SAN ANTONIO - Four candidates, including District 5 incumbent Shirley Gonzales, are seeking a victory during San Antonio's upcoming general election on May 4.

CANDIDATES:

  • Incumbent Shirley Gonzales seeks re-election
  • Jilma Davila 
  • Anthony Gres
  • Nazirite Perez

Besides Councilwoman Gonzales, on the ballot is Jilma Davila, Anthony Gres, and Nazirite Perez. Farook Malik was originally set to run but withdrew in early February.

First elected in 2013, Gonzales wants to continue serving parts of the west and Southside of San Antonio. If elected, this will be her final term on council.

"I'm really looking forward to continuing some of the 2017 bond programs. That's a bridge over Frio City Road, a gateway project on West Commerce, [and] a swimming pool at Elmendorf. I believe that we need to continue Vision Zero initiatives. We are still having fatalities on our roadways and we need to continue to significantly invest in our roadways to reduce the number of fatalities. I'm also looking forward to finally getting with the small business community in District 5, we are seeing some revitalization in our businesses especially in the creative economies," she said.

The greatest infrastructure need is drainage, according to the councilwoman. Gonzales said water flow needs to be redirected to creek ways instead of collecting on roadways. Another focus is human capital.

"My first terms have been focused primarily on what people said they really needed: public safety, streets, sidewalks, drainage. However, we have an incredible amount of human capacity and I feel we need to dedicate more funding to delicate agencies especially those that address issues of domestic violence, child abuse and then workforce initiatives," Gonzales said.

West side business owner, Anthony Gres, is also running for the council seat. One of his focuses is on public safety in his community.

"They want more police presence. They want more officers and boots on the ground, per se. If we have new police officers, new cadets or police officers in the area, they want them to speak at least Spanish and [the community] wants to at least relate to them and not [have police] come in and look at [community members] like they are somebody different," he said.

Gres said the needs of the community are many. If elected, he wants to also focus on the basic necessities.

"The basic necessities is infrastructure, safety, roads, sidewalks and the same pot holes that have been there for the last 30 years plus. Returned phone calls and being a part of the community. They want someone to be at the office when they go to make a complaint and they want a phone call from a city council person member or at least an answer from them and that's what I'm going to do."

Jilma Davila refers to herself as the "old west side". A long-time resident of District 5, her focus is encouraging the community to get involved with the officers who protect their neighborhoods.

"We could make District 5 safe. We could get more lighting and more officers on patrol. Our community coming out and getting to know the officers and who is protecting us," Davila said.

In addition to meeting officers, she wants to meet her neighbors and find out what they want done, if she is elected. 

"I would start by communication and asking my neighbors, 'Hey, where do we start together as one? Okay. Because I'm going to need you to get out there in order to start tackling one issue at a time'," she said.

 

Spectrum News attempted to interview candidate Nazirite Perez for this story but did not hear back. 

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