On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the Reporters Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Joining us now as we go on the Record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

A lot to talk about this week and we're starting with teachers and whether they should get a kind of tax break in the city of San Antonio.

The council that came up with the idea that will go before the city council some time, we're not sure when J-Lo, Mickey Rodriguez, District two.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

And I don't know if I characterized that right, but how would you characterize the idea?

So I would actually be a teacher home buyer assistance program.

So I would tell you it might take the shape of a zero interest forgivable loan that would be forgiven over a period of time of teacher service in a in a public school district.

And why why should there be a tax break for this particular not a tax break, but it's kind of a tax break, isn't it, In effect?

It's a it's a it's an assistance program.

No different from the 8101 20 homebuyer assistance programs that we already have for non teachers.

But I think a big reason for this specific proposal is that our school districts are facing, you know, retention issues, recruitment issues.

We're in the middle of a housing crisis where it's harder than ever to have to afford a home.

And so this might allow our public school districts to be a little bit more attractive to those who are looking to live in the communities that they serve.

Why teachers specifically?

Why not other groups of people?

People might think, well, you know, low income people would need more assistance.

Veterans should get more assistance.

You were a teacher.

People might wonder, well, is that why you know firsthand how tough it is?

Absolutely.

And I think a part of it is that I think we can hit on all of those groups at different times.

And our focus might at one for one proposal be on a specific group.

But that that doesn't shift our attention away from anyone at any point in time.

There was a very clear need to assist in our education space and on city council we don't really have a lot of opportunity for that.

And so this proposal was one of the ideas that my team and I had been discussing and got quite a bit of support from the San Antonio Teachers Union.

And so we're we think it'll be a hit.

Well, this has been done well in New Orleans, but how?

I mean, it's a novel idea.

Have you had it in mind for a while or did you just hear about this?

So it's something that over the over the summer break, while council was recessed, I was still working with my team.

And we never stop thinking of policy ideas.

And so we really wanted to make an impact in the education community and in the spaces in particularly for teachers who are consistently under attack and consistently underpaid and under resourced.

And right now is a very intense hiring period for our school districts.

And so did a lot of research on programs that were assisting teachers and other communities and saw New Orleans in about 20, I think last year initiated a program.

And so we want to do something similar.

Is this specifically for San Antonio because of certain school districts that you think are you know, there's enrollment is dropping in certain districts, People are leaving those districts, charter schools and other private schools are draining people, resources, tax money is part of that because of because of that that you're doing this?

Absolutely.

I think our school districts and thinking of SAIC, of a Judson of Edgewood, they're in a very unique position where charter schools are popping up and draining some of the resources that they have.

And so this is an additional opportunity to incentivize new teachers and incentivize experienced teachers to stay in those school districts and to live again in the community that they serve in.

So you think people aren't moving into San Antonio or teachers because of that?

And so they're not working in those school districts.

It's just be an incentive for them.

So people are choosing to live wherever they can find that it's most affordable.

And quite often we have conversations at city council about how unaffordable San Antonio is becoming.

And so this is an opportunity, I think, to assist.

One group will need some more help to assist others, but I think it's a start.

How much will it cost?

It'll depend over the next few months will be getting to have conversations at council about, you know, what is the scope of a program like this?

How many teachers do we hope to impact, and how would that impact play out over five or ten years as it relates to the forgiveness portion, what do you see in terms of how it would work?

Say, I'm a teacher, I am looking to buy a house, what do I do and how much would I get over that time?

Ideally, they would work with, so it would be a link on our Neighborhood Housing Services Department where other homeowner assistance programs are located.

You would apply, you would submit your documents, you would agree to teach at a public school district for the term of the loan.

And once you meet portions of the loan, meaning the loan from the city, that would be how long?

So say it was a $50,000 loan.

Ideally or often we see the 30 year, we see the 30 year loan.

So over a period of five years, you might be forgiven for ten K over ten years, you might be forgiven for 20 K. So no matter what, there is a benefit to reaching those milestones, you might decide that you're not going to teach after that 10th year and at least you've gotten a portion of that forgiven.

But it would be, what, at least five years?

Because retention, even after one year is tough for a lot of school districts this year.

Right now, the conversation is five years.

We'll see how it shapes up at council and it would be, say, 5000, 10,000.

You're not looking at more than that.

You know, $1,000 a year.

5000.

What?

What's your ballpark?

We just we we submitted the proposal just to have the conversation.

And because of those conversations about, you know, financials, how much is it going to cost, how much is going to cost long term, What's the economic impact of forgiving a certain amount at certain intervals?

We have to hash out all those details, count in the timeline.

