THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
SUBJECT: San Antonio History
INTERVIEW WITH: William Thornton
DATE: 5 July 1996
PLACE: Mr. Holmesly's Office
INTERVIEWER: Sterlin Holmesly
H: Interview with San Antonio Mayor, Bill Thornton, July 5, l996, in my office. This is Sterlin Holmesly.
T: I'm Bill Thornton. I'm currently the Mayor of San Antonio, but my first time to come to San Antonio was 1963, when I came to Trinity University to go to college. I was born in Abilene. I lived there through high school. Attended Trinity University for two academic years; went to Dental School in Dallas; did my oral surgery training in Dallas, and then returned in l972. I involved myself in civic activities, primarily through my start with Albert Bustamante and the Bexar County Hospital District, where I served for 12 years, the last 10 as chairman.
H: And you came to town. You are related to James Bauerle?
T: That's true. In 1972, the reason I came back to practice was to practice oral and maxillofacial surgery with James Bauerle, who at that time was President of the Texas Dental Association and was just becoming a Regent of the University of Texas System. And we practiced together for several years and then separated our practices around 1977.H: As I recall, you also...we'll talk about the Hospital H: District in a bit...but you were also involved with San Antonio Symphony, as something of a trouble-maker, as I recall. I may be miscalling that, but you certainly got the people's attention there for a few years. And you have been on the City Council; you served 2 terms and then were elected mayor in 1995.
T: Correct.
H: Correct. All right. Let's talk. You are at the top of the city political hierarchy in your office.
T: Correct.
H: How does that work? How do you get things done? You're one of eleven members; you have very little power, real power.
T: [laughter] Well, you're right. The mayor in this city has one vote. We have 10 council members, so mine plus theirs, as I'm one of eleven. I have, by charter, no ability to set an agenda, literally, or for council meetings to determine what items will be discussed and voted on. But just like each of the council members, have to get the concurrence of at least 5 others to join with me, to do that. The power that is held in the mayor's office is, primarily, through those sometimes skills, but more often that position that that person holds. As I remind myself and sometimes my colleagues, whereas each of the council members is elected by one-tenth of the city, the mayor is elected by the entire city. And so, because of that, the office is given more THORNTON
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importance. But in getting votes and making things happen, I have absolutely no T: power over any of the council members, to make things move along.
H: Well, how is it, now you're serving under what some regard as draconian term limits - two two-year terms and out, either as member of council or as mayor, which we're beginning to see - we will soon have an almost perpetually green city council. By the time they learn how things work, they're on the way out; they are lame ducks. It seems to me that the power of city staff is increased immensely. Is that an accurate reading, as far as the agenda and how things really come down?
T: I think it is. And at this time, with [city manager] Alex Briseno, that is not a terrible problem for me, but certainly the power is shifting over toward staff - simply because they're the ones who have the planning department that they can assign to do research for them. They are the ones who can assign each of the department heads to simply spend their financial and human resources addressing this problem. We on the council, and I as mayor, don't have that ability. And with the shorter terms for elected officials, we don't have time to build up a reservoir of, oh, of involvement in issues and a memory of what's gone on.
H: And leverage.
T: Exactly. And that was kind of the word I was trying to THORNTON
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think about on reservoir. You know, with time, you gain purchase points - you know, where you can grab something and T: make it move, and you remember when you last were helpful to someone. But it's very difficult now, because the terms are very short.
H: Well, your time on city council has been all under the single-member district plan, which went in in the late 70's. You've served as a council member for District 8, right?
T: Correct.
H: And, as mayor, do you find it hard, as a single-member district council person, to think of the whole city? Or is just all the phone calls from your constituents in your neighborhoods...can you ever step back and say, "What does San Antonio need?"
T: I think that's an accurate description of what it's like to be a councilman, and it also gives meaning to why you need a mayor who has that city-wide view. And I certainly have a different agenda as mayor than I did as a councilman. Councilmen are basically having to deal with the delivery of basic city services - streets, maintenance, police, fire, garbage, those things that are direct response of citizens wanting the services delivered as they think they ought to. The mayor has the ability to step away from that and each of the single-member districts, and try to see where we are as an entire community. What are the overall problems that are THORNTON
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above basic services and, more importantly, where do we need to be going in the future? And that's, I think, the only person in city government, other than possibly the city T: manager, the mayor is the only one who has that opportunity.
