The City of San Antonio held a budget work session on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, to review proposed fiscal year 2027 budgets for the Parks and Recreation, Economic Development (EDD), Solid Waste Management, and San Antonio Public Library departments. The meeting included presentations by department directors and discussion by Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Council members. No formal votes were taken.
On Wednesday, September 9th, 2026, and the City of San Antonio budget work session is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call roll. Councilmember Corr. Councilmember McKee Rodriguez. Present. Councilmember Via Grande. Here. Councilmember Mungia. Present. Councilmember Castillo. Councilmember Galvan. Here. Councilmember Alderete Gavito here. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Councilmember Spears. Councilmember White. Mayor Jones. Here. Mayor, we have Quorum. Great. Thank you. This afternoon will re review the San Antonio Public Library, Parks and Rec, Economic Development, and Solid Waste Management Budgets. Eric, over to you. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So yes, uh, we'll start off with parks, then move into economic development, then solid waste, and then uh wrap up with uh the library. And we do have a member of the library board here as well who will be uh providing some remarks. So I'll turn it over to Homer to kick us off. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Homer Garcia the third uh parks director, want to thank uh City Manager Walsh, the entire executive leadership team, Freddie, his entire budget team. It's certainly been a collaborative process throughout to get us to this point. So I appreciate the opportunity to present the proposed 2027 parks budget. Also want to highlight I do have some team members with me here today, uh, our both of our assistant directors, Melinda Certa and uh Nikki Ramos, as well as uh some members of our senior leadership team are with us. Um, and then several are listening. So um I'll go ahead and proceed with really just an overview of the department. We I will outline the proposed budget, which does include revenue enhancements, some program changes, uh, our initiatives and key programs, and then provide a summary and some priorities as we look ahead to driving forward our work plan uh over the next 12 months. Uh for the work that we do, uh we're primarily organized in across three pillars, if you will. If you think of operations and maintenance focused on keeping our parks safe, uh clean, ready for public use. That's what that teams does. It is comprised of skilled trades, uh park sanitation, our urban tree canopy, uh, which is really critical uh here the last uh several days. Additionally, we have our recreation uh and community engagement team that houses all of our recreation centers. We have uh 30 facilities, fitness, aquatics, um we just wrapped up pool season, uh so it was a very busy time of year for the parks department, and then lastly, our uh support services that is the director's office, our fiscal team, uh contract services, and accreditation and data governance. Uh you can see uh just a sampling of the vastness of our park system uh to provide some additional context. We have more than 17,200 acres of public green space, and that comprises 278 parks, um, and as well as more than a hundred miles of greenway trails. It's not all inclusive, but it gives you an idea of just the breadth of what we do daily. Uh we are an accredited park agency. We were really proud to achieve that mark in our first attempt back in 2022. We are the second largest accredited park agency in in the country, and then we also have an and really what leads our work daily is making sure that our staff have the resources, the training, and safety first always. If we're not taking care of our team, then they're not going to meet the needs of the community. So the proposed budget is uh 120.4 million dollars across all funds.