 My name is Gloria Hurtado and I'm one of the assistant city managers and We have a number of city staff here Tonight to help us with the process. You'll have a staff member at each of the tables So how about if I just get city staff to Stand up so everyone can see who is here and I know we have a number of people in the back Thank you. So I'm just going to kick off the process We do have a video an informational video for everyone to see and Then we'll get to the work on the tables Councilman Saldana is on his way but he asked us to go ahead and get this process started so what we're doing here tonight is Getting input from from you on our budget for the budget year that starts October 1st So right now we're in what we call fiscal year 2014 and October 1st It's a new budget year for the city last week our Budget and finance departments gave the city council an overview of our five-year forecast our five-year outlook for our budget It's projected that for this next year. We're going to have a Financial challenge or a deficit. We're going to be short Somewhere between 27 to 34 million dollars and that's if we just keep doing everything that we're doing today We would have that deficit and of course we have to balance our budget. So that's part of this process We cannot go into the red. So we have to balance it Some of the major challenges for the city and contributing to this deficit is the cost of employee health care And health care can cost continue to go up It's also very important for the city to maintain our triple-a bond rating We're the only major city in the country that has a triple-a bond rating and from all three rating agencies And what that means is it actually saves us money when we finance our bond project So it's very important to the city and to our general fund balance. We also Have to maintain a strong balance on our general fund So all of these are some of the challenges that we face The other is that we have a lot of unmet needs in the city That we I'm sure we'll hear from you, but things like street maintenance our parks and maintenance in our parks code Enforcement our libraries all of those are we have some challenges in terms of unmet needs The total city budget is about two point three billion Dollars, but what we're going to talk about here tonight is the general fund and that is 988 million dollars, so that's mainly our operations for the city when we look and that's represented here and so when we look at that general fund budget of 988 million the public safety police and fire make up about 67% of what the city spans out of its general fund and then all of the other departments which includes parks and rec libraries human services All the departments listed here planning economic development all of those departments are funded and all those services are Funded out of the other third of the general fund budget Over the past 15 years the city's total public safety cost that 67% of the budget has grown faster than the city the city's revenues So the money that we come that we get coming in is growing at a slower rate than our actual cost in the public safety area Public safety is a priority city service. We certainly appreciate all the dedication and service of our public service employees But the cost of providing health care benefits to police and fire employees has increased by a hundred and forty percent Over the past ten years and has continued to grow Currently the city is in collective bargaining with the police labor union and one of the topics is employee health care The city is proposing that health insurance that excuse me that uniform employees pay health care premiums Like the city civilian employees do Today police and fire personnel do not pay for health care premiums In order to deliver a balanced budget as we are required to we need to evaluate and prioritize the city's programs and services So we're here today to ask you to help us with that prioritization This evening's agenda, of course, we're going to have a video then we will do table Exercises and we'll walk through that following the video So I'm going to ask the staff to go ahead and run the video The many services provided by the city of San Antonio are prioritized and funded through the adopted annual budget This video will provide you with an overview of the many services provided by the city and Explain how the city pays for these services with an annual budget of two point three billion dollars and 11,300 employees the city of San Antonio strives to provide you with high quality services every day So how does the city's budget work? The city's total budget is divided into separate funds including the general fund Restricted funds and The capital budget the largest of these funds is the city's general fund which receives funding from four major sources of revenue property taxes sales taxes CPS energy revenues and other revenues Property taxes represent the city's portion of the taxes you pay on your home and business However, the city's portion of your total property tax bill is only about 25% Sales taxes are collected on purchases made throughout the city and are dependent on the local economy CPS energy provides a portion of its gross profits to the city as a return on investment and these Revenues vary based on the south, Texas weather Finally other revenues represent funding collected from user fees licenses and permits together these revenues support the majority of city services two-thirds of the total general fund budget is Allocated to the police and fire departments with more than 4,000 uniform personnel the police and fire departments enforce the law Protect San Antonio residents their families and their homes the remaining one-third of the general fund resources support critical city services such as streets parks libraries code enforcement health and human services and animal care The city of San Antonio is facing a financial challenge of 27 to 34 million dollars in fiscal year 2015 in the general fund Expenditures