San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
After eight years in office, what’s next for outgoing councilwomen?
Viagran, Gonzales built identities on bringing funding to their districts
Rebecca Viagran and Shirley Gonzales walk out of City Hall this week as the longest-serving councilwomen in recent San Antonio history.
Viagran and Gonzales — representatives of the predominantly Hispanic south and west sides — will step down Tuesday as they hit City Council’s maximum limit of four two-year terms.
It’s unclear what their political future holds.
In their eight years on council, the two women forged political identities around bringing more public and private dollars to their districts — some of the poorest parts of the city, the result of historic discrimination against communities of color leading to high poverty rates and poor public infrastructure.
“(Gonzales has) been able to broaden the view that if you do well for people in a place like (the West Side), you’re really doing well for the city,” said Patti Radle, a former West Side councilwoman and outgoing board president of the San Antonio Independent School District.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg emphasized his respect for Viagran.
“Under her leadership, the South Side has risen to become the center of gravity for future economic development in this city,” Nirenberg said. “That’s where I think you can see the future of this city.”
Gonzales and Viagran aren’t leaving quietly. Last week, Gonzales excoriated a North Side councilman for opposing a housing development on the city’s majority-Black East Side and accused him of “flat-out racism.”
When another North Side councilman complained that white men would benefit less than women and people of color from city subsidies for small businesses, Viagran shot back that she wished she could give even more.
Gonzales has made no secret of her mayoral ambitions — though she said she won’t challenge Nirenberg, who handily secured a third term in May. If he wins a fourth term, Nirenberg would hold the mayor’s seat until 2025.
“Waiting around for four years is a long time in politics,” Gonzales said. In the meantime, she’s floated possible runs for county judge and county commissioner. Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who’s been in the spot since 2001, has said he won’t seek another term next year.
Viagran wasn’t as forthcoming
with her political plans — to be expected from a council member who’s garnered a reputation for keeping her cards close to the vest.
“No comment on that,” Viagran said coyly when asked about future ambitions.
What did they do?
Gonzales’ biggest achievement, observers agreed, was convincing City Hall to adopt an “equity lens” — prioritizing historically underfunded inner-city districts.
In 2017, Gonzales argued the city should put more money aside for five urban districts — winning $35 million for infrastructure projects. Four years later, the equity approach has spread to all city departments.
“That is to me probably the most progressive movement by this City Council that is about to retire than had ever been done before,” said Juan Solis, a former District 5 councilman. “It was fully recognizing that all are not equal.”
But Gonzales anticipates San Antonians won’t see the full benefit of the equity budget for decades — as long as it took for the city’s historic inequities to take hold.
Under Viagran’s watch, District 3 has drawn some 4,200 new jobs and more than $1 billion in investments, according to the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation. In many cases, businesses received lucrative property tax breaks at the Brooks mixed-use development as well as other subsidies.
“Her leadership and support of our regional economic development efforts were instrumental in some of our largest and most recent wins,” said Jenna SaucedoHerrera, who heads the foundation.
Viagran also is credited for helping secure the UNESCO World Heritage site designation for the San Antonio Missions, making them a destination for international tourists. She sought to beautify and bring upscale development to the areas surrounding the missions — though that sometimes brought her into conflict with nearby business owners.
Viagran’s work on the Missions in part made her an ideal candidate to take over a pair of key leadership positions overseeing the $450 million overhaul of Alamo Plaza, Nirenberg said.
Together, they backed a “reset” of the makeover earlier this year when it was stalled over a controversial
idea to move the Cenotaph, a 1930s-era monument depicting the Alamo defenders.
“She, politically, is able to bring people together from different sides of the political spectrum,” Nirenberg said. “Like it or not, that is one of the challenges of the Alamo project, is getting people with wildly different backgrounds to agree on the importance of the accurate and historical preservation of the plaza and the buildings on it.”
As one-third of a rare female majority on the council — only the second in the city’s history — Viagran and Gonzales pushed for policies to close the gender wage gap in the private sector as well as the city’s own ranks. Gonzales, alongside Councilman Manny Peláez, spearheaded the city’s five-year plan to tackle rampant domestic violence.
Still, Gonzales sensed different treatment from her male colleagues.
