Speaker 1: On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele duke.

Hello, San Antonio is a fast growing fast moving community with something new happening every day.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table and talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on, Speaker 2: I am Randy Beamer.

And thanks for joining us for this week's edition of on the record.

Kids are back in school.

Some lawmakers are back up in Austin, and we are talking about vaccinations shortly Metro health, but first your money city's budget is being finalized right now.

The man in charge of that, I am told the man is Eric was the city manager joining us today.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for, um, there has been a long input, long process of input for people on the budget up till now.

And basically though it is pretty much in the final stages.

It is.

We're going through the proposed process.

We have council work sessions.

We've had a number of budget town halls, and then that'll culminate in middle of September when the council adopts the budget on September.

So it's going to be different this time.

It's a record $3.1 billion.

That sounds, oh my gosh, huge.

And you know, everybody, you talk to seems like streets, uh, sidewalks, that kind of thing, but there are a lot of other differences as well, given the things you're spending money on.

So just to put it in context with, with 12 and a half thousand employees and 40 plus lines of business, $3.1 billion is a lot, um, we're running an airport, we're running police and fire departments, library systems, maintaining 4,000 center line miles a year.

Um, the big things I think that you'll, that the public will see as part of the budget is really an enhanced investment in infrastructure or street maintenance program, additional dollars for sidewalks, uh, and, and, and closing up gaps, uh, making a deliberate investment in, uh, some of our intersections where we, where we always have a pedestrian type of incident accident.

Um, and, and I think the other part that will be different for us is how we respond to mental health calls from a police department standpoint.

And it really not just relying upon police officers, but a team approach that brings a police officer, a paramedic, and a licensed clinician to be able to deal with those calls.

You know, a lot of the work we did in the last year, really focused on that.

And, and when you call nine 11, you get asked three questions, what's your emergency police, fire EMS.

You know, ideally from my perspective, there ought to be a fourth.

Is there a mental health issue?

Um, and, and we're going to be looking to improve our own dispatch system and have folks at our dispatch system that can help kind of diagnose that it's not defunding the police in any way.

It's sending out different groups or different teams when there are different calls for help.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's not defunding the police.

It is.

In fact, you have more officers, right?

It is.

And, and, and the proposed budget includes a recommendation for 15 additional officers, but, but one of the things we want to do, and we spent a lot of time with neighborhoods and community groups and officers themselves over the last spring is what type of encounters are our officers in?

We get 2 million calls for nine 11 a year, and a lot of those don't necessarily need a police officer.

Um, so there are some calls we'll be pushing over to other city departments like animal related calls or code compliance related calls.

We want our officers to be available for serious calls.

We want them to be proactive and patrol.

Um, but we also want to be able to resolve potentially and make a connection from an advocacy standpoint, those mental health type calls, and, and this is not any different than any other large city.

So when call and you say police fire EMS, or mental health, what, what does that mean in terms of mental health?

What kind of calls will be sent to that team?

You know, um, we get close to 40 or 50,000 calls a year for mental health type of episodes.

And that can be, you know, a mother calling about her son.

Who's happy, who's having an episode.

It could be somebody that's being, uh, that you run into on the street.

There's it, it runs the gambit.

And, and I think making sure that we approach those differently and really to try to connect folks or families to service providers.

And I anticipate really trying to, to, to improve the collaboration with the center for healthcare services, the county, the hospital systems, all the components are there, but we're using a police officer only to respond and, and try to put, you will have the police officer respond with this team, like a clinician I understand, or who, who responded.

So it'll be a team, it'll be a paramedic, a police officer, and a mental health clinician.

And they'll, they'll ride in the same vehicle.

That's the idea, um, that, that we've proposed and that will kick off, uh, this upcoming year.

And w that changes gradually.

I mean, it's not going to be tomorrow.

Hey, I, I'm going to hear police, fire EMS, mental health.

Yeah.

You're not, we're going to start in the central area of the city, the central substation area next year.

Um, uh, and we'll measure that.

And then it will come back and, and with additional recommendations to the council next year, to continue to expand it.

