It would be impossible to list every street, park, school, or housing development impacted by COPS/Metro's hundreds of community leaders in the last 50 years. This is a list of their biggest accomplishments.

Neighborhood Improvements

COPS/Metro leaders worked with San Antonio Development Agency to build Vista Verde, a first-of-its kind low-income single-family housing development with access to job training and childcare.

Directed over $25 million in federal Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and $2 Billion in infrastructure bonds to parks, street, drainage and housing construction

Got Out the Vote for large library bonds, resulting in eleven libraries built on the West and South Sides.

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, an olympic-size swimming pool on the West Side.

Organized to bring business development to the South and West Side, including Las Palmas shopping center and the first bank branch on the West Side: Broadway Bank.

Housing

Worked with the city to establish the San Antonio Housing Trust and down payment assistance program.

Leveraged bonds, CDBG funds, and private investments to build over 2,000 units of affordable housing.

Created a home rehabilitation program to repair homes of vulnerable residents. Current budget 14.5 Million.

Leveraged federal funds for Casa Verde weatherization of low-income homes to reduce energy costs with free improvements, like insulation, doors, windows, and duct sealing. Current budget: $3 Million.

Advocated for a $1 Million repair and maintenance fund for public housing.

Education

Leveraged over $2 billion in infrastructure and education bonds

Organized in the 1980s to ensure Alamo Colleges built Palo Alto College on the South Side, and got out the vote for the bond to fund construction.

Worked with governor Mark White and legislature to change the statewide funding formula to allocate a greater ratio to property-poor school districts.

Brought together businesses, communities, school districts, and universities to create San Antonio Education Partnership with a scholarship fund for public high school students. SAEP students have earned 25,000 degrees since the program started in 1989.

In the 1990s, secured over $15.6 million in city funding for After School Challenge Program, presently available in eight school districts at 132 schools serving 11,000 children.

Brought parents and teachers together through the Alliance Schools Initiative to improve neighborhood safety and classroom learning.

In the 2000s, changed state law to enable municipal sales taxes to be spent on human development, creating funding opportunity for Pre-K for SA.

In 2021, defeated Chapter 313, a statewide tax abatement program, preserving $10 Billion in public school funding statewide.

 Job Training, Living Wages

Created Project Quest, a nationally recognized program that has placed over 15,000 unemployed and underemployed high school graduates in long-term job training for high-skill, high-wage jobs. Participants increased their average earnings from $11,000 to over $45,000 / year, making Quest one of the most successful programs in the nation.

In 2021, as many were losing jobs in the pandemic, COPS/Metro brought the city and its largest employers together to create SA Ready to Work . COPS/Metro campaigned and won 77% of the vote to approve $200 million in funding. No other city in the U.S. has taken on a workforce project of this magnitude.

Helped write city guidelines requiring companies who receive tax breaks to pay a living wage with benefits.

Organized to raise the wages of the lowest paid workers at City of San Antonio, Bexar County, School District and Alamo Community Colleges to $15 per hour

[Photo Credit: Scott Ball, San Antonio Report]

Public Safety and Policing

Partnered with Community Churches for Social Action (CCSA) and the Baptist Ministers' Union (BMU) to support SAPD's policies banning no-knock warrants and choke holds.

Worked with SAPD to close nuisance bars and drug houses in residential neighborhoods.

Lobbied for bond funds to construct police and fire substations in under-served areas.

Worked with SAPD to improve police community relations and community policing in neighborhoods.

Lobbied for funds for a city program to distribute free gun lockboxes to prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands.

Healthcare

In 1994, preserved the West Side's only major medical facility, bringing the Texas Diabetes Institute to a neighborhood with one of the highest rates of diabetes in the nation.

In 2009, lobbied Governor Rick Perry and the legislature to expand health insurance for children (CHIP).

In 2012, held workshops on the Affordable Care Act Healthcare Marketplace to help people access insurance through the new system.

Environmental Justice

In the 1970s, fought a gasoline storage facility on the East Side. Won safety measures for the neighborhood, passed a new ordinance that gave city council and the public a means to stop expansion of similar facilities. Won pollution controls in power plants and cement plants on the South Side, and prevented Kelly AFB from storing hazardous waste near a neighborhood park.

Forced a referendum in 1976 to prevent a shopping mall over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone.

Organized another referendum in 2001, collecting 60,000 signatures to force the PGA and local developers to negotiate for living wages and  environmental protections and monitoring for a golf resort over the aquifer.

Governance + Fiscal Accountability

Before 1978, city council was elected at large. The representation was 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.

Successfully fought to lower utility rates after finding out that money was being used to benefit high-end developments rather than neighborhoods.

Led a statewide effort with sister organizations to lower property taxes for seniors.

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 in San Antonio would have to pay a living wage to its San Antonio employees.

