Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ buzzer-beater attempt to put the Spurs arena back on the ballot looks likely to be a brick, with a majority of council members already publicly against the idea.
The $1.3 billion NBA arena planned for Hemisfair relies on the Spurs, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County all chipping in. The Spurs would pay at least $500 million, the city would pay up to $489 million and the county up to $311 million.
County voters already approved the county share, funded with a tax on hotel stays and car rentals, in November. The city’s proposed financing is tied to special tax capture districts and lease payments from the arena and related development and does not require a similar vote, though the city could ask voters’ opinion anyway.
In a July 31 memo to her colleagues, Jones proposed a discussion about putting such a vote on the city’s share of funding onto the November ballot, saying that “since they pay twice, City voters deserve to vote twice.”
“November would allow City voters to vote clearly informed by what they are paying, what they are receiving in return, and whether the latter is good enough,” she wrote.
Mayor Memo for 2nd Vote by gjimenez
The deadline to order a vote is Aug. 17, and she would need at least five of the 10 other members of the city council to agree.
However, when KSAT reached out to all 10 council members, the six who provided an interview or statement all spoke against the idea: Sukh Kaur (D1), Phyllis Viagran (D3), Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8), Misty Spears (D9) and Marc Whyte (D10).
The council members said the vote would not help close the looming $158 million budget deficit Jones mentioned in her memo, and that the November vote on the county funding had already settled the arena issue.
“They knew the term sheet. They knew what the city’s contributions were going to be, and we voted ‘yes’ for it,” Alderete Gavito told KSAT.
Kaur said another election would take money and energy while “repeating work we’ve done.”
“Rather than re-litigating an issue that we addressed last fall that is going to cost us actually more money in our budget, we should be focused on making sure that city services and programs that help all of our residents are not cut as a result of the budget,” said Kaur.
The city’s share of the funding would come from bonds backed by four sources of revenue: the Spurs’ lease of the publicly-owned arena, private developers’ lease of nearby city-owned land, property tax from that development within a specific area known as the Hemisfair Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ), and hotel-related state taxes from a “Project Finance Zone” (PFZ).
Whyte called Jones’ memo “tremendously misleading” and said the $489 million had “absolutely nothing” to do with the city’s budget deficit.
“That money cannot be used to close our budget deficit. That money cannot be used to fix streets and sidewalks all around our city. It can’t be used for public safety issues,” he said.
The city still needs to negotiate a final deal with the Spurs, which top city staff hope to do by the end of the year. At last check in June, the city was waiting for the results of a study on the potential costs and revenue opportunities.
Spurs Sports and Entertainment CEO R.C. Buford also released an open letter to the San Antonio community on Tuesday defending the funding plan and saying, “now is the time to move forward together.”
“The vote has taken place. The commitments have been made. The work is underway,” he wrote.
RC Buford Letter Believing in What's Next for SA by gjimenez
Jones appeared on the KSAT Q&A after the broadcast version of this story initially aired. Despite having less than two weeks until the deadline to order an election, Jones said “we’ve got some time to do this.”
“This is a generational investment. Why folks would be afraid of hearing from the voters that they signed up for a $489 million contribution is beyond me,” she said.
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