On March 4, members of the public will get their first chance to provide feedback on proposed changes to the City Charter currently being hammered out by a commission of Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s appointees.
Past amendments to the City Charter have paved the way for transformative change in San Antonio, such as the 1977 switch from at-large to single-member districts, which was compelled by the Department of Justice.
That move, over the course of the next several decades, helped create a minority-majority council by requiring that each geographic region have representation that lives there.
This year a Charter Review Commission has been asked to look at changes that could again shape the makeup of who seeks the city’s top leadership roles.
As with all amendments to the City Charter, any changes the commission proposes must be approved by voters. The current commission’s potential amendments would be placed on the Nov. 5 ballot, when voters will decide the presidential race and a host of other federal, state and local contests. The commission’s final recommendations are expected to go before the City Council in June.
Among the issues Nirenberg asked the commission to explore are whether the city should add two new council districts, whether increasing the pay of City Council members would allow more people to run, and whether removing a salary and tenure cap for the city manager position would make the city’s hiring ability more competitive.
Under the current rules, City Manager Erik Walsh could no longer serve after 2027.
The commission could take up other issues if it chooses. Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) asked that it look at allowing city employees to donate to or campaign in municipal elections, something the City Charter currently forbids.
“We’re going to focus on the [mayor’s] charge and make sure all of that work gets done first,” Bonnie Prosser Elder, the commission’s co-chair, said in an interview. “And then we should have time, programmed in, to touch on [any additional issues] at the end of this process.”
Public input
A 15-member Charter Review Commission stacked with San Antonio power players has divided the work among five subcommittees, each made up of four or five members. The subcommittees meet privately with city staff and other subject-matter experts to form their recommendations.
Since January, the full Charter Review Commission has convened downtown twice a month at the Central Library to give updates on their subcommittees’ progress. The group has already held a third of the 12 public meetings it is scheduled to hold.
Members of the public will get their first chance to address the commission at two meetings next month.
The commission’s March 4 and March 21 meetings will take place at the Central Library from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and attendees will get up to three minutes to provide feedback on the proposed charter revisions, depending on how many people sign up to speak.
The March 4 meeting is expected to include a presentation of the commission’s preliminary recommendations for the city’s ethics enforcement structure, potential changes to City Council compensation and suggested language modernization updates in the City Charter.
At the March 21 meeting, the commission will present its recommendations for whether to change to the number of council districts and the process it would use for drawing new districts, as well as potential changes to city manager tenure and compensation.
Comments can be submitted online here, and the online registration to speak at the March 4 meeting is available here.
The commission plans to continue honing its recommendations in meetings on April 11, April 25, May 6 and May 20. Additional meetings could take place in May if needed.
Who decides what
The 15-member commission was formed by Nirenberg in November, and includes people who have experience with previous charter reviews, prominent business leaders and others active in civic affairs.
Prosser Elder, general counsel and senior vice president for VIA Metropolitan Transit, chaired the last Charter Review Commission in 2018, as well as the city’s redistricting commission two years ago. Co-chair David Zammiello previously ran a workforce training nonprofit after a long executive-level career at USAA.
Ethics subcommittee: This group will look into whether the city should have an independent ethics auditor, and whether its current Ethics Review Board should be restructured to give it more autonomy.
Subcommittee chair Mike Frisbee, a former city engineer, has said that the group had sought input from UTSA risk management expert Jason King and believed the addition of an ethics auditor position at the city probably wasn’t necessary.
Subcommittee members were interested in giving the Ethics Review Board more teeth, however, including perhaps writing its directives into the City Charter to keep the council from being able to change them through city ordinance.
Other subcommittee members include Elva Pai Adams, an accountant; Josh Baugh, spokesman for VIA Metropolitan Transit; Bobby Perez, chief legal officer for Spurs Sports & Entertainment; and Shelley Potter, the former leader of San Antonio Independent School District’s teachers union.
City Council compensation and term length subcommittee: This group will look into whether increasing council member pay would make it possible for a broader cross-section of people to serve in city government. It’s also exploring whether council should move to two four-year terms, instead of the current limit of four two-year terms.
The subcommittee is chaired by Luisa Casso, chief of staff at Trinity University, and includes Baugh; Frisbie; Martha Martinez-Flores, a creative consultant; and Dwayne Robinson, a political consultant.
Baugh said on Feb. 22 that the subcommittee had met with former council members Ana Sandoval (D7), William “Cruz” Shaw (2), Reed Williams (D8) and Rey Saldaña (D4), and sought input on various aspects of their service, including the financial struggles of serving with the current council salary of $45,722 per year.
The group liked the idea of extending the length of council terms, Baugh said, but was still soliciting input on that issue.
City Manager tenure and compensation subcommittee: This group is tasked with exploring whether the City Council should have the authority to manage the city manager position without the limits on pay and tenure that was approved by 60% of voters in 2018.
Those changes were pushed by the firefighters union, which was at odds with then-City Manager Sheryl Sculley. Undoing the restrictions has become a high priority of the business community, which doesn’t want to lose current City Manager Erik Walsh.
Subcommittee chair Pat Frost, who recently retired as president of Frost Bank, told members of the commission that Walsh, who has hit the annual salary cap of $364,000, is “underpaid compared to peers around the country,” but the group hasn’t yet determined the best way to address that through the charter review.
The subcommittee has worked with the city’s Human Resources Department to compile extensive research to back up an eventual recommendation, which could be among the most contentious proposals put to voters in a city with an exceptionally high rate of people living on wages below the federal poverty level.
Adams, Martinez-Flores, Robinson and Naomi Miller, executive director of the American Council of Engineering Companies, also serve on the subcommittee.
Council districts and redistricting subcommittee: This subcommittee has been asked to look into whether the city should increase the number of council districts to keep pace with the city’s population growth, and whether its redistricting should be handled by an independent commission, like the one Michigan uses.
It’s chaired by Frank Garza, a former city attorney, who said at the Feb. 22 meeting that his group had so far focused exclusively on the process for redistricting, preparing recommendations for both a version that council would approve, and one that could operate independent from the council.
In an interview, he told the San Antonio Report the subcommittee so far favors the idea of having council sign off on redistricting recommendations, as opposed to the independent approach.
McKee-Rodriguez is among those urging the commission not to recommend additional council districts, which he said could dilute the city’s Black vote.
Miller, Perez, UTSA demographer Rogelio Sáenz and María Salazar, the LGBTQ chair for LULAC, also serve on the subcommittee.
Language modernization subcommittee: This groups is tasked with updating the language of the City Charter.
Per a Jan. 22 request from Nirenberg, it is also looking at whether to put new guardrails on council members’ ability to request a special meeting.
That idea has drawn criticism from council members pushing for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire resolution the mayor doesn’t want, but subcommittee meeting minutes indicate the group is looking at how other cities handle special meeting requests, and whether certain topics are appropriate.
Salazar chairs the subcommittee, which includes Garza, Potter and Sáenz.
Charter Review Commission member Pat Frost is a member of the San Antonio Report’s board of directors.
