SAN ANTONIO – What could be cut from San Antonio’s budget to potentially make space for more San Antonio police officers?
The city has been trying to follow a recommendation from a 2023 staffing analysis to add 360 patrol officers over a three to five-year period.
The idea is to give officers more time for proactive policing — such as checking on regular trouble spots, traffic enforcement or patrolling for car burglars — compared to running from call to call.
The city added 205 patrol positions in the past three budgets, but council members said adding more could be tricky. They’re also grappling with how to close a projected $131 million hole in the budget over the next two years.
Adding police officers would increase that deficit, and members who are in favor of continuing to add officers have been skeptical of raising the tax rate.
‘Number one priority’
Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), Misty Spears (D9) and Marc Whyte (D10) had pushed a public show of support for adding 65 police officers in May.
All three appear to be in favor of adding more officers based on supportive comments spoken during Thursday’s committee discussion about the staffing plan.
“It’s clear to me that as our city grows, our police force needs to grow with it,” Alderete Gavito said via text.
While they push to spend on the officers, the trio has pushed back against the possibility of raising property tax rates.
Alderete Gavito and Whyte were fully opposed to raising the tax rate in the upcoming budget during a goal-setting discussion last week, and Spears said she was “uncomfortable” with looking at it without first seeing how much the city could cut.
Whyte believed it was “very reasonable” to push for another 65 officers in the next budget.
The Northeast Side councilman believes cutting waste, redundancies and what he called “nice-to-haves” — programs that aren’t tied to core city services — would give the city “plenty of money.”
“If we focus on core city services, public safety and infrastructure being at the top of the list, we can cut out the rest, balance the budget and do what the citizens of San Antonio expect us to,” Whyte said.
He wasn’t worried about cuts in the rest of the budget, but adding to the police budget would send a hypocritical message.
“Because when you’re putting a budget together, you start with the number one priority, and everybody in that building says that public safety is this government’s number one priority,” Whyte said as he pointed to City Hall behind him. “Start with funding the additional officers we need. Build the rest of the budget around it."
Teri Castillo (D5) told Whyte and Spears during Thursday’s Public Safety Committee meeting she’d like to hear in future budget discussions how the city would pay for the extra officers.
“Is it increased property taxes?” Castillo asked. “Is it cuts to specific departments? If so, which departments? Which programs? I think that would be helpful to understand — to name the departments that you’d like to see staff reductions in."
A tax increase isn’t projected to fully close the city’s budget gap. It is unclear where other potential cuts may fall.
“I currently don’t know where we’re gonna get any kind of money right now,“ Sukh Kaur (D1), the Public Safety Committee chairwoman, said. ”I think, one, it’s really important to figure out what our whole budget looks like before we even discuss staffing in any department."
City staff is expected to present a high-level trial budget around mid-June.
Pay raises in the pipeline
It’s not clear how much extra police would cost the city, but the price won’t be going down.
The city is currently negotiating a new three-year contract with the San Antonio Police Officers Association in which pay had been a sticking point.
The two sides began negotiating again after the union said it was pausing talks over a payment offer the previous president called a “slap in the face,” more than six weeks ago.
The latest city proposal would be a combination of hourly-rate and percentage-based raises.
It could raise the base wages for the lowest-ranking San Antonio police officers from $65,431 currently to $74,970 in April 2029 — a more than 14% bump in pay over the next three years.
The union unveiled its newest proposal on Tuesday that would raise the base pay for all ranks between roughly 17% and 23% over the life of the contract, with the final amount determined by the city’s budget performance.
The union has also called for eliminating the lowest, current pay step for new officers so they’d start at a higher pay scale.
Deputy City Manager Maria Villagomez said she still had questions about that aspect of the union’s proposal, which would help them determine how much it could cost the city.
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