in the general fund are growing at a faster pace than general fund revenues the financial challenges that the city faces in 2015 Include the increased cost of providing health care benefits to uniform police and fire employees Maintaining a triple-a bond rating Maintaining a balance between public safety and other services paid by the general fund and the many needs across the city including street maintenance new sidewalks library services human services and the maintenance of city facilities in order to maintain a balanced budget in fiscal year 2015 as required by law the city will have to prioritize services and redirect resources in the general fund more than 66 percent of the general fund is Allocated to the police and fire budgets if the community desires to maintain or increase the funds allocated to police and fire other city services such as streets Parks libraries animal care code enforcement and health and human services would have to be reduced The city maintains more than 4,000 miles of streets more than 400 miles of drainage infrastructure and more than 1,300 traffic signals the maintenance and preservation of the city's streets and sidewalks is the Responsibility of the city's transportation and capital improvements department each day city employees work to preserve and maintain streets across San Antonio by filling in potholes as well as maintaining city drainage channels adding bike lanes and building new sidewalks The parks and recreation department maintains 244 parks 14,816 acres of parkland 145 miles of trails 24 outdoor pools and 29 community centers throughout the city San Antonio's 26 libraries provide residents of all ages access to books computers and Educational programs through the libraries you can receive live homework assistance and download ebooks audiobooks music and videos for free The animal care services department is committed to improving outcomes for San Antonio's pet population through increased education Adoptions and enforcement for the current fiscal year Resources were added to increase spay-neuter surgeries enhance licensing awareness and reduce the number of loose and stray animals as a result of these Additional resources and many other efforts by the animal care services department The city has been able to increase its live pet release rate from 30 percent in 2011 to 80 percent today The city provides code enforcement officers who work throughout San Antonio to maintain the safety and integrity of our neighborhoods These officers enforce the city's property maintenance code address concerns caused by unoccupied and Elapidated structures and help prevent and abate graffiti other important city services are funded by restricted funds that are not supported by property tax revenue the rates and fees that support Services paid by restricted funds cannot be used to pay for services in the general fund such as police fire streets or code enforcement services paid by restricted funds include garbage collection review of new commercial and residential development permits operations of the International Airport and the city's parking operations Ensuring that the fiscal year 2015 budget is financially balanced and reflects the priorities of the community is a collaborative effort between residents city leaders and city staff the city wants to know which services matter most to you Let us know your priorities by attending one of five community budget input hearings Scheduled from May 19th to May 22nd You can also provide your input through the city's budget input box located inside libraries senior centers and online at www.sanantonio.gov Slash budget with your assistance the city of San Antonio can continue to deliver high-quality Services to all residents in our great community. I don't know if the the mic is working Good evening to all of you. I want to thank you all for sharing some time with us. How are you Michael? I see a lot of familiar faces. I see some new faces here First off, I got to say about the video. I've never heard anybody more enthusiastically or positively positively talk about a budget deficit than the voiceover on that video We have a lot to get to talk about today and the format that we work with in the past was that we it's sometimes more productive to have some small engaged conversations and then draw out from there what priorities are and I know that we have a lot of groups here who have Certain priorities that they have they feel are in in their interest and their minds some of the top The best thing is that those to get distilled and communicated out to us here There's no point in me standing up here and talking as much as you know The point of today's meeting is that we hear as much of as we can from you all So I just wanted to come and make sure that you all know that we're here We're interested. I will be sitting at one of the tables. We get to do this around every single year So look forward to it again. I thank you guys for for being here with us today in our district So for those of you who are in district for residents, I hope you'll welcome those from outside the district to our beautiful southwest side So let me pass it back to Gloria who's going to Introduce herself. Oh I'm sorry. I have to introduce myself My name is race. I'll dining. I'm on the city council. I have been since 2011. I grew up about five minutes away from here I'm about five seven one seventy five So there's my introduction Thank You councilman Okay, so time to do the work This is going to be a three-step process and as I said, we do have a city staffer Who's here to be a facilitator note taker a helper at each table? so the first thing we want you to do is identify five program areas or services that you would consider either reducing or eliminating from the city's budget and Then the second is tell us if you are willing to increase revenues or fees Things like property taxes or park fees That could be used to support the services that you do want and then the third thing We want you to