And now big picture, and that 3.1 billion, most of it is what's called restricted money.

A lot of, uh, money for police and fire general fund is actually what half of that.

And some of the ARPA money, the, uh, COVID money yet.

Some of it that the city is getting and going to spend this year.

Yeah.

So, uh, the general fund is about $1.3 billion of the 3.1.

It's where we do all our basic stuff like police and fire and streets and parks and libraries.

Um, we are, uh, the city did get ARPA dollars.

Uh, the American rescue plan act dollars earlier in the year by 320 million.

Um, we're using about $90 million of that over the next three years, to really smooth out our revenue loss in our general fund and our hotel occupancy tax fund.

The three main components of ARPA as dictated by the federal government is to provide financial stability, recover revenue loss, and deal with any immediate issues that are rising as a result of COVID.

The council will have a much broader conversation in the fall about how we invest that money we have to use.

We have to commit that money by 2024 and spend all that money by 2026.

So as we've had those conversations with the council, there's likely to be a three to five-year financial plan that will lay out, and there's a lot of need in the community.

And now w you want to get into the money that you could spend new street lights, as well as those improvements, several million more on that kind of thing, that infrastructure you talked about.

Yeah.

So we're, we're back to $110 million for street maintenance next year, almost 1300 projects.

Uh, we have, uh, $21 million, uh, which is about three and a half million dollars more than this year in sidewalks and closing gaps, $5.8 million, uh, for additional streetlights.

That's.

One of the things we heard as we met with the community is, um, additional streetlights and especially in our core area.

So that's probably the single largest investment in one year that the city's made and we'll be working with, uh, council districts and neighborhoods.

And a lot of this money is just catching up because last year you had to make a lot of cuts, the hotel occupancy tax, and money coming in.

Wasn't there the projections earlier this summer, where that it's going to come back pretty fast.

And now with the COVID going up again, what are the projections?

Well from the visitor industry standpoint, we've always thought that it's going to take time in 20 23, 20 24 to recover springtime and summer, beginning of summer, really good, uh, for the visitor industry here in San Antonio, we are seeing a little bit of a dampening of that.

Um, you know, frankly, Randy, it's one of those parts of our business that I, I check the financial pulse of almost on a weekly basis.

You know, the key to, I think our success is making sure that we keep our hands on the throttle to be able to reduce expenses.

If we start to see a trend or increase the expenses in order to service the clients that will be here and our conventions.

And now we're talking about vaccinations just this week, the FDA approved, uh, not emergency use, but for regular use, uh, the vaccine now, the city and other businesses can require their employees to use this.

So will the city do that?

And you said, there's a great need for it because of examples of what happened just last week.

Yeah.

We had three employees die in the last seven days, um, um, uh, in their forties.

Uh un-vaccinated um, and it is that's the, we've had 11 city employees that have died since this started, you know, we S we rolled out a vaccine incentive, uh, here about two and a half weeks ago.

That's really geared towards getting folks or employees vaccinated by September early September.

Um, we're going to run that course.

I do think that broadly, uh, employers will have the discussion about requiring it just like you're required to have a driver's license to apply for a job.

Uh, I, I've met with a bunch of new firefighters last Friday and, and, and told them, look, you know, as local government, we are engaged with people every day face to face.

And so we've got a model that type of behavior.

I know there's a personal decision around vaccines, but I also feel like we have, um, uh, additional responsibility to the community.

So now you can require that we can.

And so will you need the incentive money to go out?

Well, I think from, from the city perspective, what we're going to do is we're going to run through that incentive.

Remember Pfizer is the only one that got authorized.

And, and so we have two other main ones.

Um, uh, and I think those other pieces need to be in place before whatever works, but maybe the best stories to work are sadly those examples of the people and they weren't vaccinated.

You said the three employees passed away, right?

Well, Eric Walls, thank you very much for coming in.

He appreciated, uh, always tough in some ways to talk about money, but, uh, hope he gave people a great idea of what's gonna happen.

And, uh, good to finally meet you after two and a half years as city manager.

Thank you.

And you've watched me since you were a kid, Eric Walls, San Antonio city manager.

