We have over 6,000 registered voters in Leon Valley and only 677 showed up for this May 12 election!

Recently, I had a discussion with my son about these dismal showings, lamenting the obvious lack of interest by our fellow residents in civic affairs. He commented that I was wrong in my assessment of the situation. He said that 5,300 voters did in fact vote for the status quo by not showing up to cast their ballots.

I believe we have two important decisions facing us in the immediate future: rebuild our city, or face annexation!

During the last 10 years, I have participated in various committees, commissions as a volunteer. I have seen groups of residents trying to come to grips with such issues as vision, zoning, sign ordnance and funding issues. We have had successes, but in each case we had that ever present 900 lb. gorilla - Bandera Road - overshadowing our efforts and it continues to be our eternal nemesis. It won’t go away and it seems to defy our every effort to deal with it.

Is time to abandon the fight? Maybe we should build a new main street and a new downtown. One residents can enjoy because it is pedestrian friendly and one that our businesses would be proud to call home.

What is the alternative to not dealing with Bandera Road? We are in a downward trend regarding sales tax revenues and property tax rates are on the uptrend. The sales tax trend is not a surprise to most of us in Leon Valley. Anyone who has lived here for any length of time has seen its manifestation in empty store fronts and short lived mom and pop businesses.

How do we change the trend and believe me it is the collective we who will have to change the trend. The truth of the matter is that the majority of businesses in Leon Valley are not owned by residents, so they do not vote in our elections! With all the new business site opportunities outside of Leon Valley it shouldn’t be surprising that many have already left and many more will eventually follow. How do we get them to stay? We appeal to their bottom line. We make it advantageous to stay in Leon Valley and grow. However, we need additional funds outside our normal revenue inputs to make this happen. We have attempted to bring additional revenues into our city via the special use sales tax for economic development but we failed three times. All of our attempts to engage the public have fallen short. The stay-at-home voters don’t seem to be interested in Leon Valley’s future. Eventually, happenstance will simply take over and make all our decisions for us. One of those decisions will be the annexation dilemma.

We can’t grow per say, we are surrounded by San Antonio, consequently all we can do is change. The challenge is how to effectively manage change to sustain our quality of life. We do this by investing our trust and confidence in elected officials, committees and city staff. They manage all those actions required to maintain our quality of life. However, we are not free of our responsibilities to be part of the team just because we elected some government officials. It is still up to us to monitor how our quality of life is being managed. Let your voices be heard and be part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Robert Flaugher
Leon Valley