$8.1M Brackenridge Project Advances to Council

It’s been more than a year of public meetings, most of which the City of San Antonio’s Public Works and Parks & Recreation departments didn’t expect to hold, explaining in detail their plan to remove more than 100 trees for a bond-funded facelift in the headwaters of Brackenridge Park. Yet few if any of those who resisted the plan when it first became public in 2022 have come around to support the project that D2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez helped put in the slow lane for more needed community discussion. Perhaps that is due to all the times City staff claimed that state and federal regulators were forcing them to remove several of the oldest trees to restore the river wall, claims Texas Historical Commission staff said in private emails were not true. Or the fact that City staff continued throughout this whole ordeal to claim that forcefully evicting a rookery of migratory birds at the site had absolutely nothing to do with the bond project—though their own emails discuss hiring USDA to kick the birds out to enable the bond project. Well, the fences and black fabric intended to screen the ugly eviction have come down. The birds have now been violently displaced. Next up are the trees. Setting the chainsaws in motion requires City Council to now sign off on a nearly $5.7M budget request for what has grown into an $8.1M redevelopment project. (Half a mil is coming from the City’s tree mitigation fund—most of which will be used to move one massive oak a short, and potentially lethal, distance.) For the number of demonstrably untrue things City staff have said leading up to this vote, remarkably little has changed about this project since first being slowrolled by McKee-Rodriguez. That doesn’t mean it has been cheap for the City, which is now being asked to kick in an additional $700,000 for design services.

Agenda Item #8

This ordinance approves a task order to a Job Order Contract with Amstar, Inc. in the amount of $3,467,639.00 for Phase 1 of the Brackenridge Park project; approves an amendment in the increased amount of $696,659.00 for a revised Professional Services Agreement value of $2,200,314.00 with SWA Group for additional architectural and engineering design services associated with the design, construction and other related services required for Phases 1 and 2 of the Brackenridge Park project; and, amending the FY 2023 – FY 2028 Capital Improvement Program with the appropriation of $526,751.00 from the Tree Preservation Fund and acceptance of a contribution of $90,000.00 from the Brackenridge Park Conservancy to the Brackenridge Park project, a 2017 General Obligation Bond Program funded project, located in Council Districts 1 and 2.

Click for full Agenda #8 Description

Public comments

Members of the public can comment on items on the agenda. To sign up to speak visit www.saspeakup.com. Click on meetings and events and select the meeting you’d like to participate in. Sign up to speak or submit a written comment. Questions relating to these rules may be directed to the Office of the City Clerk at (210) 207-7253. Individuals signing up for public comment may register for VIA bus fare or parking validation at www.saspeakup.com. VIA bus fare or parking at City Tower Garage (located at 100 Blk N. Main) will be provided to individuals who request the assistance. Staff will provide VIA bus fare passes and parking validation tickets in the lobby of City Council Chambers. To view the live meeting please view our livestream.

Visit Deceleration’s Happening Events Calendar.