Ivy R. Taylor was elected Mayor of San Antonio on June 13, 2015, and prior to that, she was appointed to the office of Mayor in July, 2014. Mayor Taylor had served as the District 2 City Council Representative for a total of five years beginning with her election in June, 2009.
Mayor Taylor led the community through a series of “Eastside Summit” activities that paved the way for the current Eastside Promise Neighborhood and Wheatley Choice Neighborhood grants as well as the Federal Promise Zone designation for the Eastside. Through her leadership, the Eastside has been awarded close to $100 million in grants for its revitalization efforts.
During her time representing District 2, Mayor Taylor earned the respect of both her colleagues and the business community. When then-Mayor Julian Castro resigned in the summer of 2014, her stature among her colleagues led to her appointment as Mayor of San Antonio, per the charter’s requirements following a vacancy of the mayor’s office.
That appointment singled her out as the first African American woman to serve as Mayor of San Antonio. It also made San Antonio the largest city in the United States to have an African American woman serving as mayor.
candidacy for re-election on February 16, 2015. In the San Antonio mayoral election held on May 9, 2015, no candidate received a majority of the vote. A runoff election was held on June 13 between Taylor and her remaining rival, Leticia Van de Putte, a liberal Democratic former member of the Texas Senate and the Texas House of Representatives. Though Van de Putte narrowly led the field in the first round of balloting, Taylor went on to win, 51.7%–48.3%, and hence retain her position as mayor for a full two-year term.
In 2013, while on the city council, Taylor voted against a nondiscrimination ordinance approved by the council that would expand the city’s then current nondiscrimination policy to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status. Upon taking office as mayor in 2014, Taylor developed and created the city's Office of Diversity and Inclusion to handle complaints under the city's non-discrimination regulations and to facilitate resolution of these disputes. She also helped to kill a streetcar system for downtown San Antonio, which many fiscal conservatives had opposed.
On January 14, 2016, the city council voted to enact an ordinance which gives Taylor immunity from any of her actions that may have been in violation of the city ethics code. The council majority said that Taylor had technical violations but did not intend to break the code. She and her husband, Rodney, accepted Section 8 vouchers through the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA), even though she is forbidden from receiving the vouchers because the mayor has direct control over SAHA.
In April 2016, Taylor voiced backing for a proposed downtown baseball stadium to house a Triple-A team, now the Colorado Springs Sky Sox of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Team owner David G. Elmore plans to relocate in 2019. The proposed stadium would be financed in part with public funds. No cost amount has been finalized.
On June 16, 2016, Taylor was booed in San Antonio as she attempted to lead a prayer for families of the forty-nine victims of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, which occurred the preceding weekend. A sign held by an LGBT activist, read, “You can’t use your religion to oppress us and then use your prayers to console us."
Taylor received the San Antonio Business Journal's "40 under 40" Rising Star award in 2004.
Taylor's husband, Rodney Taylor, operates a bail bonds business in San Antonio and has one daughter, Morgan.The Taylors live in the Dignowity Hill neighborhood on the east side of the city.
Since 2009, Taylor has served as a guest lecturer at the University of Texas at San Antonio College of Public Policy.
San Antonio
San Antonio, officially the City of San Antonio, is the seventh most populated city in the United States of America and the second most populated city in the state of Texas, with a population of 1,409,019. It was the fastest growing of the top 10 largest cities in the United States from 2000 to 2010, and the second from 1990 to 2000. The city straddles Central Texas and South Texas and is on the southwestern corner of an urban megaregion known as the Texas Triangle.
San Antonio serves as the seat of Bexar County. Recent annexations have extended the city's boundaries into Medina County and, though for only a very tiny area near the city of Garden Ridge, into Comal County.The city has characteristics of other western urban centers in which there are sparsely populated areas and a low density rate outside of the city limits. San Antonio is the center of the San Antonio–New Braunfels Metropolitan Statistical Area. Commonly referred to as Greater San Antonio, the metropolitan area has a population of nearly 2.4 million based on the 2015 US Census estimate, making it the 25th-largest metropolitan area in the United States and third-largest in the state of Texas. Growth along the Interstate 35 and Interstate 10 corridors to the north, west and east make it likely that the metropolitan area will continue to expand.
San Antonio was named for Saint Anthony of Padua, whose feast day is on June 13, by a 1691 Spanish expedition in the area. It is notable for Spanish colonial missions, the Alamo, the River Walk, the Tower of the Americas, the Alamo Bowl, and Marriage Island. Commercial entertainment includes SeaWorld and Six Flags Fiesta Texas theme parks, and according to the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau, the city is visited by about 32 million tourists a year. The city is home to the five-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs and hosts the annual San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, one of the largest such events in the country.
The US armed forces have numerous facilities in San Antonio: Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base (which constitute Joint Base San Antonio), and Lackland AFB/Kelly Field Annex, with Camp Bullis and Camp Stanley located outside the city. Kelly Air Force Base operated out of San Antonio until 2001, when the airfield was transferred to Lackland AFB. The remaining portions of the base were developed as Port San Antonio, an industrial/business park. San Antonio is home to six Fortune 500 companies and the South Texas Medical Center, the only medical research and care provider in the South Texas region.
The missions of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park along with the Alamo, became part of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites on July 5, 2015. The San Antonio Missions became the 23rd U.S. site on the World Heritage List, which includes the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty.
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