Last November, 83% of Houston voters supported an amendment to their city’s charter to create a process for city council members to submit agenda items for consideration at regularly held council meetings. Until then, the mayor of Houston had full control over council meeting agendas, but the amendment empowered Houston council members to have a say in what the full council could debate and vote on.
Houston joined other major Texas cities, like Laredo and Austin, with this democratic process already in place. But in San Antonio, the process for creating council agendas remains similar to Houston’s previous, antiquated process. The San Antonio mayor, in consultation with the city manager, creates our council’s weekly agendas.
In San Antonio, we elect council members to help solve our problems, but in some ways, we don’t enable them to do so. Not being able to place items on the weekly meeting agenda can prevent discussions and delay action to solve problems.
As a freshman council member, I often found myself frustrated when faced with problems that had existed long before I was elected to office. I sometimes wondered, what did all the council members before me spend their time working on? These are solvable problems. Why haven’t they been addressed?
I had inherited several major city construction projects experiencing repeated and extensive delays. Local business owners on Broadway and North St. Mary’s Street complained that these messy construction projects were limiting customer access and adversely impacting sales.
It turned out that a solution to our painful construction delays had already been proposed. In March of 2021, before I was elected to office, District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda had drafted and submitted a policy proposal for an ordinance allowing the City of San Antonio to exclude contractors with a history of poor performance from being awarded projects, even if a contractor submitted the lowest cost bid. It was a great, common-sense policy proposal, but it was shelved at City Hall for almost two years.
It wasn’t until local business owners organized out of frustration with poorly executed city construction projects that Councilwoman Cabello Havrda’s proposal was finally placed on the agenda for full council consideration and action. City Council did not have an opportunity to vote on this policy proposal until January 2023, when it passed unanimously.
The week before that ordinance was brought to council, I submitted my own policy proposal on Protecting Small Businesses From City Construction Delays to the City Clerk. That proposal would take fines paid by contractors for not meeting project deadlines and distribute those funds to local businesses impacted by the construction delays to help offset their financial losses. My proposal was signed by four of my council colleagues, yet over one year and four months later, that proposal continues to sit on a shelf, never having been assigned to a committee or discussed by council.
Citizens expect better governance and faster results. But it can be difficult to solve community challenges when you have to wait years to discuss them, if given the opportunity to do so at all.
Last November, Mayor Ron Nirenberg appointed a charter review commission and tasked them with developing recommendations for San Antonio city charter amendments for voters to consider. The mayor’s charter review commission was given a strict, narrow focus on just four topics that the mayor selected.
That commission will present its recommendations to the full city council on Wednesday for consideration to be placed on the ballot in November. Council members are free to consider these recommendations, but they can also propose additional charter amendments to place on the ballot for voters to decide on.
San Antonio citizens deserve to have the challenges their districts face addressed in a timely manner. Citizens deserve to be represented by council members empowered to place items on council meeting agendas for discussion and votes. City council should include a proposed charter amendment on the November ballot that creates a process for council members to do so — then let the voters decide. If council members in Houston, Austin and Laredo can be entrusted with this responsibility, why can’t ours?
