San Antonio voters nix city manager pay cap, increase salaries for mayor and council

San Antonio voters passed all six city-charter propositions on the ballot this election cycle by considerable margins, according to poll numbers available late Tuesday.

Indeed, voters showed strong support for Prop C, the most hotly contested of those propositions, which would uncap the city manager’s pay and current term limits. Just before midnight, more than 53% of ballots counted were for the measure and roughly 46% against.

San Antonio’s powerful fire union engineered the initial 2018 ballot initiative that limited the city manager’s pay to no more than 10 times that of the lowest-paid city employee. The union stood behind that proposal this cycle and organized to prevent it from being overturned,

Union officials said they were disappointed by voters’ decision to abandon the rule passed six years ago but will respect their choice.

“Prop C was always about the will of the community, and if this is their will, then that’s fantastic,” the San Antonio Firefighters Association said in a statement. “We felt compelled to ensure they were educated on what they were voting for.”

The union landed the original restrictions on the ballot amid a bare-knuckle fight with then-City Manager Sheryl Sculley over a new contract.

Residents also overwhelmingly voted to increase annual pay for City Council members to $70,200 and the mayor to $87,800. They also backed a proposition extending council terms to four years from the current two.

In light of recent bad behavior by some council members, voters also passed a proposition strengthening the city’s Ethics Review Board by allocating more funding and adding a definition of “conflicts of interest.”

A proposition to update “archaic” language in San Antonio’s City Charter and another to allow city civilian employees to donate to or campaign for political candidates also received majority approval from voters.

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This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2024.