COPS/Metro's accomplishments have been achieved by the efforts of thousands of community leaders over the course of 50 years. These are examples of their work.
Neighborhoods
Development Without Displacement
In the 1980s, Pioneered a new approach to urban renewal with San Antonio Development Agency. Created a plan to benefit existing residents rather than demolishing their homes, in which residents received relocation money, had first choice of new homes in the neighborhood, and first place in line to apply for the new jobs created in the area. When Prince Charles visited San Antonio, the mayor took him to see Vista Verde as an example of success in affordable housing.
Infrastructure
Over 3 decades, directed over $25 million of federal Community Development
Block Grant (CDBG) funds to critical street, drainage and housing construction in the central, southern and eastern areas of the city. Leveraged over $2 billion in infrastructure and education bonds by working with the San Antonio, Harlandale, North East Independent School Districts, the Alamo Community College District, the City of San Antonio, and Bexar County in successfully shaping and passing important bond proposals.
Libraries
Got Out the Vote for large library bonds, resulting in eleven libraries built on the West and South Sides. Fought for bonds to maintain those libraries.
Parks + Recreation
Over five decades, created or rehabilitated over twenty parks on the South, West, and East Sides. Gathered signatures and lobbied for funding to build the San Antonio Natatorium, the first indoor swimming pool on the West Side.
Housing
San Antonio Housing Trust
In the 1990's, worked with the city to establish the San Antonio Housing Trust, committed to creating and preserving housing that is primarily affordable, accessible, attainable, and support community development efforts that build and sustain neighborhoods, empower residents, and provide for positive equitable outcomes.
Home Rehabilitation:
In the 2010s, expanded San Antonio's budget for home rehabilitation, preventing displacement and providing free home repairs for low-income residents, including vulnerable seniors. Current budget 14.5 Million.
Down Payment Assistance:
Starting in 1979, COPS/Metro worked with San Antonio Development Agency to provide assistance to homebuyers. Current budget: $1.5 Million.
Weatherization:
Worked with CPS to leverage federal funds for weatherization of low-income homes to reduce energy loss (and costs) with free energy efficiency improvements, like attic and wall insulation, new doors and windows, and duct sealing. Casa Verde's current budget: $3 Million.
Public Housing Maintenance:
Advocated for a $1 Million repair and maintenance fund for urgent needs in public housing.
Education
Palo Alto College
Organized in the 1980s to ensure Alamo Colleges built its next campus on the South Side, and got out the vote for the bond to fund the construction of the campus.
San Antonio Education Partnership:
Brought together businesses, communities, school districts, and universities to create a scholarship fund for public high school students. SAEP students have earned 25,000 degrees since the program started in 1989.
After School Challenge Program:
Secured over $15.6 million in city funding for after-school enrichment programs throughout the city since 1992. The program is presently available in eight school districts at 132 schools and serves 11,000 children.
Alliance Schools:
In the 1990s-2000s, brought parents and teachers together at Alliance schools in Harlandale, SAISD, and
Edgewood to improve neighborhood safety and classroom learning. Some Alliance Schools improved their test scores by twice the state average.
Education Funding Reform: In the 1980s, working with allies in the Texas IAF network, changed the
statewide funding formula to allocate a greater ratio to property-poor school districts.
Job Training, Living Wages
Project QUEST: Created a nationally recognized community-based economic development program serving San Antonio since 1992, which places unemployed and underemployed high school graduates in long-term job training for high-skill, high-wage jobs.
Living Wages: Persuaded the City of San Antonio to institute a tax abatement ordinance requiring companies that receive municipal tax incentives to pay a living wage with benefits. By 2019, organized to raise the wages of the lowest paid San Antonio, Bexar County, San Antonio Independent School District and Alamo Community Colleges workers to $15 per hour.
SA Ready to Work: In 2021, leveraged pandemic relief funds to establish the largest city-funded job training program in the United States, modeled after Project QUEST, working with the city's largest employers.
Healthcare
Texas Diabetes Institute: In 1994, Preserved the West Side's only major medical facility, organizing to convert it from a hospital into a world-class diabetes care center in a neighborhood with one of the highest rates of the disease in the nation.
Children's Health Insurance: In 2009, Texas IAF organizations lobbied Governor Rick Perry and the legislature to expand health insurance for children (CHIP) to cover households with income up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, around $66,000 for a family of four.
Affordable Care Act: In 2012, with the Affordable Care Act, COPS leaders at Our Lady of Guadalupe Helotes and other parishes held workshops on the Healthcare Marketplace to help people access insurance through the new system.
Environmental Justice
Neighborhoods Taking on Polluters:
In the 1970s, fought a gasoline storage facility on the East Side, and won significant safety measures for the neighborhood, passing a new ordinance that required companies to pass muster with city council and the publi
c before expanding similar facilities. Fought to install pollution controls in power plants and cement plants on the South Side, and prevented Kelly AFB from storing hazardous waste near a neighborhood park.
Protecting the Aquifer
Forced a referendum in 1976 to prevent a shopping mall from being built over a sensitive area of the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. Organized for another referendum in 2001 to force the PGA and local developers to negotiate for environmental protections and monitoring for a new golf resort over the aquifer.
Governance + Fiscal Accountability
Single-Member Council Districts
Before 1978, city council was elected at large. The representation was always majority white (with one Latino and one Black councilperson), and mostly connected to moneyed interests. When COPS joined the effort to change the city charter to create 10 single member council districts, they turned out the votes from the West and South side needed to win the fight. In the following election, for the first time, five Latinos and one Black candidate made a non-White majority on city council.
Utility Rates + Property Taxes
In the 1980s, when utility rates went up, COPS/Metro leaders investigated where the money was going, and discovered that it was being used to pay for projects across the city. They successfully fought to lower the rates. Then they led a statewide effort with sister organizations to lower property taxes for seniors.
Tax Abatements
In the 2000s, COPS/Metro argued that if businesses wanted tax breaks in San Antonio, they ought to pay more than poverty wages. COPS/Metro helped the city council write guidelines stipulating that any company wanting a tax abatement to build in San Antonio would have to pay a living wage to its San Antonio employees.