Nearly 1,200 San Antonians were contacted for the survey conducted by an outside firm. The city collected thousands more respondents in its own public input effort.
SAN ANTONIO — As San Antonio City Council begins to shape next year’s budget, residents say they hope their local elected leaders will prioritize services for the homeless community as talks continue in the coming weeks.
An independent survey found that those resources, along with cleaning up homeless camps, streets, affordable housing and Animal Care Services were among the priorities for 1,199 Alamo City residents. The survey combined what was most important and what were respondents’ greatest unmet needs to come up with a “priority investment rating.”
The “statistically valid” survey was conducted by the ETC Institute, a national research firm, which worked to gather a collection of responses representative of San Antonio as a whole. At least 100 responses from each council district were gathered.
The five priorities it landed on closely align with the city’s own survey, which was open for anyone to take from May 12 to June 6. More than 9,000 San Antonians took advantage of the opportunity, citing affordable housing, police, fire and EMS services, resources for the homeless, and ACS as their top five collective priorities, respectively.
Garbage/recycling, pedestrian safety and responding to nuisance properties were the least-cited by those who took San Antonio’s own survey.
The ETC findings – shared with Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and the rest of City Council at the city’s first budget planning workshop Friday – more or less align with 2024’s survey. Respondents in both years cited streets, homeless camp cleanup, and resources for the homeless as priorities.
Police came in as the sixth-strongest priority in ETC’s survey this year. As is the case most years, that’s expected to take the biggest slide of the budget pie; in the $3.96 billion budget for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, a $1.03 billion line item to fund police, fire and other public safety services amounted to the biggest anticipated expenditure.
Districts 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 all had a top priority rating for services to assist their homeless neighbors. Districts 1, 2, 3 and 5 cited homeless camp cleanup efforts as theirs, while District 10 on the far north side decided on streets.
The next fiscal year begins Oct. 1. Leaders are expected to approve a final budget in late September, after city staff provide them with a proposal.
This is a developing story.