H: But then you have to convince the other members of the importance of these goals?
T: That's true; that's true. And for me in this first year, it wasn't an agenda that I chose, but rather was the...just the fate that was given us - and that was the closure of Kelly.
H: Your agenda has been Kelly and water, basically, since you took office?
T: Correct.
H: Kelly being foremost.
T: And Kelly is pretty well on-track with the good group of citizens working that forward. And I'm trying, as best I can, to limit it to specific areas - education and water - with guiding both of those towards job creation.
H: Now in education, city, officially, has nothing to do with education. You've got these 15 independent school districts. Do they listen to the mayor?
T: They do. One of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised to find is the community is very kind to whoever's the mayor. And you are given an opportunity to speak. You THORNTON
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can involve yourself in things, if you choose to do so. Henry Cisneros involved himself with the Education Partnership. Mayor Lila Cockrell was also involved in that, and keeping children in school was the driving force behind that. But T: other than that, there's not been that much involvement of the mayor with these other districts, because each of those districts have their own elected board of trustees. And rather than to insert...the mayor to insert himself or herself into that, most of the time they've hesitated to do it.
H: Would it be better, or more logical, if San Antonio had fewer school district? Say three or four?
T: I think it'd be much better. The problem we have is in some of the smaller, poorer districts - the biggest game going is the school district, in terms of job creation, of structure of any type in that part of the city. And so, it becomes a very powerful influence over that neighborhood...those neighborhoods in that part of our community. And the school boards then start acting in a very political way - not so much directed towards the students and their education, but rather towards the school district and the number of jobs that can be given out from it.
H: Yeah, directly involved in day-to-day operations and personnel and...
T: Well, one of things you're starting, see, is...and we THORNTON
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mention single-member districts in San Antonio at City Hall, but if you do that within a school district and you are the representative for that district that has this high school in that district and this middle school and these elementary schools. Then they - in some trustees' minds - that becomes their high school. And they have, in the past - I think T: incorrectly so - directed involved themselves in the hiring and deciding who would be the principal, the assistant principals, the teachers. And you've taken the administration of the schools away from school superintendents into elected officials. And I think that's wrong.
H: Let's change topics. Let's go back to the Hospital District. What year were you first elected to Bexar County Hospital District Board?
T: Well, I was appointed in 1979 by Albert Bustamante.
H: Who was County Judge.
T: Correct. And I went on and immediately was appointed, then, to chair the Budget and Finance Committee, and chaired that for two years. And then, in 1981, was elected chairman of that board and served as chairman from 1981 to 1991.
H: And in that time, as I recall from personal experience, there was a great change in how the board operates and how the district operates - went from an annual supplicant to Commissioners' Court to a self-sustaining operation, modern THORNTON
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state-of-the-art facilities. How did that come about?
T: The reason I asked Albert to put me on the board - and he and I were serving together what was called the Health Systems Agency, back in the Carter administration years when federal dollars were flowing into health care and there was a desire to set up clinics... And I...at that time the Hospital District had just moved the OB services from downtown out to the Medical School, or to the northwest part of our city. And T: a lot of the citizens who were using that service felt like they were being abandoned and that the center part of our city was being left behind for this new campus, which to them seemed very, very far north. And, in fact, there was a suit by citizens against the Hospital District. And so, it was in the late 70's - a very contentious time between the community and the Hospital District, the very people the hospital was there to serve, and the Medical School. And I'd mentioned to Albert, I said, "Albert, I think I can do a better job of that. I think we can open that board up." I said, "If you appoint me on there, we'll blast that thing open and have where lights come in through the windows and the doors open and people can see what we're doing." And he did appoint me, and in 1979 we began serving there. I think one of the other interesting things was from...through the 80's, if you were to try to find a part of our economy, nationally, where costs were THORNTON
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escalating, were spiraling upward, health care was often given as an example. It was going up, up, up. And here we were in San Antonio, required to provide that health care which was costing more off of a tax base which was not wealthy, and yet do that without raising taxes.