Now, you filed a council consideration request, the CCR, and that's one of the things that council is looking at how long it takes for those to be taken up by the council.

So what does it look like right now?

I'm optimistic that we would be able to get through a request like this in the next couple of months.

That would be heard by the governance committee, which is chaired by the mayor, and then they would send it to the appropriate committee and then hopefully undertake maybe four or five months before full council would have the opportunity.

You're also going into the budget season now for a city council, and you say maybe it's because you are a math teacher, you're excited about this.

I love the budget and I think of it as one of the it's the most direct influences we can have on policy and on our constituents daily lives all at one, all at one point.

So we're going to be talking about everything from animal care services to police and fire to Metro Health infrastructure, all of those things.

And so I'm excited.

Where do you see the focus this year moving or a bigger focus than maybe in the last couple of years?

You know, a priority for me has been ACA, animal care services from day one.

And I didn't feel that same sense of urgency from the rest of council until this year.

And so I think that's going to be a probably a big shift.

Last week we had Councilman Mark White in talking about the city's lawsuit against the state over the so-called Death Star bill, limiting some of the things that the city can do.

He had ideas about why he was against that lawsuit.

Tell us why the rest of the council was for that.

So in the simplest way, and we all came to the same conclusion from different points of view, right.

In its simplest, this is a chance by the state or an attempt by the state to basically change the Texas Constitution and make it so that the home rule city no longer exists.

And so the things that have been within our purview, the types of regulations and the things that we control are no longer so.

And, you know, the argument that some might make against our for it is that, you know, it makes it consistent throughout the state what regulations exist so that it's easier for an employer.

But if we're being quite honest, the average person, when they make a decision to move somewhere to a city, they're doing their research.

And if a business or a company is looking to move somewhere, they should do their research.

And do you expect people we're about out of time here after you talk about, okay, there should be this this assistance for teachers, different groups to come to you and say, hey, it's tougher for me.

I'm not a teacher, but this is my my job or I'm a veteran or I'm a certain age.

You expect some of that and a little pressure to expand that program, even if it does pass.

I would imagine so.

I would imagine there would be a variety of interest groups and a variety of different types of workers and employees who could benefit from some type of assistance program.

And so I'd be really eager and excited to work with them to come up with something new.

You don't worry that it would open the floodgates to everyone asking for some kind of housing help from the city.

Everyone should say what they need and we should do our best to try to meet that need.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Appreciate you coming in.

Jalen, Mickey Rodriguez, City Council District two.

Good luck with that budget speech.

Thank you.

If you are a bicyclist in San Antonio or just a couple of weeks ago, the city launched a new survey aimed at finding out what you would like, what you need, how we can make San Antonio a more bike friendly city.

Joining us to talk about that is the secretary of bikes, San Antonio, Katie Nickels.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Glad to be on.

And now Bike San Antonio is a group aimed at all kind of helping all kinds of issues with bicyclists in San Antonio.

What do you think of this community survey that the city has launched online?

I guess a couple of years in terms of getting input from bicyclists and others.

So I am extremely hopeful about the community survey that the city has launched.

It has been over ten years since the last bike planning implementation strategy and the original plan, over 1700 miles of bike facilities were plotted, 200 bike boulevards, 200 miles of bike boulevards, 500 miles of cycle track and buffered bike zones, all kinds of different infrastructure.

And as cyclists, we we envision San Antonio as a place for that.

Anyone can ride by bicycle, whether they're traversing the city from the north side to downtown, or they're on their way to work, or they're taking one of the greenways to their favorite coffee shop, their favorite restaurant.

We envision San Antonio as a world class city where people feel safe getting on a bicycle and where we have with the strategy that the city funds through general funds and through voter approved bonds and federal and state grants, that the infrastructure is not just, you know, a planning or a method, but something that's actionable on the streets that we can see people on.

They're going out and they feel safe riding on the greenways, but also on the streets.

We don't have nearly enough protected bike lanes in San Antonio, but we don't have enough dedicated bike lanes.

You see the painted stripes along the sides of the roads, like the ones that were just added to Avenue B between Alamo and Broadway Street.

Well, that's you know, it's great that the city has done that, but it's it's really from from a cyclist point of view, it's something that was added kind of extraneous, almost like an afterthought, an afterthought in a way, to a car driven culture.

And I moved to San Antonio in 2013, and my first ride was riding along St Mary's Street, which is it's a very dynamic, winding road.

It'll take you all the way through downtown to the San Antonio missions, but it's at the time it didn't seem very safe the way cars and busses and bikes were merging around.

And now out of that 2011 survey, I think our bike master plan was the last one that they had.

