The San Antonio Botanical Garden welcomes 400,000 visitors annually. Credit: Courtesy of San Antonio Botanical Gardens

Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones is looking for fat to trim as the city deals with a $158 million budget deficit — and she’s starting with the award-winning San Antonio Botanical Garden.

During a presentation last week on the city’s trial budget, Jones expressed alarm that San Antonio spends so much money subsidizing revenue-generating nonprofits. At that time, she specifically mentioned San Antonio Botanical Garden as a nonprofit that’s no longer in need of any public subsidies.

As part of the trial budget, or proposed financial plan, city staff recommends cutting $200,000 from the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s $1.2 million subsidy. However, Jones said she wants to see the subsidy drop to zero.

“They charge a ticket fee. They have an event called Bubbles & Blooms,” Jones said. “They’ll be okay.”

Jones continued: “If you charge a ticket fee, then you can figure it out. … If we’re talking about cutting nutrition centers, then we’re not going to fund the Botanical Garden.”

Jones doubled down on her plan to prune garden subsidies during a Monday appearance on Texas Public Radio’s The Source with David Martin Davies.

“I would argue this is a really important moment for us to also be looking at corporate and philanthropy and foundations and understanding how they might be able to help cover some of these gaps,” Jones said during the appearance. “I think it’s also fair, though, for some of these private entities in the community that are sitting on millions of dollars of assets, that they might not to also relook at their own budgets, because we are in tough times as a city.”

Officials with San Antonio Botanical Garden, which welcomes 400,000 visitors annually, didn’t immediately respond to the Current’s request for comment on Jones’ plan or what it could mean for the organization’s finances.

Jones also proposed defunding the San Antonio Book Festival and certain Fiesta activities to help the city overcome its budget problems.

“I know you’re going to have to talk to your Central [Catholic High School] buddies and some of the other folks about what that means for them,” Jones told City Manager Erik Walsh of the idea of cutting Fiesta funding. “But, again, if you charge a ticket fee, then we should not be subsidizing your things, and you can figure out how to right-cost that.”

Council members will next head to their districts for town halls to receive constituent feedback on pending budget cuts, which also could include jettisoning hundreds of City Hall jobs. Council will then reconvene in September to vote on a final budget.

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...