H: Let me interject here that the Hospital District, in effect, was the county charity ward for people who could not afford medical care.
T: That's correct. We had gotten a Medical School in 1968, or the promise of a Medical School then, and a Dental School T: followed, and then a Nursing School. And we soon had what was then called a Health Science Center. And the Hospital District was now becoming more and more of a teaching hospital, rather than simply a safety net to capture people who had no health insurance, or didn't have the funds to go to the other hospitals here in town. And so, it was in that environment that we took over, and there were others on the board who were strong leaders that contributed greatly.
H: Some of those names?
T; Peveto.
H: John Peveto.
T: Marvin Smith.
H: Dr. Marvin Smith.
T: Yeah. And who was John Smith? If you knew the history of San Antonio, you know there becomes a line from one to the THORNTON
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other, but there were a lot of good people on the board at that time. The amazing thing we did, though, Sterlin, is from 1979 till the time I left in 1991, we never borrowed money - large amounts of money - and we built 55 million dollars worth of capital improvements, and we did it out of cash flow. What we did was, we made a conscious decision to not only care for non-funded patients who were simply a cost and expense, an obligation to meet, but also to care for funded patients who would bring revenues into the facility. And that was not received kindly by the Medical Society, which about every 3 years would remind us that the hospital was there simply to T: care for the poor and to teach. And we would then add to that, "We're also here to, as much as possible, be self- sustaining." The changes in health care now are making it where what we began then, we have positioned our Hospital District to where it is able to compete. And as we're going toward managed-care, they are one of the forces that is accepted in the community as an option for many people who have choices to go anywhere they would like.
H: I remember one of your difficulties, in addition to the local Medical Society, was convincing the faculty members to bring their own patients into the County Hospital.
T: No doubt about it. We can't have a...
H: The paying patients.THORNTON
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T: We can't have a funded patient if there's not a doctor who is going to also treat them. And if you can't get the faculty - the physicians who are on the faculty - to come out of their research labs, to get out of their classrooms, and to begin seeing patients in a clinic setting and in the hospital, then we're not going to generate revenues and neither are they. Several things brought them into seeing the value of that. One was that they started - they being the Health Science Centers across the state - seeing they were also getting fewer dollars from the state, and that started, then, affecting their salaries. And they have a mechanism - what's called the 'MSRDP' - it's a fund that their patient revenues, when they generate, go into that fund and then allows them to T: supplement their salaries. So, suddenly it was not only to the Hospital District's benefit to have funded patients, but the faculty started saying, "Well, if our salaries are going to go up, we're going to have to generate those funds, too." Or, again, a move off of complete dependence on the tax rolls, but a move more towards self-sufficiency. And they did not come along quickly, and I'm not sure that we were persuasive. I think, more importantly, when it started affecting their salaries, that was the reason for them to start...
H: It got their attention.
T: It's amazing how they saw the light and they, too, then THORNTON
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wanted to partner with the Hospital District in producing revenues.
H: You mention cash-flow. From personal experience, the County Hospital is the slowest at billing and collecting of any medical institution I have ever been around, which makes me wonder how steady the cash-flow is. Like, I had a problem in August, and I got my final bill on it in May.
T: Yeah, it's horrible. We...one of the things we had to do was have a mind-shift, an attitude shift, of people who...and let them experience - and let me exaggerate to make a point - who are simply on a government job. They're going to get paid, regardless of what the hospital does, because the revenues are coming from taxes. To shift that over more toward, as I am in my private practice - if I do the work, I T: don't get paid until the patient pays me. And you can't do that with employees in an institution. But, yet, you can move their attitude over to where they start realizing that if you do the service, you need to capture the fee, to capture the revenue.
H: I think some of them are still a little bit behind the curve on that.
T: Always will be, and that's probably a continuing bettle I'll have to keep doing.
H: Yeah.
T: We have to do that in my practice, too. [laughter]THORNTON
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H: Right. Before we started this, you mentioned power - vacuum of power - in San Antonio now. Tell us what you were referring to and define the situation.
