complaint<\/a> in early February, saying Jones yelled and cursed at her in a staff area after a council meeting. The pair held conflicting views on gay nightclub Bonham Exchange and its failure to install fire sprinklers by an October 2023 deadline.<\/p>\nJones wanted the club to slice occupancy in half until it installed sprinklers, while Kaur supported a resolution that would give the establishment until February 2027 without adjusting occupancy. Jones reportedly pressured Bonham Exchange\u2019s general manager and co-owner into accepting the reduced occupancy.<\/p>\n
According to the Express-News, Jones, who is the city\u2019s first openly gay mayor, said Friday that she \u201cbecame passionate\u201d during her exchange with Kaur \u201cbecause I firmly believe public safety is our number one responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a member of the LGBTQ+ community, we have seen too many tragedies at LGBTQ+ establishments, and I could not \u2014 would not \u2014 unnecessarily place the lives of patrons, employees, and potentially firefighters in harm\u2019s way,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
The censure resolution called Jones\u2019 actions toward Kaur \u201cverbally abusive\u201d and mentioned prior incidents with others, according to the Express-News.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I have previously shared, I have already shared with Councilwoman Kaur a written apology, and earlier this week, I shared a public apology,\u201d Jones said. \u201cAgain, this morning, Councilwoman\u00a0Kaur, I apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a post-vote press conference, Kaur said Jones has tried to downplay her behavior.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mayor has tried to diminish this instance by saying it was a single F-bomb that was thrown,\u201d Kaur said. \u201cIt is very different to use the curse word as an adjective versus to use it to continuously berate someone and intimidate them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2014 The San Antonio City Council formally reprimanded Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones on Friday following a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[30432,1063,223,287,82,84,83,6293,27],"class_list":["post-187109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-hannah-maguire","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-san-antonio-what-you-need-to-know","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}