Editor’s note: The San Antonio Report is pleased to feature the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report. We’ll be publishing a brief synopsis of the podcast each Tuesday.
The public input portion of the city’s charter review is winding down, and the campaign to support its recommendations is firing up.
Members of the Charter Review Commission will hear from the public one more time Thursday before making their formal recommendations on issues like how to strengthen the city’s ethics procedures, whether City Council terms should be longer and whether the power to set the city manager’s salary should be returned to the council.
Given the feedback they’ve already heard, commission co-chairs Bonnie Prosser Elder and David Zammiello told bigcitysmalltown host Robert Rivard last week that one of the commission’s preliminary recommendations, to dramatically increase City Council pay, may require help bringing the public on board.
Any proposed recommendations would need to be approved by the City Council, then by voters on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Elder said the commission’s preliminary recommendations for raising council pay from roughly $45,000 per year to as high as $125,000 per year “picked up a lot of buzz” and are still being tweaked by the commission members in charge of that issue.
While she and Zammiello support the idea of rethinking the way council is compensated, they said the issue needs — and is likely to get — a messaging campaign behind it.
A similar effort bankrolled by the business community helped institute the first professional salaries for San Antonio City Council in 2015.
Zammiello said he believes there’s a lack of understanding about what the job involves.
“I hope that we’re able to articulate and look at the council role a little differently, with a little more insight to the roles, duties, responsibilities and the skills required, and use that as a platform to build a thought process for why compensation should be looked at a little bit differently,” he said.
As with past Charter Review Commissions, big money will likely follow once the recommendations are formalized.
“Polling, data and things of that nature, that’s a lane that we’re not living in,” Prosser Elder said. “But I have all reason to believe as this moves forward and as it gets before council, that there will be groups out doing that type of work.”
Tune in to episode 53 of bigcitysmalltown to hear the full interview with Prosser Elder and Zammiello on the work of updating the City Charter.