T: Let me make reference to when I ran in '91 for City Council, District 8. District 8 is the wealthiest part of our community. It's a part of our city where there's high voter turnout. It's the part of our city, when I ran in '91, that was...and we'd not redistricted or drawn the lines again since 1980. I had literally 200,000 citizens. It was a very large district. And it was the most organized district, in terms of neighborhood organizations - both voluntary and neighborhood organizations where it was mandatory participation. So, when I began to run, one of the first changes was...I did from... I think in the past, I was not interested at all in who the precinct chairmen were throughout the district of the, T: historically, that voting structure. But I was far more interested in who the leaders in each of the neighborhood groups were. Because that, quite frankly, was where the vibrancy was. That's where people were meeting; where they were talking about issues on a weekly, bi-weekly basis. And so, we were starting to see, I think, in the city the rise of neighborhoods as a political entity that, quite frankly, in my opinion, needed to be dealt with.
H: Do you credit that to the rise of the Communities THORNTON
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Organized for Public Service - the first neighborhood group?
T: No, it's separate. They were very much alike in that if you asked the, "What do you want?" - and both of these areas would say, "We want better infra-structure, better streets, better education for our children, and safer neighborhoods." It's amazing how they say the same thing. But, yet, there was a gulf between District 8 and District 5, where there was absolutely no communication. And, in fact, the perception in District 8 of what COPS was doing, was not something that those people wanted to follow. But the truth is, they all organized for exactly the same reasons. And some of what we were seeing in [District] 8 was because there were large developments, some of which - like Elm Creek - if you bought a home there, you were required to contribute monthly and be a member of the Elm Creek Homeowners Association. But there were also a lot, as an example, of Ray Ellison sub-divisions that would have, say 500 homes, a central area that had a T: swimming pool and a community area and some un-sold lots and some common area. Well, there was no requirement to participate, but because of the swimming pool, because of the common areas, and because of dealing with one developer-builder, they came together voluntarily. In District 8, and I mentioned how that was the factor then. Another thing, as I looked to run, that I think was different from the past, I saw the voting numbers, the THORNTON
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just raw power of where the votes were to be in those neighborhood groups, more so that what could be driven or influenced by, in the past, simply coming in with a large amount of money and through direct mail, phone bands, or whatever money would buy in a campaign, just bulling your way into a victory. It was more important to me then to have the neighborhoods with me, for their votes, than it was to have the business community with me for their money. Now, the balance was to try to gain the confidence of both groups. Once I got into office, that proved to be true. And I had been a part of the business establishment, because in 1989 I chaired the Greater Chamber. But several changes were starting to take place. Also , in '89 we had a campaign to build the Alamodome. And the battle there was won by the business community, but it was a close battle. And just citizens - those folks who represent the homeowners, taxpayers, not the business or the establishment part of our community - became oragnized and became a political influence from that point on. I'm convinced of that. The election in T: '91, when I went in as councilman, also had a very spirited campaign of whether we should continue building Applewhite or not. And at that point, you had the business community, the establishment, the elected officials, all of these people that normally would have won elections in the past, saying, "We want this to happen." And, yet, through THORNTON
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petitions and through simple hard work and a lot of creativity, the citizens-based groups who were, quite frankly, on the outside of the establishment, won the election in '91. And Applewhite was turned down as a lake... We saw a similar election in August of '94, and it was on a second attempt to have a water plan for San Antonio. And it was the same lineup - on one side you had for the water plan, the business community, the newspaper, the establishment, most of the money, all of the things that you would call the "power structure of the city". And, again, against it you had the people without money but with a great deal of passion and a lot of creativity on how they sold their message, and they beat the establishment again. And they not only beat them again, they beat them by a greater margin.
H: Well, let me interject. I remember the first meeting that I had with then-Mayor Nelson Wolff and others on the second Applewhite election. And I said, "Nelson, what's the problem?" He said, "They don't trust us." Is that what it boils down to, in your view? Both Applewhites. And also, even going further back, fluoride was turned down.
