It was with mixed emotions that I read the New York Times’ damning exposé published last week, which posthumously canceled Chávez as a civil rights leader and historic advocate for better living and working conditions for migrant farm workers. An en…
One thing about inflation: money isn’t what it used to be, right? If you need proof, try checking into the $185 million, 200-room Monarch Hotel at Hemisfair, San Antonio's newest upscale downtown hotel destination. News reports peg starting room rat…
Mayor Gina Jones and Council members Edward Mungia (D4), Ric Galvan (D6), Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8) and Misty Spears (D9), all elected in 2025, did not run campaigns promising multiyear spending cuts to balance the General Fund or rate increases for…
People, more of you turned out to vote, here and across Texas! Bravo. Looks like about 15% of the county’s 1,294,973 registered voters went to the polls. Media reports led me to expect an even higher number. Let’s hope it portends a robust November …
If you thought things couldn’t get worse at City Council under Mayor Gina Jones, think again. As you read this on Monday morning, the City Council is meeting in executive session to decide whether to censure the embattled mayor for her latest destru…
Mayor Gina Jones should sense gathering storm clouds on the near horizon when the San Antonio Express-News publishes an editorial, as it did Saturday, that calls her a “jerk” and renews the conversation about her lack of fitness to hold public offic…
After 37 years living and working in San Antonio as a journalist, I’ve met just about every newsmaker who has made a difference in this city. The people who have had the most profound and positive impact on me, and I would argue, the community and b…
Bigcitysmalltown started the new year with a bang in the Geekdom Podcast Studio, featuring individual episodes with Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who is seeking to unseat Sakai in the March 3 Democratic p…
As a District 1 resident, I am fatigued, as are many of my neighbors and fellow downtown workers, by the daily challenge of navigating urban street improvement projects that take years to complete. Completion of one project seems to signal the start…
It’s a new year, and that means yet another developer has announced plans to bring the long-dormant Lone Star Brewery Complex back to life. The 33-acre blighted site was once home to a brewery that, like the Pearl, was synonymous with San Antonio. …
There is a reason I joined with former San Antonio Mayor and U.S. Secretary of Housing & Urban Development Henry Cisneros and former San Antonio Express-News business columnist David Hendricks to report and write The Austin-San Antonio Megaregion: O…
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I still like wishing people well in the season, although some people seem to approach those words as if they are walking on eggshells. Happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays to all the people of other faiths who don’t…
Texas has long been an anti-science state, one where state elected leaders cling to the 19th-century past and keep their heads planted in the soil rather than accept responsibility for governing smartly in the 21st century. There is no better examp…
Mayor Gina Jones may have found an issue that will deliver a significant, much-needed win with her colleagues on City Council. The mayor wants to move city elections in odd-numbered years from May to November in an attempt to overcome dismal voter t…
I am spending more and more time each week delving into the world of AI-powered search tools, and I know I am not alone. How about you? These tools — new ones are seemingly launching faster than I can test-drive the existing ones — are changing my…
Sporting an out-of-office, salt-and-pepper beard, former mayor Ron Nirenberg moved through the crowd at the River North Icehouse on Election Night, shaking hands and exchanging abrazos as Spurs-crazy fans celebrated the passage of Propositions A & B…
317 W. Jones Avenue was a fitting address for supporters of Bexar County’s Propositions A & B on the Nov. 4 ballot to gather and await vote returns Tuesday night. A former dilapidated warehouse is now the city’s new icehouse, simply named River Nort…
It’s a noble gesture on the part of Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and many of San Antonio’s major employers and charitable foundations to mount a $1.6 million emergency campaign to provide $150 H-E-B gift cards to an estimated 11,000 economically challenge…
Week one of early voting in the Nov. 4 Bexar County election concluded with only 62,937 registered voters turning out to the polls. Another 2,600 mail-in ballots were received, and by the looks of it, even more mail-in ballots were returned to count…
If you’ve lived in San Antonio as long as my family, you probably recall the UTSA poll showing tepid support among voters for using the county’s “tourist taxes” to help fund a new arena for the San Antonio Spurs. I’m not talking about the latest UT…
San Antonio and Bexar County voters: This is no time to stop. Don’t do all the hard work to run a marathon and drop out halfway after hearing how hard it will be to finish. Let’s push through to the finish line and celebration. I am talking, of cou…
Let me say what San Antonio Spurs Chairman and Managing Partner Peter J. Holt is too pro-San Antonio to say: If Bexar County voters fail to pass Propositions A & B on Nov. 4, other big city mayors and billionaires will be falling all over each other…
Gina Ortiz Jones was sworn in as mayor of San Antonio on June 18, 2025 after one of the most ridiculous campaigns in city history with a clown car total of 27 candidates on the ballot, at least 20 of them lacking credibility. Jones, a Democrat, fini…
It was big news in 2002 when Trinity University announced the rebirth of Trinity University Press and the hiring of its new champion, the poet and publisher Barbara Ras. Backed by a $2.1 million grant from the Ewing-Halsell Foundation and an additio…