Concluding her first 100 days in office and approving the Fiscal Year 2026 budget for San Antonio, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones comments on next steps. A city survey was sent out to record what residents want the city budget to invest in before the city council decided where to allocate the funds. Affordable housing was the top choice, with 38.8% of residents choosing it as a top priority.
Jones highlighted investments in infrastructure and job opportunities as important goals to achieve to support community needs. Explaining how costs are rising, Jones details that the city council is trying to mitigate the affordability issue.
“The council is committed to making sure we’re doing everything we can to help address housing affordability challenges in our community. I think we all recognize we wanted to go much further. And we’re not only thinking about the budget, but also the great interest in another affordable housing bond,” Jones said.
The next fiscal year bond is expected to be much smaller than the previous year’s. Jones explains that it looks like it will come out to be around half a million.
“$500 million doesn’t go as far as it used to just even a year ago, right? So I think it’s going to be important moving forward that we’re balancing our interest in expanding affordable housing in our community, while also making sure that we’re investing in things like infrastructure and downtown revitalization efforts,” Jones explains.
When commenting on what infrastructure projects are being funded by the FY 26 capital delivery department, Jones explains that there are still projects in need of completion that already exist.
“Recognizing that we need to go faster on some of the major projects, we still have some outstanding projects from previous bonds — 2017, 2022 — and so I think that we need to manage those a little bit differently,” Jones said.
Of the 182 projects funded by the 2017 bond, 89% of the projects are completed. Compared to the 188 projects from the 2022 bond, only 13% are completed, with 16.54% off schedule.
“Delayed projects, not only are they frustrating, whether they are delayed, it’s the small businesses that are impacted by those delays. Managing the delivery of those major projects, and communicating with all the stakeholders, is really important,” Jones explained.
Regarding the recent awareness of San Antonio being ranked as the third most impoverished metro area in the U.S., Jones explains her message to the city council members and their duties for serving the city.
“I laid out in the memo that I shared when I assigned people to their council committees, I said, ‘Everybody’s job, regardless of what your actual job is. Everybody’s job is to think of their work in terms of two goals, which is one, reducing poverty, and two, making our community as economically competitive as possible,’” Jones explained.
Jones emphasizes short-term opportunities and long-term opportunities to reduce poverty in San Antonio. How that starts is with investing in accessible education and an aggressive approach to bringing good jobs to San Antonio, as Jones explained during an interview with The Paisano.
“I will certainly do my part to highlight San Antonio and try to recruit businesses to come here, especially those that are going to be good paying jobs. This is a concern of mine as we go into 2027,” Jones said.
At Jones’ previous town hall meeting on Sept. 4, she brought up the Taiwanese Electrical Manufacturing Association to generate more jobs for the San Antonio area. Jones reiterates her recruitment efforts when explaining job opportunities brought to the city.
“So just a couple of weeks ago, I recruited a Taiwanese delegation to come to San Antonio: The Taiwanese Electrical and Manufacturing Association. They were focused on identifying partners, specifically on electrical vehicles and UAVs. So I was able to recruit them to come here,” Jones stated.
No other partnerships regarding job opportunities have been mentioned by Jones so far. Jones’ next town hall meeting with Councilman Marc Whyte will be Oct. 9 at 6 p.m. at the Northside Service Center.