Thanks appreciate it.

From the city now to the county and money, as well as some talk about what is going on at the jail.

Joining us now is Trish the Berry, the a county commissioner for precinct three.

Thank you very much for coming Speaker 1: In.

He's happy to be here.

We were just talking Speaker 2: About the city's budget and their process.

It's pretty much set in stone right now, and they're going to adopt it about the same time.

Now, the county's budget, you're going to adapt it also in mid September, right.

But you're still looking at some changes.

Tell us about that budget.

What does a 2.8 2.2?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So it's actually, it's 2.8 billion.

We just got our first look, you know what that budget looks like.

Now we have a lot more money associated with this budget, a billion dollars more as a result of the infusion of monies from COVID relief and the American plan act otherwise known as ARPA.

And what does that look like?

A lot of people probably don't know what that stands for, cause we always refer to it as the acronym, but yeah, we have a lot more money at our disposal to really, you know, I think implement transformational and not just transformational, but foundational change because we've all been hit hard, you know, from an economic development standpoint, nonprofits in particular associated with the pandemic.

So anyway, we got our first look, which is great, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to focus on because I think there's no better time, really, to focus on relief to the taxpayer and the homeowner, which is why I proposed a homestead exemption, not only at bear county, but also at the bear county hospital.

And Speaker 2: Now the city has that homestead exemption right now.

And the one you're proposing wouldn't go into effect for the county or couldn't until Speaker 1: Fiscal year 20, right?

The next fiscal.

But it provides us and myself and my colleagues on the court, an opportunity to get out there, pound the pavement and say, Hey, apply for this homestead exemption.

Like this is what you need to be able to do.

So let me, let me clarify something is that there are some folks thousands actually, who have already applied for a homestead exemption with the county under flood control and under a disabled veteran, this would open up the window to a general tax exemption up to 5,000 for all homesteads.

Speaker 2: And now one thing that's different from the county's budget than the city is, are you going to use all the ARPA money at once that 300 and some million that you have to spend?

I think by 2025 or 26, the city's going to put off some of that.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

We'll probably put off a little bit, obviously.

So it's amazing how quickly money can go, which is why I also declined to pay raise, because you know, at 5% across the board, including elected officials, which I was like, look, no way now, how is this a time to be able to say, Hey, as an elected official or in a position of power that I'm going to accept a pay raise because as a county commissioner, you make a very decent salary.

And I just liked the optics of that are not good and crunch.

Yeah.

And pragmatically, it's just not a good time.

And so, by the way, I was the only commissioner that voted no, yeah.

To the pay raise for elected officials.

Cause I just, I don't think it's appropriate.

And Speaker 2: Now those 19 elected officials, by the way, they can opt out of that.

And Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, absolutely.

I think the sheriff has opted out because he's one of the big beneficiaries associated with it, but, um, kind of crickets regarding the others or whatever.

But I was very clear on court on the Dias yesterday.

I'm not going to be taking a pay raise.

No.

Also Speaker 2: One thing you talked about yesterday is the jail and what's going to happen at the jail.

You're bringing in a consultant to look at what.

Speaker 1: So I think we've got to get a handle because I, what I deem as a real crisis regarding jail administration.

So the court meeting, we probably had four weeks ago, I made a motion to hire a jail consultant because we continue to spend way too much money on jail overtime.

And some of that is associated with recruitment, right?

There's a problem with recruitment and look it's by and large, it probably more difficult to cross the country based upon political movements, et cetera, for people to go into law enforcement.

But from a taxpayer standpoint, when we talk about homestead exemption, taxpayer affordability, we're spending almost close to $14 million in overtime.

This fiscal year that has to stop Speaker 2: Been going on actually for several years.

One of the things the sheriff first campaign on years ago was too much overtime with the jail.

We have to get people, but then it's that recruitment getting people to be a deputy.

You have to be a jail guard Speaker 1: First.

Right?

And so I think so Mike, the consultant that we're going to be able to hopefully bring on and I hope to bring that forth to court on September 14th is that we're going to look at ways to be able to provide solutions.

