San Antonio Report
by Andrea Drusch
Mayor Ron Nirenberg is laying the groundwork for some major changes to San Antonio’s government in his final term, announcing plans to form a review commission to propose changes to the City Charter.
“There’s a lot of things that have been discussed, including possibly … increasing the number of [council] districts,” Nirenberg said Tuesday at an event co-hosted by the San Antonio Report and PBS member television station KLRN.
“I’ve talked about an independent ethics authority for the city, which I think would be appropriate,” he told San Antonio Report Editor-in-Chief Leigh Munsil. “But ultimately, this is the domain of the City Charter commission, a charter review commission.”
The mayor alone has the authority to call a charter review commission. Changes to the charter can only be made every two years and must go to voters for approval.
Nirenberg said he hopes to form a charter review commission — a body whose decision-making process typically takes months — after the city budget process this fall. He said he will give clearer directions about which issues he wants a commission to tackle once it is formed.
Any proposed changes would likely go before voters during the November election in 2024.
The last time the charter was amended was in 2021, allowing bond money to be spent on affordable housing.
In 2018 voters approved a charter amendment that capped the tenure and compensation for future San Antonio city managers. Undoing that change to the City Charter could potentially be on the menu for the next charter commission.
City Manager Erik Walsh can currently serve a maximum of eight years, meaning the last year he could hold the role is in 2027, and his compensation is capped to 10 times the amount of the lowest paid, full-time city employee.
Changes to council members’ salaries could also be addressed by the commission, an idea Nirenberg appeared to support.
In 2015, the city set its current pay of $45,722 for council members and $61,725 for the mayor, a move designed to make the roles more accessible to candidates who couldn’t afford to work for the previous $20 per meeting.
“That change to now have an actual council salary allowed a lot of folks to access this job [who couldn’t] before, so that’s an important discussion,” Nirenberg said.
Ana Sandoval resigned from the District 7 council seat in January to accept a job at University Health, citing the need to make more money.
“If it’s 50 years until we change that [salary] again, we’re going to close the door again on a lot of folks who are willing to serve this community and not able to,” Nirenberg said.
No-confidence votes
Last year Nirenberg oversaw the censure of two colleagues, Mario Bravo and Clayton Perry, whose terms ended in May.
Nirenberg said Tuesday that the council learned many lessons from that disciplinary process, including that the “City Council doesn’t have the authority to hire or fire, only the voters of San Antonio do.”
Council issued both men a vote of no confidence, and Bravo was formally urged to resign. Perry declined to seek a fourth term after being involved in an alcohol-related car crash. Bravo was rebuked for berating a council colleague before a budget vote and lost his reelection race in a runoff.
“I was very proud of the fact that we acted swiftly in both of those cases in terms of … these are things that aren’t appropriate, and you should expect more from elected officials,” Nirenberg said.
Construction
Nirenberg acknowledged public frustration over city construction projects, some of which, he said, were slowed down by supply and labor disruptions.
Delays on the St. Mary’s Strip became a defining issue in the municipal election this year, and many more projects are slated to begin in the next two years. San Antonio International Airport is about to undergo major renovations, and the city expects to break ground on a rapid transit bus line along San Pedro Avenue running from the airport, through downtown and extending past the Blue Star arts complex in Southtown.
Nirenberg said Tuesday he couldn’t promise “fewer orange cones” over the next two years, but added that he and Walsh have been in close contact about how to better communicate with the public and mitigate disruption on future projects.
“I want to see more coordinated orange cone activity,” Nirenberg said.
Wemby
Nirenberg cheered the San Antonio Spurs’ addition of No. 1 draft pick Victor Wembanyama, calling the economic benefit to the city “immeasurable.”
“All of a sudden we’re the center of the sports universe now, and people are going to start to get to know our city again,” Nirenberg said. “Meanwhile, we’ve been making all of these investments and moves, improving our city in some dramatic ways.”
“I’m excited for people to get to know San Antonio again,” he said.
Legacy as mayor
Nirenberg was reelected to a fourth two-year term in May, setting him to potentially serve the longest mayoral term since Henry Cisneros held the role in the 1980s.
He said Tuesday that some of the hallmarks of his time in office should be the commitment to equity and creating opportunities for residents to lift themselves up, such as his Ready to Work jobs training program.
But Nirenberg said the full impact of that work won’t be realized for many years, and will require persistence long after he’s no longer mayor.
“The challenges that we have to work on and that we’ve committed ourselves to … things like economic mobility … are generational in nature,” Nirenberg said. “My work and my focus is to make sure that we’re making the fundamental decisions necessary that we take the ball as far down the field as possible.”