How we spend your money determines our city’s future, so let’s be good stewards.
How we spend your tax dollars is the most important thing the San Antonio City Council does. Over the past few weeks, council members and city staff have been engaged in countless budget briefings and town hall meetings to produce the fiscal 2025 budget that was adopted Thursday.
While there are certainly areas of agreement, it should be no surprise that the fights always center on one thing: money — or the lack thereof.
To fully understand the city’s plight, it is important to understand why we are where we are.
Over the past few years, the city has taken advantage of hundreds of millions of dollars the federal government sent to help the city get through COVID — American Rescue Plan Act dollars. This money has been used to fund a variety of city programs and initiatives, including a significant portion of our homeless response network, but the money is about to be gone.
Accordingly, money is tight this year and will be even tighter moving forward, and how we spend our general fund dollars will be even more important.
Money is provided in this budget for additional public safety and infrastructure, and to clean up the numerous homeless encampments around the city. This is a good thing, as San Antonio residents have told us these issues are their top priorities.
Also in this budget, however, is money for programs and agencies for which metrics to determine their success are lacking. Additionally, there is money in this budget for many other items that are “nice to haves” but do not directly impact the quality of our residents’ day-to-day lives. This is where we need a reset.
For those reasons, this year I proposed the city change its budgeting model and put forth a plan for creating a zero-based budget in 2027.
The purpose of such an approach to budgeting would be to start over; to make sure we eliminate all wasteful, redundant and outdated spending; and to create a budget based on the outcomes we want to achieve in each department. And these should be outcomes that the people of San Antonio are looking for — not council members.
After numerous discussions with my colleagues and much work with city management, I was proud that this initiative passed through the governance committee by a 5-0 vote. The next step, per our city manager, is a plan to introduce this new hybrid, zero-based and outcomes-based budgeting model in April — including funding for an outside consultant to help the city develop the budgeting process and help us through our first budget using the model.
Sure, this is nerdy. Yes, this new form of budgeting will take additional time and effort for our city staff and our council. But how we spend your money will determine our city’s future. We have limited resources; those resources must be spent wisely, and in a manner that directly benefits your quality of life and puts the city in a position to succeed for all San Antonians in the future.
Finally, we are on the right track.
City Council Member Marc Whyte represents District 10.