Monday Musings #29 San Antonio Moves from Thinking Big to Acting Big

I actually had plans to multitask Thursday, but another marathon City Council session featuring more than 100 citizens to be heard kept me glued, post-shoulder surgery, to the laptop screen for what seemed like an entire day.

The outcome, as expected, was a council majority rejecting Mayor Gina Jones’ ill-advised maneuver to bring the city’s negotiations with the Spurs to a stop just as staff was putting the final touches on a non-binding term sheet. While her stunt might have played well with people who still believe after all is said and done that they are paying for Hemisfair improvements, including a new Spurs arena, out of their own pockets with money that could otherwise go into fill-in-the blank (housing, daycare, transportation, job training, more cops on the street), it was a profile in poor, clueless leadership.

Instead, by the same 7-4 vote, an emboldened, independent-minded council supported the two-year effort by staff to bring the ill-named Project Marvel to a successful Phase One conclusion. That means harnessing visitor taxes and money that otherwise would go to the state to help underwrite the largest public-private proposal in the city’s history. And that includes an unprecedented financial participation by the Spurs ownership group.

As City Manager Erik Walsh and Chief Financial Officer Ben Gorzell explained in their pre-vote briefing on the term sheet, the city would issue revenue bonds for $489 million to pay for its share of the new arena, using four revenue sources to service the bond debt: The $160 million in rent the Spurs will pay over its 30-year arena lease; ground lease payments from private developers; new tax revenue captured in the Hemisfair Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ), and state hotel tax revenues from the Project Finance Zone (PFZ).

After losing the two consecutive votes, Jones asked City Attorney Andy Segovia if issuing revenue bonds could be tied to a citywide vote. Segovia seemed surprised by the question since no such vote is required, but Jones told council members she intends to push for such a vote, which sounded like yet another maneuver by her to thwart the council majority. Tying the issuance of revenue bonds to a citywide vote would set a bad precedent and could even negatively impact the city’s credit rating if such a move is seen as politicizing city financing mechanisms.

As part of her remarks, the mayor took a jab at the Alamodome, repeating a false claim about NFL promises. I’ll have more to say soon about why that criticism misses the mark and why the Alamodome has been a bigger win for San Antonio than many realize.

Now, if history is a reliable guide, we can expect Bexar County voters to go to the polls in November and approve the third rail of this public-partnership, paving the way for the Spurs’ eventual departure from the Frost Bank Center and return to Hemisfair, and a transformative investment in the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. People have no idea what a big deal the latter investment means: a host of infrastructure improvements and year-round programming that will bring far more people and money to the Eastside venues than anything we’ve seen in the last 22 years.

Don’t miss our recent bigcitysmalltown podcast with San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo CEO Cody Davenport as he talks about some of the big changes on the horizon.

Citizens to be Heard

Most people tune out the Citizens to be Heard portions of public meetings. It’s messy democracy on display. For every citizen who works up the nerve to take the microphone and address an elevated jury of elected officials for the first time, there is interspersed a whacky Jack Finger gadfly. Still, it’s like panning for gold. You have to sift through the gravel for the good nuggets.

I thought Spurs legend Sean Elliott gave one of the most articulate, impassioned short speeches I’ve heard in my 36 years as a journalist in this city. He and I came to the city in the same year, 1989, and for me, Sean has always embodied the Spurs franchise, on the court and in the community. And speaking of the Alamodome, one of my greatest memories in this city was being present with my family for the Memorial Day Miracle in 1999. Without that shot, considered one of the 60 greatest moments in NBA history, there would have been no trip to the finals, no River Walk victory parade, and no homecoming celebration…in the Alamodome.

As I listened to the cheers from council chambers, I found myself thinking how much better off we would be right now if Sean Elliott were mayor for the next four years. Number 32 teamed up with Peter J. Holt, the Spurs chairman, to make their case alongside all the others. Holt coolly ignored Jones’s three repeated attempts to bait him on the subject of her desire for another economic impact study.

Citizens to be Heard is not an invitation for the mayor to interrogate those from the community addressing the council. Coming days after Jones hijacked the business community’s press conference on the steps of City Hall, it was yet another demonstration of how she is driven by impulse

It would be interesting to see how Jones reacts if an individual of opposing views barges into one of her public events and wrests away the microphone.

This week was a big win for the future of the city, but it was a resounding setback for a new mayor unable or unwilling to govern more collaboratively. In the course of her failed effort to “pause’ negotiations with the Spurs, Jones has been critical of the former mayor and council, critical of city staff, combative with the county judge and fellow council members, and critical of consultants. She called the two-year timeline rushed, although she wasn’t even living here for some of that time.

In sum, it was a very good week for the future economic and cultural development of San Antonio, yet one laden with concerns about the future trajectory of city governance.