[Excerpt]

A surprising legislative success in 2021 is on track to be undone in 2023, unless a grass roots left-right coalition can block legislation and the forces behind it that are trying to go backward....

In the name of jobs and economic development, a 2012 tax code trick called Chapter 313 essentially funneled state money, via school district property tax breaks, to private companies doing new industrial construction. The school districts that granted tax breaks under Chapter 313 were reimbursed — and many still are being reimbursed — by the state, meaning we as taxpayers reimbursed them. It was the ultimate insider game of channeling public benefit to private companies.

In San Antonio, Mike Phillips is a COPS/Metro leader, a member of the Texas IAF. His organization and others rallied in Austin on March 21 to call attention to the inequities that school district tax breaks cause statewide.

“This is money that could instead be going to public schools. We are working this session with legislators from both parties and a range of allies to oppose taxpayer-funded corporate giveaway programs that involve school finance and school district decision-making,” Phillips said.

[Excerpt]

The Network of Texas IAF Organizations, a labor and faith coalition that has staunchly opposed using school property tax breaks for incentives... railed against the Texas Jobs and Security Act.

"It looks like it was written on the back of a napkin,"

stated Jose Guerrero, a leader with Central Texas Interfaith from Saint Ignatius Catholic Church.

The organization believes the proposed bill would have even less regulation than Chapter 313, including the exclusion of minimum job requirements as a key factor in a project's eligibility for approval. "It is hard to imagine that they would propose a program with even less accountability, fewer specifics (like no job requirements), and more leeway for companies to take taxpayer dollars from school children to line their pockets," Guerrero stated.

[Excerpt]

"In December, legislators killed a controversial tax abatement program known as Chapter 313, but its effects will last decades....

“There’s no accountability at the statewide level; nobody administers it,” said Bob Fleming, an organizer with [T]he Metropolitan Organization of Houston who campaigned against Chapter 313 reauthorization back in 2021. “A bunch of local school districts make singular decisions based on what they think is in their interest. Nobody is looking out for the statewide interest. Local school districts are overmatched when the $2,000 suits walk into the room.” ....

“It’s a perverse incentive,” said Doug Greco, lead organizer at Central Texas Interfaith, one of the organizations that helped shut down reauthorization of Chapter 313 in the 2021 legislative session.

“We approach it on a school funding basis,” said Greco, who is already gearing up to fight any Chapter 313 renewal efforts in 2023. “It’s corporate welfare and the people who pay over time are Texas school districts.” ....

“The district my granddaughter goes to is losing $4 million to $5 million every year,” said Rosalie Tristan, referring to Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District. Tristan is an organizer with the community organization Valley Interfaith who lives north of McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley.

“They could be using that money to get more teachers for these students,” she said. “For a parent, or for a grandparent raising her granddaughter, it’s a hit in the gut.”

[Photo Credit: Pu Ying Huang, The Texas Tribune]

Critics Say State Tax Break Helps Petrochemical Companies and Hurts Public Schools, The Texas Tribune [pdf]

[Excerpts]

When organizers set out to overturn Texas’s giveaway program for the oil and gas industry, they had a long game in mind. Over 20 years, the tax exemption program known as Chapter 313 had delivered $10 billion in tax cuts to corporations operating in Texas — with petrochemical firms being the biggest winners. This year, for the first time in a decade, the program was up for reauthorization. Organizers decided to challenge it for the first time.

At the beginning of last week, as Texas’s biennial legislative session approached its end, the aims of organizers remained modest. “We thought it would be a victory if the two-year reauthorization passed so we could organize in interim,” said Doug Greco, the lead organizer for Central Texas Interfaith, one of the organizations fighting to end the subsidy program.

At 4 a.m. last Thursday, it became clear that something unexpected was happening: The deadline for reauthorization passed. “The bill never came up,” Greco told The Intercept. Organizers stayed vigilant until the legislative session officially closed on Monday at midnight, but the reauthorization did not materialize....

“No one had really questioned this program,” said Greco, of Central Texas Interfaith. The reauthorization was a once-in-a-decade chance to challenge it. “We knew in our guts that the program was just a blank check, but we also are very sober about the realities of the Texas legislature.”

In Blow to Big Oil, Corporate Subsidy Quietly Dies in Texas, The Intercept [pdf]

How Skeptical Texas Lawmakers Put an End to a Controversial Tax Incentive Program, Houston Chronicle [pdf]

Texas Legislature Dooms Chapter 331, Which Gives Tax Breaks to Big Businesses, Business Journal [pdf]

Missed Deadline Could Doom Controversial $10B Tax-Break Program, Houston Chronicle [pdf]

A Texas Law Offers Tax Breaks to Companies, but It's Renewal Isn't a Done Deal, Texas Tribune [pdf]

Losers and Winners from Chapter 313, Central Texas Interfaith