San Antonio’s City Council is still months away from deciding the future of horse-drawn carriages on downtown streets, but a council member who led the charge to phase them out two years ago now says she’s OK with the horses continuing to operate.
Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran (D3) said Tuesday that when she submitted the November 2022 Council Consideration Request with Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) to ban the practice, she was concerned about “extensive downtown construction, our increasingly hot summers and the urban heat island effect.”
But after meeting with the carriage operators and visiting the horse barns, Viagran wants to see the city work with the industry on changes that could allow them to continue operating in their current location.
Her comments come weeks after the city’s Transportation Advisory Board unanimously recommended that City Council consider keeping the horse-drawn carriages in downtown.
“As a longstanding advocate for small, minority-owned businesses, I want to work with the five companies that employ over 115 workers, collectively, to ensure they have as many options as possible,” Viagran said in a written statement read at the council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
That could include retraining the employees for new careers, or “finding creative ways for riders, operators and horses to continue to coexist in their downtown footprint.”
Despite the comments from his co-sponsor, McKee-Rodriguez contends that there’s still ample support from the both the City Council and the public for a full-fledged ban.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg has backed the idea, and proponents of the ban just picked up a new supporter: Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), who chairs the Public Safety Committee and is considering running for mayor in 2025.
“It’s interesting to see that the horse-drawn carriages are perhaps one of the remaining customs we have in our city from the end of the Civil War,” Cabello Havrda said.
“Some people think that it’s time that we left that practice behind, and I’ll tell you that I agree with them,” she said. “I’ve heard all the considerations, and my thinking is that our city should move beyond this practice.”
Tuesday’s committee meeting was intended to seek input from the council on what a potential ordinance might look like, such as moving the routes into local parks and off the streets.
The carriage industry, which wants to stay downtown, has pitched starting weekday service later, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., to allow downtown traffic to die down, or phase out day shifts during the week.
City staff laid out plans for months of additional conversations and research, including seeking input from the Animal Care Services Advisory Board and formal meetings with the industry.
“The question that we have to answer is, at a certain point: … When does the existence of horse-drawn carriages operating downtown clash with the changing culture in San Antonio?” McKee-Rodriguez said.
Though the carriage-horse operators said they’ve made many changes over the years to accommodate a changing downtown, it’s still a lot of uncertainty for a precarious industry.
One of the carriage company’s representatives at Tuesday’s meeting said her company spends roughly $150,000 per year on grain for the horses, and would need time to make other arrangements if their revenue source was cut.
A different company is struggling to find a new downtown barn for their horses amid zoning challenges.