T: The two water issues were clearly not debated on the engineering of whether you can build a lake or do a water plan on the water issue itself, but were...the two elections were driven by political concerns. And I, for completeness sake, want to add, just legal concerns. But the biggest THORNTON
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problem we had was a political issue, and it was, as you said, distrust. Now, what I...how I would look at all of that and place it on the table is, the old days of the banks, the law firms, the accounting firms, and the Chamber, and the largest corporations coming together and deciding what we're going to do and then muscling it along with money, are gone!
H: And the Alamodome was the last one.
T: It was the last one. Now, look what else has happened. One of the other things that was happening when the Alamodome election in the late '80s was going on, look at the number of banks that we had in this city and that transformation in banks and in banking. Look at the law firms that we had in the early '80s and then that transformation that took place through the difficulties of the '80s. Look at the accounting firms - the CPA firms. They, too, went from the Big 8 down to where there are even fewer. There was a total fracturing of the power structure in the matrix of what held this community together - many communities - in terms of legal, money, business, and political power. And all of those things came together where, at the end of it or at the beginning of the '90s, it was like a war where there was no one standing. As H: you looked around the horizon to see who was standing to lead us, there was no one.THORNTON
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H: And, in some cases, they were killing the wounded.
T: Oh! Well, first you would kick them and take their possessions and then kill them! But it was a difficult time for a lot of people, because I don't think they understood, those who had been in power before; they simply weren't in power anymore.
And that's why, when I ran for election in '91, my interest was not those previous power-brokers. I'm out there at neighborhood meetings, sitting in lawn chairs, fighting red ants. That's were the power was. Who had the ability to bring those groups together? And as we all know in politics, the one who wins the election is the one who gets the most votes. And then at the end of that election, I can say, "I got the most votes". But I think it has been a tremendous change in how this city is run. It would be very difficult - you and I started talking about this session here today, about HemisFair '68. It would be far more difficult, in my opinion, to do what was done in '68. Look what was done in '68: HemisFair, UTSA, Riverwalk, Hospital District, Medical School. And those were all decisions made by the "then-establishment" that it would be far more difficult to do today.
H: Right. But one difference on HemisFair: I think for the first time, the establishment reached out to as much of the community as it could and involved as many people as it THORNTON
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could H: in the creation of HemisFair. That was a watershed thing. But would it be fair, then, to say that in your political campaigns you have not depended upon what some call the "extinct volcanoes"?
T: The "spent volcanoes" is what Henry Catto told me, and which I thought was great, yeah. You know they're still there, they're clearly enormous and...but yet, they don't spew forth with the power that they've had in the past, and whenever they rumble, everyone stops and looks to see what they're saying. I think those days are gone. I think the mayors and the elected leaders of this community, single-member districts, will ceretainly be grassroots campaigns. But I think the mayors are going to have to be closer tied to people.
H: Well, then, how do you get a consensus on anything? The distrust is still lingering. I don't think that's gone away from Applewhite. How do you get enough together to get something done?
T: We have to gain trust. And there are several ways that you can do that. One was, for me when I became mayor, one of the first visible and not only, I think, real but symbolic gestures, was the appointment of the chairman of the Water Board. For decades the chairman of the Water Board had been a white, male developer who was primarily building homes on the northside. And the homes they were building were always THORNTON
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just exceeding our northern-most city limits, which required T: for the Water Board the extension of water mains and sewer service. And it required, as you build new schools in undeveloped areas or new areas with undeveloped areas, you had to build new schools. So it became important that you had involvement with the school boards.
