An incumbent mayor who’s been reelected 10 occasions within the Metropolis of Leon Valley faces two challengers this 12 months who don’t like the town’s strategy to homelessness and the town finances.
By most accounts, Mayor Chris Riley has been a well-liked mayor.
However three years in the past in June, the council grappled with complaints from residents and companies within the small city a couple of rising variety of people who find themselves unhoused, and their encampments.
After a lot dialogue, the council handed an ordinance that made it unlawful for anybody to sleep in a public house, stand in a site visitors median and sleep in a car.
Now of the 14 smaller municipalities holding metropolis elections on the Might 2 poll in Bexar County, Riley is the one mayor in a contested race.
What’s on the poll in Bexar County’s Might 2 election?
Her two opponents embrace a fugitive restoration agent, Evan Bohl, who has taken situation with the town’s spending priorities, and a former councilman, Jed Hefner, who criticized the town’s new homeless tenting ban as too harsh.
Hefner, now a advisor, opposed the ban three years in the past. In an interview this week he mentioned he helped to show issues round at Metropolis Corridor throughout his time in workplace, however is worried in regards to the course the council has taken towards “a number of heavy-handed enforcement.”
Hefner was initially appointed in 2020 following a recall election by which two council members have been ousted. He gained a full time period in 2021, representing Place 3 till 2023, when he determined to not search reelection.
If he will get to return, his high priorities are guaranteeing property rights and balancing the finances. “I feel that there are locations in our metropolis the place we spend cash once we shouldn’t, and we are able to allocate these assets extra effectively,” he mentioned.
Bohl, a member of the council’s Capital Services Oversight Committee who ran for mayor within the two earlier elections, didn’t reply to an electronic mail requesting details about his marketing campaign.
In a Fb submit asserting his candidacy, he wrote: “We face a rising deficit of skill, unable to adequately fund vital companies and tasks in Leon Valley. The present insurance policies in place and course our Metropolis is being taken down has wasted thousands and thousands of {dollars} whereas our residents wouldn’t have what they want and pay taxes for.”
A number of of Bohl’s social media posts present him in a legislation enforcement uniform.
Riley, for her half, says she’s stored going as a result of so many residents wished her to.
“I did ask [other] individuals in the event that they’d prefer to run [this year]. They mentioned, ‘No, Mayor, we wish you to run,’” Riley mentioned. “[I said,] ‘OK, however I can’t be mayor perpetually.’”
The 47-year Leon Valley resident is an workplace supervisor and authorized assistant at Riley & Riley Attorneys at Regulation, a follow run by her husband and son. First elected as mayor in 2004, Riley has served 11 consecutive phrases.
“I actually love doing it,” Riley mentioned. “I like my job, and I like speaking to my neighbors and getting the temperature of the group and getting their issues in order that we are able to deal with it and make Leon Valley a greater metropolis.”
Riley sees the end result of the homeless ordinance as a constructive. She mentioned the town fashioned a partnership with Haven for Hope and have become the primary suburban metropolis to have interaction in a pilot program for reaching out to the unsheltered inhabitants.
Her precedence for the rising metropolis is to take care of emergency companies and it’s why she supported a 6-cent tax charge enhance that allowed the town to rent three new firefighters. Riley mentioned the 20% homestead exemption the town handed in 2023 may assist seniors in the neighborhood soak up the rise.
Additionally on the Might 2 poll in Leon Valley are present council members Betty Heyl, operating unopposed for her second time period representing Place 2, and Rey Orozco for Place 4, who will likely be serving his fourth time period.
