A 16-month-old proposal to end operation of horse-drawn carriages on downtown San Antonio streets is suddenly off to the races.
Rather than banning them entirely, however, the plan’s author, Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), and other council members are now sounding open to the idea of allowing them to operate instead in parks or other less-congested areas.
The council consideration request (CCR) filed on Nov. 28, 2022 by McKee-Rodriguez and Phyllis Viagran (D3) asked city staff to come up with a plan that would “phase out” the carriage horse industry by December 2023. Councilmembers Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4) and Ana Sandoval (D7), who chose not to seek reelection last year, plus Manny Pelaez (D8) also signed on.
The idea drew praise from animal welfare advocates, who call the practice cruel, while eliciting backlash from carriage companies, whose leaders say their businesses adhere to strict animal welfare standards set by the city’s own equine veterinarian.
Local carriage company representatives lawyered up for the fight, and even backed political opponents to McKee-Rodriguez in 2023.
But talk of the ban had grown quiet until this week, when some carriage company operators said they were surprised to learn from a news report that the council’s Governance Committee was planning to discuss the proposal for the first time Wednesday.
Governance is the first stop for potential new ordinances, and members of the public aren’t allowed to sign up to speak until a proposal is taken up by the committee assigned to oversee it. Thanks to some recent procedural changes, however, McKee-Rodriguez was allowed to address colleagues.
“I’ll admit, I thought it had been killed,” said McKee-Rodriguez, one of the council’s most progressive members, who pointed to heat, construction and traffic changes in recent years as degradations of the horses’ working conditions.
A presentation from city staff mentioned replacing horse-drawn carriages with electric ones. It did not incorporate the option of relocating them.
But Mayor Ron Nirenberg seconded the idea, suggesting Brackenridge Park could be an appropriate location, while “two-way streets in downtown does not make sense in 2024 in San Antonio, Texas.”
Last year, San Antonio carriage operators seemed to agree that heat and pollution were becoming problems for their businesses. Facing a decrease in their eligible hours of operation, they sought unsuccessfully to loosen some of the city’s rules prohibiting horse-drawn carriages from running when the temperature is above 95 degrees or when an Air Quality Health Alert has been issued.
On Wednesday, Stephanie Garcia, owner of the Yellow Rose and H.R.H. Carriage Company, said any relocation would have to take into account access to tourists and historical sites used on their tours.
“Obviously it’s a compromise, but we have to be in the downtown area,” she said. “We rely on the hotel and restaurant clientele.”
Animal welfare vs. ‘agrotourism’
San Antonio’s proposed ban comes amid a broader nationwide push from animal welfare advocates to remove carriage horses from busy streets.
A Dallas City Council committee advanced a potential ban on horse-drawn carriages on Monday, and at San Antonio’s meeting Wednesday, Pelaez listed off gruesome examples of carriage horse abuse in other cities.
“In a city that lives and breathes off of tourism, there are people who will choose to not come here if there was a viral video like [the ones taken in other cities],” said Pelaez, who is open to moving them but prefers an outright ban.
But the horse-drawn carriage industry is well-organized and ready to buck what it sees as a growing culture war with urban municipal leaders.
Mindy Patterson, president of Oklahoma-based Cavalry Group, which lobbies on behalf of the horse-drawn carriage industry nationwide, said they’ve found many sympathetic ears in conservative statehouse leaders across the country.
Those lawmakers support their effort to protect “agrotourism,” she said, and consider the carriage-horse bans part of “patchwork regulations” they’ve been trying to stamp out.
In a nod to that dynamic, last year Texas lawmakers approved House Bill 2127, which seeks to preempt municipalities from enforcing ordinances that regulate commerce beyond what the state specifically allows.
San Antonio leaders sued the state to stop that law’s implementation and a Travis County judge agreed with them in August of last year, though the state has appealed that decision.
“We’re counting on [Attorney General] Ken Paxton to enforce the law as these city councils break [it] by banning these lawful businesses,” said Patterson, who added that she’s been in contact with HB 2127’s author, state House Rep. Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock).
The city attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Done stalling
A background document for Wednesday’s council meeting offered some of city staff’s first research on the issue.
It said San Antonio has issued permits to the horse carriage industry since 1865, and under current permitting, five horse-drawn carriage companies can each operate five carriages.
Several council members suggested the CCR should move on to the Economic Development and Workforce Committee due to the employment issues entailed. Instead, city staff directed it to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has some authority over the horse-drawn carriages through the Transportation Advisory Board.
City Manager Erik Walsh said he envisioned the proposal going through a single committee, then moving to the full council for discussion and robust public input opportunities.
“One thing that’s been made clear in the year and some change since Councilwoman Viagran and I filed the horse-drawn carriage CCR is that the community is passionate and ready to finally have a discussion regarding horse-drawn carriages,” McKee-Rodriguez said.
Meanwhile, carriage industry leaders say they’re still eager to be included in the discussion.
“The best solution would be to sit down with us,” Garcia said. “Because since November 2022, not one of the City Council members has actually spoken to us or visited our locations.”
