Alderman Earnest Gay Lies In Speech to Texas Public Policy Foundation

Alderman Earnest Gay was the honorary speaker at a presentation in Austin for the Texas Public Policy Foundation on January 8, 2015.  He contributed about 8 minutes to a 2 hour long presentation organized by Jess Fields on the topic of Liberty Cities.  Also present, and speaking for a large portion of the presentation, was Art Martinez de Vara.

Gay spoke as a representative of the City of Sandy Oaks, discussing the topics of incorporation and the process of starting a city government.  In his speech, he embellished many details, insulted his own citizens, and even lied about various topics.

The full presentation can be viewed below.  Alderman Earnest Gay comes in around minute 19:

Reasons For Creating A City

The main reasons Alderman Earnest Gay gave for incorporation are very different from the ones the Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks (CISO) gave.

 Basically, our biggest deal from wanting to get our own city done was the city of San Antonio announced a limited purchase annexation.  They announce this annexation [then] brought their city limit line down to the northern boundary of our area and it was in effect January 8, 2014.

CISO did use fear to manipulate people into voting in favor of incorporation, saying that San Antonio would impose itself on the area of Waterwood.  But CISO started the incorporation process in 2011 and San Antonio released 2.4 square miles of its Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) in November of 2013.  San Antonio didn’t announce annexing anything in the area until CISO showed signs of actually pushing for an incorporation vote.

The City of San Antonio had good reason to annex.  CISO pushing for incorporation meant that the most expensive portion of the area with little revenue would be removed from San Antonio’s responsibility.  South of the City of Sandy Oaks there isn’t any major commerce and there isn’t major industry that San Antonio has shown interest in.  The reality is that San Antonio did not want what it released to CISO.  In fact, Pedro Orduno, Chairman of the Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks, told the Express News on March 4, 2012 that he felt the City of San Antonio wouldn’t want the area because of the low property values and septic tanks.

The reasons for incorporation that Orduno gave were for animal control, police protection, and fire protection.  Items Gay never addressed when he gave reasons for why the area incorporated.  In fact, these are topics Gay has never addressed since incorporation.

Alderman Earnest Gay did, however, give a new reason why the area incorporated that has not been heard:

All of this began – I don’t know if you are familiar with south Bexar county and San Antonio, but there’s 2 major companies down there, one of them is called Weatherford and the other one is called Halliburton.  Weatherford had been there a long time, and they would have been in our city, but they expanded and moved across the highway.  And then of course Halliburton came in and set up a 30 or 40 acre deal on 1604.  We missed both of them.

At no time has Weatherford ever occupied territory that is now in the City of Sandy Oaks.  The company did not move out of the area because they “expanded.”  In the land negotiation with San Antonio, at no time did CISO ever request property that would have included the areas where Weatherford and Halliburton currently exist.  And Halliburton wouldn’t be able to fit 30 acres in the city because there’s not 30 acres of continuous land available.

Alderman Earnest Gay Continues to Ignore Upset Citizens

The following is what Gay had to say about people who are upset about incorporation:

Now don’t get me wrong, we incorporated, but it wasn’t without opposition.  A lot of people that, uh, I see a lot of few people that said, oh, we didn’t get the word out, we didn’t announce it, uh, we named it Sandy Oaks when actually the subdivision we were in was called Waterwood and people were confused and didn’t think it effected them – Not true. It was in the papers, it was on the news, we had signage out, and 10.6% of the people came out and voted.

All of these complaints were certainly expressed after the vote for incorporation.  But Gay completely ignores why people addressed these complaints and why these complaints still continue to matter today.

Name Of City

The issue of naming the city “Sandy Oaks” isn’t that the name of the proposed city wasn’t the name of the main subdivision.  The issue is that “Sandy Oaks” is the name of a community that was already in existence and been so for some time.  Residents in the subdivision of Waterwood (which is still called Waterwood, regardless of Gay’s use of the past-tense) have never considered themselves as living in the area of Sandy Oaks, a community 2.5 miles away.

