The River Road Neighborhood Association firmly opposes a controversial  and secretive proposal to use city bond funds to demolish San Antonio’s historic Sunken  Garden Theater and convert it into an event space that will overwhelm the infrastructure of the  entire area.  “This is the people’s park. It is not for sale,” says River Road Neighborhood Association Chair  Lucy Wilson. “The Brackenridge Park Conservancy has put forward a proposal to use public  funds in a private development scheme.”  

Editors Note: This column was published in 2016 prior to the city council's vote for the SAPOA contract. The final vote of the City Council approved the contract (9-2) with the two dissenting votes cast by Ron Nirenberg (D8) and Rey Saldaña (D4). NOWCastSA was at the protest and rally that occurred a day before the vote and captured video and photos of the participants.

With state lawmakers immersed in the COVID-19 pandemic response and Texas’ electricity failures, the public’s access to information must be at the forefront of the Legislature’s actions. Information allows citizens to watch over their government, to speak out and to ask questions. There’s no better time than Sunshine Week, which began on March 14, to emphasize the importance of the people’s right to know.

There are 5.1 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S. as of Aug. 12, 2020, half a million alone in Texas. Of the national total, 163,651 died.

Note: This talk by Kathryn O'Rourke was part of a day-long symposium on the importance of the Woolworth Building as a Civil Rights historic site, hosted by the San Antonio Conservation Society and Bexar County. Click here to see other presentations.

Sometimes in our lives we all have pain We all have sorrow The announcement of Bill Withers’ death by his family on April 3 was a mere footnote in history, lost among the urgency of the current global health pandemic. Paradoxically, Withers’ most popular and familiar recording has increasingly become part of the collective national consciousness, just as it has countless times before in time of personal crisis, disaster and suffering.

We sat in our first session, a form-based code “boot camp” in anticipation and some trepidation.

San Antonio is, without question, the most backward city of any of the major urban Texas municipalities when it comes to making public records available. Opacity seems to be the rule.

For a document obsessed with events of 1836, the new “Alamo Comprehensive Interpretive Plan,” reads more like “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” a dystopian novel that satirizes hypocrisy by the state. “Embrace the continuum of history” means “repudiate the continuum of history.” “Enhance connections to the surrounding streets” means “reduce connections to the surrounding streets.” “Enable pedestrian flow through the site” means “restrict pedestrian flow through the site.”