San Antonio Economic Workforce Development Committee Meeting – May 26, 2026
San Antonio Economic Workforce Development Committee Meeting – May 26, 2026
The Economic Workforce Development Committee met on May 26, 2026, to receive briefings on the update to the city's economic development strategic framework, recommendations for federal Opportunity Zones 2.0, and procurement policy options related to ICE detention support. No public comment was offered.
Consent Calendar
- The committee unanimously approved the minutes of the previous meeting with no corrections.
Discussion Items
- Economic Development Strategic Framework Update – TIP Strategies (John Karas, Tom Stelman, Alexis Angelo) presented an update on the refresh of the 2022 framework. Highlights included: a 50-member advisory committee, 20 stakeholder roundtables, a data-driven competitive analysis, and preliminary themes. Top themes included: underperformance vs. peer cities, opportunities in emerging sectors (e.g., automotive, aerospace, defense, cybersecurity, biosciences), need for cohesive marketing, workforce retention, infrastructure and site readiness, and accountability in implementation. Council members provided input: Councilwoman Castillo urged focus on succession planning for small businesses, district-level economic profiles, and linking workforce training (e.g., Ready to Work) to resident opportunity; Councilman Spears emphasized competitive marketing and flexibility in wage incentives; Councilman Galvan stressed multimodal transportation, density, and community benefits; Councilman Mesa Gonzalez asked how the framework will translate into specific policy actions; Chair Viagran called for accountability metrics and subcommittees to advance identified priorities. Staff confirmed the framework will inform incentive updates and an implementation matrix.
- Recommendations for Federal Opportunity Zones 2.0 – Anna Bradshaw (Assistant Director, Economic Development) presented staff's data-informed model recommending 69 of Bexar County's 146 eligible census tracts for nomination to the state by June 26, 2026. The model used four buckets: economic drivers, public/private investment, geographic attributes, and community demographics. Stakeholder input included the Small Business Advisory Commission, TIP Strategies roundtables, and coordination with Bexar County. Council members asked for detailed maps, list of stakeholders, and explanation of scoring methodology. Councilman Galvan requested inclusion of an adjacent tract. Councilman Spears sought clarity on how zoning and resident impact will be addressed. Councilman Mesa Gonzalez stressed outreach to small businesses in designated areas. Councilwoman Castillo voiced concerns about potential gentrification based on past Opportunity Zone studies and asked for coordination with the county and alignment with school closures and New Markets Tax Credit eligibility. Chair Viagran emphasized explaining the designation to residents and ensuring the program delivers community benefits like infrastructure, affordable housing, and services.
- Briefing on Procurement Policies Related to ICE – Troy (Finance Department) presented a follow-up to the February 12 council resolution, outlining legal constraints for five proposed strategies on non-contracting, vendor accountability, and value-based criteria. He distinguished between statutory procurements (IFB, RCSP, RFQ) where inquiry is possible but cannot influence award, and non-statutory procurements (RFP, some RFQs) where disclosure can be required and used to determine non-responsiveness. Insurance liability and reputational risk were deemed difficult to quantify. Councilman Galvan and Councilwoman Castillo expressed support for using disclosures on discretionary contracts. Councilman Spears voiced concern about potential negative impact on economic development and public safety cooperation, preferring not to proceed. Chair Viagran suggested bringing an example disclosure form for committee review after the summer break and asked for a memo on timeline. Staff will research other cities' implementation and consider a floor for small business impact.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes or binding decisions were made on the discussion items.
- Staff (Economic Development) will return to a City Council B session in two weeks with preliminary findings on the strategic framework and will continue refining the Opportunity Zones recommendation with additional stakeholder input and data, meeting the June 26 state deadline.
- The committee directed staff to gather examples of disclosure mechanisms from other cities, develop a proposed disclosure form for discretionary contracts, and brief the committee after the summer break on procurement policy options.
- The committee expressed intent to consider forming subcommittees to drive specific policy development for the strategic framework and Opportunity Zones.
Meeting Transcript
6 2026 in the meeting and the meeting of the economic workforce development committee is now called to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Councilmember Castillo. Councilmember Galvan. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Councilmember Spears. Chair Via Gran? Here. Chair, we have a quorum. Great. The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Can I get a motion in a second? I've got a motion in a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion carries. Madam Clerk, are there any citizens signed up to speak on the item for public comment? All right. Okay. Um we will move on to item two. This is a big day of briefing, so I hope you all have all the questions y'all need. Uh item two is an update on the economic development strategic framework. Is there a staff presentation? Alright, okay. The floor is yours. Good afternoon, Chair, Council members. Um Brenda Hicksorenson, Director of Economic Development. I'm actually going to turn it over to the TIP strategies team who you may recall last fall. We issued a solicitation after we briefed this committee in October and November, went through that solicitation process process TIP strategies was identified as that vendor, and we just wanted to use today as an opportunity as that check-in for where we're at after the discovery and as we're moving forward, and uh just go through the rest of the timeline and want more to come. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to John Karas with TIP Strategies. Good afternoon, Chair and Council members. Great to see you all today. Thanks for the introduction, Brenda. I'm John Karis with TIP Strategies, and I'm joined here by Tom Stelman, our CEO and Alexis Angelo, our project manager. And we just wanted to give you a very brief, ideally no more than 10 minute quick overview of where we are in the update to the 2022 strategic framework. So I'll go over just a background on the project goal, where we are in the process, the some of the economic context, and then a lot of the stakeholder engagement that we've been hard at work at, and then a very brief overview of some of the preliminary findings that uh will then ultimately feed into the update. So as a reminder, the goal is not to start from scratch, but really to build off of the 2022 framework where we had three big goals innovation and industry, placemaking and development, and talent and workforce. So we're updating that framework, as well as the the five target industries uh that included things like uh mobility, IT, security, biosciences, manufacturing across many different sectors, corporate and professional services. So we're updating that, uh looking for fine-tuning and refinements, and then we're also looking at updating the small business ecosystem assessment and the international outreach through the Metro Priority Plan. We're uh that the two uh different sides there, the on the right side, the process. Uh so we've got four distinct phases. We're still kind of in the the early phases of the process. Uh we're started work on a lot of the data analysis. I'll give you just a teaser of that, and we've done a lot of the stakeholder input. We're still gathering input, not just from uh council members and community members, but I'll I'll give you an update on that, and then we'll be heading into the opportunities for growth and then the implementation phase later as we get into the end of the summer. But I wanted to start with uh the larger economy. So, what has changed since 2022? Well, we're in quite a different economic landscape.
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