ustxtxb_obs_1984_04_20_50_00026-00000_000.pdf

and some mechanisms at work in the marketplace, there are private developers interested in projects in the economically depressed areas of the city. Mayor Cisneros organized a Southside Taskforce to examine all aspects and issues involved in determining what needs to be done by the public and private sectors to promote growth and development on the Southside. This project is beginning to bear fruit in efforts to improve the infrastructure needed to support growth, to improve school districts and housing, and to improve the thoroughfare plan as a promoter of growth for the Southside. An example of public/private cooperation in this area are current efforts to have the state, city, county, and private sectors cooperate in the extension of a freeway which would tie into Highway 90 just to the southwest of the central business district \(in the Edgewood northwesterly direction to Loop 1604. The idea for this project came from a private architect and urban planner, Ralph Bender, who convinced the largest landowner along this route to donate the land, along with the access roads, to the state, county, and city to build the freeway. Other landowners are cooperating, and the state approved this plan in record time. It appears to be a win/win situation. A freeway increases the value of the land to the private landowner over the long haul; it will serve as a major growth generator in one of the poorest school districts in the state of Texas, Edgewood; and it will solve some major traffic problems for the city and county. I do not mean to paint too rosy a picture, however. Bexar County, with a population of one million, includes functionally illiterate. San Antonio, which boasts a population of 837,000 152,329 functionally illiterate adults within its boundaries. That is 22.5 % of the city’s population. 47,638 adults in San Antonio speak no English at all. Most of these are functionally illiterate in their native languages. 25,708 young adults in the city between the ages of 18 and 25 represent 16.9% of the illiterate population. As only 6,000 such adults are enrolled in literacy classes, the city must work with the state, county, and private sectors to attack adult illiteracy in San Antonio. All of Mayor Cisneros’ efforts to attract hightech industry and have a high-tech corridor between Austin and San Antonio will not solve the problems of the city’s economically depressed population. Brief mention is made in The Politics of San Antonio of an alliance formed in January 1980 called “United San alliance, .designed to involve business, government, and the public in economic development. COPS has declined to join USA, viewing it at best as a public relations body and, at worst, as a sinister attempt to coopt dissenting groups. In my opinion, COPS needs to remain outside USA. The book contains a good analysis of “The Politics of Unequal Educational Opportunity .” The Edgewood School District has been, for the past decadeand-a-half, the most vocal school district in Texas advocating a reform of school finance in the state. In 1968, a group of Edgewood concerned parents contacted attorney Arthur Gochman about problems in the school district. This eventually led to the filing of a lawsuit charging the Texas method of school finance with violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On March 21, 1973, the Burger Court sustained the validity of the Texas policy of public school finance by a 5-4 vote. Eleven years later we have the Perot Commission and Governor White’s promise of a special session of the legislature this summer to resolve finally the school finance issue. To illustrate the urgency for such reform in San Antonio, one can cite the fact that in the 1982-83 school year the Alamo Heights School District had $358,751 of taxable property per student and was able to provide an additional $1,393 per student to enrich basic education. Edgewood had $24,528 of taxable property per student and could provide an additional $41 per student to enrich basic education. Southwest School District in south Bexar County could provide no additional money for enrichment. One of the most important chapters in the book is the one devoted to a discussion of the politics of water in San Antonio. The city’s supply of water comes primarily from the Edwards Aquifer, an underground reservoir stretching more than 175 miles across South Central Texas. Northern Bexar County, into which the city of San Antonio has grown and continues to grow, includes a portion of the aquifer’s recharge zone. Thus, there have been bitter political battles between, on the one hand, environmentalists, COPS, and some Southside politicians and, the development community, business community and Northside politicians, on the other. Should the city try to limit or control growth to the north for fear the aquifer could become polluted? A political struggle emerged in October 1975, when the city council voted to permit construction of a large regional shopping mall on 129 acres over the recharge zone. The Aquifer Protection successful campaign to promote a referendum on the council’s decision. The opponents of the mall won by a margin of nearly 4 to 1. The city began to reexamine its growth policy in early 1976, at a time when the Justice Department was moving San Antonio to district council elections. With a new council elected by districts, the council voted 6-4, on June 10, 1977, to adopt a temporary eighteen-month total ban on development over the recharge zone to allow for completion of a technical study on the issue. This was viewed as a moratorium on growth in direct conflict with the idea of a free market. Business reaction was extremely hostile. In January 1978, the Fourth Court of Civil Appeals of Texas reversed San Antonio’s 1976 referendum prohibiting construction of a mall on the recharge zone. The court ruled that referenda as tools of citizen action may not be used to abrogate the city’s legitimate exercise of a delegated state power land use control or zoning. Appeals to the Texas and U.S. Supreme Courts were fruitless. Today the most rapidly growing areas of San Antonio are the northwest and northeast sectors of the city. The issue of surface water is one of the most important issues facing the city. Mayor Henry Cisneros has pledged that he will do everything in his power to promote surface-water projects. Environmentalists and consumer advo -Cates, like Faye Sinkin, recently elected to the Edwards Underground Water District Board, and local attorney and expert on water law, Kirk Patterson, are leading the fight against surface-water projects, calling it an economic boondoggle and a waste of taxpayers’ money. The surface-water pushers recently called for five surface-water projects at an estimated cost of $1 billion to provide for growth in the San Antonio-Austin corridor. This looks to be the major divisive issue over the next few years in San Antonio politics. It will be a bitter battle, as it has been in the past, and Cisneros’ efforts to create a “bipartisan” task force to resolve the issue once and for all, by finding scientific, technological, legal, and economic data all sides can agree on, appears destined to failure. The lines are drawn on this one. All in all, anyone who is interested 26 APRIL 20, 1984