SAN ANTONIO HAS A NEIGHBORHOOD PROBLEM. PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING PROVIDES A SOLUTION.

In a city like San Antonio, where sprawl is the game and fixing infrastructure feels like whack-a-mole, community associations play a critical role in flagging issues and alerting the people with the power to address them.

In church halls and school gymnasiums across the city, these groups weigh in on everything from public safety and zoning to potholes and park upgrades. On a hyper-local level, they help create a sense of community — organizing backyard barbecues or late-night happy hours at the neighborhood bar.

There are two main types of community associations:

• Voluntary neighborhood associations clustered mostly around the urban core and older areas inside Loop 410

• Homeowners associations (HOAs) that collect dues, enforce private rules, and sometimes maintain their own streets, pools, and parks. Their dependency on local government is less.

These institutions of civic life have been a key part of City Council and city staff’s approach to community engagement, offering a ready forum of constituents willing to weigh in on projects and policies. In many ways, the city depends on them, and they depend on the city.

But not all neighborhoods are the same. While some have no problem packing a meeting hall, others can’t meet quorum. And even the packed rooms, the people who show up often represent just a sliver of the community; usually affluent, older homeowners.

That disconnect poses a real problem. It raises questions about who’s actually being heard and whose needs are shaping city policy.

Meanwhile, shifting housing dynamics and making it more difficult to organize communities and increase membership. Families moving into multi-family housing, or choosing to rent instead of own, are less likely to plug into civic life in the same way. Without that long-term stake, engagement drops. And when participation fades, boards struggle to fill seats — leaving association to eventually stall or dissolve altogether.

In that vacuum, small factions often step in as gatekeepers. They weed out dissent and maintain outsized influence over zoning and development decisions, even without support from the broader community.

What’s happening in neighborhood associations is just one piece of a bigger issue.

After the 2025 City of San Antonio General Election, where only 8% of registered voters turned out, it’s clear we need to rethink how the city approaches civic engagement.

Instead of focusing only on voter registration strategies or how the overwhelming number of candidates on the ballot confused voters, we need to acknowledge the elephant in the room: declining trust.

We’ve seen that frustration show up in conversations around Project Marvel and the fact that voters sent a clear signal of discontent with the status quo in this general election. Three outsider candidates led the mayor’s race, and at least two handpicked successors of termed-out council members performed either below or just on par with their challengers in those districts.

I spent the last three months managing a campaign in the crowded District 1 race — now headed to a runoff — where I spoke with over a thousand people at events, polls, and doorsteps. Before that, I worked with neighbors in Tobin Hill and Five Points and partnered with businesses to create a plan to revitalize a section of San Pedro Avenue.

In my conversations, a clear theme has emerged: many San Antonians don’t see the point of getting involved or voting. “It’s useless.” “Nothing changes.” In Five Points, an easy to miss neighborhood nestled between I-35 and I-10, the neighborhood association has struggled to build up membership due to apathy and years of neglect. Honestly, I get it. While I’ve met city and council staff who care deeply and work hard, that effort doesn’t always translate into a system that builds trust broadly.

When community engagement looks like the same ten people in a room, and feedback feels more performative than meaningful, it’s hard to take the process seriously.

We’re not just dealing with apathy — we’re dealing with disconnection.People don’t see themselves reflected in the process. They’re not being reached in ways that feel relevant. And they’ve learned, rightly or wrongly, that most decisions get made whether they show up or not.

So why vote? Why volunteer?

Right now, trust in local government seems weak. We need a solution that brings people in and gives them a reason to care about the communities they live in. I believe we can do so by incentivizing hyper-local civic action.

I believe one answer lies in hyper-local Participatory Budgeting.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a process where residents directly decide how to spend a portion of public money. People submit ideas, those ideas get vetted into workable proposals, and then the community votes on which ones to fund. The results are public, and the winning projects actually get built.

Often, the implementation works at the district level. But that structure still leaves room for apathy and distrust. It risks being seen as an extension of the councilmember’s platform, rather than a neutral, community-led process. That process can also be uneven, especially when certain neighborhoods have more capacity to engage than others, leading to outcomes that don’t always reflect the broader community’s needs. That’s why we should explore PB at the hyper-local level.

The benefit is clear. This approach gives neighborhoods, or possibly a cluster of similar, nearby neighborhoods, a direct say in how public money would get spent; offering San Antonio something we’ve been missing: a real stake in the local process. It’s not just engagement for the sake of engagement. When people can point to a sidewalk, a park upgrade, or a traffic calming project and say “I voted for that,” it shifts how they see their role in local government. It builds trust because it considers the needs of individual neighborhoods first.

Community associations have the potential to be useful partners in the implementation, but to actually work here, we need to revitalize the foundation.

Neighborhood groups need the tools to reach more people and grow their membership. Their opinions matter, but we can’t keep leaving big decisions to the same ten people who show up everytime. If we want “participatory budgeting” to work on a hyper-local level, it needs to be inclusive.

That means real reforms: giving community associations basic support in digital outreach, education, communications, and organizing strategies that give neighbors an opportunity to be informed about upcoming meetings, events, and public forums. 

It might also mean raising the bar for neighborhoods: term limits for board members, access to leadership training, required outreach plans, and materials available in multiple languages. Give people a process that works and they’ll show up.