What are the issues?
Trish DeBerry-Mejia has a new campaign ad airing on TV in San Antonio focusing on work/life balance. In it she speaks of her commitment to focusing on family issues within the workplace such as childcare. “Creating a family-friendly culture that enables employees to fulfill themselves career-wise, while also being the best mother or father they know how to be has always been a priority with my company,” said DeBerry-Mejia. She is also hosting a table at UTSA’s Great Conversation! focusing on the same topic. So apparently she feels strongly that this is a critical issue in San Antonio. But is it really? What are the issues that San Antonio will be facing that the next mayor will deal with.
Cibrian speaks of needing to focus on better management of energy and developing alternative sources. She has enlisted the help of Bill Sinkin, noted activist and solar energy proponent, to help her campaign and provide counsel on the topic. Castro focuses on education and the need to start with pre-K learning to help foster a stronger San Antonio workforce. “As mayor, I will pursue a short-term, mid-term and long-term strategy to boost education and make San Antonio competitive in today’s knowledge-based economy,” said Castro in his announcement speech. He even has a poll on his website asking citizens what they think the issues are for San Antonio. The most recent results point to promoting business as the top issue.
But where do the candidates stand on these issues? What proposals do they have that outline the actions they will take to address these issues? DeBerry’s ad looks great and will most likely tug at the heart of many a working mother or family. But does it really speak to a vision for San Antonio? Can voters find in that clip the key messages that will help them decide the future of our city?
As we move into the early stages of the mayoral race it’s fair cut the candidates some slack as they build their organizations. Small sound bits are probably appropriate now. But that forgiveness can only hold for a little while longer. As voters we will need them all to hone their messages and give us what they plan to do and how it will affect our lives. From early indications Castro seems to be the candidate most likely to carve a vision out for San Antonio. Cibrian speaks in sound bites and DeBerry-Mejia is good at the marketing twist. That’s not to say they don’t have a vision. It’s just difficult to truly find it.
I posed a question to Trish on her site a few weeks ago and here is her response about what her top issues for San Antonio would be.
My approach is to first decide what we want these projects to do, and quite frankly it’s to create jobs. We need to prioritize our list based upon the following criteria: 1) will the project create jobs and employ people? 2) is the project ready to go to construction, meaning are the engineering and design elements completed? 3) will the project have long-term positive results on our quality of life?
If you take these premises, and apply them to the list of candidates, you will see very quickly which projects are best suited to stimulate the economy. So, in answering your question, I am going to give you four: 1) modernizing our classrooms – technology is moving at a rapid pace and in order to have employable citizens we need to make sure students have the tools necessary to learn and be competitive in a world where technology is affecting everything we do; 2) improving our mobility — we know which projects are queued up and ready to go. Whether its Bus Rapid Transit running from UTSA through the medical center and into downtown; or adding additional lanes to congested highway systems such as Loop 1604 North and US 281. A comprehensive transportation system that includes expanded public transit, such as light rail, and additional options for motorists is absolutely critical to San Antonio’s economic development; 3) Diversifying our energy sources — we have to asses what roles coal, natural gas, wind, solar and nuclear have in providing our future energy needs; and 4) Minimizing our reliance on the Edwards Aquifer. We have got to get focused on other sources of water. Chief among these candidates is looking at desalination.
All of these projects are in various stages of advanced design. They will create jobs, can get ramped up fairly quickly, and improve our quality of life.
Thanks Travis. I like the approach (very business like) but there’s more to governing a city than just basic project management. It shows she has a project focus, not a policy focus. So I’d sign her up to help implement policy but not set it. This actually reinforces what I’ve seen in DeBerry-Mejia as being weak on public administration.
You have to also look at how to bring about things like modernization of classrooms. Schools are managed by school districts, not the city. Things like improving mobility and diversification of energy are starting down the right paths. Public works projects focused on that will help a lot.
What I’d like to see is some of this laid out in more detail on her website.
RbearSAT. You pose a very interesting question. I think its hard to answer because its early, and while we would all like to handicap the race towards are personal choice, it is nevertheless a race and time will tell.
Julian is running a campaign thus far (and again its early) on a vision of community. Cibrian…well…I am not sure, perhaps to just stay out of trouble. But Trish DeBerry-Meja is running on a campaign of laying out what her values as a person are and what her principles for decision-making will be. After all, the economy is changing. San Antonio has survived the blunt of the economic problems, but that isn’t to say we have escaped the recession all together–things could change for the worse tomorrow. Therefore, we need to know what kind of decisions a person could make in the future. Your right, she is going to have to lay out more specific details in the future, but aren’t they all?
As for Julian (since I really see this as a two person race) he has laid out a beautiful picture of San Antonio in his campaign announcement. I think he brings up some very valid issues. As to the education issue, I agree its a problem. But as you validly put it above, “Schools are managed by the school districts, not the city.” So if his number one priority is to fix something he can’t fix. Why should we elect him? So right now for Julian all we have is a picture. He is going to have to lay out some specifics as well in order to tell San Antonio, how will his vision come to be. In an environment that is normal (not like the volatility we have today) it’s very easy to lay out specific projects and proposals. But things are changing daily, and the question I would ask Julian is “What are his principles for decision making” that way we can feel confident that any unforeseeable situation is covered by the Mayor.
However, in the end–and this is the one real thing I wanted to add–the questions that he and all candidates are going to have to answer is the number one issue. How do you pay for whatever it is they want to do?
It will be interesting to see how that question is answered by each of them.
rreagansa great response. I agree that the specifics are needed for a really thorough decision. Unfortunately we don’t get them during a campaign because of the sound bite factor or because factors could affect the final answer. Tomorrow will be the taping of the KLRN/AAACOC debate to be aired Thursday at 8 p.m. on KLRN. I’d tune in to that to see what you think. I’ll have an entry up on Wednesday about the debate but may hold off on the details until I watch it on Thursday. I don’t think they’re going to let me blog from the studios. BTW, thanks for stopping in. Now that you’re comment’s approved any successive comments post immediately.
I am interested to see the debate on Thursday (sorry no lucky golden ticket for me). However, with debates it all falls on the moderator to glean those details. If you happen to see the moderator, please remind them of such.
I’ll try but my guess is the moderator (s) probably have the questions laid out. I’m hoping they take questions from the audience. It’s supposed to be around 80 people.