The City of San Antonio held a budget work session on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, at 2:02 PM, to deliberate on potential amendments to the Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget. The meeting focused on a list of amendments presented by Budget Director Justina Tate, including employee compensation increases, public safety investments, and adjustments to various programs. Councilmembers expressed their priorities, with significant debate around funding for 40 additional police officers versus other public safety and community service needs. No formal votes were taken; the discussion will inform a revised amendment memo to be prepared for the next work session.
Good afternoon. The time is now 2.02 p.m. on Tuesday, September 16th, and the City of San Antonio budget work session is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Councilmember Corps. Councilmember Castillo Angiano. Councilmember Via Gran. Councilmember Mungia. Councilmember Castillo. Councilmember Galvan. Councilmember Alderete Gavito here. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Present. Councilmember Spears. Councilmember White. Mayor Jones. Okay. Mayor, we have quorum. Okay. Thank you, Madam Clerk. This meeting is to hear about potential amendments. The FY26 proposed budget. Eric, over to you. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So I'm sure you've seen we sent a new memo out earlier. Um, and we're gonna walk, justina's gonna walk through a quick presentation. It's got a couple of other adjustments, and we'll point them out. Um, but but for reference purposes, there's been a lot of things, uh, a lot of uh adjustments and requests, so I would ask that you look at what's being presented as the latest information on the presentation slides, just a couple of adjustments, and we'll make some clarifications because on the memo that was sent out. We you know, we attempt to capture um council members that we've heard in prior work sessions. Justina will point out in a couple of areas where we left off some of the council districts. But this is a this is one of two budget amendment work sessions, and uh I'll be working with you all and the mayor to make sure that we get a good summary of today so that we're prepared for tomorrow. Justina thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Justina Tate, I'm the budget director for the city of San Antonio. Today we wanted to provide a brief uh recap budget recap, and then we'll move into the uh potential budget amendments, and then finally, we'll review potential reductions and new revenue as a um as a way to pay for these budget amendments. So the budget is a comprehensive plan that guides the city spending, reflecting council and community priorities. The fiscal year 2026 budget proposed budget is four billion dollars, and this budget has been presented to city council over the past 10 budget work sessions. In addition to these work sessions, we hosted 11 town hall meetings as well as two public hearings to provide to provide information about the proposed budget as well as get community input. Additionally, uh the questions that mayor and city council had during the budget work session presentations, those responses have been provided, as well as the report and summary of our town hall meetings. Today we will begin deliberation on potential budget amendments to the 2026 proposed budget. It is required that we maintain a balanced budget for fiscal year 2026, and this is required by law, and our goal is to keep 2027 the 2027 plan balanced. So, as we started preparing the 2026 budget, we faced several challenges that we had to address. As presented during our five-year forecast as well as the trial budget, the general fund faced deficits in both fiscal year 2026 and 2027. As you may recall, our revenues are still growing, but they're growing at a slower pace than what we have historically seen, and our expenses were outpacing our revenue growth. As we saw, this was not unique to San Antonio. Cities across Texas as well as the United States are experiencing the same challenges that we are. When we presented the budget on August 14th, it was balanced, and the plan for 2027 was balanced as well. We balance this budget by reducing spending with minimal impacts to services, used savings from completed project and unspent balances, moved eligible projects to capital, implemented the CPS revenue financial policy, and finally increased fees and fines to add additional revenues. We balanced the budget using our guiding principles that were adopted by city council during the goal setting session.