The San Antonio City Council will vote on Thursday on the timeline to phase out the city’s nearly 160-year-old horse-drawn carriage industry.
The council members will be voting on a policy that, as it’s currently written, gives the industry three years to shut down its operations, though council members may change that timeline once they convene to vote. Other options, from one year to five years, were widely discussed in an October meeting about the industry’s phaseout.
During that meeting, council members were nearly evenly split between the one-, three-, and five-year options.
The vote comes two years after a policy proposal to discuss possibly phasing out the industry was co-written by District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 3 Councilmember Phyllis Viagran in 2022.
If the council approves the proposed policy as-written, horse-drawn carriages would cease to operate on Jan. 1, 2028. The operating hours for the industry’s five permitted carriage companies would shrink each year until then, and no new permits for carriage companies or licenses for new horses would be given after Dec. 12, 2024.
The city would also engage with company owners to help them work on drawing down their debt. The city has said the companies each hold between $70,000 and $700,000 in debt, and council members and company owners have shared concerns that they will go bankrupt if not given enough time to deal with their debt.
The city would begin holding job fairs and connecting horse-drawn carriage operators with other job-seeking resources, the city’s Ready to Work (RTW) workforce development program and LiftFund for new job and entrepreneurship opportunities.
A survey the city conducted of horse-drawn carriage operators found fewer than half were interested in RTW. That may be because the average RTW graduate makes roughly $44,000, compared to the vast majority of operators who make more than $50,000. Nearly half surveyed said they make more than $70,000.
The city council has the authority to change terms of the ban and the timeline before it votes to approve any policy on Thursday.