END OF TAPE I, Side 1
TAPE I, Side 2
T: So, what I wanted to do was to find an appoinment to that position that would be, one, someone who was not a developer, so that the interest of extending mains and not having hookup fees when you hooked up new homes, making that as little as possible, so that it worked to benefit the developers. But I wanted someone who was not a developer, who would represent the citizens more, someone who was more centrally located in our city - if not physically, mentally at least. Was not always pushing that northern boundary, as home-building and development was doing. And, thirdly, it was...it would have been nice to me if that person was Hispanic. And so, in the first month the name that finally came to me and one that I selected, was Juan Patlan. He was someone who had experience in major developments. He was a mature man who had been a part of our city for many years. He was not a developer and he is Hispanic. Well, that was a time for people to say, "Well, hey, maybe this person, or THORNTON
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Bill, maybe I am not someone who's going to do things as they've been done in the past; maybe I was showing an independence from those development T: interests. And, in fact, that decision was challenged immediately, and it was an interesting thing. And you ask how you make these changes? It was one where I against a council that was against me by numbers, was, on their part, the second floor of city hall, scurrying around putting together groups to out-vote me. And so, in my first month, it became a very clear time of decision of, "Am I going to let this council run by committee, or was I going to be a mayor alone?" And I chose to dig in and fight, and won, and got Juan Patlan. The question you asked was, "How do you gain confidence?" Well, one, I showed a break from the past. Now, has that been easy for me on other fronts? No. Because it starts immediately rumblings and mumblings from those who for decades have been able to call the mayor's office on the phone and move things around. And I had sent a very clear signal that I was going to be independent and try to be more representative of what citizens - just people - wanted. And that's, in some ways, caused hardship for me over this last year.
H: And probably will.
T: It will. but I'll tell you what - I cannot tell you how free I became. There was a time when we were talking about hiring a lobbyist for the city. And in that one evening I THORNTON
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had five phone calls, from 7:30 until ll:30, five separate phone calls from two peoople who over the past decades had repeatedly told the mayor what to do and who to hire. And once I realized I didn't have to take those phone calls T: anymore, I didn't have to have someone else tell me what I thought was best for the city, was one of the most liberating moments I've had. And from that point, quite frankly, there may be skirmishes and difficulties and moments of friction, but I feel clean and comfortable with the way I'm able to make decisions.
H: Great. Let's talk about campaigns. What did it cost you to be elected mayor last year?
T: Around eight hundred thousand.
H: For a position that pays fifty dollars a week.
T: [laughter] Fifty dollars.
H: Not much return on money.
T: No, it's not.
H: Okay. You didn't depend on the business community for your money, but you still came up with almost a million dollars.
T: Well, I did depend on the business community for the money. The person I was running against was the...Kay Turner, who had won the 1994 water election, had won the 1991 Applewhite election, she and others, and had won the fight against fluoride. And because of that time period, she had a THORNTON
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much higher name ID that I did. What's interesting was: January of '95, just four months before the election, I did a poll, by Tarrance, a good solid poll, a high number of people surveyed, and found that my name identification, just that they even knew me - this is after being on the Hospital T: District the 12 years, chairman of the Chamber in '89, and a councilman for three and a half years - at that point, my name ID was forty-one percent. It was lower than Kay Turner's because she had been in the previous campaign. So, we realized that for me to win, the first thing had to be for people to learn who I was. And in a mayor's race in a city this size, you've got to have money to buy television, to direct-mail, and on the northside to get out the vote, you have to do phone banks. So, we had to raise money. People say I barely beat Kay Turner, but the key word in that sentence is, "I beat her!"
H: Right.
T: She didn't get beat in '94; she didn't get beat in '91, I'm the first; she didn't get beat on the fluoride; I'm the first one to ever beat her!
H: Right. Well, I assume the fear of Kay Turner helped you raise money from the business community. I mean, the idea of Kay Turner being mayor must have caused a lot of sleepless nights around town.
T: Oh, I know. A lot of folks are concerned about Bill THORNTON
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Thornton being mayor, but [laughter] I get...you know, politics is not who you necessarily want to fill that office. Politics is deciding between those candidates that are before you. And in that case, there were a lot of people that voted for her that were against me, but there were also people who voted for me that were against her.
H: Let's go to the job of mayor or just to public service. I have observed and known all sorts of elected officials over the years. And one thing I have never quite grasped is why someone like you - successful medical practice, nice family -deliberately seeks and achieves public office which (a) as we've mentioned, pays almost nothing; (b) gets you a lot of lumps, earns you some enemies as well as friends. You must put in 60 or 70 hours a week as mayor, day and night. Why?
