District 8 Councilmember Manny Pelaez speaks about the Reproductive Justice Fund being only a small part of the overall budget at a city council meeting in the City Council Chambers on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023 in San Antonio.
San Antonio Express-News
Molly Smith, Staff Writer
A pair of tragedies this year — the fatal dog mauling of an elderly Air Force veteran in February and June’s police shooting of a woman suffering a schizophrenic episode — did more than anything else to shape next year’s city budget.
Both led city leaders to dramatically increase Animal Care Services' budget in a bid to crack down on irresponsible owners of dangerous dogs and to expand a team that responds to people in turmoil.
With the biggest funding increase by percentage of any city department in fiscal year 2024, ACS will hire eight more officers to answer calls about aggressive dogs and to ensure that owners of dogs that have been designated as dangerous are complying with city regulations. The San Antonio Police Department’s mental health crisis initiative — which pairs an officer with a paramedic and a mental health clinician — will eventually work around the clock.
“This is progress, and we’re going to save lives,” District 2 Councilman Jalen-McKee Rodriguez said, calling the new budget San Antonio’s most “progressive” one to date.
The $3.7 billion budget is the largest in San Antonio’s history. And it appeared headed toward unanimous approval until Mayor Ron Nirenberg and a majority of City Council members pushed to use a sliver of that money, $500,000, to fund reproductive health care efforts.
The details of the newly created Reproductive Justice Fund — including whether it will support San Antonians seeking out-of-state abortions — will be worked out at a later date. But the possibility that grants from the fund could pay the travel or hotel expenses of people seeking abortions prompted District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte, who opposes the procedure, to abstain from voting on the budget.
“There’s so much good in this budget, but I cannot vote for this budget with this in there,” he said.
Council adopted the 2024 spending plan by a vote of 10-0-1.
Whether the influx of dollars into ACS and SAPD will be sufficient to prevent future tragedies remains to be seen.
Even with the new ACS officers, the department will be able to respond to only an estimated 64 percent of critical calls involving aggressive animals and animal cruelty and neglect — up from 44 percent, a rate the mayor called “shocking” when he first learned of it.
“What’s needed is responsible pet ownership,” City Manager Erik Walsh said. “We can enforce, we can adopt, we can spay/neuter, but we’re going to need folks to be responsible pet owners.”
Hiring boost
Ramon Najera Jr., 81, was killed in February by pit bull mixes that escaped their West Side yard and mauled him and his wife as they tried to visit the home of a friend who lived next door to the dogs. The attack horrified San Antonians and resulted in criminal charges against the dog’s two owners.
It also resulted in ACS seeing a funding increase of 33 percent over the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The city was already looking to revamp the department before Najera’s death, Walsh said, but additional positions were added to beef up ACS’ enforcement capability after the widely publicized dog attack.
In addition to the eight new officers, the budget funds seven additional staffers to investigate dog bite cases and to ensure that owners of dogs that have been designated as dangerous are complying with city regulations.
“This increase is urgent, and the sooner we can get the positions filled the better,” District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda said.
The mayor and McKee-Rodriguez had wanted ACS to accelerate a three-year hiring plan aimed at getting the critical call response rate to 100 percent. ACS Director Shannon Sims, however, said doing so wouldn’t be feasible next year — too few trainers and not enough department vehicles.
Instead, 14 more officers — enough to respond to all calls — will be part of the fiscal year 2025 budget, thanks to city-owned CPS Energy’s electricity sales on the Texas wholesale power market in August, which generated a $20 million windfall for San Antonio. That meant more money for council to spend over the next two fiscal years. (The utility gives 14 percent of its gross revenue to the city annually.)
The new budget also increases funding for low-cost spay and neuter services to reduce the city’s dog population.
24/7 crisis response
Few, if any, council members uttered Melissa Perez’s name during budget discussions. But her June 23 shooting death at the hands of police prompted the mayor and seven council members to push to use the bulk of the surplus — $7.2 million over two years — so the San Antonio Community Outreach and Resiliency Effort will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week come next summer. That’s one of SAPD’s teams that responds to calls involving people in mental distress.
“Mental health trauma doesn’t just happen from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.,” District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur said, referring to SA CORE’s current hours. “It happens at any point, and we as a city need to be able to respond to that.”
Perez was killed during the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. window. Though that’s outside the team’s current service hours, the team likely would not have been called to Perez’s South Side apartment because it handles crisis calls only where the person in turmoil isn’t behaving violently.
“That tragedy was not related to the coverage of CORE,” Nirenberg said. “But what it did show us is further evidence of a mental health crisis that’s happening not just in San Antonio, but across the country. The success of CORE has already provided us reason to invest more dollars into it.”
By January, the city will have three teams covering the entire city, up from one team that handles only downtown-area calls.
The city estimates these teams will respond to at least 1,500 calls in the next fiscal year.
The budget also funds 100 new patrol officers and five police academy instructors. That’s part of a five-year hiring plan that aims to have police spend more time on “proactive,” or crime prevention, work.
A more recent crisis — officers being shot at by suspects they were pursuing — prompted council to spend $1.75 million of the CPS surplus to outfit SAPD vehicles with bullet-resistant windows.