Six months ago, members of the Bexar County Commissioners Court, which is under new leadership this year for the first time in two decades, asked for more work sessions to hash out details of the county budget.
Less than 24 hours from an expected vote on that budget, however, commissioners concede there’s still much work to be done on improving their procedures for collaboration.
Roughly 20 minutes into their third budget work session Monday, longtime community activist T.C. Calvert accused commissioners of deploying 9/11-style terrorism tactics to projects in his son’s precinct.
The comments came as part of an hours-long lobbying effort on the part of Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) and community members to enact eleventh-hour changes to the budget, and were met with swift criticism from Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3), who walked off the dais in response.
Most commissioners had already worked with staff to determine budgetary priorities for their precincts headed into Monday’s session.
Calvert, on the other hand, had exhausted nearly every avenue, including threatening to sue the county, in his effort to make major changes to the $2.95 billion budget proposed by county staff last month.
He invited numerous residents to speak on his behalf at the public hearing Monday — including his father — as he called on staff to reconsider a new spending cap favored by his colleagues.
“You started this meeting off today in a moment of silence about the terrorist attack that took place in New York City,” the older Calvert said, standing at a podium and addressing his comments to the court. “Well, a lot of us feel that you, the commissioners court, are doing the same thing to the projects that Commissioner Calvert has proposed.”
Moody, whose own last-minute attempt to set a lower tax rate was denied by colleagues on Monday, walked out of the meeting and returned to the dais after the older Calvert was finished speaking.
“As a Marine officer who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and has lost many friends in that fight, I couldn’t stomach the comparison,” Moody said in a statement after the meeting. “These comments were so reckless and out of line, they must be condemned publicly.”
Commissioners voted unanimously to accept a list of staff changes proposed to the budget Monday. They’ll cast a vote on the final proposal Tuesday.
Elected for the first time in 2014, Calvert is currently the longest-serving member of the court. Moody joined the court in November, and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai took office Jan. 1.
All three men were in favor of more work sessions earlier this year, as part of a larger county government modernization effort of spearheaded by Sakai. Despite those changes, Sakai told commissioners Monday he regretted the fact that so many concerns were left up in the air as they approached the deadline.
“The minute we adopt this budget, I will start to sit with the budget office and debrief them as to what I think we could have done better,” Sakai told commissioners after the staff changes were approved Monday.
“We could have communicated better… We could have been more clear. And I think I clearly agree with [Commissioner Calvert] that this budget process needs to be looked at,” Sakai said.
Calvert and the public comments of his allies dominated the roughly three-hour work session Monday afternoon, as they sought to fight a new spending limit imposed by county staff aimed at keeping things equal between the precincts.
“I think we all had different numbers of requests,” said Commissioner Justin Rodriguez (Pct. 2). “The budget office looked at that and said, ‘Look, we have to figure out how to be fair in this process.’ … So they landed on [$10.5] million per precinct.”
Calvert argued that approach doesn’t do enough to make up for past spending disparities and differences in population growth. In particular, he and his allies said Monday that Precinct 1, represented by Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores, has received more than its fair share in previous years.
Clay-Flores declined to comment after the work session.
Though Calvert’s efforts were largely shrugged off by fellow commissioners, Rodriguez said he’d work with him to help fund some of his priorities outside of the budget process. Calvert gave staff verbal directions on how to spend the $10.5 million designated for his precinct Monday.
“My understanding was, he just was kind of uncooperative in giving that priority list to the budget office until today,” Rodriguez said.
After the meeting, Moody said he still had concerns about the budget proposal that he was working hastily to address.
“I have some items that I’m going to speak to tomorrow that I need to take up very quickly,” he said. “We’ll just keep working through it.”
