San Antonio homeowners will pay a higher city property tax rate for the next fiscal year, starting on October 1.
The San Antonio City Council approved a 3.9 percent property tax rate increase on September 17. Because the city had set rates below its voter-approval limit in the previous two years, state law allowed it to count that unused capacity toward this year’s limit and adopt the increase without an election. This marks the first property tax hike in 33 years.
In the $4.4 billion budget approved for fiscal 2027, the city’s property tax rate will increase from 54.159 cents to 56.288 cents per $100 of taxable value. The council landed there with the 3.5 percent revenue cap plus unused increment, the highest allowed before having to hold an election.
The new rate will add approximately $2.95 more per month in city property taxes for the average homeowner with a homestead exemption. Senior and disabled residents with a tax freeze, who make up about 47 percent of homesteads, will see no city-rate increase.
City Manager Erik Walsh first proposed the tax hike in May.
In a 7-4 vote, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones opposed Walsh’s recommendation, joining Councilmembers Marc Whyte, Misty Spears, and Marina Alderete Gavito.
To bridge a projected $158 million deficit in the general fund over two years, the council used a combination of spending cuts, new and adjusted fees and revenues, and available property tax capacity.
The budget includes nearly $90 million in spending cuts, $34.8 million in new or adjusted fees and other revenues, and $90.2 million in available property tax capacity. That’s unused increment and state-allowed growth the city did not take in the previous two years. The two-year plan assumes another hike in fiscal 2028.
The tensions that led to the budget vote were evident in council member Jalen McKee-Rodriguez’s summary.
“This has been a tumultuous budget season, to say the least,” he said. “What we have before us [is] a document worth billions of dollars that absolutely none of us are happy with.”
Spears expressed frustration that colleagues would not fund more patrol officers or make the deeper cuts to noncore services she wanted.
“You’re going to squeeze so many people out of their homes, including rentals,” she said. “That increase will be passed on to them, on top of these regular fees that they have to pay out of their own pockets, too.”
Jones said she has consistently maintained that raising property taxes was a last resort. “We owed it to our neighbors to make the tough cuts, and unfortunately, this budget shows we punted,” she said from the dais.
Before the vote, Whyte compared the city’s budget to the 2016 budget and lamented that funding for public safety fell from 66.5 percent of the 2016 budget to 65 percent of the current budget, despite population growth.
“We cannot ignore that the spending of our city government is out-of-control,” he said. “Non-public safety personnel spending in our city is three times the amount of the population growth in San Antonio.”
Whyte and Spears offered amendments to the budget and backed each other’s proposals.
Whyte’s amendment to the budget proposed a series of fee adjustments, $200,000 in cuts to the planning of the Northeast Corridor Revitalization Program, and $947,354 from planning SA Tomorrow. Those cuts would free up $1.6 million for 10 San Antonio Fear Free Environment officers, one for each district.
Whyte’s proposal was met with applause from the gallery but failed in a 2-9 vote.
Spears proposed her own amendment to the budget that would have provided for 10 additional San Antonio police officers at a cost of $1.158 million in fiscal 2027 and roughly $1.5 million in fiscal 2028. She proposed funding those positions through $750,000 in cuts to adult programming and approximately $408,000 in cuts to the San Antonio Water System Plumbers to People program in 2027, with additional cuts to each of those programs in 2028.
That amendment also failed in a 2-9 vote.
Whyte asked to continue the votes on the six budget ordinances until September 25 to look at how cuts would affect the different departments. That move prompted applause from the gallery, but failed.
“What I find comical is really the hypocrisy to talk about affordable housing, when we’re here today to make housing more expensive,” he said. “This is going to have a real impact on everybody.”
Whyte said it will be “tax hike upon tax hike,” as the staff’s plan anticipates using the unused increment in fiscal 2028 as well. He asked if the council would continue the tax hikes, when, as the staff projected, five years from now, the city will still have more than a $100 million deficit.
According to the city’s September 17 news release, the budget includes: $30.8 million for homeless services, $37.7 million for affordable housing, $129.8 million for street maintenance, and $5.6 million for new investments through the Economic Development Incentive Fund.
The general fund budget includes $676.5 million for the Police Department and adds 49 officers, to include 27 officers for the airport’s new terminal. Twenty-two vacant park police positions will be transferred to the San Antonio Police Department to create 22 officer positions.
The general fund budget also includes $451.2 million for the Fire Department, adding nine firefighter positions. It also includes $71.1 million for Parks and Recreation, $58.1 million for libraries, and $38 million for Animal Care Services. The city will open a new veterinary hospital during the fiscal year. The human services general fund budget is nearly $33 million, and two part-time nutrition sites with low participation will close.
San Antonio’s fiscal year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
