San Antonio City Attorney Andy Segovia presented to the City Council on Thursday the proposed city charter amendments they will vote on next week.
The list of charter amendments presented included smaller raises for council members and the mayor than originally proposed by the Charter Review Commission. It also included a new proposal to remove the longtime ban on city employees engaging in municipal politics outside of their jobs.
The changes come from council’s comments and requests after they were first presented with the Charter Review Commission’s recommendations in June.
The city council will vote on the recommendations one by one in August, and the approved recommendations will then go on the November ballot for voters to decide.
The new salary proposals presented to council were $58,000 for council members and $73,000 for the mayor, with annual adjustments tied to the U.S. Census Bureau’s definition of San Antonio’s area median income.
Other recommended changes included new term lengths for council and the mayor and the elimination of tenure and salary caps for the city manager. The council votes in August, and voters make final decisions in November.
Council members are currently paid a salary of $45,722, and the mayor is paid a salary of $61,725.
The original salary proposals from the Charter Review Commission were $80,000 for council members and $95,000 for the mayor.
Most council members called in June for those salary proposals to be reduced, but some said they’d been shrunk too much.
“If we wanna treat any potential new council member along the lines of what the median family can earn in this city, then we ought to be paying that kind of compensation,” District 9 Councilmember and mayoral candidate John Courage said. “And I’m not gonna be a city councilman for District 9 — this is not gonna benefit me.”
Several council members recommended that the salaries line up with the average median income for a family of three in San Antonio, in the $60,000 range. Others, like District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte and District 8 Councilmember Manny Peláez, another candidate for mayor, said they wouldn’t support any raise.
District 6 Councilmember Melissa Cabello Havrda said if council does approve a raise, no current member should be able to benefit from it even if they are re-elected.
Council members also shared concerns with the proposal to extend council terms to four years instead of two, and how that might affect current members.
Currently, council members and the mayor each serve two-year terms for a maximum of eight years served. Under the proposed amendment, council members currently serving their third two-year term would be allowed to run for a four-year term next year, giving them 10 years in office if elected.
City staff said that possibility would be limited to only those current council members who are in that position, and that the city would make a temporary exception on term lengths to avoid staggering council elections in the future.
The reason given for avoiding staggered elections is that whichever election cycle the mayoral election sits on would have a much higher turnout than non-mayoral years, affecting the fairness for council member elections.
Segovia said the City Attorney's Office would present more information about how staggering would work to council members between now and the vote next week after multiple council members said they wanted to learn more about the possibility of staggering elections.
Several council members also pushed back on language in the ethics revisions proposal that would eliminate term limits for citizen members of the Ethics Review Board.
City staff will have to decide what final language to present to the council when they vote next week. Council members will also have the power to make any motions they wish to potentially amend the charter amendment proposals.
Cabello Havrda and Whyte said they wanted to change the charter to give council the authority to hire and fire the city attorney, rather than the city manager. Both were involved in an effort in May to attempt to push out Segovia over what they said was his lack of transparency.
“Council members who are accountable to the voters should have an attorney that’s accountable to them, and that’s not what we have now,” Cabello Havrda said. “As it stands, with the city attorney accountable to the city manager, there’s a risk that legal opinions are filtered or laundered before they get to the city council.”
Cabello Havrda also proposed another new amendment that would add two elected ratepayer representatives to the boards of CPS Energy and San Antonio Water System to represent residents in conversations about rate increases.
After Cabello Havrda made the two recommendations, Mayor Ron Nirenberg shot down efforts to introduce new amendments at this stage.
“This is not open season on the city charter,” Nirenberg said. “We do have a presentation, we have a Charter Review Commission, we have a posted agenda item [next week]. We need clarification and comments on the items that are posted in the presentation.”
Council must decide by Aug. 19 whether to order a City Charter amendment election in November.
Council members voiced near unanimous agreement on putting forward the ballot amendment that would remove salary and tenure caps on the city manager, as well as for the language modernization changes.
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