The result of that, as you talked about, a lot of plans.

How much of that have we really seen make a difference, practical difference to bicyclists here?

And why do you worry about that coming out of this next survey that there will be some grand plans, but as you said, not some actionable differences?

Well, we do feel that we have buy in from the city and from voters.

But will, are we skeptical and worried that we'll see the the number of lanes, the depth of lanes and infrastructure that we need?

Yes, we're we are worried.

I don't know the exact number, but I think it's something like 200 bike lanes should be planned with this next this next bond.

I think it's something like $10 million for bike facilities.

And we have seen now the city pay a lot of lip service to what they want to do with San Antonio's infrastructure.

And unfortunately, not a lot of concrete evidence to show that.

Now, there's a lot of talk when you say bicyclists hiking bike trails around the city, you know, the greenway trails that they've put a lot of at least emphasis on this publicly.

But as a bicycling, you say that's not enough because you have to drive to a greenway to bike.

You can't bike there.

Well, you can bike there, but you're taking your life into your own hands.

We we don't have a safe biking city, unfortunately.

We have roads with 30 and 40 mile per hour posted speed limits with trucks sidling up to cyclists.

We have a car driven culture where 63% of people say they don't feel like they have an adequate place to bike or adequate or quality facilities to bike, to park their bike, to ride, to commute or for recreation.

So we don't unfortunately, we're not where we need to be at all, but we we have a long way to go, but we have the passion and the drive and we have gotten so many more cyclists on the road in this city in just the last five years, there's been probably almost enough to reach critical mass.

Well, now that critical mass, what are you actually hoping for then?

Because it is a sprawling city.

There is a car culture that's going on.

I don't know how you would change that.

The are you looking for concrete barriers to make sure there are dedicated bike lanes instead of just the stripes?

Would you like more of that or what are you hoping for?

We want protected bike lanes, concrete like you see on Avenue B and cycle tracks, which are the pedestrian and the cycle track is separate from the roadway where motorists drive.

How much have you seen in terms of bicycles increase around town?

I have seen so many more of the cycling groups get involved, whether it's the Tuesday night social ride, whether it's right in the hill country or downtown meet ups.

The coalition is there.

It's grown exponentially, I would say.

I mean, the time is now for San Antonio to become a bicycle friendly city.

If it's not now, it would be it would be such a tragedy for people to move here and to arrive here with that hope that it's a city where they could commute by bicycle and it's friendly and it's healthy for people and for them to feel that that wasn't fulfilled.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

And again, now it's time for input on that.

And the San Antonio is doing a survey and Katie Nichols, who is the secretary of bikes, San Antonio, thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you so much for having me.

On the record this week, we are talking ready to work and apprenticeships here in San Antonio, as well as the new home where the old home of the Spurs with a new name to tell us all about it, Tracy Adele Hamilton, who is the business labor reporter Business and labor and more.

Reporter for the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Now the Ready to Work program expanding through apprenticeships, which in your story as you put it, the apprenticeships of your as in old because we think of apprenticeships we don't think a lot of them now.

So is that part of the struggle is to get people to accept what an apprenticeship is, to get into it, to get businesses involved?

Absolutely.

So apprenticeships are actually one of the oldest form of workforce development, and that was you were an expert, a craftsman, and you would take me under your wing and pay me and train me.

And so and that's still really important for the trades and manufacturing.

And so what this grant from the federal government is designed to do is to help businesses that maybe have not thought about apprenticeships as a way to train workers, to help them create apprenticeship programs or really hook into existing programs in I.T.

or h.r.

In industries that haven't typically used them in the past and now are ready to work as the san antonio project of 200 million roughly.

And it hasn't trained nearly as many people as they had hoped by now.

And the apprenticeship project.

This is a separate grant from the department of labor.

That's correct them.

Correct.

Ready to work is taxpayer funded, Taxpayers approved, ready to work at the end of 2020.

And it's going to bring in roughly $200 million, a little bit more than they thought originally.

And yes, the goal is to put about 15,000 people into better paying jobs.

And it is a slow start.

They've certainly spent the first year trying to set this program up.

It's massive.

It involves tons of partners.

And so one of the criticisms is that they aren't meeting their numbers yet.

And Mike Ramsey, who heads up the city's workforce development office, says we absolutely will meet those numbers.

And what he says is a lot of people are going through the pipeline.

It's slow and a lot of people have chosen not a ten week training program, but perhaps a two year schooling.

And so a lot of people are coming in.

He claims that they're going to meet their numbers by the time the money runs out.

And so we'll see.

How about the apprenticeship program?

