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The San Antonio City Council will hold a special session on Friday to publicly discuss changes to a key policymaking process made by Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones.
Last week, three council members signed a three-signature memo, a rarely used process, which requires that a public meeting be held to discuss and potentially vote on an issue, after repeatedly arguing the changes went beyond Jones’ legal authority.
Jones has said her changes to the Council Consideration Request (CCR) process were up to her and that they were intended to make the process more efficient.
The memo was signed by District 5 Councilmember Teri Castillo, District 7 Councilmember Marina Alderete Gavito, and District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte.
After they submitted the memo last week, Alderete Gavito said the mayor gave them no choice.
“We weren’t seeing any traction,” she said. “We weren’t seeing any movement with that. We gave her two weeks. We have CCRs in the pipeline that we need to start working on.”
She and her two colleagues have said Jones’ primary changes to the process — requiring that the city manager and city attorney sign off on any proposed policies and running it by the mayor’s chief of staff — could block the democratic policymaking system in place.
“With a couple of these prerequisites, what it essentially is allowing unelected officials to stifle and or kill policy before the general public has an understanding of why something can’t move forward,” Castillo said.
Before any CCR can be considered by the council, five council members must sign off on it to indicate their interest in discussing it.
The three members have said that it is an adequate system of checks and balances, and that the current CCR process formed after over a year of internal and public discussion under Mayor Ron Nirenberg.
Jones dismissed her colleagues’ informal request for a meeting they made before this more formal step after a town hall last month, calling it a “petty” issue that would get in the way of other serious items the council is tasked with handling this month.
Those include budget work sessions, potential infrastructure and housing bonds, and a potential vote on a terms sheet with the San Antonio Spurs over a new arena.
Jones did not respond to TPR’s request for comment on the special session.
Jones has also recently gotten into conflict with Bexar County officials over what she called a “leaked” video of the District 8 Councilmember Ivalis Meza Gonzalez’s magistration process after she was arrested under suspicion of driving while intoxicated on July 24.
The magistrate court is regularly livestreamed by the county.
The hearing is scheduled for Friday at 4:30 p.m. according to city council staff.
