and service priorities. Council members discussed program changes, data-driven efficiencies, tree planting, illegal dumping, trail safety, and future innovation.
The time is now 2 p.m. on Tuesday, September 9th in the City of San Antonio. Budget work session is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Council member core. Councilmember Castillo Angelo. Council Member Via Gran. Councilmember Mungia. Councilmember Castillo here. Councilmember Galván. Here. Councilmember Alderete Gavito. Here. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Councilmember Spears. Councilmember White. Mayor Jones. Sure. Mayor we have corn. Great. Thanks, Madam Clerk. This meeting is to hear about the budgets for the parks and recreation and solid waste management operations. Eric, over to you. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So we'll start off with Homer and the Parks Department, and then Josephine from Solid Waste will give her a presentation. Homer. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. My name is Homer Garcia the third director for the Parks and Recreation Department. Want to thank you for the opportunity to present our uh fiscal year 2026 operating budget. And uh before I begin, I do want to acknowledge and thank a few of our team members that are with us today. So our executive team, Melinda Cerda over Park Operations is here. Want to thank her for her work, as well as Nikki Ramos, our assistant director over recreation services, athletics, aquatics, uh, and also some other members of our senior leadership team and many that are listening. Thank you for your work in helping us do what we do. And this slide is a presentation overview. And before I begin covering, I want to extend the thanks to Eric Walsh and the executive leadership team. Thank you for your help in guidance and developing this budget. Uh, we are one of four comprehensive budget review departments, and so we worked very closely with Justina Tate and her budget team as well as Kate Kinovate Kate Kinnison in Innovation and her team. So just want to thank them again for their efforts in helping put together our proposed budget uh that I will review today. So I'm gonna provide an overview of the department so you get a kind of lay of the land, certainly what our proposed spend plan is. I will detail the findings of the comprehensive budget review. We do have some additional reductions that are uh recommended, and then I'm gonna close and and focus really on our core services, our initiatives, key programs, and then provide a summary in the end. I want to go ahead and begin by acknowledging the hard work of our team, more than 500 strong. So in 2022, we became a nationally accredited department. We are the second largest park system that is accredited, and that is demonstrating compliance with 154 standards. We are up for reaccreditation in 2027. That effort is led by Lynn Kinton, our park administrator, but it took everybody to achieve that mark. I also want to highlight in 2024 that we became uh we have certified our safety certification effectively, and that's really critical because we really focus on safety first with our team, making sure that they have the resources that do their job. It's not just about uh the the training and the commodity side of it, but making sure that they're have safety in everything they do. If we're not taking care of our team, then they're not gonna be able to meet the demands and needs of the community.