And it is maybe not everybody has to go through detention before they get into law enforcement, because I think that that's problematic in and of itself.

And I also think there's something to be said for outside perspective and look, don't get me wrong, Randy, the jail is a beast or whatever I campaigned on.

Like I wanted the court to take care of her administration in the jail because quite honestly I think the, the job for the sheriff has become too big meaning administration of the jail and law enforcement turn administration of the jail over to the court.

So we can hire a professional jail administrator guarantee.

You, we will realize cost efficiencies associated with that and let the badge do what the badge does best.

And that is focus on law enforcement.

So Speaker 2: There are a lot of his deputies underneath him that are running that jail right now.

Will that stay the same?

Or do you want that to stay?

Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see.

I mean, you really depend, there has to be some cooperation with sheriff regarding what we're doing with the jail and you know, it's one of those things be careful what you wish for you really want to take on the jail administration, the jail back over on the court.

And by the way, there is a caveat when the judge and I mean, judge Nelson Wolff was in the legislature.

He passed a bill that said basically because there was a crisis of the jail back in late seventies where they turned over administration of the jail to the court.

And so Nelson carved that out when he was over at the legislature.

So we have the ability to do that, but we have to have permission to the sheriff to do that.

So it depends on whether he's willing to give that up or he's not willing to give that up, but in the meantime, we need to have better solutions associated with what we are doing in the jail, because it's out of, and in Speaker 2: The meantime, there's going to be debate for months and months And years of good luck with that.

It's going to be interesting.

And I'm sure we'll have you back to talk about that as well as the, again, the tax rate's going to be adopted on the 14th Speaker 1: September remain flat eight, 13.

All right.

Speaker 2: Well thanks very much.

Trista Berry precinct commissioner three, three.

Yes.

Good to see, Randy, of course COVID is a big topic of conversation right now.

It is all over the news.

It is all over the web for good and for bad as well.

Joining us right now to talk about that from the San Antonio current, the editor in Sanford Nolan, thank you very much for coming in.

Great to meet.

You wrote a fascinating piece, uh, this week about different kinds of disinformation that are out there.

And one of the things you got into right away is what the FDA had to knock down this week, which has been going around in which people have been trying.

And tell us about that.

Oh, Speaker 1: You must be talking to ivermectin, right.

Then the dewormer Speaker 2: Horse dewormer that people are taking for COVID Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

Apparently there have been, uh, there has been some, uh, information being shared on the, on the webs, uh, about, uh, you know, this being a potential way to stave off or cure COVID, uh, there's really not a lot of scientific data to support it.

And it's potentially dangerous, uh, to take a, you know, dewormer meant for an animal that weighs a 1600 pounds when you're human being right.

And the FDA over the weekend.

And I think this is about as blunt as you can get on multiple social media channels said you are not a horse.

You are not a cow.

Seriously, all stop it.

And it Speaker 2: Was the FDA lane of serious y'all's.

Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

I mean, I suppose it was maybe to appeal to the rural folks who seem to be buying this stuff, but yeah, I mean, uh, ABC news did a recent, uh, research, uh, report where they found from the federal government that there had been a 19% 19 fold increase in sales of this particular dewormer brought on by people trying to use it to cure COVID and, and, and I think it, it highlights just how dangerous this disinformation is out there.

Um, you know, and, um, I think a lot of times we tend to think that it's just a few people in their bedrooms that are posting this random stuff on a blog or on Facebook.

The reality is, uh, there's, uh, an interesting report.

I came across from an organization called news guard.

Uh, that's trusted by libraries around the country, federal government, et cetera.

And they basically sort of look at the veracity of news coverage and various at various organizations.

The current gets audited by them about once a year express news does I'm sure TV stations do.

And, uh, you know, what they found was that there are about 500 sites that are out there about two thirds of them in the United States that are sharing regularly sharing this information about, uh, about COVID and about the efficacy and safety of vaccines.

And one of the frightening things to me is that this isn't just a few folks in their bedrooms posting stuff that gets shared around on Facebook.

These are, these are sites that are purporting to be news sites purporting to be medical sites that had tens of thousands of, um, ad buys on them from 43, according to a news guard's research, 43 different brands.

