Member of the Charter Review Commission were on the brink of finalizing their recommended changes to the City Charter when the first signs of trouble were surfacing at City Hall.
The commission spent months assessing and refining a list of potential changes that ranged from beefing up the city’s ethics procedures to expanding the number of council districts to creating a Michigan-style independent redistricting commission.
Just two major recommendations made the final cut: Adjusting the pay and term-length of the city manager and City Council to match high-level executive skills the roles require.
But in the hours leading up to their announcements Thursday, simmering disagreements between some of those officials boiled over when a group of council members accused the city manager and mayor of locking them out of contract negotiations with the firefighters’ union.
The unusually public infighting, combined with a looming budget deficit that’s already threatening cuts to city personnel, casts a dubious shadow over the salary changes the Charter Review Commission hopes voters will approve on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Andrew Vicencio, a U.S. Army veteran who signed up to speak at Thursday’s Charter Review Session meeting, said a San Antonio firefighter that’s been on the job for five years makes about $62,000 per year. “Last I checked, the City Council members don’t carry people out of a burning building,” Vicencio said.
If word of the unraveling at City Hall had reached members of the Charter Review Commission that evening, it didn’t show. An exuberant mood filled the room as the public comment session ended and and they approved their recommendations one by one.
The proposals include raising City Council pay from $45,700 per year to $80,000 per year, and changing council members’ service eligibility from four two-year terms to two four-year terms.
They also hope voters will agree to undo salary and tenure caps on the city manager position — policies the firefighters’ union pushed for in 2018 when they were at odds with then-City Manager Sheryl Sculley. Voters approved the union’s restrictions by 60%.
The San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association hasn’t said whether it plans to be involved in the charter review this year. Spokeswoman Emily Leffler said the group is “increasingly concerned” with issues at City Hall, where “a pervasive lack of transparency and manipulative tactics from city management has our firefighters thinking nothing has changed” since the last contract negotiation.
City Manager Erik Walsh has already reached the maximum salary of 10 times the lowest-paid city employees, or $374,000 per year. Under the tenure cap, the last year he could serve is 2027.
“While all the committee’s works have been very important to me, this is the priority,” said former City Attorney Frank Garza, who sits on the charter committee. “I enthusiastically make a motion to adopt the committee’s recommendation to eliminate the capping of the tenure of the city manager.”
That move wouldn’t automatically result in a raise for the city manager, but restore the council’s ability to set the position’s salary as they see fit.
All recommendations were approved on voice votes with little discussion.
Now that the committee has covered the issues Mayor Ron Nirenberg charged them with making recommendations on, it will consider other ideas brought forward by the public later this month, then take the full list of recommendations to the City Council on June 5.
Will the public go along?
Though a main part of its job is done, whether the commission’s recommendations have enough political appeal to succeed on the November ballot is hard to say.
The city budget discussions this fall are already likely to include tough spending conversations as council looks to address a budget deficit of $10.6 million. The cuts could be even steeper, depending on how much the new firefighters contract costs.
At the press conference outside City Hall questioning City Attorney Andy Segovia’s “fitness” for office, Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), who was among the council members criticizing Walsh, suggested the brewing fight between council and city staff could inadvertently “impact public perception of council, city staff and any of the charter amendments.”
In an interview after the Charter Review Commission’s meeting, commission members Luisa Casso, chief of staff at Trinity University, and Josh Baugh, spokesman for VIA Metropolitan Transit, said it wasn’t the panel’s responsibility to find public support for their proposals.
“We did a lot of work, a lot of research… to get to the recommendations that were made today,” Baugh said. He suggested the total cost of the raises they were recommending, about $900,000 for council and the mayor, could be offset by the savings of having fewer elections if voters advance both measures. (Each item would appear separately on the ballot.)
“There’s going be a whole other process with a different group of people that come together for a political campaign,” Baugh said. “But it’ll be up to them to make sure that the voters are educated on the facts of charter amendments and what they do for our city.”
Business leaders helped push council pay raises across the line the last time they were approved in 2014. Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Jeff Webster spoke at Thursday’s meeting, where he praised the proposed changes regarding the city manager, adding the work “doesn’t end here tonight.”
“There are a lot of challenging things happening this community,” he said. “But this is something to help move our city forward when we talk about who are our next elected officials.”
