San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh returned this week from an annual meeting of city managers in Philadelphia. What did he learn there? “I learned we are not alone,” Walsh said after returning home to complete staff work on the city’s fiscal 2027 …
Mayor Gina Jones has sent a July 24 letter to San Antonio's business, foundation, and philanthropic leaders asking for new, three-year funding commitments to allow city budget cutters to eliminate $6.5 million in annual grants to 15 mostly local non…
No major U.S. city does more to address homelessness than San Antonio, yet ask any member of City Council and they will tell you their constituents list “the homeless problem” as a leading concern, right up there with crime and potholes. Is percept…
As local organizers prepared for the inaugural Texas Scrabble Classic in San Antonio in April last year, thousands of fans poured into the city in a fever of anticipation. They were coming, of course, not to play the board game but to support the Fl…
I can’t think of a faster way to alienate readers than to renew my annual call for an elimination of public fireworks displays, and my parallel call for city police here and in the suburbs to vigorously enforce existing prohibitions on individuals s…
This week, The Midweek honors our nation’s birth 250 years ago on July 4, 1776, with the publication of an essay by the Honorable Fred Biery, U.S. District Judge in the Western District and the longest serving federal judge in San Antonio. Judge Bi…
Is it news when a planned mass shooting actually never happens? Bad news travels fast. Good news, not so fast. I’d like to share one story about good people acting in the best interests of society. Last week, I attended a criminal trial in the cour…
It’s official: Gina Jones has survived her first year in office as mayor of San Antonio. It’s been a cage fight at city hall, at times painful for citizens, the media, and other onlookers to watch, and for the mayor and the 10 council members in the…
San Antonio is sometimes blessed, sometimes cursed, by the latest national survey ranking U.S. cities and their people, economies, and quality of life. After 37 years here, I tell people that I live in a great city to raise a family. It’s also a ver…
San Antonio will be looking for a few good men and women to fill some big shoes. The search is already on for a new police chief to replace this week’s bigcitysmalltown podcast guest, San Antonio Police Chief William “Bill” McManus, who will retire…
I do not envy City Manager Erik Walsh and his senior team as they address budget deficits that began with a $30 million shortfall in the current fiscal year budget and are predicted to grow to $130 million by fiscal year 2028. Mayor Gina Jones and …
For the 15th consecutive year in San Antonio, cyclists will gather in silence this evening on Main Plaza in the historic heart of the city to honor the six riders who were struck and killed by vehicle drivers last year.  Some of those drivers were…
If you missed Tuesday’s announcement by ​Texas Public Radio​ and the ​San Antonio Report​, the two are joining forces on July 1, a significant change in the local media landscape and what could be a harbinger of the future for nonprofit news organiz…
There’s a new medium in town, and it’s calling itself ​The Civic​. Its first newsletter was released Tuesday by Philip Reichert, the Substack site’s editor and executive director. Reichert, who attended West Point and served in an intelligence role …
Welcome to the newly launched weekly newsletter of the bigcitysmalltown podcast. Monday Musings is now being published as The Midweek every Wednesday morning. Why change? Because life is hard enough without a weekend deadline for myself or the BCST …
For the second time this month, the ​bigcitysmalltown​ podcast and this newsletter are putting a spotlight on two multi-billion-dollar, publicly funded infrastructure plans that would inflict irreversible environmental damage and a loss in land valu…
San Antonio’s two major municipal utilities, CPS Energy and SAWS, have both briefed city Council on the need for future rate hikes. CPS Energy’s board recently approved a budget with a $50 million deficit, a signal that trustees believe a rate hike…
If President Trump really wanted to help Texas, the massive sum of $46.5 billion allocated for border wall construction in Big Bend in the absurdly named Big, Beautiful Bill of 2025 could be spent on many other transformative initiatives. Instead, …
Who says office towers struggle to find new tenants? Last week, a few hundred downtown advocates gathered on the garden patio of the One Riverwalk Place office tower for what may be the most important real estate occupancy since the pandemic. “It’…
It was with mixed emotions that I read the New York Times’ damning exposé published last week, which posthumously canceled Chávez as a civil rights leader and historic advocate for better living and working conditions for migrant farm workers. An en…
One thing about inflation: money isn’t what it used to be, right? If you need proof, try checking into the $185 million, 200-room Monarch Hotel at Hemisfair, San Antonio's newest upscale downtown hotel destination. News reports peg starting room rat…
Mayor Gina Jones and Council members Edward Mungia (D4), Ric Galvan (D6), Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8) and Misty Spears (D9), all elected in 2025, did not run campaigns promising multiyear spending cuts to balance the General Fund or rate increases for…
People, more of you turned out to vote, here and across Texas! Bravo. Looks like about 15% of the county’s 1,294,973 registered voters went to the polls. Media reports led me to expect an even higher number. Let’s hope it portends a robust November …
If you thought things couldn’t get worse at City Council under Mayor Gina Jones, think again. As you read this on Monday morning, the City Council is meeting in executive session to decide whether to censure the embattled mayor for her latest destru…