“State of the City,” State of Confusion

Some of us are sticklers for words.  “Grammar Nazis,” if you will.  Oftentimes the situation is inconsequential and therefore not worth harping on.  Sometimes, you expect more from the source.  Still yet other times, you wonder if there’s a degree of calculation involved.

When San Antonio mayor Ron Nirenberg delivered his “State of the City” address recently from the Tech Port Center + Arena at the Port San Antonio, one could be forgiven for wondering which of the last two options we were getting.

He used “pandemic” or “covid” no less than two dozen times, blaming it for society’s troubles over the last two years.  He has a lot of company in the political class in assigning such blame.  And they’re all wrong.

The turmoil we’ve seen since the spring of 2020 has largely been the result of policy choices.  For pols who have an aversion to a dictionary, that means it was an “option,” an “alternative” to leaving us free to navigate the virus, which we were starting to do. 

But, as they so often do, they have leveraged their own poor decisions to portray themselves as heroes coming to the rescue with a raft of solutions.  The mayor rattled of just such a list.

One of the most prominent involves workforce development.

With funding from the federal CARES Act, the city set up the “Train for Jobs” (TfJ) program to help those thrown out of work by the government shutdowns (“pandemic/covid” in political-speak). 

With a whiff of political opportunism, he and supporters put a successor, “Ready to Work” (RtW) on the ballot in November 2020, regardless of the poor results of TfJ.  They successfully convinced voters to pass it.

With a gust of reality, businesses and existing educational systems wiped away nearly all shutdown job losses before RtW even got off the ground. 

One of those institutions is the Alamo Colleges District (ACD), which the mayor gave props to in his speech (disclaimer: one of our board members teaches there).

They also happen to be one of the organizations onboard with RtW.  Why is it necessary though, to cross ‘revenue’ streams?  Not all voters approve of being compelled to pay excessive taxes.  Why are they at the mercy of those that do?  Do the rights of minority factor into consideration of any of this? 

When you have elected representatives like District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello-Havrda, who seize on “occasions when city government can have a direct influence on education,” these tendencies don’t come as much of a surprise. 

Perhaps all of this is what the mayor had in mind when he credited City Manager Erik Walsh with “responsible stewardship of your tax dollars while managing a daunting array of programs and services.”

Is Mr. Walsh and his team ready add “affordable housing” projects to their docket?  In an almost clairvoyant statement, the mayor predicted that issue “will outlast the pandemic.”

Another arguably calculated, shutdown-related maneuver was putting Prop A on the ballot in May 2021.  Overshadowed by the much-ballyhooed Prop B targeting the police officers union in the midst of the “defund” movement, Prop A made the recently-passed “affordable housing” bond possible.

This section of the mayor’s address is replete with confusion, starting with how more government involvement can help.    

We live in the fastest growing state, at least when measured by the fact that we picked up two seats in congress as a result of the last census.  More folks coming in means more demand for housing, but that’s where the organic reasons for soaring home prices end. 

The next cause is government, pure and simple.  An unsung culprit is one that San Antonians have less direct control over; monetary policy coming down from Washington D.C.  A volatile, or weak dollar means investors drift toward safer assets.

Voila; housing!  And when more pour their resources there, prices rise further. 

District 8 Councilman Manny Pelaez offered a nugget of wisdom recently in the San Antonio Express-News when he said the “most impactful thing my … colleagues and I can do is to get the heck out of the way.”

Then he loses his way and falls back into the mayor’s way of thinking, suggesting citizens urge their state and federal representatives to send “more of our taxes” home “so we can incentivize” and “invest in … new housing stock.”

Basically, just funnel tax loot through a different channel of government. 

That they believe they are the ones best suited to navigate “labor and supply chain problems” that they contributed to with their “Stay Home, Work Safe” shutdown orders, in an effort to “thwart rising housing prices,” is an exercise in breathtaking arrogance. 

That’s matched by their posture toward business.

The mayor says he “recognize(s) the great stress that” the shutdowns “put on our business community.”  He touts the support and involvement of “170 businesses” in the RtW program.

However, that’s just a fraction of all employers in San Antonio, no doubt the majority of which are small businesses.  It’s highly unlikely they can also afford a line item in their budget for lobbying. 

While the mayor worries about a lack of demand-side “participation in other sectors of the economy,” we’d have a more prosperous community if budding entrepreneurs had less of their savings siphoned off by property taxes.

Alas, they only seem to get giddy about changing that when the state compels them to.  Were 14% and 15% rises in home sales prices and rents, respectively, last year not cause for action?  It doesn’t take all that much courage to do the right thing for the real government benefactors.

Instead, they throw “millions of dollars in federal recovery funds” here, and “$200 million in emergency housing assistance” there, believing it will have a positive impact.  Not only is that misguided, but the detrimental effect in the long-run is lost on them.

If politicians ever became curious enough to brush up on their vocabulary, they’d do well to start with the word “humility.”  We’d all be better off as a result.