do is give us three Service priority area so three things that you want to keep or increase or add to the city budget So one is five areas to decrease Second is where the revenues might come from and then the third is what would be your highest priorities to add or Include in the city budget and we're going to spend about 30 minutes on this exercise then we'll have each table report out and I will tell you that we do collect all of this information at each of the budget hearings And it is used by the city manager as she develops her draft budget Which will go to city council on August 7th, so I will leave you alone for 30 30 minutes and we'll have staff walking around in case there's any questions or issues. Yes, sir I'm not too familiar Getting involved with that but in fact, I think it's I really don't know much about So on your on the third step being here Is that gonna come out so many people came here and they all heard I mean, I've heard fire police like 10 times Excuse me, I'm sorry you have an opportunity to add so if you want to see increases to police and fire Then you have that opportunity to add it Maggie nice to meet you I'm ready so that you So this is a budget hearing and we have every year we go through a budget process in which about September We vote on the finalized budget for all the numbers. It's about 2.3 billion dollars But we'd like to hear from residents as to what they want to see more of A lot of opinions a lot of passions about certain things, but it's important Today we're seeing is a budget meeting that's happening here on the surface But they're also happening in every corner This is my third time It's always a different type of process Today we're doing a different type of process Prioritize your top five Perhaps So I think if only information what happens is we move it we move collect that Shared That's more Yeah, this is a process that goes on it couldn't go on for six or five days every year Conversations in people's neighborhoods, but you can always come to our offices And Okay, Dale is your table ready So we did the Balancer budget balancer sheet on service areas where we wanted to meet the gap of 27 million so we got to 26 million by reducing planning department economic development center city development downtown operations It's for uniform benefits To uniform benefits and the city manager's office the reason all of these planning economic center city are because Many of those use the restricted funds But we believe they take from the general fund so they don't put anything in the general fund, but they use but but Because all their funds are in restricted, but yet they use they eat up the general fund Well, that was kind of where we had Discussion in our table your table might have a different discussion And we weren't we weren't 100% on anything we were we just put up whatever we Talked about and the property tax there was a one cent One percent increase One cent one penny one cent. It was one cent one. No, it was one cent It was one cent that would come up to eight million, but then also focusing on business which was Commercial properties to also increase there That's it great. Thank you Okay, we're gonna have this table up front Okay, some of the things we were looking at making cuts first of all was that there's you know If you're not aware, there's a 80 million dollar reserve fund or rainy day fund, whichever you want to call it We're not looking at reducing that but just reducing the 10 million It's been allocated to go for towards that this next budget cycle which could be used for obviously a lot of other services Some of the revenue increases we had a little bit different number But we still believed on the one cent to on our individual property taxes Because a lot of us who are still in workforce We felt we could absorb that a lot of you 65 and older it wouldn't affect and took that into consideration, but They had eight million. I heard it was seven million either way one million one other way or not But a lot of us it was a hundred percent We're willing to do that and put a little skin into the game also holding these businesses Accountable to start paying their fair share There's certain businesses out there affiliate the city. They don't a substantial amount of property They're paying zero property taxes, and I don't think that's correct Just a look at the library the consideration We don't know what the dollar amount would be but looking at the possibility of a small fee structure And maybe looking at the utilization of the libraries to see where they're maybe not used so much In one area town, but then maybe they're utilized a lot more, you know Like I said, that's gonna take some work to look at that Maybe do that a little bit more efficient, but at the same time there might be some reductions or increases We could do parks fees. We just put it out there. We agreed at it with the whole table We don't know what those are exactly, but it was just some ideas And what we had talked about also of what not want to touch the table is a hundred percent consensus with police and fire Keeping its status quo Some of the areas that we would like to see some increases We don't know what the dollar amount for sure would be we'd like to see an increase in animal care and also human services Finishes our report. Thank you. Thank you Okay, it's table for this table for you ready Hello, my name is in here Rodriguez and I would like to congratulate this gentleman next to me that he survived our table Poor man. He needs a raise. He should be up there somewhere One of the things that came up was animal care streets human services Excuse oh at priorities How much we don't know because we don't really don't have a Clear picture of what's really going on. We don't know What the assets are the liabilities of each category? So it'd be nice to know you at least have a better picture of what each category really cost So we're just throwing out numbers in the air but anyhow, there was Not much consensus