City Council members got their first public look at the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year and appeared ready to tweak the

$2.5 billion spending plan to address living wages for municipal employees.

City Manager Sheryl Sculley on Thursday presented the council with her budget, which she said meets the priorities set by the council and community: spending on street maintenance and sidewalks, additional cops, workforce development, a “Smart Cities” initiative and Animal Care Services, among other things. It has increased general fund spending and a flat tax rate while keeping spending on public safety to under 66 percent of the general fund.

The council will conduct five budget work sessions, and the city will hold five community open houses in August and September, along with public hearings Aug. 31 and Sept. 7, before a vote to adopt the budget Sept. 15. The fiscal year for 2017 begins Oct. 1.

The budget blueprint unveiled by Sculley adds 32 new police officers along with nine new parks police; 42 new civilian call takers in the 911 Call Center; $64 million for street maintenance and $15 million for new sidewalks; $1 million for additional street lighting; and

$1 million each for pedestrian safety around schools and Vision Zero, a plan to end fatalities on public streets.

Read the full budget proposal:

What wasn’t in the proposal caught the attention of some council members, including Ray Lopez, who attended his eighth and final annual budget presentation.

“What isn’t on here, and I’d like to ask you, Sheryl, to accept it as a recommendation, is the whole discussion around compensation for employees,” he said.

Last year, the council approved a policy that increased the wages of the city’s lowest-paid employees to $13 an hour beginning this calendar year. The COPS/Metro Alliance group has advocated for annual increases to the city’s minimum wage — calling for $14 an hour this year and $15 next year.

Lopez noted that $13 an hour goes a lot further in San Antonio than in other major metro areas such as New York and San Francisco, but the idea of increasing wages, he said, goes directly at being “an employer of choice” that helps bolster families.

“A path to $15 with a reasonable step this year to $14 and next year to $15, I think goes a long way to ensuring that we achieve the kind of position we want to be as an employer of choice that is family-oriented, that gives opportunities for our employees being able to invest the time they have — not in second and third jobs to be able to meet their financial demands or medical bills — but to actually get an opportunity to invest it in strengthening their family unit.”

Sculley said she and her staff are prepared to brief council members on the effect of increasing the city’s minimum wage when they discuss employee compensation at a meeting in the coming weeks. She told the council that there would be significant effect to the budget by increasing those wages. Under the current proposal, she said, employees would be guaranteed to make $15 an hour once they’ve reached a senior position within their job category.

The city will also make a considerable shift in how it handles leave for new parents. Civilian employees have used short-term disability for maternity leave, which pays a percentage of their wages. Under the new plan, they’ll have six weeks of paid leave at 100 percent of their salary and up to an additional eight weeks under short-term disability. The parental leave is for both the birthing and non-birthing parent, and includes adoptions.

The city will also give employees 24 hours of paid leave for attending their children’s school-related functions, such as parent-teacher conferences, scheduled wellness visits to the doctor, and registration and enrollment-related activities for college or trade-school classes, according to budget documents.

Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran choked back tears as she applauded the plans for paid leave.

“It’s important that we lead by example and set a standard. The paid leave and the parental leave are so important as we move forward,” she said. “I think this is one of the most transformative budgets that we’ve had fundamentally here.”

Sculley also proposes adding $900,000 in new funds to Animal Care Services, bringing the proposed department budget to $13.9 million. The funding would add dedicated animal control officers to council Districts 3 and 4, along with three new positions for public education. It would also cover an additional 5,000 spay/neuter surgeries, bringing the city’s total to some 36,500 over the next fiscal year.

Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales, whose District 5 on the West Side received a dedicated animal care officer in the 2015-16 budget, balked at the continually growing ACS budget.

“While animal care has been a great concern of mine, and I continue to see loose animals in my neighborhood ... I continue to recognize it’s a priority, but I’m concerned we’re going a little too heavy on our funding for animal care,” she said.

Sculley, who later said in an interview that she was surprised by Gonzales’ comment about reducing funding, explained to the council that it had prioritized ACS. Addressing the city’s stray population and attaining a “no-kill” status has been a long-sought goal of San Antonio.

Sculley reminded Gonzales that her district got an ACS officer in the last budget and that now two other districts would, too.

The councilwoman said she looked forward to a deeper dive into how the city plans to spend its money over the next 12 months.

The ACS budget, she said, was “more than we spend on homelessness, more than we spend on family well-being, more than we spend on after-school services.”

jbaugh@express-news.net

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