Pages tagged "infrastructure"
Accomplishments
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 publi
c 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.
COPS/Metro Leader Virginia Mata Profiled in HEB Foundation Magazine
[Excerpt]
Everyone in San Antonio knows about flash floods—“Turn Around, Don’t Drown” signs are familiar on certain roads. But in the West Side, a neighborhood established by Mexican Americans who were restricted from more resourced neighborhoods north of downtown, floods were far more commonplace.
“I remember as kids getting pulled out of the [family] station wagon [that almost got swept away],” Mata said. “We were at the time like five or six, I think. But yeah, we didn’t know that was not normal.”
Mata says when you grow up experiencing poverty, “you accept it, normalize it, and blame yourself for it.” What seems normal at the time becomes absurd when you reflect back on it as an adult.
Mata speaks softly and with a kind of wisdom that comes from navigating barriers early in life.....
Mata is retired from two careers—one in federal law enforcement, and another as a lietenant [sic] commander in the Navy Reserves. Nowadays, she spends a lot of her time with COPS/Metro, a community organizing coalition that gathers people from churches, schools, businesses and unions to represent the needs of families and children. Over the last year, Mata and her COPS/Metro partners have spurred the City of San Antonio to create and invest in a workforce training program designed to support people seeking higher-paying jobs.
Retirement from her final job as a probation officer in Del Rio in 2018 brought her back to San Antonio, where she bought a house near Sea World that is still a close enough drive to her old stomping grounds. Those stomping grounds include Holy Family Church, Mata’s church growing up, which is also where COPS/Metro was born.
The coalition’s first fight, all those decades ago? Demanding that the city fix the West Side’s drainage issues.
Mata’s story is coming full circle....
[Photo Credit: Echoes]
Someone Like Virginia, Echoes [pdf]
COPS/Metro Celebrates TxDOT Fixing of "Death Curve" in Helotes
[Excerpts]
Crews have improved a curve off FM 1560 and Riggs Road that drivers called dangerous and deadly with the hope of fewer crashes in the area.
In late 2018 improvements were made to the area to create better traffic flow. However, cement barriers created a new problem for drivers.
Last year, more than 200 people packed the parish hall at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and voiced their concerns to Texas Department of Transportation officials.
Lucia Hernandez attended the meeting and recalled being hit by a driver when she pulled out onto FM 1560. She blamed the cement barrier and said it created a blind spot.
However, more than a year later, the barrier has come down, and in its place is a new guard rail.
Catherine McCoy, the COPS-Metro Alliance leader, said the spot was dangerous to drivers, especially with the growth in the area.
She and others gathered at the former problem curve Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the changes.
“People should have a right to know that when they’re on the road that these roads are safe, that the engineers have designed it in a safe way,” McCoy said.
[Photo Credit: KSAT]
Drivers Happy With Changes Made to 'Dangerous' Curve in Helotes, KSAT [pdf]
COPS/Metro Urges TxDOT to Address "Deadly Curve" Near Church and School, West / Southwest IAF
Community Group and Parishioners Celebrate Changes at Controversial Intersection in Helotes, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]