Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai is pushing back against a proposal that would give San Antonio voters another chance to weigh in on millions of dollars in funding for a new downtown sports and entertainment district.<\/p>\n
San Antonio City Council is expected to consider the proposal Monday. If enough council members approve it, voters could decide in November whether the city should spend its share of the funding on the project.<\/p>\n
Sakai says another election isn\u2019t necessary because the city, county and San Antonio Spurs already reached a written agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cA deal is a deal,\u201d Sakai said.<\/p>\n
Sakai says Bexar County, the City of San Antonio and the Spurs agreed to spend a total of $1.3 billion on the district after voters approved Propositions A and B last year.<\/p>\n
Under that agreement, the city would contribute $489 million, Bexar County would contribute $311 million and the Spurs would provide $500 million. Some of the funding can only be used for tourist venues, including a proposed new Spurs arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agreement was there was gonna be one election because we were required to do so,\u201d Sakai said.<\/p>\n
If City Council moves forward with another public vote, Sakai says he is already using county resources to acquire the county\u2019s funding even though there would be no guarantee that the city will approve its portion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would be similar to somebody buying a home with a mortgage and you don\u2019t get your home,\u201d Sakai said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Jones says plans for the district have changed. She says the project no longer includes a 1,000-room hotel that could provide revenue or a land bridge over I-37.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Jones said she made her position clear when Propositions A and B passed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI let them know then. I said I will be asking for your consideration to allow for city voters to vote on this,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Jones also cited the city’s changing financial situation with a projected $158 budget deficit. <\/p>\n
Judge Sakai says he’s concerned for any future agreements made between the city and the county. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai is pushing back against a proposal that would give San Antonio voters another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-408666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408666","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=408666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}