The Rev. Jimmy Drennan with COPS/Metro speaks Friday at a news conference to push back on Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ call for new votes on the Spurs arena and the city’s Ready to Work program.
Blaine Young/For the Express-News
Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has pushed for new votes on a Spurs arena and the city’s Ready to Work program. The City Council is expected to discuss the arena vote on Monday, while Jones has backed off her call for reallocating the remaining money in the city’s workforce training program.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
With so many challenges facing the city of San Antonio, this is a time to look forward, not backward. It’s a time to bring stakeholders together, not drive them apart. That is not happening at City Hall these days.
Staring down a $158 million city budget shortfall over the next two years, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has pushed for new city votes on the downtown Spurs arena and the city’s workforce training program, Ready to Work. She recently caved on redoing the vote on Ready to Work, but the City Council is expected Monday to consider a possible second vote on the Spurs arena.
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For a variety of technical reasons, nixing these investments won’t address the city’s budget issues and, therefore, would be a poor political and policy choice. While those technical details are important, they are secondary.
Most important is honoring the decisions voters have made.
Last November, 52% of Bexar County voters approved $311 million in county funding for the new Spurs arena. There was a broad understanding that should voters approve the county funding, the city would issue $489 million in bonds, which did not have to go to a public vote. These two funding sources were tethered together. Importantly, a majority of city voters approved the arena plan.
As for Ready to Work, in 2020, 77% of city voters approved temporarily allocating a 1/8-cent city sales tax from December 2021 to the workforce program. After 2025, those funds shifted to VIA Metropolitan Transit.
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Roughly $123 million remains dedicated to Ready to Work, which has placed more than 5,800 people in approved jobs that earn at least $15 an hour. The program overwhelmingly serves Black and Hispanic people, as well as women. The mayor can read Ready to Work’s dashboard, too.
Like them or not, these are voter-approved initiatives. Opponents of the arena often press their case by imploring the City Council to listen to the people, or they argue the arena “barely” passed — as if a slim majority is somehow not a majority. In doing so, they either minimize or ignore that the people spoke.
There would be some salience to Jones’ argument if there were a discrepancy between county and city voters on the arena, but there isn’t.
As District 9 City Council Member Misty Spears stated in a recent vote analysis, “Of the 248,658 total ballots cast, 178,176 were cast by registered City of San Antonio voters, representing 72% of every vote cast on the Spurs Proposition B. When the votes are limited to City of San Antonio registered voters, the project was approved with 51.72%, demonstrating that city residents had their voices heard.”
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All of this is sound and fury signifying nothing because a new vote would come in November, after council members approve the city’s budget. And, again, there are restrictions for how arena funds — and Ready to Work funds — can be used.
While a new arena vote might fire up the mayor’s base, she may emerge from this even more isolated from council members and community stakeholders.
Obstacles abound. While the mayor’s voice and platform are powerful, these are not the same as a formal campaign.
Also, former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who created Ready to Work and supported a downtown Spurs arena, will be on the ballot in November seeking to become the next Bexar County judge. He won his Democratic primary with 62% of the vote over Judge Peter Sakai, a beloved figure in the community.
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Significantly, in going after Ready to Work, the mayor alienated COPS/Metro Alliance, a community powerhouse. COPS/Metro helped create Ready to Work, and it was also a staunch opponent of the arena. Its leaders recently joined several council members and business leaders to oppose new votes.
And let’s not discount the popularity of the Spurs. The team just made a remarkable NBA Finals run with superstar Victor Wembanyama. Their on-court success could fuel even more voter support.
Part of democracy is respecting election outcomes, even if they don’t go one’s preferred way. The city is under immense fiscal and political pressure. Redoing recent elections, aggravating community divisions, only distract from the challenges ahead.