The forces that want BexarMet wiped out of existence are swinging into action after the utility's trustees on Thursday reluctantly called a November election that will ask ratepayers if they'd rather be SAWS customers. Expect a vigorous campaign to dissolve BexarMet, largely paid for by engineers and developers who'd much rather deal with the City-owned San Antonio Water System.

The City Council will vote Thursday on the first serious money dedicated to luring a downtown grocery (read: H-E-B) as well as funding that could help pay for the Friedrich Building, a redevelopment project that’s running into complications.

The funding – $1 million for the “Downtown Grocery Development Project” and $3 million for the Friedrich, a onetime refrigerator factory complex that mars East Commerce Street – is interest income gleaned from a $57 million loan pool awarded to the City several years by HUD.

​ Hungry to expand its job-training efforts, Project Quest Inc. took a risk in 2009 with much more potential downside than its administrators realized at the time.

Two years ago, the nonprofit, whose mission is to bankroll training for good-paying jobs, learned it had landed a $500,000 state grant; it quickly began enrolling low-income San Antonians in nursing programs in anticipation of the money – before knowing either the eligibility standards for the then-new Jobs and Education for Texans (JET) program or the terms of the contract with state Comptroller Susan Combs’ office, the grantor.

“It would allow us to grow the program to where we wanted it to be,” Quest Executive Director Mary Peña said.

She added: “We took a risk in enrolling these students. It didn’t pan out.”

The Great Recession widened the wealth gap between rich and poor in the United States, and, even more dramatically, between non-Hispanic white and Hispanic households, largely due to plunging home prices in regions with dense Hispanic populations. However, though wealth data by metropolitan area are not yet readily available, San Antonio residents likely saw our white-Hispanic gap narrow as home prices climbed while the income differentials shrank.

What about Mexico?