on this one. So therefore your honor. We have a hung jury. No, let's see the alignment There was it was chaos no consensus because like I said, we don't we really don't we're just Throwing numbers out there in general and this is a budget a city budget a serious thing that can affect a lot of people So we're very concerned about saying oh we want this or we want that okay The property tax thing the first thing that popped up is people and fixed incomes How will they work with it? One thing that's not here is which we should have is a San Antonio Chamber of Commerce anytime There's an abatement. Why not ask them when they ask an abatement? That those that are already in the chamber Give up some of their abatement to bring in new businesses that they want to attract But that's a different story. That's my opinion not tables So that's what came up less than a cent. What was it miss the lady told me how much it was this in the center, right? Yeah, so that's for what? four million yeah penny listen a penny for taxes the Some of the services that are mentioned people aren't even familiar with in our table because this is a different side of town so There's a disparity of information Regarding different if you go to certain places, you'll see certain needs and if you go to another section You'll see other needs. So we're a big city. We all have different neighborhoods. We all have different needs So it's quite a task to bring all of them together to a consensus. Thank you Thank you Okay, um table five chief Hi, we're from table five and It will switch positions here. There you go on the areas of coding back We would like to see the city managers office To include the city manager her salary Reduced by two hundred million and eliminate her bonuses. I'm sorry 200,000 and that includes her staff as well which includes the city attorney and We also on the delicate agencies haven't for a hope We'd like to see their budget cut in half so that they can become self-reliant Just like we do we tighten up our belts and we move on Police what we what we discussed is We'd like to have them review their salaries and benefits by no means did anybody Overrun the other and say we have to cut their their their benefit package I don't think anybody here is brave enough to go put on a gun or run into a burning building Or having to bring somebody else back to life with EMS So I think by reviewing their salaries and benefits and their procedures on what they do like Maybe sometimes they leave their car on when it shouldn't be on the gas consumption of those vehicles if we were to include some kind of program to Eliminate someone that waste we would be saving some money and we wouldn't have to cut their benefits or even consider cutting their benefits at all services It's about aligning their benefits and their salaries more to what tack what the what the state employees and the teachers Would pretty pretty much get in other words They'd have to pay their share on their stuff to everybody else does But that's just a review review process also animal care services. We'd like to see them reduce their budget their entire budget Which is 11? Million we'd like to receive see it reduced by three million Everybody else is taking a cut. So let's make them take a cut as well and I mean they're doing a good job, but not good enough and So let's talk about the Center for city development. We talk about the hemisphere. We've talked about those one-time projects We want to be able to see able to cut that by point six million and I think that would be a comfortable amount on the revenue type we'd like to see The EMS transport fees increased by 33 percent That's feasible Now commercial property The tax on the commercial property we want to see an increase of 25 percent no increase in the Residential property property tax We can't afford it And we also want to increase the entertainment tax Let the visitors who come here Pay their way and to help us out as we do when we go to theirs Thank you Thank you. Okay Think we have one last table back here. I don't know what the table number is Okay, we kind of we had a lot of really good discussion at our table a lot of passionate people And we kind of skip to step two through our discussion. This is just kind of what it led to so sorry But in our discussion we talked about things that we felt would be Either okay or comfortable. We didn't come to a consensus, but this was as close as possible so Areas that we could reduce would be after-school programs human services delegate agencies historic preservation center city development and planning development and there was a little bit of discussion about the amounts That's kind of the part that was hard to come to a consensus, but we did reach a balance of Make taking out 27 million When we went to the site that we thought deserved to have an increase in money We talked about what were things that were important to the city. So of course police and fire That was important We did want to see an increase of 10 million for them library services a lot of the things that the library provides for us Help not only school districts, but citizens who don't have the type of opportunities and the things that Others have so a 2 million increase animal care, especially with education of Spaying and neutering that is something that needs to be looked at so we allocated 5 million code enforcement A million and then streets 5 million Thank you. Thank you Okay, I I think that's all of our tables Now the what will happen all this information will be collected from the five budget hearings council will have a All-day budget strategic planning session next week and then the draft budget will be presented on August 5th And then there will be five more budget hearings so that You will have an opportunity to comment on what the draft budget is And then it's scheduled for a city council to adopt on September 11 So we want to thank you for taking time tonight and coming out and please have a safe trip home. Thanks