San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh Proposes Balanced Fiscal Year 2022 Budget

Press release from the City of San Antonio:

August 12, 2021

CONTACT: Laura Mayes, City of San Antonio
laura.mayes@sanantonio.gov

Michelle Vigil, City of San Antonio
michelle.vigil@sanantonio.gov

SAN ANTONIO (August 12, 2020) – Today, City Manager Erik Walsh presented the Fiscal Year 2022 Proposed Budget. The City of San Antonio’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Proposed Budget reflects the City’s better financial position due to a faster than anticipated recovery from the fiscal impacts of COVID-19, but uncertainty remains. The Proposed Budget restores cuts made over the past two years, focuses on critical community needs, responds to crises differently and makes investments to become a more resilient city.

The FY 2022 Proposed Consolidated Annual Budget, comprised of all funds excluding transfers, totals $3.1 billion. The General Fund budget is $1.36 billion. Restricted Funds, including Airport, Development Services, and Solid Waste total $1.12 billion; and the FY 2022 Capital Budget is $592.2 million.

“The proposed budget reflects my commitment to improving and transforming our community through innovation, critical service delivery and support for our most vulnerable residents,” said City Manager Erik Walsh. “While uncertainty due to COVID-19 remains, our charge is clear: provide our residents with high quality services and help our community recover from the pandemic.

The FY 2022 Proposed Budget makes strategic investments in critical issues that emerged from the pandemic, such as public health, housing, senior services, workforce development through the Ready to Work program and a more open and accessible City government.

Police Services Review
This Spring, the City fostered community dialogue around the role and expectations of encounters with police officers. These efforts included a scientific survey, 27 public meetings, a study of SAPD’s website, focus groups and conversations with stakeholder groups. The Proposed Budget invests $5.4 million in a new approach to responding to crises as a result of this feedback and also expands SAPD’s capability to build stronger relationships with neighborhoods.

“My vision for the San Antonio Police Department is to be the best police department in the nation, in terms of accountability, training and community engagement. Over the past year, we’ve asked our residents to tell us what their expectations of police encounters are and have taken a close look at what calls for service could be responded to differently,” said Walsh. “The Proposed Budget takes a multidisciplinary approach to calls, which will better connect people in crisis to services and will give the police department more capacity to strengthen their relationship with our community. This work should never end as we continue to stay engaged with our entire community.”

This investment includes:

• A pilot program introducing a dedicated multi-disciplinary response team to address mental health calls in the central area of the City as recommended by the Meadow’s Policy Institute. The team consists of a paramedic, a health clinician, and a police officer that jointly respond to mental health calls.
• A team of crisis community advocates will respond alongside police officers to calls related to domestic violence, homelessness, mental health, and substance abuse.
• Funding for the Fire Department Arson Division to respond to fireworks calls during New Year’s Eve and Fourth of July.
• Funding for a test program to partner code enforcement and police officers to respond to loud music calls is included.
• Four Animal Care Officers to address barking dogs and animal related calls currently handled by SAPD. Police will continue to provide support to ACS for calls involving vicious dogs.
• Five positions to Animal Care Services to conduct targeted educations in high equity score areas to connect residents to ACS services available
• New resources to minimize the time it takes for a police officer to bring found property to the downtown property room.

The Proposed Budget also adds 15 Police Officers; 12 for the SAFFE unit to proactively engage with residents and strengthen community policing efforts and three to downtown bike patrol.

Finally, the Proposed Budget adds $5.8 million for a streetlight program to take a proactive approach in identifying, monitoring, and administering a streetlight gap index throughout the city and respond to residents’ requests.

“One of the top priorities of our residents was to invest more in streets, sidewalks and streetlights. The Proposed Budget restores the street maintenance budget and invests in pedestrian safety initiatives, a comprehensive update to the bicycle master plan and adds funds to build more sidewalk miles in areas of need,” added Walsh.

The Proposed Budget makes significant investments in San Antonio’s infrastructure by restoring the street maintenance budget to $110 million, adding $5 million for Vision Zero pedestrian safety improvements, adding $2.7 million for a comprehensive update of the 2011 Bicycle Master Plan and increasing the sidewalk funding budget to $21 million. In addition, the Proposed Budget provides $1 million for each Council District to allocate to needed capital projects.

The Proposed Budget invests $16.3 million in federal grants and general fund dollars for Metro Health’s Year 1 of a 5-year Strategic Growth Plan. Building on the lessons learned from the pandemic, the Strategic Plan will create a more coordinated approach to public health with a focus on mental health, health justice, access to care, and technology/infrastructure.

The City will also add $1.1 million to fund expansion of Fire Department Clinical Dispatch program that allows 911 call takers to provide telemedicine to residents, freeing up ambulance and paramedic resources to respond to critical emergencies.

The Proposed Budget allocates $32.8 million for Affordable Housing, provides funding for Community Navigators that will direct families and individuals to fair housing resources, options and assistance and adds funding for three Financial Counselors to assist seniors with avoid and recovering from identity theft, mortgage fraud and other scams.

City Manager Walsh also announced new improvements to the City’s language access services. Funding is added to begin providing Spanish and American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation at all City Council Committee meetings. The City will also conduct a study of the community’s language needs, the City’s language access services and best practices of other large municipalities. The City will also redirect three positions to enhance the availability and outreach around these enhanced language services programs.

“Access to information in the language that a person is most comfortable in is extremely important to our community. The Proposed Budget’s language access services expansion will both increase the availability of information in different languages and will also create audience specific public awareness campaigns and content,” said Walsh.

Finally, the Proposed Budget also adds seven 311-call center positions to address the growth in call volume.

Community Input Opportunities
The City will host 10 budget town hall meetings for residents to learn more about the proposed budget and provide their feedback. Residents can tune in to the virtual town hall meetings live on the web by visiting www.sanantonio.gov/tvsa or on the City’s Facebook page. Residents can also watch on television channels: AT&T 99, Grande 20, Spectrum 21, and digital antenna 16.1, or listen live by dialing 210-207-5555 and selecting option 1 for English or option 2 for Spanish.

In addition, residents are invited to submit their budget questions in advance by calling 311, emailing saspeakup@sanantonio.gov, using #SASpeakUp on social media, or by texting their question and “SASpeakUp22” to 55000. A complete schedule for the SASpeakUp on the FY2022 Budget town hall meetings is shown below. All events will be available in English, Spanish and American Sign Language.

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This press release was produced by the City of San Antonio. The views expressed here are the author’s own.