The community of Sandy Oaks exists at the corner of Hardy and Campbellton Roads.  At no time did any of the proposed boundaries of the City of Sandy Oaks ever included the community of Sandy Oaks.

we had signage out

Yes, the Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks had signage out that said “Vote to Incorporate Sandy Oaks.”

There are still people today who do not know they are part of a city because of the continuing lack of communication.

It Was On The News

Using the name of another location that already existed wasn’t confusing just for residents.  Even major news organizations in San Antonio were confused about the location of the City of Sandy Oaks.  When CISO filed paperwork asking San Antonio to release territory, KSAT 12 News did a story about it.  Reporter Paul Venema went to interview people at the Sandy Oaks Volunteer Fire Department about the incorporation project.  The station, of course, is located in the community of Sandy Oaks, 2.5 miles away from what is now the City of Sandy Oaks.  All of the people Venema interviewed were people associated with the fire department and none of them lived inside the area that CISO wanted to turn into a city.

Even News Radio 1200 WOAI got it wrong in a January 2014 article titled Sandy Oaks Formally Applies for Incorporation.  The article calls the area of Waterwood “Sandy Oaks” and even refers to Jim Clement, Vice-Chair of CISO, as a “Sandy Oaks Resident.”

Here’s an example from the San Antonio Express News where the name “Sandy Oaks” is used to describe an area besides the original community of Sandy Oaks.

In none of the above reporting in radio, television, or newspaper did anyone mention the area of Waterwood, Star Oaks Dr, or the stretch of Priest Road near Waterwood.

But according to Alderman Earnest Gay, the citizens he is supposed to represent have no right to be upset for not being fully informed.

Supporting Appalling Voter Apathy

In the defending of the vote for incorporation, Alderman Earnest Gay said:

10.6% of the people came out and voted

No, 10.6% of the people did not come out to vote.  Only 3.2% of the population voted.

But Gay doesn’t see non-registered voters as people.  He pretty much said so to a fellow resident back in August during a “Meet the Candidates” meeting.  Of the 3 meetings where candidates met to answer questions from citizens, Earnest Gay only bothered to show up to the first.  At the meeting, one man said he wasn’t notified about the vote to incorporate.  Gay’s response was

Well are you a registered voter?  Then you don’t get to know!

Gay didn’t say this in a matter of fact tone.  He said it with a loud domineering voice practically in the face of a fellow resident who was upset and concerned.  Afterward, the man said

I felt like I was barked at like I was just some dog.

10.6% of the registered voters isn’t exactly something to be bragging about.  To put it in perspective, the New York Times recently published an article titled “The worst voter turn out in 72 years” in which the NYT refers to the 28.8% voter turn out in its state as “shameful.”

In fact, Earnest Gay later proves to himself in his own speech that the voter turnout for the incorporation vote was incredibly low.  Gay mentions that 16% of the registered voters (15.9% to be exact) participated in the election of the City Council.  Why did more voters participate?  Because 3 of the 9 candidates (not including Gay) went door to door asking for votes.  These 3 candidates even organized shifts the day of election for people to man the main entrances and exits of the community, waving signs for the election.  Basically, more people knew about the city council election because more work was done to communicate the election.

The Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks didn’t want to communicate the election for incorporate because they only needed 1 vote in favor for incorporation to pass.  CISO put in the bare minimum because CISO’s goal was for incorporation to be successful, not for the community to be involved or communicated to.

Since the vote to incorporate, every election has seen more people participate.  The vote in November 2014 saw twice as many voters.  Saying that 10.6% is a good voter turn out is simply ignorant.  The fact that only 10.6% of the registered voters participated is a testament to the lack of communication from the Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks.  Which means people have every right to be upset about incorporation.

Alderman Earnest Gay Lies About Property Tax

Here’s what Alderman Earnest Gay had to say about property tax:

 If we would have done a 2014 tax, back-taxed them in other words, we would have had money coming in this January for operating funds this year.  It was not the intent of our council to do that.  We did not want to burden our residents, which are mainly fairly poor individuals to begin with, with a tax they probably would not be able to afford.

