City Charter Commission Hearing – April 25th – Suzie’s Transcript
Commission members, good evening.
I’m appreciative that you have been given a mandate to review our city charter, but I’m hoping that you do NOT interpret this as a mandate to necessarily CHANGE our charter. Any changes should be approached with a lot of caution.
SPECIFICALLY:
1. Ethics Review: I do NOT support the creation of an independent ethics officer and/or the creation of an Ethics Review Board. Right now, frankly I’d like to see you recommend equal treatment of council members when indiscretions occur.
2. Council Pay: The current pay for council members is set at the median income for the citizens in San Antonio; around $45,000. I cannot believe you want to raise it to over six-figures, or even double it! Be aware of how elitist this is.
Our council acknowledges that we are one of the poorest large cities, and yet you want to elevate salaries for our civil servants to such grand levels? We are not here to support a ‘royal court’. We want elected officials who want to serve the city, and there are plenty who want to do this without royal pay!
3. Council Term Limits: Keep the current four two-year terms.
Please be aware that our state and congressional representatives are still elected every two years. Our LOCAL officials should also be up for election every two. It forces them to get out into the community, and gives the community the lever it needs to vote an unacceptable person out.
4. City Manager Tenure and Compensation: Don’t take the cap off the city manager’s pay or his/her tenure.
We are a home rule city. The longer someone is in power, the more power they accrue, and we should have some guard rails in place to prevent that. It’s easy for our council to get lazy and cede power to someone who has been In charge. Read my lips: that’s dangerous!
5. Increasing the number of districts in the city: we should NOT be increasing the number of districts in our city to twelve.
Think about it: our state and congressional reps have much larger districts to represent. If they can make it work, why can’t our district councilmen? It’s really quite embarrassing that they would plead inability to do their job!
Even more scandalous is what would they be doing to the city budget?! To add two more seats would mean that you would add tons of money in the budget for just administration! You’d be paying more salaries to a councilperson, their staff, and all the other costs that go with each position. Council, please do not tell San Antonio residents that you can’t rise to the occasion and get more done with what you have. Everyone else in this city and in this country is being asked to do just that.
I repeat – we do not want to support a royal court.
We want citizen servants who want to help our city and are willing to do it for reasonable compensation and invest themselves at the same levels the rest of us do. Every change suggested tonight strikes me to have originated from people who are saying they can’t do their job and so need more money, need more help, need it to be easier, etc. This kind of attitude is what needs to be addressed first!
Our current charter has worked very well for a LONG TIME, and so I hope that you will be very careful about how you advise tinkering with it.