T: You're right. The disincentives are there. It's a financial cost, it is a physical cost, it is an emotional cost, it is a personal cost in terms of your family, and it's a personal cost in terms of your friends. And in almost every one of those areas, it's a negative, and a large negative. But there is not a single position in this community, other than the mayor's, where you have as much influence on a daily basis, in our efforts to improve our community, our people's lives. State legislators don't have that - state senators, the county commissioners, the county THORNTON
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judge. If you're mayor of this city, more than anyone else you have the ability to...the best chance to do good for this community. And I will tell you, for me, and that...it's, with the term limitations, I'm in and I'm out! And a mayor of a city this size, I'm not certain leads anywhere. It didn't necessarily for Lila Cockrell, didn't for Nelson Wolff. Henry Cisneros was exceptional and was appointed to national office. But I don't see it leading anywhere for me. It's a meat-grinderr! T: So with all of those understandings, you start taking on, literally, an almost paternalistic view of the city. And you start becoming protective; you start, literally, caring. You say it often enough, you know, "I care for those families that work at Kelly; I care about those kids in school; I care about those jobs". And if you've got any sort of emotion at all, you really start feeling that responsibility. And that is tremendously satisfying when you find you've made a difference, to do some good for this community.
H: Is this opportunity to do good part of your Baptist upbringing?
T: Oh, yeah. No doubt about it. And I answer quickly now what years ago I wouldn't even have known what to answer. And also, it's easier for me to answer at age 51, because my view of life is different now than it was several years ago. There's no question, you know, as you approach that time THORNTON
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when you say, "Well, when life's over, what will I be able to say I did and will others view?" This gives you a chance, more than any other opportunity in this town, to do good things. YOu're not going to get rich. If you do deals for your friends, you're going to go to jail. Those are all the wrong motives anyway. The only satisfaction you can gain from this job is doing good things for San Antonio. But that is enough, and it's in enough quantity to offset all of those negatives that you and I mentioned at the beginning.
H: Sure. What's your outlook for San Antonio? Probability H: is that you're going to have another 2 years as mayor, beginning in May of '97. You have the closing of Kelly Air Force Base within the next few years. Water. Education problems you've mentioned. Where do you think San ANtonio will be, say in 5 years - economically, socially, services - city services?
T: Let me tell you. It's true, I have at least one year, maybe 3 years to go. But everything I'm looking at, in terms of what I want to do, is 5, 10, 40, 60 years out. And the thing that concerns me is, we look to what do we need to be doing today. To address those concerns I have for the long-term future are these: one, poverty in this city is far, far more than it should be. The figures that I use, that are about a year old now, are, 23 percent of our community lives below the federal poverty level. Well, let me give that some THORNTON
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meaning. For an individual, that's about $7,400,'500 a year for a single individual. For a family of four, it's about $14,800, 14,900. Now, if 23 percent of our population lives below that level, you...many of us wonder how do they get by? In fact, they themselves wonder that. But if you have an individual making $11,000 or a family of 4 making $22,000, they're still poor. That is a rock that those people have to drag along, as they try to meet their personal needs, their family's needs, just to make house payment, car payment, and so forth. We've got to address this poverty problem. If the trend is that 20%, 23% climbs, and poverty is getting worse, T: this city...there will be a time where it will explode. Another long-term concern which I think we do fairly well in: we're a city of 55% Hispanic, 37% Anglo; 7% black, 1% other. So, we're basically a 63% minority community. I think we do well in San Antonio of not...we certainly do enjoy our diversity, but we're not divided by it. And that is something that we have got to work on. And I think we've done some steps this year - English Plus was a strong statement; maintaining an affirmative action, regardless of what you call it, with city dollars. Opposing 187 as they've done - the 187 we see California saying - we think that's wrong. Those are things we've done this year to gain credibility in San Antonio with some of the more active groups, for civil rights. We're trying to do the right THORNTON
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thing. If we ever lose that enjoymnet of people who are different, and in fact, use the differences as ways to divide us, we're a community that's headed for trouble. Third thing, if we don't address water in San Antonio, for the long term, we're never going to have that economy we must have, to have the jobs for all the people who live here. Or all the people who are being born who're going to want a job 10, 20, 30 years from now. We must address water. We have historically expected everything and done nothing. We've had it too easy, too cheap, too long, regarding water.