I hear about that and I think, well, what kind of jobs you talked about, you know, trades and things like that, what kind of jobs and businesses are even thinking about apprenticeships besides trades.

Yeah.

So one thing that the office, the Workforce Development Office is trying to set up is apprenticeships in health care and I.T.

And the idea is they're partnering with entities that can help develop the curriculum so the employer doesn't have to do it right.

One of the barriers for employers is it can be expensive, especially if the apprenticeship is registered with the Department of Labor.

And so it requires on the job training and it requires classroom training, mentorship, wages.

And at the end, The Apprentice gets a national certification.

And so what the ready to work office is trying to do is create programs in health care, in I.T.

and expand existing programs so that say if you're in health care and you're running a health care company, you can find employees that can hook into this program so you don't have to develop it on your own and spend that money and figure out how to create a curriculum.

So this is part of the Department of Labor big push that they have right now.

But how tough is it to sell it to businesses?

If I hear this, it sounds very complicated.

I spend more time.

It's going to cost me money.

Where does the money come from?

And in terms of me as a as a guy who was looking for a job, say, how much do I have to pay or wait for or get tuition from somebody.

Yeah.

So so they're going to have to convince not only employers to try these brand new programs, but the other thing is, is that folks who come into ready to work, you know, they're offered a sort of catalog of what are you interested in, what training?

And so these caseworkers have to also convince participants, hey, you should try an apprenticeship.

So there's a lot of education that has to happen on both ends because you can't force a participant into an apprenticeship.

You want them to choose it.

And one of the things that I learned from Adrian Lopez, the CEO of Workforce Solutions Alamo, is that a lot of people just simply don't know what's available to them as an option, and they choose things like customer service, right?

And that's goes against what, ready to work once Ready to work wants to get people into well-paying jobs, career track jobs.

But they can't do that if they don't know about them.

If they were looking at getting people to come out in ten weeks, we were looking at customer service kinds of jobs.

But if they're going for the two year training programs, are we going to have many more I.T.

than we expected?

Or what kind of jobs are we getting?

That's definitely the hope.

And I would say health care, I.T., cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing, those are all things that ready to work has identified as as industry sectors that really need employees with a certain amount of training.

And so it may take a while, but once folks graduate and get those jobs, you know, there's the multiplier effect, their entire family benefits and San Antonio as a whole benefits.

So they're willing to say, look, choose the two year college degree because ultimately it's going to benefit you, it's going to benefit San Antonio, it's going to benefit the employer.

What about the need for those customer service jobs and employers wanting those kinds of people?

How are we doing in that part of the labor market?

I mean, I think those are the non skilled jobs that it's easier to fill right now.

And so what I think workforce solutions Alamo and what other ready to work partners are really trying to do is educate people who are interested in looking for work to say aim higher.

There's a lot out there and you can do it.

And an apprenticeship gives them a paycheck while they're learning.

And I'll ask you to look into your crystal ball after talking to all these people, do you think they'll meet those goals?

Is that a realistic option?

No pressure.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I, I don't know.

I believe that the people involved are working really hard.

And I think that going after the apprenticeship grant and using that as yet another avenue is an example of how the program is constantly looking for ways to continue to expand so that they can meet those goals.

And either employers or employees can go to the city's website because it is a city program ready to work and get more information about that.

Yes.

Another story you've been working on is the new old home of the Spurs.

Tell us about that.

Yes.

So this the AT&T center has been named that well, it was SBC Center originally, and then AT&T left San Antonio and I believe in late 2020, early 2021, they ended their contract for naming rights.

And so the Spurs and AT&T extended that for one more year.

That was last year.

And then they just signed a deal with Frost Bank.

And so the AT&T Center is going to be the Frost Center.

And as you know, the lease is up in 2032, I believe.

And so we'll see what happens after that.

But for now, certainly the Wembley mania is helping re excite, I think people about 80 about the Frost Center.

It's going to be hard isn't And now do you think this also will reassure people who were concerned oh the Spurs are going to leave for Austin.

You know when when that panic kind of hit, when they wanted to play more games in Austin and Mexico?

I mean, I think so.

I think that the Spurs investment in the Rock, you know, their state of the art training center certainly has West side big huge complex.

Yeah I think Peter Holt standing up and saying we're not going anywhere.

Hopefully that helps.

But and then when B of course, has certainly helped.

Are you a big fan?

Huge fan.

I just want to make sure.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Tracy.

Adele Hamilton in San Antonio Report.

Thanks for coming in and answering all those confusing questions.

My pleasure.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see the show again or previous shows.

You can also download podcast at KLRN.org I'm ready, Boomer.

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