District 6 on the San Antonio City Council is one of four seats that will not have an incumbent running in the 2017 Mayoral and City Council election. That guarantees a new face will represent the far West and Northwest sides of San Antonio. Most of the candidates appeared at a debate Monday night to highlight what they want to do for the district.
Seven of the District 6 candidates attended a debate Monday night held by the Great Northwest Community Improvement Association. District 6 contains the fast-growing corridors of Culebra, Wiseman, and Potranco roads and Highway 151. Ray Lopez has represented these residents since 2009 – elected four times — he’s reached his term limit. He says he wants his successor to actively listen to constituents.
“What I’m hoping to see is we have a continuation of engagement with the community, that what the community wants is weighed heavily in the decision making process. I think the candidates that are running are all having that general way forward. I’m optimistic.”
At Monday’s forum, the candidates fielded questions about public safety, making City Hall more accessible to neighborhoods, and population growth. District 6 is the third fastest growing district by population according to the last census. With growth, roadway gridlock often follows; something experienced by many during rush hour in this part of town. Each candidate has their own solution.
Take candidate Don Page. He’s the pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church and says the best way to prevent clogged roadways is controlling growth.
“Uncontrolled growth can be disastrous – such as in cancer –we need to make sure that we structure that growth and coordinate that growth so that we don’t have adverse impacts on traffic and other things.”
Melissa Cabello Havrda, an attorney, says transportation is the biggest problem she hears about as more people move in.
“And our streets, our roads, are not capable of maintaining what we have. We also have Alamo Ranch which may or may not be annexed into the city and we’re the bridgeway to Alamo Ranch. We need to widen that bridge. We need to create to options for transportation. We need something like a light rail, more bike lanes, other ways for us to get around, because these roads are not going to hold up with the amount of pressure and the population that’s going through here.”
Candidate Rick Trevino, a teacher at Sam Houston High School, also brings up light rail as one of many options.
“Just different modes of transportation and incentives to behave in a different way: carpooling, maybe even stagger the way where people go to work. But, just not trying to address it, you know, we’re going to end up like L.A., we’re going to end of like Dallas, and I don’t want to end up in a river of brake lights.”
Greg Brockhouse is no stranger to City Hall. The marketing and political consultant campaigned against the city’s now-abandoned street car project and helped write the ballot language voters approved on future light rail projects. He says light rail isn’t a bad idea; it was proposed wrong at the time. He ran for District 6 in 2013 receiving 38 percent of the vote. As a council candidate again, he says the city needs to work with TxDOT in fixing state-owned roads like Culebra.
“There’s a coordination problem between TxDOT and the city of San Antonio we’re going to have to solve. It’s not working. When streets go down to one lane out of nowhere and community members are upset about it because they have no idea, it’s just bad business.”
Joseph Cortez has first-hand City Hall experience as a former staff member for current Councilman Ray Lopez. Cortez says the city is making progress on connecting different parts of the district with the help of the state.
“Traffic is an issue we face across the city, but in District Six, the great work we’ve been able to do of getting state funding for projects for flyovers on 151 and 410, 1604 and 151 and just leveraging the dollars we’re able to get and ensuring our streets and roads are able to hold and maintain.”
VIA bus service is seen as a solution to Ropal Anderson. The data analyst who works for AT&T says VIA is under-utilized by residents and getting more cars off the streets and people into buses would reduce congestion.
“A lot of the times you see the buses pass and they’re empty. Is it because the word is not out? People are discouraged because they’re situation is so bad because people get discouraged? We definitely need to improve the bus situation.”
Eric Gosset was working at a logistics firm but left his job to run for City Council. He also says bus service is lacking.
“A company like Uber wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a market and there is a market because VIA has laxed understanding what the people truly need for transportation and I feel like that needs to be looked at.”
All of the candidates attending the forum support San Antonio’s six bond propositions. An eighth candidate, Robert Casteneda, was not present Monday night.
With eight people on the ballot – most of which have not held an elected office - a run-off in this district is likely. One challenge each candidate faces is getting the 76,000 registered voters in the district to turn out. In 2015, only 5,900 people voted for a candidate. That year, there were only two names on the ballot. Early voting begins April 24th – which is in the middle of Fiesta. Election day is May 6th.
