Efforts to increase city spending on youth programs, install ranked-choice voting in municipal elections and end a prohibition on campaign activity by city employees were all punted by the 15-member Charter Review Commission Monday evening.
The commission spent roughly six months assessing and debating Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s potential changes to the City Charter, during which the co-chairs repeatedly vowed to consider the public’s suggestions at the end of the process.
But after a brief meeting Monday, commission co-chair Bonnie Prosser Elder said there wasn’t enough time to fully assess the public’s ideas, and that Nirenberg had directed the commission to “focus its efforts exclusively” on his list of potential changes.
The meeting ended after roughly an hour, and a second meeting dedicated to proposals from the public scheduled for Thursday was canceled.
The commission’s final recommendations are now headed to the City Council for approval in June. If the council signs off on the ideas, they’ll go before voters on the Nov. 5 ballot.
“The charges that were provided [by the mayor] required a significant amount of research, analysis and work,” said Prosser Elder, who also serves as general counsel and senior vice president for VIA Metropolitan Transit.
“The other three items that came out of the public comment section, in order to give them any justice … It would require a significant additional time,” she said.
Ideas brought forward by the public could get a second life if the City Council decides to take them up when it reviews the commission’s other changes.
In particular, there seemed to be broad support for lifting the prohibition on city employees’ ability to campaign.
On Monday the commission viewed a brief presentation from city staff on the feasibility of the three items with the most public support.
Ranked-choice voting runs into problems with state law, the city attorney’s office said, while the effort to direct more money toward youth spending would hamstring future councils’ ability to make spending decisions.
As for the prohibition on city staff’s ability to participate in campaigns, that language was added to the City Charter in 1951, making San Antonio one of just two Texas cities with such a rule on the books, the presentation said.
“I feel like it’s really time that we move on into the 21st century,” said Shelley Potter, a former San Antonio ISD union leader who serves on the commission and pushed the group to consider city employees’ request. “We’re out of step with what most public employers do.”
But Prosser Elder said Monday that the commission would not take a vote on the issue, instead turning its notes over to the City Council.
Guillermo Vazquez, an area field services director for the union representing city employees, said it was disappointing to city employees who hoped the commission would take up their suggestion so they could participate in city elections ahead of an open mayoral race and other high-profile contests in 2025.
They’d been preparing to make their case at Monday’s meeting, after attending months of public comment sessions earlier in the process. But the co-chairs alerted commission members ahead of that meeting that no action would be taken on outside proposals.
Potter asked each commission member to weigh in publicly so that the council would know where they stood. While several members voiced support for the idea, others said they wanted more research on why the provision was created in the first place.
“I think it was pretty clear that overall, our commission members are supportive of the idea of removing those restrictions,” Potter said in an interview after the meeting.
“As far as the due diligence that we gave all the other issues, we didn’t have the opportunity to do that,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that council won’t.”
