Monday Musings #27: An Open Letter to Mayor Jones

In four decades of observing newly-elected mayors take office in San Antonio, I have never seen one struggle so unsuccessfully to hit the ground running, to lead the City Council effectively and collaboratively, or to assemble a reliable professional staff.

One certainty about Mayor Gina Jones is this: she is smart. And if she acts smartly, she will move quickly to change the style and tone of her opening weeks in office. Now is the time to hit the reset button — with the City Council, City Manager Erik Walsh and his staff, the media, the public, and the business community.

It’s no secret that I did not support Jones for mayor. Still, once she won, I readily recognized that it was in everyone’s interest for her to succeed as mayor, as I wrote in early June following her runoff victory over Roland Pablos: Congratulations, Mayor-elect Gina Ortiz Jones.

Regardless of who you voted for, if you love San Antonio and, like me, want to see it grow and thrive, we need Jones to succeed. She is the mayor for at least the next four years. If she can pivot, which will take some doing, her opening-month stumbles will quickly fade into the past. If she persists with her authoritative command and control approach, she will find she neither commends nor controls the city’s agenda. The job of mayor in such circumstances will not be fun.

My first impression? Mayor Gina Jones, who touts her military service and background, is projecting an overbearing management style more conducive to a drill sergeant running a boot camp than understanding what it means to be mayor in a city manager form of municipal government.

Add to that her obvious discomfort as a public figure ill at ease with the media or those who disagree with her, and you have an officeholder who comes off as aloof and unwilling to brook dissent.

To succeed, Jones needs to study other mayors who have succeeded before her. If she does, she will see many led by dint of personality and by building strategic alliances that gave them a council majority on key issues. For a mayor who talks “process,” understanding the limits of her own authority in public meetings and behind closed doors is essential. I’d make City Attorney Andy Segovia a key advisor — better that he school her in private than correct her in public.

Jones is fumbling an historic opportunity to complete the redevelopment of Hemisfair with a new Spurs arena and entertainment district, among other major public-private capital investments in the once-neglected 100-acre downtown park. 

City Manager Erik Walsh and a city council majority openly opposed her failed bid at Wednesday’s marathon public meeting to stall negotiations with the Spurs. The team’s ownership group has exceeded expectations with its bid to invest more than $1 billion, making the centerpiece of the Hemisfair redevelopment a reality. In that meeting, Segovia had to remind Jones that she can’t just call for a vote when it suits her. That was a good thing in that instance, since she would have lost that vote.

That Spurs decision to add $60 million in community investments to their commitment should enable Jones to deliver on a campaign promise to make sure Project Marvel leads to greater city investment in early childhood education and day care programs. She should grab that brass ring now. 

Yet Jones sought without success to place negotiations on hold. A seven-person council majority that supports the deal and wants to move to agreement on a non-binding term sheet is evidence that Jones has not taken the time to build relationships with individual council members that will prove key to her future success.

The new mayor also needs to understand she cannot please everyone. She seems to be telling the Spurs and project supporters that she wants the deal to work, while telling COPS/Metro and others who oppose the public-private partnership that she, too, shares their position.

One point Jones should abandon is her insistence that the city’s investment should lead to revenue sharing with the Spurs and other private sector operators. The city makes infrastructure investments all the time that lead to greater private sector economic investment and activity. The city has invested tens of millions of dollars in the San Antonio River and River North, but it doesn’t share revenues with the Pearl or others on Broadway. It took years for the city to upgrade infrastructure on North St. Mary’s Street, a much-delayed project that strangled some businesses. We certainly don’t see the remaining businesses kicking in a percentage of revenues to the city.

Municipal government is not financed by siphoning off private sector revenues.

Acting unilaterally is a prescription for failure. The mayor does control the microphone at city council meetings, but the art of listening and being open to counterpoint is essential. Engaging in argumentative and preemptive exchanges with council members at the dais, as Jones did in Wednesday’s meeting, only serves to cast the mayor as tone-deaf and rigid.

Jones is in desperate need of some grown-ups on her staff with a solid working knowledge of how municipal government works, and what the limitations of the mayor are in a city manager form of government. There are numerous capable veterans who have worked for past mayors and council members who can be drafted. Competency is more important than absolute political alignment in building a staff that can accomplish tasks and help Jones avoid pitfalls. Assembling a trusted and tested team should be a priority.

Jordan Abelson, Jones’ former campaign manager who then became her chief of staff, was out of the job after two weeks, lasting only until July 5. Later that month, Jones hired Gary Cooper as her communications manager, a staffer in the city’s Neighborhood and Housing Services. Cooper was hired on a Monday, fired by Thursday. 

"Well, that was fun," Cooper posted on LinkedIn on Friday, Aug. 8, the day after his dismissal by replacement chief of staff Denise Carroll. "As of yesterday, I'm no longer with the office of the mayor. One helluva week, though! Best of luck to Mayor Jones, her Chief of Staff, and others. Her success is our success as a city."

Equally disturbing is Jones’ disdain for the role of a free press in a democratic, civilian society. Shutting out the media is not going to help her succeed. It would benefit the mayor to relax her demeanor around reporters and act more openly, understanding that the city’s business is the people’s business.

Her anti-media bias showed in the ill-advised email she sent to Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai demanding an investigation into a “leaked” July 24 video of District 8 Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez’s arrest on a DWI charge. Any experienced city staffer could have told the mayor what Sakai told her, namely that magistrate hearings are open to the public and live-streamed in the digital age.

The mayor could have issued a public mea culpa for her rookie mistake, but instead, Sakai’s response was met with Jones’ signature silence. She missed the opportunity to shift her focus from the media she so obviously dislikes and instead used her office to lament the epidemic of drunk driving in San Antonio, including the specter of three council members in three years charged with DWIs. 

This was Meza Gonzalez’s second such arrest, and although she got the first charge expunged some years ago, she was wrong to proclaim her “innocence” in a press statement. She was found “not guilty.” There is a difference. Perhaps the councilwoman should consider a life without drinking and set a different kind of example for the future.

So what comes next? Walsh and his negotiating team will meet with the Spurs negotiating team this week, as they have been doing for some time now. The numbers are out on the table for the public to evaluate. The economic impact study was conducted by CSL International, a respected national firm specializing in the professional sports sector. There is no need for a new “independent study.” 

I see this as the city’s most important public-private investment project ever, and I am confident Bexar County voters will strongly support the November ballot items proposing major investments in the Eastside stock show and rodeo grounds and a new Spurs arena at Hemisfair. 

Meanwhile, Jones faces further dissent in a public meeting on Wednesday in which council members are challenging the legitimacy of her unilateral declaration changing the way council members get items placed on the public agenda. The meeting portends more open conflict at the expense of getting real work done. Jones should take the opportunity to withdraw her proposed change, avoid another public confrontation, and begin the work of building bridges with these council members.

Let’s hope Mayor Jones takes that opportunity.