She pointed to a program in her district to paint houses in need of a touch-up. That program ballooned into a vehicle for all kinds of housing repairs and was duplicated in
other council districts.
District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño eventually had the idea of repairing roofs for homes that desperately needed it — which became the Under One Roof program, which he often touts.
But Gonzales felt Treviño never gave her credit for building the foundation for him.
“It always pissed me off … about the men not acknowledging the work that the women had done right,” she said.
While Treviño said he respects his colleague, he credited his Under One Roof program to resident Miguel Calzada, who almost lost his house because of a roof leak. There wasn’t a program to help at the time, so they created one, Treviño said.
“I could not have done it without the community, city staff, my staff, and all of my council colleagues,” he added.
Drawing critics
Both Viagran and Gonzales have drawn heat for backing policies that displaced residents or, critics said, prioritized housing for
wealthier residents households.
“I don’t think we’ve seen economic prosperity based on the policies that they helped to support,” said Graciela Sánchez, director of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.
Anxiety over rising property values and the specter of gentrification likely propelled Teri Castillo, a substitute teacher and political organizer, to win the open District 5 seat held by Gonzales, who backed Castillo’s opponent. Castillo campaigned on a message of protecting the district’s cultural identity and not catering to developers.
In the District 3 race, voters were satisfied enough to keep the Southeast Side seat in the Viagran family. For the next two years, Viagran’s sister, Phyllis, will serve the area.
In her first term, Viagran voted for an apartment development that pushed out more than 100 low-income families from the Mission Trails mobile home park on the city’s South Side. Later, the development got nearly $2 million in city subsidies for 360 units — none of which was considered affordable.
Viagran defends the vote to this day, arguing that she worked to provide financial help to the displaced residents. But she acknowledged the incident planted the seed for a greater reckoning over the potential negative effects city policies could have on less fortunate residents.
Viagran and Gonzales each sat on arms of the San Antonio Housing Trust initially intended to give sometimes centurylong property tax breaks to housing developers to build affordable apartments. In recent years, the entities have drawn criticism from housing advocates who said many of the apartments’ rates are out-of-reach for the city’s poorest residents.
A city-commissioned report found the nonprofit operated for years with little oversight and little expertise on how to create affordable housing.
“People like Rebecca Viagran and Shirley Gonzales are happy to go along with it because they’re told, ‘This is going to benefit your district; this is going to make it nice and shiny and beautiful,’ ” said Sofia Lopez, a former San Antonio Housing Authority commissioner.
That’s not the fault of Viagran and Gonzales, Nirenberg said. San Antonio’s housing bureaucracy over the years has grown overly complex with little coordination between the city’s various housing
over
poorer organizations — a problem officials are trying to correct.
For their part, Viagran and Gonzales stand by their decisions. The city is in dire need of housing, no matter the price range, they argue — and some apartment complexes have revitalized once blighted parts of town.
“Did some of them spread economic development? Maybe,” Viagran said. “Did some not? Maybe, but we were still providing the housing.”
Now, activists are fretting about the planned renovation of the long empty Lone Star Brewery and the potential rise in nearby property values that could force longtime residents out of their homes.
Gonzales voted for a $24 million subsidy package to help finance the project — a proposed mixeduse development with housing, restaurants and offices.
“I would’ve expected a councilperson to handle that proposed development and the $24 million giveaway with more sensitivity for her constituents today versus the ones that she, I think, hopes are moving into that area,” Lopez said.
To Gonzales, the developments are a way to relieve the city’s entrenched economic segregation and keep well-off households in the neighborhood. The West Side had more mixed-income areas in the mid-20th century before decades of flight to the suburbs, she said.
“There’s no reason why we also can’t have luxury spaces,” Gonzales said.
She downplayed concerns of any immediate effect on property values stemming from the development. Gonzales expects construction to take years. In that time, the city can help homeowners secure tax exemptions.
“Having a blighted, abandoned property is much more concerning for the constituents than the rising property values,” Gonzales said.
For now, Gonzales has the West Side pawnshop she owns to run — and three young children to raise — while she weighs any future political moves.
Early Thursday afternoon, Viagran was mum on whether she had lined up another gig.
Later that afternoon, Texas A&M University-San Antonio officials announced they had hired Viagran in a newly created role as director of workforce development and community partnerships.