And the way this works in the online advertising industry, people don't go say, I just want to buy an ad on this site.

Just want to buy an ad on that site.

They basically have a sort of a brokering system where you, you say, I want this many ad buys and I want this many people to see it.

And they sort of go out and buy and put you on various places all over the place, right?

So if w if these sites have enough eyeballs on them, suddenly your ad is appearing on it.

And some of the people whose ads have appeared on sites, basically questioning vaccines have been Pfizer, Pfizer, yes.

Hospital systems and health insurance companies.

Wow.

So this stuff is an industry it's being funded.

And, you know, when you look at that, there's no disincentive for these people to stop sharing this information.

If it's getting them clicks.

And I think the same goes for Facebook and Twitter, you know, uh, our, our elected officials like to complain about misinformation, disinformation being shared on social media, but the reality is, uh, those social media platforms, they live and die by clicks.

The thing they like to talk about is engagement in what gets people engaged.

It's arguing, it's flagging these flame wars.

Yeah.

Speaker 2: And some of these also some of the sites are aggregators, and they may have articles that are mainstream or a little bit more mainstream, and then worked in there are these other articles and some of them, uh, while you're getting reaction.

And we'll talk about locally from, uh, from some of the experts here, because what's tough is how do you talk to somebody who is gotten this kind of misinformation and maybe has been convinced by it to do one thing or another?

Speaker 1: The reality is I don't think in our current political situation where we can't even agree to, you know, pass an infrastructure bill, or it takes as much effort as it took.

Um, I don't think you're going to get conservatives and people on the, uh, and Progressive's to agree on how we regulate this stuff.

Uh, first amendment protects free speech online.

Um, and you know, I think it's going to be very difficult to rely on our elected officials to do too much about the disinformation and these, these, uh, companies that are making all this money over it.

Uh, the social media platforms, the people spreading the, this information.

They have no incentive to reign it in.

So what it comes down to is we've got to have conversations with people who were worried about people were concerned about who fallen into this.

And, uh, I spoke with Aaron dealt with, she was a communication scholar at Trinity university.

Uh, and he's looked a lot into disinformation online propaganda online.

And it's almost like cult deprogramming.

You have to, you have to reach out to the person and say, look, this is what we have in common.

Let's have an offline discussion.

I'm concerned about you because, you know, maybe we can both that this COVID thing is real.

Maybe we can both agree because we know a couple of people who passed from it.

Right.

Um, what is it you're hesitant to, uh, about with regard to the vaccine?

Can we have a talk about that and look at this information where you're getting it and what incentives somebody might have to share information that's, that's making you suspicious.

Speaker 2: And I mentioned this to Eric Wall.

So just a while ago, about the more cases where people are dying, who hadn't believed, who had refused advice, there was a talk show host who passed away who had just the week before, you know, mock the vaccine are those kinds of anecdotal stories you think, going to carry more weight with people who have been refusing to get Speaker 1: The bag?

I think they might.

I think, I think it almost becomes a situation where you have to be talking to people where you were, you, you were sort of pre guessing what's going to work with them right now.

And I think, I think it, at the end of the day, we as Americans all have a lot more in common, right.

When we talk face-to-face than when we talk online, it tends to be this very polarized thing.

Whereas when you're talking, you know, I mean, I have relatives, I have friends who I disagree with politically, but we can agree that we like to, you know, eat good Mexican food together or play music.

Yeah.

We have conversations Speaker 2: About COVID with people and tried to, yeah, I certainly have, yeah, that had been that awkward and not Speaker 1: Quite that awkward, but, but you know, you have to have that conversation.

And I think it helps if, you know, uh, I think it helps if it's happening offline.

And I think it helps if it's couched, as I am concerned, let's talk about how we can get through this together as opposed to set up as an argument, right.

As a debate.

Right.

I thought it was great article again, it's in the San Antonio, current from the editor in chief that is Sanford cover story notes.

Thanks very much Sanford Tonio current.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of on the record.

You can see it again, or previous shows as well at the podcast at dot org..