Where do Your Property Taxes Go? Military Affairs

A Recap of City of San Antonio revenues and spending. So $1,074.42 of your property taxes goes to the City of San Antonio.

The City of San Antonio receives revenues from several sources: Property taxes (25%), Charges and fees (20%), Revenues from Utilities (17%), Grants (usually federal) (15%), Sales Tax (14%), Hotel/Motel Tax (4%), Other Taxes (Short Term Rental Tax, Bingo Tax, etc) (2%), Fines (Library Fines, Traffic Tickets) (1%), Miscellaneous (1%), Intergovernment (0.6%), Permits/Licenses (0.4%)

The 2010 Budget for the City divides general fund expenditures in the following ways: Police (36%), Fire/EMS (26%), other services (Aviation, Community Initiatives, Historic Preservation, Solid Waste Management, Military Affairs, etc) (11%), Convention, Tourism and Culture (9%), Streets and Infrastructure (7%), Environmental (5%), Parks & Recreation (6%), Agencies (4%), Library (3%), Health (1%), Municipal Courts (1%), Neighborhood Services (1%), Economic Development (0.5%), Animal Care (0.5%). I will take you through each of these items in separate posts. If you feel that you have a better way to spend the money you can post your suggestions on the online Budget suggestion box for the 2011 budget.
(For links to all items in the CSA budget, see past posts.)

What do you know, almost done with the City of San Antonio.  There are other areas where money is spent but these are the largest budget items.

So, Military Affairs coordinates and facilitates the city's support for BRAC or the Base Realignment and Closure.  If you want to get a contract to work on the realignment, this is the place to go.  Military Affairs also helps military families relocate to San Antonio.

When military bases close, military assets are moved to other bases in the area to increase efficiency and reduce expenses.  In SA Fort Sam is the beneficiary of most of the assets and construction is taking place on the base to accomdate them.

Many of the former bases have been converted to civilian use for municipal airports (Bergstrom in Austin), housing developments, office parks and industrial parks.  Kelly AFB is now known as Port San Antonio.
As I talked about in an earlier post, the Port San Antonio airport will be used to handle industrial flights.  It also has a Railport for train traffic, existing buildings for office space, lots of land to build new office buildings, warehouses and even assembly buildings.

The entire former AFB (1900 acres) is designated as a Foreign Trade Zone which gives companies the ability to bring foreign parts into the base, destroy damaged peices, and assemble them and then pay the duty on the assembled parts once they leave the port.  Often the duties are lowered on an assembled product than its parts and no duty is paid on the damaged pieces.   

There is also a Commission on Veterans Affairs.

The Commission's mission is to serve the City Council in an advisory capacity on issues affecting the City's military population, both active and retired. It serves as the community's liaison and advocate for veterans' affairs; advises the City Council on issues affecting San Antonio veterans and their families; and makes recommendations for improving services.

The City of San Antonio has a long standing relationship with the military.  It is the largest employer in the city and the city works hard to keep them here.