Mayor Ron Nirenberg (right) and City Manager Erik Walsh talk as the mayor, City Council and city staff convenes on Thursday, Apr. 13, 2023 for a day-long work session to discuss the fiscal year 2024 budget.
Kin Man Hui/Staff photographer
San Antonio Express-News
Molly Smith, Staff writer
Mayor Ron Nirenberg is wary of the salary cap and eight-year term limit that voters imposed on San Antonio’s city manager in 2018, saying they could hamstring efforts to hire or retain strong executives.
“We have to remain competitive for top talent in the city manager’s office, and that’s a concern long-term for the city,” Nirenberg said.
With the backing of San Antonio business leaders, he’s poised to launch a process that could result in asking voters to reconsider the pay and tenure restrictions on the city manager.
Nirenberg said he’ll convene a Charter Review Commission of 13 San Antonians in late summer or early fall to study a potential repeal of the caps. He also could ask the group to weigh a plan to add two new City Council districts, bringing the total to 12, largely because of San Antonio’s fast-growing population.
The commission will make its recommendations to the City Council, which could then call a charter amendment election, possibly for November 2024.
City Manager Erik Walsh has hit the salary cap of $364,000, which is 10 times what the lowest-paid full-time city employee makes. And unless the city charter is changed, Walsh must step down by February 2027, the end of his term limit.
In 2018, the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association successfully mounted a petition drive to force three charter amendments on the ballot, including the caps on the city manager. The union, led by then-President Chris Steele, was locked at the time in a bitter struggle with then-City Manager Sheryl Sculley over a new labor contract.
The fire union waged a fiery campaign for the amendments, and voters OK’d two of them. The proposition dealing with the city manager’s pay and tenure prevailed with 59 percent of the vote.
But Steele was replaced as union president in January 2022 by Joe Jones, and the new leader isn’t balking at Nirenberg asking a Charter Review Commission to weigh in on the city manager restrictions.
“We understand his desire to study it, to look at it in terms of fairness, the ability to compete for talent moving forward,” said Jones, an officer in the fire department. “We understand all these concepts. We’re not immune to them, so we’re keeping an open mind at this point in time.”
Steele did not return a call for comment. During the 2018 campaign, he railed against Sculley’s $475,000 salary, reminding voters that her pay was “more than the president and the governor combined.”
A city-commissioned external analysis, released after the election, found that Sculley’s salary was in line with market averages for similar positions. The proposition did not affect her compensation or tenure. It kicked in when the City Council made Walsh her successor in 2019.
The vitriol that marked Steele’s assessment of Sculley is gone. Jones strikes a friendly tone when talking about Walsh.
“He’s a hometown guy, and we’re fortunate for that because I think that there’s a sense of loyalty there,” Jones said. “That said, we also identify his intellect and his talent, and we’re aware that some other city could come in and try and recruit him. And then what?”
“We’re aware of these things, which is one of the reasons we try to be reasonable,” he added. “What works for the community moving forward? What works for the health of the city? What works for firefighters and police officers? This is a big, multidimensional subject, and that’s why we keep an open mind.”
The union, Jones said, is “actually looking forward” to the charter commission’s review of the city manager salary and term limits.
Business backing
San Antonio business leaders revered Sculley, who announced her retirement shortly after the November 2018 charter election. She served as city manager for 13 years. The business community was among the loudest voices against the fire union’s charter amendment, and it continues to oppose the salary and term caps.
“It really limits the talent that would be interested in applying for San Antonio city management opportunities,” said Dave Petersen, interim president and CEO of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce.
“We think the market ought to drive what that compensation looks like, based on what the compensation would be for city managers in like-type situations,” he said.
Chamber members have spoken to Nirenberg about addressing the current restrictions on the city manager, and Petersen said he’s brought up the issue with City Council members.
Like his predecessor, Walsh also has business support.
“The words I get from the business community is we’re quite satisfied with the way Erik Walsh runs the city. I hear that from the general population, I hear that from the city staff, so I think he’s doing a fine job,” Petersen said. “I think it would be a terrible shame if the clock ran out on him and we said, ‘You got to go, even though we all love the work you’ve been doing.’”
The chamber has not yet taken an official position on whether it would like a potential charter amendment to remove the compensation and tenure cap on future city managers or whether such a proposition should also apply to Walsh.
San Antonio’s constitution
The city charter, which enshrines San Antonio’s weak mayor-strong manager form of government and sets limits on city policies and rules, can be changed only every two years.
It was last amended in May 2021, when voters overwhelmingly approved rewriting it to allow the city to use bond dollars, or voter-approved debt, to develop affordable housing.
This May, a citizen-led charter election to codify policing practices surrounding abortion and marijuana laws, misdemeanor arrests, no-knock warrants and chokeholds failed badly. That opened the door for a charter election during Nirenberg’s fourth and final term, which ends in mid-2025.
Nirenberg appears to be eyeing November 2024, the next presidential race — which usually attracts more voters than any other election.
“I’ve always been of the view that important issues need to have as many people casting a ballot as possible, so very likely it will be a fall election,” Nirenberg said. “But all that has yet to be determined.”
The mayor said he will convene a Charter Review Commission once the City Council adopts next year’s budget Sept. 14. He didn’t specify a date.
Only the mayor can form this commission, which makes recommendations to the council about potential charter changes to put on the ballot.
When Nirenberg last convened the commission in spring 2018, he tasked it with studying four policy areas. But the commission’s work was ultimately cut short by the fire union’s amendments.
Nirenberg said he’s open to increasing the size of the council from 10 to 12 districts, but he told the San Antonio Express-News in 2021 that “voters should make the decision.”
Tying council members’ pay to an economic index, such as median income, is another possible item for the commission to weigh, as well as making the Ethics Review Board more independent. The latter was something Nirenberg directed the 2018 commission to study.