At the Budget Hearing in September 2014, Mayor Jim Clement presented a budget that would have taxed the City of Sandy Oaks retroactively.  Residents would have had to pay for taxes for the entire year of 2014 even though the city incorporated in May.  The City Attorney, Art Martinez de Vara, explained that there was no prorating the tax.  When members of the audience became upset, Mayor Clement responded “It’s all or none”, implying he was in favor of the tax.

Alderman Earnest Gay not only voted in favor of the budget, but was the Alderman who motioned to accept it.

When asked who created the budget that would more than double the current property tax, Mayor Clement pointed to Martinez de Vara and replied “The attorney.”  Martinez de Vara claims he worked with Clement to create the budget, which would mean that Clement certainly did plan on establishing a retroactive tax.

Martinez de Vara was not only in favor of a retroactive tax, but claimed that his own City of Von Ormy, which he is Mayor of, made a retroactive property tax of 2 years.  He stated that the residents didn’t seem to mind.  What he did not state, however, is that Von Ormy has had a population decline of about 10% since it incorporated in 2008.

Here is an audio recording of Mayor Jim Clement attempting to dodge questions about trying to create a retroactive property tax:

To say that it was not the intent of the Sandy Oaks City Council to create a retroactive tax is a lie.

The Vanishing Property Tax

Alderman Earnest Gay continued to lie about property tax saying this:

If we need [property tax] for 2015 we’ll look at that and see [what to] set it at.  Our goal at first was to try to get 38 cents.  When we saw what we could make from city public service we dropped it down to 30.  Now we’re looking at – hey, we’ve got some people coming in, we’ve got some money coming in franchise wise, we may be able to eliminate that tax all together if at all possible.

The Sandy Oaks City Council has never discussed dropping the proposed property tax from 38 cents to 30 cents because of the amount of money coming in from franchise fees.

The budget, that Mayor Clement presented and Martinez de Vara created, brought in a revenue of $250,000 from a proposed 38 cent tax on an area of land valued at $64 million.  But according to Clement, the Bexar County Appraisal District valued the land at $90 million.  Because of this, one of the other Aldermen suggested lowering the property tax from 38 cents down to 30 cents in order to bring in an amount close to $250,000.  The entire City Council was in favor of this.  In fact, they unanimously passed the retroactive 30 cent tax for the entire year of 2014 on accident.  They then had to roll-call their vote to reverse their mistake.

Math isn’t exactly Alderman Earnest Gay’s strongest skill.  When Martinez de Vara laid out a potential budget in August 2014 with a property tax revenue of $300,000, Earnest Gay stated loudly in the meeting “well that can be achieved with a 38 cent tax!”  It had to be explained to Gay that 300,000 divided by 640,000 would actually result in a 47 cent tax.

There Is No If

If we need [property tax] for 2015 we’ll look at that and see [what to] set it at.  … we may be able to eliminate that tax all together if at all possible.

It’s not “if”, but “when.”  The Sandy Oaks City Council has never looked at a budget that did not include property tax.  In fact, the City Council isn’t doing quarterly analyses of the budget so they don’t know what the property tax is going to need to be.  So the practice of poor communication is continuing, and the same poor individuals are going to have the same limited amount of time to know that they need to save for property taxes.

4 Sales Taxes

Alderman Earnest Gay also discussed sales taxes as a source of revenue.  What he did not discuss, however, is that he and the Sandy Oaks City Council created an illegal amount of sales taxes.

At its very first meeting, the City Council created an election for 4 different taxes.  The first 3 were the creation of new sales taxes and the 4rth was the elimination of a sales tax for the VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority.  VIA was 1/2% and the new proposed sales taxes totaled 2%.

Even though Art Martinez de Vara tampered with what the council decided on and changed one of the ballot propositions from a 1/2 to a 1/4, the result was that the voters voted in favor of all the taxes and now the City Council is responsible for the creation of 2.25% worth of sales taxes, which is beyond what is allowable by state law.

Damn.  Math is hard.

