Should San Antonio City Council start from zero on spending?

District 10 council member, Marc Whyte speaks before the San Antonio City Council votes to approve the first overhaul of its short term rental ordinance.,

Jessica Phelps

District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte wants city departments to justify every cent they're seeking in San Antonio's annual budget. 

Called zero-based budgeting, the bottom-up approach would require City Council and city staffers to scrutinize every line item in the city's budget, instead of just evaluating new spending plans.

“Zero-based budgeting is not about cutting spending,” the Northeast Side councilman said. “It's about finding outdated programs, programs that aren't working, the inefficiencies, the duplication and then taking that money and reallocating it to the citizens' priorities.”

In social media posts, Whyte has promoted zero-based budgeting as a way to pump more money into the police and fire departments, which already make up the largest share of the general fund. He also wants to add funds for infrastructure projects and the clearing of homeless encampments, the latter of which is criticized by advocates as ineffective.

The first-term councilman is proposing rolling out zero-based budgeting in 2027 and repeating it every five years — only for the general fund, which pays for basic services such as police and fire and police protection, parks, streets and libraries. 

This year's $1.6 billion general fund makes up 43% of the city's overall $3.7 billion budget.

Zero-based budgeting has plenty of critics. They say it's hugely time-consuming, is much more expensive than routine, or "incremental," budgeting, and rarely delivers the efficiencies its adopters expect.

Branco Ponomariov, an associate professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said that budgeting approach can be an “extremely resource- and time-consuming process” that puts “tremendous” pressure on staff.

“The idea for zero-based budgeting is really appealing on its face and it's quite useful as a management approach, but if it's taken literally, it's almost preposterous in practice,” Ponomariov said. “If you dig deep enough, you will find money somewhere. But how much really? And at what cost?”

Whyte has the support of at least four of his council colleagues, but Mayor Ron Nirenberg isn't one of them. 

“Having our police department or our parks department, whatever department, go all the way down to zero and have to justify every penny that comes out of that department is, in my opinion, a waste of taxpayer expense and time of staff,” he said. 

Local governments rarely decide they want to drop existing programs from one year to the next — or even every five years. Also, much of what a city spends on is mandated by state and federal law, Ponomariov said.

San Antonio city staff starts budget talks in the spring and spends the entire month of July preparing a proposed budget to present to City Council in August. Council then adopts the new budget in mid-September. Zero-based budgeting would blow up that timeline.

But council members Melissa Cabello Havrda, Marina Alderete Gavito, Manny Peláez and John Courage say zero-based budgeting could result in more transparency — that is, much more information on how the city wants to spend taxpayers' money — and smarter spending. 

Courage and Peláez have announced mayoral campaigns for 2025. Cabello Havrda is widely expected to announce her candidacy, possibly after the presidential election in November.

Several of its council supporters say city staff’s early projection of a $10.6 million budget shortfall over the next two years, with few federal pandemic relief dollars to fall back on, may require a new approach to the annual budget.

“If we're not back to basics and tightening our belt and developing a dependable way of creating our budget, starting at zero and looking at every program and every department, then we are going to continue to face a financial challenge — it's going to become a burden on people in our community,” Courage said. 

Councilwoman Teri Castillo is one of the council members who aren't convinced. 

Castillo, who joked at an April meeting about the “bad" idea of zero-based budgeting, worries that it would result in trimming funding for some programs, hurting city workers along the way.  

“When we're talking about potentially making cuts, those are potential city employees that may have to do without work if we cut their programming and work projects,” she said.

Clashing interests 

Whyte has also managed to gather support from a couple of prominent progressives — who rarely see eye-to-eye with the council's lone conservative. 

To Ananda Tomas, executive director for local police reform group ACT4SA, zero-based budgeting could be a way to slow the expansion of SAPD's budget and give smaller departments a fighting chance for more funding.

This year, the city started rolling out a plan to add 360 officers to the police department over the next five years.

With zero-based budgeting, Tomas said smaller departments would have a chance to prove how much additional funds could beef up their programs and service, and force police to do more to defend what they ask for. 

“It’s going to be on a more even playing field,” Tomas said. 

“We have to start changing the narrative and start thinking bigger and broader,” she added. “For every department to start at the zero base and be, like, ‘This is why we need the things. Here's the evidence’ — I think we'll start seeing a better allocation of money, not just away from police, but any other wasteful spending.”

Brielle Insler, managing partner at San Antonio political and marketing consulting firm Düable, says zero-based budgeting could lead to more money for area youth and an initiative to address homelessness, beyond clearing out encampments. 

Düable represents liberal candidates and organization, including Act4SA.

Insler, who was initially skeptical of Whyte’s proposal, thinks zero-based budgeting could be a way to increase transparency in city spending and boost community voices.

“Pushing this forward will bring us to a place where we have public input that won't just be thrown away,” she said.

Spotty track record

Governments that have adopted zero-based budgeting tend to drop it after a short period or only end up using elements of the process. 

Jimmy Carter used the budgeting strategy in Georgia when he was governor in the early 1970s and then implemented it at the federal level when he was elected president in 1976. Ronald Reagan ditched it when he replaced Carter in the White House in 1981. 

Though Georgia claims to continue to use zero-based budgeting, Ponomariov noted the state cherry picks only 10% of its programs to undergo the extra level of scrutiny. 

“Zero-based budgeting by design is meant to be comprehensive in part to be able to decide on priorities across programs,” Ponomariov said. “Obviously, you don’t really do that if you just single out specific programs.”

The city of Houston used zero-based budgeting for its general fund in 2021. But Houston leaders ultimately turned to performance budgeting instead, which essentially requires the city to consider how well each of its programs is performing to determine how funding it should receive, rather than building a budget from the ground up in each budget cycle. 

Whyte said he’s open to considering other methodologies, such as performance budgeting, if that's the direction his colleagues want to go, but for now he's focused on zero-based budgeting. 

The city's Office of Management and Budget is reviewing Whyte’s proposal and will brief the council’s Governance Committee by mid-August.

It's worth noting that Nirenberg chairs the 5-member committee, which decides whether council members' policy proposals advance or die, and he controls its agenda.