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San Antonio reports tabletop exercise on federal-grant risks; staff recommends cross-sector working group
Summary
City staff summarized a December federal-grants tabletop that modeled 50% cuts and eligibility changes; the exercise identified significant disruptions to health, housing and food services and recommended a cross-sector federal funding impact working group and shared data tools.
City staff presented results of a December federal-grants tabletop exercise on Feb. 18, outlining how substantial federal funding reductions could affect San Antonio’s social-service network and recommending tighter cross-sector coordination.
"This tabletop exercise was held in December and it included participation from 34 outside agencies," Justina Tait, interim assistant city manager, told the council. She said the City of San Antonio’s budget includes about $153 million in federal grants funding, supporting roughly 663 positions; the exercise focused on health, housing, homeless and human-service grants that represent about $85.7 million of that total and support about 436 positions.
The daylong exercise ran two scenarios: a 50% cut to city- received federal grants and a 50% cut to community-wide grants plus potential eligibility impacts from reconciliation-bill changes to Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP and the Affordable Care Act. Participants included health-care organizations, housing and homeless agencies, school districts, food-access organizations, utilities and nonprofits.
Tait said partners raised concrete concerns: the local food bank said cuts to programs such as WIC could force rationing and lower-nutrition offerings; health partners warned reductions in clinical services could leave hospitals with unstaffed beds; and human-service networks already operating at high capacity would struggle to absorb large-scale increases in need.
"We identified focus areas as we analyze the impact of potential reductions to our city grants," Tait said, describing the exercise’s five key findings: funding reductions would cause significant disruptions to health, housing, food access and education systems; existing networks have limited surge capacity; a unified public messaging strategy is essential; shared data tools and referral systems can reduce duplication; and cross-sector coordination should be strengthened.
As a next step, staff recommended creating a cross-sector federal funding impact working group to further analyze grant dependency, share data and develop communications plans and contingency strategies. The group would explore philanthropic and private-sector partnerships and consider subgroups focused on health, housing and youth.
Several council members said they would have liked greater council access to the tabletop (some members said they were not invited to observe) and pressed staff to include large non-profits and technical-assistance providers in follow-up work to help build capacity across partners.
What's next: staff will begin outreach to potential partners to stand up the federal funding impact working group and will provide the council with further details in follow-ups ahead of budget season.
