Sometimes you just have to say no.
This election season in San Antonio is one of those times.
Regardless of whether you are excited for a candidate, or if you have “noped” out of the opponent, there are Propositions on the ballot that a voter needs to consider.
Once you have voted for Federal, Texas, and Bexar County candidates (and you need to vote all the way down the ballot), depending upon which municipality within Bexar County that you live in, you have to keep going.
There are more than 20 incorporated entities in Bexar County, and this blog will not cover each one. Leon Valley residents, for example, have a ballot about twice as long as the rest of the areas.
For residents of San Antonio, voters will see three Propositions. They are beautifully worded to sound like you will be beneficent in voting for them. However, they are three taxes… and with the way the economy has been, you should just say no.
The first - Prop A - asks you to keep funding PreK4SA. This Pre-K program was started before the state required school districts to offer Pre-K.
As a taxpayer, you are now funding Pre-K programs through your school district taxes. The schools are the experts on education - not the city. The city’s program has become redundant.
And the city is currently shelling out about $40,000 per child per year in its PreK program.
We could be sending the kids to Ivy League universities for this.
If you vote yes, you are voting for taxpayers to pay twice for PreK. And the city program is the bloated one.
Prop B is another wonderfully sounding piece that asks you to fund a big, workforce program when Texas already has your tax dollars at work with the Texas Workforce Commission. The City of San Antonio added a component that again puts them in the position to fund education.
We have school districts and college districts - that you already fund with your tax dollars - offering similar services, including high school completion programs, GEDs, and job training.
Vote No to this redundancy.
A post-pandemic economy will require every one to buckle down and make do with less. It is patently unfair to burden struggling people with an additional tax to help a few live better.
Prop C has makes strong points asking you to redirect sales tax money the city already collects to public transportation projects. And in less economically strapped times, it may have more support. But right now - every single person and business in San Antonio has been negatively impacted by the pandemic. A No vote would be the first time in a long time that taxpayers in San Antonio actually got a tax break.