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Mayor Ron Nirenberg is just a couple of months away from leaving City Hall as his eight-year mayoral term limit nears.
He sat with TPR’s Josh Peck in his City Hall office to reflect on his 12 years working in San Antonio’s city government and to discuss what comes next for San Antonio and himself.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Peck: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to you today, Mayor Nirenberg. You know we’re talking here in April. It’s 12 years since your election to [San Antonio] City Council District 8 in 2013, eight years since your election to mayor in 2017. … So there's a lot I want to talk to you about today. I want to start with the light stuff. What are some of your, as you see them, your biggest achievements as mayor of San Antonio?
Nirenberg: Yeah, well, thanks, Josh, and it's great to be here with TPR. As I look back on my tenure in City Hall, what I am most proud of is that … we've refocused ourselves on addressing how to define economic prosperity in this city and ensuring that we are building a city that is prosperous, not just for some people, but for all people. And we're doing it through a systems approach to economic mobility and ending cycles of poverty, particularly in investments in human capital, workforce, development and education. … Of course, the foundation of economic security for any community and for a family is housing, and we have really solidified an affordable housing agenda in this city, and [it] has been resourced, and it's been supported by the public.
Peck: Could you talk a little bit about some of the specific areas on the ground [regarding] how city policy has changed affordable housing in San Antonio?
Nirenberg: Well, and it's always a work in progress, and we live in a dynamic environment. … We found through the housing policy work about … 95,000 households that were cost burdened. In order to address those issues, we needed to do a number of policy changes, mainly to preserve the housing that we have, because the most affordable housing is the one we don't have to lose to disrepair, etcetera, and we have programs for that. And also, we needed to work to facilitate the private sector that produces the vast majority of housing in our community. We're not going to subsidize market rate housing, we're not going to subsidize luxury housing, but we can facilitate its production where it's needed by cutting unnecessary red tape.
Peck: I wonder if you’ve felt a tension, or feel a tension now, between doing that as a priority, and then, you know, you have major development projects — I’m thinking obviously, Project Marvel. Do you think these things are in tension with the city's policy to support affordable housing?
Nirenberg: There is a tension there, absolutely. I don't at all deny the tension that exists, but we have to recognize that we need to do both things — be able to create economic opportunity and support economic development but also address the needs for housing. … what we can do at the city is to do displacement assessments and use the tools that we have at the local level to try to address the rising property values.
Peck: So there’s a couple things I want to make sure we get to. One of them is Project Marvel. Obviously, it’ll be one of the biggest things that you leave city council, kind of like, "Here you go, guys. Figure this one out ... this next term" with a big caveat that you won't be the one seeing those details and voting on these things. You have been a proponent of the concept—
Nirenberg: As is the nature of most great things. You don't get to do them all from start to finish. But I hear your point, yeah—
Peck: What [are your] thoughts on how the council and the next mayor should handle Project Marvel and all these multitudes of smaller developments and big developments like the Spurs downtown?
Nirenberg: I'm a believer in Project Marvel, and Project Marvel, unfortunately, has taken on its own narrative because of some of the silence and lack of details that we've had up until this point. But I will tell you, Project Marvel, to me, is a realization that downtown San Antonio needs to be a vibrant place for local residents to come to and enjoy and shouldn't be viewed simply as a collection of projects that periodically happen and are mainly driven by the tourism industry. My advice for the next mayor and the council is to continue moving forward and thinking big. ... a prudent, community- focused, community-benefited, sports and entertainment district that with the Spurs in the heart of downtown, that also finally makes good on the opportunities to bring the East Side the kind of development and economic opportunity that they have needed and wanted since the AT&T Center was first brought over there. We can do those things if we dare to try.
Peck: So another one of the things that you mentioned, talking about some things that you've achieved, is on workforce development. I think, obviously, the biggest, most expansive example of that is Ready to Work, a program that you spearheaded that received voter approval. There have been lots of critics among the media [and] among the public about the program and its graduation rates, its placement rates. … but I want to give you the chance to talk about the program, if you think some of these criticisms are off base, if they miss something about this program.
Nirenberg: By the time the program funds run out, which is going to take longer than we initially thought, we will have trained tens of thousands of people in the city. So I'm proud of this program. It is much harder than any of us thought it would be, but breaking the cycle of poverty requires us to have faith that we can help people in this community reach their full potential. I will tell you that $6,000 per participant, which is what the average spend is when they're placed into a job, is well worth the money if we break the cycle of poverty. And if we don't, if we're not willing to try, then we should stop talking about poverty, because it's insincere.
Peck: I want to talk about the future. I'm sure there are many things you could think of for this as an answer to this, but maybe what’s one of the one of the biggest challenges that you see the next San Antonio City Council and mayor facing, whether it be something local and organic or something that comes from the state legislature or the federal government?
Nirenberg: The chaos and malice that has been shown through the Trump administration actions that are starving local communities, cutting off funding for nonprofits and to local communities, that are wholesale cutting the workforce of incredible agencies that we rely on to protect public health or to do the basic functions of survival in this country are creating huge headwinds and uncertainty in the functioning of our local communities, and that is a crisis of dramatic proportions that will have to be dealt with by future leaders. … And so you know that, to me, is the greatest challenge is the political environment we're in. And coupled with that is the fact that it's a divisive, polarized political environment as well, and the misinformation out there is so loud and overwhelming that it's hard to get information out that people need to have. So … to me, that’s the greatest challenge that the next, the next set of leaders in the city will face.
Peck: And then, very last thing I think I have to ask, you know, what comes next for you? Maybe, is it going to be the Texas legislature or some political nonprofit think tank, or maybe even, you know, a run for Congress against Chip Roy?
Nirenberg: (laughter) So you know, I was not planning to do — to have a political life when I was growing up. I have enjoyed the time I've been privileged to serve and to lead the city. The truth of the matter is, I have fallen in love with public service. I do believe it's been a calling, and I enjoy solving problems, and Lord knows, there's more of those being created than solved at the moment in our political spectrum. So I don’t think I’m done, but I think you’ll have to wait and see. I don't think you've heard the last of me, though.
Peck: Well, thank you so much for your time, again, mayor.
Nirenberg: Thank you, Josh — and long live public radio.