H: All you had to do was drill a hole and bring up the aquifer water.
T: It's too easy. Other cities build dams, build lakes, buy water. We've done nothing! Water is the third one. The...those three come together - education and other things like that become important, but all of the rest of the stuff, then, becomes simply what you have to do to create jobs and the types of jobs you want. Education you gotta have. I mentioned water. And if you do those things, then you're able to attack crime, because if you've got a city filled with poverty and division, crime's going to be a problem. If you've got a lot of poverty, drugs are an easier option for some people. Gangs become an option.
H: It's hard to separate education from poverty and all the resulting ill-effects as...THORNTON
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T: You can't. We have 20% of our adult population, as staggering as that number sounds (and 20% of a million is 200,000) adults in this city who are functionally illiterate. We have a Council District - District 5 - where half of the adults in that district cannot read. And then we sit here and say, "Well, we want all the jobs to move to San Antonio. We want them to be high-paying jobs; we want them to be high-skilled jobs." And you've got to ask yourself, "Where does someone who can't read go?"
H: Where's the workforce?
T: That's right! And so it all comes togetehr; it all has to come together, which is why, now that Kelly seems to be fairly well on-track and moving along, the two things I'm T: going to focus on are water and education.
H: Then on the Kelly, the privatization - recurring question in my mind and, I think, some others - if the Air Force didn't have enough business to keep Kelly and the other one in California open, where is the work going to come from, from privatization? From commercial?
T: That's the exciting thing, you bet!
H: From airlines?
T: Yes!
H: From airplane makers?
T; Yes!
H: And how are you going to keep that workforce here until THORNTON
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the work gets here?
T: Well, two things. Let me go back to the military first. What we're seeing now in the military is the United States is bringing back our strength. But we want to be able to respond, literally, around the world. So we're not just going to "sit off" soldiers in Germany and let them sit there for 4 years and be available. What we're going to do now is have troops here, and if there's a reason for them to be in Germany, we're going to fly them there. Or if we had to go to Desert Storm, we're going to fly men and equipment there. Or Ethiopia, Somalia, you know. Pick a place! [laughter] We're going to have fewer people, but we're going to be far more agile and mobile. That mobility comes with airplanes. So, you may see down-sizing in the military, but there's still T: going to be...and as we've seen with the recent purchase of 120 C-117's, they should have a life-span of 30 years. They're going to be modified and maintained, and I think Kelly can do that. But what excites me more than just that military work is, people are moving, too. And if we can capture that commercial work, the movement of goods and the movement of people maintaining those airplanes, I think that's the future for us.
H: Right.
T: None of us expects to send a package to Seattle now and have it arrive 12 days later. We don't do that anymore. We THORNTON
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expect to send it today and through Federal Express, UPS, DHL, or now even the Postal Service, it'd be there tomorrow! And those require airplanes.
H: Speaking of airplanes, what can the city do to get more direct flights to and from San Antonio, without going through either Dallas or some other...changing places to New York or L.A.? That's a frequent complaint. I love San Antonio, but it's hard to get there.
T: The simple answer - and I'm not being smart-allecky, because I think it's the truthful answer - is to buy more tickets to those places. And if the airlines see enough origins and destinations - the origin being San Antonio, from San Antonio to 'a place', they will put a direct flight. We have a test - one of those right now - it's from San Antonio to New York, Continental to Newark. If people don't buy the T: tickets and utililze that flight, then I don't care what we want, Continental is not going to fly that plane back and forth!
H: There was some talk earlier, and I think it went away, of subsidizing a major airlines. Say, "Come in here, and we'll help you pay for direct flights to Washington and New York." Would that be viable?
T: Yeah. That's a way to do it. And some cities have done that, who are more remote than San Antonio. You know, we're not without airline services, just that we have to go THORNTON
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either through Houston or Dallas or Salt Lake city, primarily, and connect. But I'm not one who's ready to spend city tax dollars to do that right now.
H: Anything else you want to cover? We're closing in on the end of this first tape.
T: Let's eat!
H: [laughter]
END OF TAPE I, Side 2