City officials are countering a claim by former Councilman Carlton Soules that “a record $231 million” of the city’s upcoming bond issue is going toward so-called “citywide” projects in the “urban core.”

Rather, city staff has recommended that about $182 million of the $850 million in bonds go to downtown projects with citywide impact.

The discrepancy is apparently due to how Soules defines “urban core.”

“I define urban core as including Broadway, since it starts at Houston Street and goes up to Brackenridge (Park),” he said. “Nobody would dispute that the Broadway corridor, which connects immediate or near downtown, is anything but the urban core.”

Soules has taken a dim view of big downtown projects since his stint on the council in District 10, an attitude that seeped into his unsuccessful 2014 run for Bexar County judge. As a candidate, he argued the county was spending too much money on projects in the city center.

Now a political consultant, Soules is lobbying against the entire $850 million bond package, disseminating a document titled “Mayor Taylor’s 2017 Bond” that argues the program “needs a reallocation of resources back to historical levels before it is brought to voters.”

“I don’t have a problem that there are downtown projects or that there are citywide projects,” Soules told me. “In this case, it’s the amount that’s allocated and how little some of the council districts are receiving for the size of the bond that we’re doing.”

Soules balked when I called his anti-bond efforts a “campaign”

“It’s not a campiagn,” he said. “It’s dissemination of information. I would say there’s a lot of interest in it. I’m getting a lot of feedback from people in different districts who are asking, ‘Where’s the fair share?’”

In May, voters will either approve or reject the bond, the largest in the city’s history.

In a presentation to bond committees, Mike Frisbee, the city’s director of transportation and capital improvements, stressed that districts are receiving a “fair share” of bond money.

From the total, $182 million would go to citywide projects downtown; $208 million would go to citywide projects elsewhere across the city; and $460 million would go to projects that impact individual districts.

Funds are distributed according to “rough proportionality,” maintaining a focus on “greatest needs” rather than “geographic areas” to provide “roughly equal investment” across the city, according to Frisbee’s presentation.

In previous bond programs, smaller amounts were equally divided among the 10 council districts, which meant fewer impactful projects were accomplished.

Citywide projects are those that impact a large percentage of the community regardless of their locations, such as improvements at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, Brackenridge Park and Hemisfair.

As far as non-citywide projects, districts are receiving a nearly equal percentage of bond money; amounts don’t vary more than a percentage point, according to Frisbee’s presentation.

Residents can weigh in on bond projects at a series of public committee meetings, held at 6 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Central Library Auditorium at 600 Soledad St. through mid-December. The next meeting is Tuesday.

Soules has not attended a single one, nor does he plan to attend any.

“At the end of the day, all I’m doing is getting information out and letting people ask their own questions,” he said.

bchasnoff@express-news.net