What’s also hard is standing up for members of the community.  Gay was told in a “Citizens to be heard” portion of a December City Council meeting that Mayor Jim Clement lied to voters outside the polling location, telling them that the sales tax propositions they were about to vote on would not increase the amount of sales taxes payed.  Gay had no response and has never addressed the issue.

Alderman Earnest Gay also seems to not like what voters decide on:

The VIA, eliminating VIA, that failed.  We don’t know why yet, but we’re going to look into it.  Because VIA does not provide us with any service.

It is not true that VIA does not provide service to people in the area.  It does send a small bus into the community to pick up residents whose only means of accessing the City of San Antonio is VIA.  And just because VIA doesn’t offer gold level services to the city doesn’t mean they couldn’t in the future.  That is, if a city leader worked for it.

Using the word “failed” means that it didn’t work out the way Gay wanted.  But more than 63% of the voters voted in favor of keeping VIA.  If Gay is wondering why his attempt of removing VIA failed, then the one word answer would be: democracy.

Alderman Earnest Gay Lies About Being A “Pay As You Go City”

At the end of his speech, Alderman Earnest Gay had this to say:

We are very adamant about trying to remain a ‘pay as you go’ government, is what we call it.  We want to set our budget according to what our income is, and not try to set our income according to what we want.  It hasn’t worked anywhere from the local level all the way up to the national level.

The City of Sandy Oaks is already in debt.

The City of Sandy Oaks went into debt because of Alderman Earnest Gay.

Gay started spending money the city did not have within the first hour of him taking office.  At its very first meeting, the City Council hired Art Martinez de Vara as City Attorney, contracted with a newspaper willing to take IOU’s, and created an election hosted by Bexar County Elections Department that was willing to defer the payment for 1 year.

Not only does the city owe money, but no one is quite sure exactly how much money is owed.  The City Aldermen are unwilling to say how much Art Martinez de Vara is being payed (which is illegal) and the Council failed to have a quarterly review of the budget in December and has made no plans for a quarterly review in March.

Alderman Earnest Gay Misunderstands Everything

Gay ruined an absolutely excellent opportunity.  He went all the way to Austin to speak in front of an audience eager to learn about Liberty Cities and creating small towns.  But instead of presenting issues and information that could have helped others, Gay focused on 2 topics that only damaged Gay and did nothing for the audience.

First, Gay focused too much on defending the Committee to Incorporate Sandy Oaks in their actions and lack of actions in the Incorporation Process.  Gay’s second priority was making the Sandy Oaks City Council look good.  He used his moment to defend instead of enlighten.

For example, CISO did the absolute bare minimum when it came to getting signatures to get the county to set a date for incorporation.  Gay even mentions this in his speech.  But 50 signatures is only 1.3% of the suspected 4,000 person population.  Instead of being defensive to a room filled with people who will probably never visit the City of Sandy Oaks, Gay could have said “Look, our incorporation committee did the bare minimum and the result was that people were really upset when they learned that they were in a new city.  Maybe your committee might want to include more people so that more people are involved since this is the sort of thing that effects the lives of thousands of people.”

It’s clear that Alderman Earnest Gay misunderstands why people are upset.  But it’s also clear that he does not recognize that CISO made mistakes.  By not recognizing these mistakes, Gay continues his lack of regard for his own citizens that he is supposed to be representing.  The whole entire point about the presentation that the Texas Public Policy Foundation set up was that local governments are supposed to make government more accessible “to the people.”  But it doesn’t matter to Earnest Gay that the people he represents are angry with him and CISO.  For him, he believes that what he wants is what is best for the community and that the community is in the wrong for being against what he wants.

Sandy Oaks is an area where 52% of the population lives below the poverty line.  Mayor Clement not only wanted to double property taxes retroactively, but he stated he didn’t want to give exemptions to the elderly or the disabled even though he himself is exempt for being a disabled vet.

People are worried about being able to keep their houses.  People are worried about being able to put food on the table.  People are worried about being able to afford medicine to stay alive.  And Earnest Gay’s response to them is that they should have listened to the news to know that they were becoming a city.