Monday Musings #38: Economic Development and Job Creation are San Antonio’s Best Anti-Poverty Strategies

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 challenged families here.

It’s also a small band-aid that only addresses a symptom of the real problem: 130,000 Bexar County residents face food insecurity and the possibility of losing their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits as the federal shutdown entered its second month on Saturday. Those families currently receive $50 million a month in benefits.

Anti-poverty assistance programs are really expensive.

Food insecurity is a big, big problem in our region. Just ask anyone associated with the San Antonio Food Bank that serves 29 counties in South and Southwest Texas and the Texas Hill Country where nearly a half million people depend on their sustained assistance. Want to help? Click ​here​ to donate. My wife Monika and I are attending a wedding Sunday of good friends, one a food bank leader and the other an urban technologist working on smart city initiatives for a national nonprofit, so it’s an ideal time for our household to up its annual giving.

But I don’t fool myself into thinking we are helping solve a problem.

If you want to make a more lasting difference in this city and county, exercise your right to vote YES for Propositions A & B in the Bexar County election on Nov. 4. Early voting ended Friday with 24,000 people showing up to bring the turnout totals to 11.2%, with ​143,499 of 1,284,828 registered voters casting ballots​ so far. A few thousand mail-in ballots will nudge that percentage up a bit.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the proposed new Spurs arena and entertainment zone at Hemsifair, and major improvements planned for the Frost Bank Center and Freeman Coliseum on the Eastside, but most people leave it at that and can’t be bothered to participate in a very consequential county election. We will be lucky if fewer than 75-80% of eligible voters sit out the election.

While I am all for extending a helping hand to our city’s most vulnerable residents, I also know there are only two certain ways to reduce poverty. One is to improve education outcomes and give more people the opportunity to live lives filled with choice, productivity, and purpose. The second is to grow the local economy and jobs base, giving people a fair wage and a dignified path to self-reliance and a stable family life with secure housing, food, and the ability to meet other basic needs such as transportation, clothing, utility bills, and daycare.

Much has been said and written about why so many of us are so passionate about bringing the San Antonio Spurs back downtown to Hemisfair while making a long overdue ​major investment​ in a year-around rodeo and entertainment presence on the Eastside.

The San Antonio Express-News deserves credit for the number and range of the editorials and op-ed pieces the newspaper has published on the importance of the Nov. 4 election, and in the newspaper’s institutional opinion, ​voting Yes on both propositions​.

A well-written Thursday ​op-ed​ by District 10 resident and entrepreneur Lou Ortiz was headlined, ‘Project Marvel opposition reveals San Antonio's small-town thinking.’ It makes a compelling argument for San Antonio emulating other cities that think and act big and don’t allow themselves to remain mired in legacy shortcomings.

Ortiz knows that a Yes vote will lead to thousands of new jobs being created, tax bases expanding, and a city offering a greater choice of entertainment and cultural amenities in a more attractive and economically vital downtown. That’s a formula for addressing the city’s poverty in a fundamental way rather than offering temporary relief.

I’ve written 13 editions of this ​weekly newsletter​ since May in support of the propositions, and challenging newly-elected Mayor Jones for her ill-advised and unsuccessful efforts to stop city negotiations with the Spurs, and what I could call her interference with the county election, notably her Express-News op-ed claiming that she can negotiate a better deal for the city if voters reject Proposition B. That’s a foolish gamble proposed by someone who has not demonstrated the leadership qualities that would inspire confidence months into her four-year term.

And it is not only outsiders reaching such conclusions about Jones’ troubled early record of mayor. Last week, ​two more people quit on the mayor​. The new communications director – not to be confused with the $10,000 a month communications consultant serving the mayor – quit on a Thursday after starting his new job on a Monday. I think the guy before him made it a full week before leaving.

This is no time to allow the worst performing mayor in contemporary city history to slow San Antonio’s momentum. Our city is the envy of many other cities that do not enjoy the robust visitor economy that allows San Antonio and Bexar County to make so many transformative investments funded by visitor taxes. My criticism of COPS, the mayor and some others opposing the Yes vote is the way they have allowed or even promoted a disinformation campaign to win votes. Many inner city voters where poverty is the highest in our city believe funds are being diverted from programs in their neighborhoods. Organizers know very well this is false, but little if anything is said at community meetings to correct such thinking.

San Antonio and the Spurs will be forever linked, and the way to continue that great relationship and legacy is to vote Yes for Propositions A & B on Tuesday. Passage of the vote will be like winning a Western Conference playoff series. We won’t cross the finish line – not yet – but there will be ample reason to drive downtown, horns honking, flags waving.