What's Your Vision of San Antonio's future?

This morning I went to the launch meeting for SA2020, a series of public planning meetings to come up with a vision of San Antonio for the next ten years.  A very enthusiastic crowd was there, and I do mean crowd.  The event planners originally expected about 700 participants, over 1300 people signed up to go.  They managed the crowds by spilling over from the TriPoint YMCA at US 281 and N St Mary's to the SAWS building on the other side of the highway.   In order to enable all those people in different buildings to interact, the meeting was webcast by NOWCastSA. The webcast also made it so that not only could people at the conference participate, but also anyone online could as well.  The conference received over 1500 comments from the online community.  One man even tweeted fromt the Denver Airport while in transit.

The major themes that the attendees felt San Antonio needed to work on were:

• Education at all levels but especially school readiness and job and vocational training
• Health including magnet hospitals, lowered obesity rates, and accessibility to health care
• Sustainable Growth including revitaliztion of older areas, water policy, and more controlled growth
• Infrastructure Improvements
• Transit options from drivable streets to bicycle lanes and better mass transit
• Making SA more Hip--this particularly for the young singles out there
• Combine Growth, Progress and still keep the history of the city
• Improve Livability in the Inner city and keeping a balance with tourism
• Job Equity and bringing better paying jobs

But not only did we talk about what needed to improve we also talked about what's great about San Antonio.

• The Big city with the Small town feel
• Strong support of the military, not just the bases but also for disabled vets and retirees
• Cultural Diversity
• Historic Traditions and conservation
• Food
• Fiesta
• Economic Stability
• Strong work ethic
• Accessibility to more state parks than any other city in Texas
• Higher Education options
• Cooperation between the civilian and military Biomedical community

and many other positve qualities.

There are four more public meetings planned

October 28, 2010           Creating a Vision for San Antonio
  7-9 pm
November 20, 2010       How will we Measure Progress?
  9am-12noom
December 7, 2010         What Will Success Look Like? 
  7-9pm
January 22, 2011           Putting it Together:  SA2020
  9am-12noon

If you would like to participate in these meetings, check out the SA2020 website.  If you can't attend, the other meetings will also be webcast live and you can participate by posting comments during the meeting.

Brakenridge HS Mariachi Band

Now the people who came to the conference are probably the most engaged people in San Antonio when it comes to civic issues, but what about your average San Antonian?  SA2020 wants to hear from you as well.  They've made it easy for you by setting up an online community survey and a special youth survey to engage the youth of San Antonio to find out what San Antonio needs to do to keep them here.  So what do YOU think?

Texas Cities, the Shape of the Future

Joel Kotkin, an urban geographer and Forbes contributor, wrote an article back in March about the remarkable growth of Texas cities in the midst of the Great Recession.  He sees the Texas city as the urban landscape of the 21st Century.

Texas cities tend to sprawl out, have multi-modal business centers and aggressive annexation policies.  OK, so what does all this mean?  Well, I'm sure all of you have noticed that San Antonio covers a large area, so much so that it is hard to convey to children that even though you've traveled for 20 miles, you are still in San Antonio.  Multi-modal business centers are kind of like mini-downtowns, the Medical Center, the 281 corridor and the IH-35 corridors each have their own business culture, and many times people who work in these areas live near them as well.  

So what does aggressive annexation have to do with all this?  Annexation is the process cities use to extend their boundaries.  In Bexar County there is a lot of unincorporated (hasn't chartered as a town or city) land area.  The city government absorbs this land mass in two ways.  First it extends the city limits down a major thoroughfare or highway, such as IH-10 or FM 471.  This is called a finger, because it's long and skinny.  All of the land within a 5 mile radius is considered to be in the ETJ or Extra Territorial Jurisdiciton of the city.   All property within the ETJ is subject to City of San Antonio zoning and development ordinances, so the city controls how the land will be used.  Once the surrounding property meets a certain population density, the city annexes the area by extending the city limits around it.  Then the area is subject to San Antonio property taxes.  By extending the city boundaries the city expands its tax base and it's population.  This is why even though San Antonio's population is quite large compared to a city like Boston, it's surrounding area (all of the little towns around it) is actually quite a bit less populated.

Kotkin says that

To reshape a city in a sustainable way, you need to have a growing population, a solid and expanding job base and a relatively efficient city administration.

So, Texas cities increase their population not only through annexation but through job growth.  Of the four largest cities in Texas, San Antonio is the slowest job generator, but we still out perform places like Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. 

OK, I know a lot of you think our city is run inefficiently, but look at our government compared to say Chicago.

The New Yorker, for example, recently published a lavish tribute to the city and its mayor, Richard Daley. But as long-time Chicago observer Steve Bartin points out, the story missed--or simply ignored--many critical facts. Mistaking Daley's multi-term tenure as proof of effectiveness, it failed to recognize the region's continued loss of jobs, decaying infrastructure, rampant corruption and continued out-migration of the area's beleaguered middle class.

Not to mention the fact that Chicago is in financial distress. The pension funds for city employees is severely underfunded, and just 2 days ago their bond rating (the rate at which the city borrows money) was downgraded.  In an earlier post, I talked about San Antonio receiving the highest bond rating based on the savings cushion instituted by City Manager Sheryl Sculley.   Not only is the city of Chicago losing population, the towns surrounding it have declined as well. 

They're headin' south.