Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and two officials from the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation hopped on a conference call Sunday.

The topic: how to tell Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that local officials wouldn’t be bidding on his company’s proposed $5 billion second headquarters.

Few expected the San Antonio area to actually land the behemoth $5 billion headquarters and its 50,000, high-paying jobs, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pounced upon by more than 50 U.S. cities. If they did, they thought it was a long shot. Aside from the massive tax incentives that officials would have to pony up to lure the Seattle giant, the city and county would have to grapple with deficits in education attainment, transportation and workforce development that have stymied officials for decades.

On top of that, where would the $481 billion online retailer build the massive campus if the company actually decided to put it in the San Antonio area?

According to Amazon’s public request-for-proposals, the project would need up to 8 million square feet within 10 years, preferably downtown. There’s office development happening in downtown San Antonio but not fast enough to meet Amazon’s target opening date of 2019, said Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, CEO of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation.

It also didn’t help that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie offered to throw in $5 billion in tax incentives to entice Amazon to the Garden State — preceded by Wisconsin’s $3 billion incentive package to Foxconn Technology Group to build a plant that manufactures LCD screens there.

“We just thought that was madness,” Wolff said in a phone interview Thursday. “This is not a game we’re going to gamble with taxpayers’ money.”

Wolff later added, “You’re risking that much money on a company that doesn’t make a profit.”

Nirenberg and Wolff opted to send a open letter to Bezos Wednesday telling the mogul neither San Antonio nor Bexar County would bid for the mega project — hours after U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz pitched Bezos on San Antonio and other burgeoning “global hubs for technology, data-driven business, and talent” in Texas as prime spots for the new headquarters.

Officials insist they’re not telling Amazon to stay out of San Antonio but, at least on this project, they won’t receive incentive dollars.

“We are not saying no or closing the door on Amazon,” Saucedo-Herrera said. “In fact, through that open letter, we are responding to them. We are inviting them to invest in our community. And we believe that they could be a great cultural fit for the San Antonio community.”

Elected officials and business leaders are framing the decision not to bid as a teachable moment that would prompt action on workforce development and transportation in the future.

“There’s a certain quotient of political courage at play here,” Tech Bloc CEO David Heard said. “The easiest thing to do would just be to just play the game, try to pursue it and then shrug our collective shoulders when we get rejected later and say, ‘well at least we tried.’”

“The hardest thing to do is to actually say, ‘You know what? Here’s where we really think we are in terms of competitiveness at this point in time on this type of opportunity. Our time and our focus is better spent on other things,’ knowing that some people will use that against you,” Heard said.

San Antonio needs to shore up its supply of tech workers, Heard said. The Alamo City fell from 40th among U.S. cities for tech talent in 2015 to 45th in 2016, according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE’s “Scoring Tech Talent in North America” report published earlier this year.

“If you have an ecosystem of those people that’s rich, companies will find a way to be there in that community,” Heard said.

Not having a major tech university feeding those workers directly into the San Antonio pipeline could be a competitive disadvantage, said Dallas Fed Senior Economist Keith Phillips. But the city doesn’t necessarily have to do all of the leg work, he said.

“Somebody like an Amazon is more able to attract workers from outside,” Phillips said. “So I don’t think the local community has to supply 50,000 tech workers.”

Earlier this week, Nirenberg announced a mayoral panel to assess the city’s air travel needs that will make the city “a competitive, long-term air option.” Nirenberg told the Express-News Tuesday that a shortage of nonstops are a hurdle to the city attracting companies and talent. Wolff said separately that San Antonio International Airport was identified as one weakness when courting Amazon.

The airport has added 17 new routes from four airlines in the past 18 months — including many nonstop flights. Russ Handy, the city’s aviation director, said airlines decide to add nonstop routes, in part, based on demand within travel markets for those flights.

“Airlines want to be there on the ground to meet the demand and they don’t want to miss the opportunity,” Handy said. “If there’s a compelling argument that we have an expanding industry, airlines are going to jump on it.”

The move not to bid for Amazon blindsided some city and county lawmakers. Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert called the decision “a big mistake.” Calvert and District 4 Councilman Rey Saldaña both said Wednesday they learned the news from Express-News reporters.

District 6 Councilman Greg Brockhouse said he learned about the city’s decision from Facebook. Beyond that, Brockhouse said city council members did not discuss the Amazon bid in any official capacity since the Seattle company put out its request-for-proposals in September.

“I think that it’s sad that he discussed it more with Nelson Wolff than he did his own colleagues on the city council,” Brockhouse said.

Nirenberg’s office refuted Brockhouse’s assertion. Spokesman Bruce Davidson said in an email Thursday council members discussed Amazon in executive session last week.

But to not compete for the project — which Amazon said would bring up to 50,000 jobs with an average salary of $100,000 to the city that won the campus — at all?

“You may not always come out the winner,” Brockhouse said. “We teach our children, and I know I teach my children, that sometimes the struggle and the process is worth it. You learn more from that. But to not compete and get in the fight is to me an unacceptable future for the city we deserve.”

Amazon still has a significant presence in the area. In San Antonio, the Seattle retailer operates a “sortation” center and a facility to fulfill orders for its $99-a-year subscription Prime Now delivery service facility. Amazon also has distribution centers in Schertz and San Marcos, the latter of which opened in summer 2016.

“I’d rather work on 10 companies with 400 or 500 employees and good diversity and better opportunities for the long-term than to gamble everything on one big company,” Wolff said.

jfechter@express-news.net | Twitter: @JFreports