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.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

A number of interesting topics that are in the news this week.

We're going to talk about starting with what's called the Death Star bill enacted by the legislature.

Now, the city of San Antonio is suing over that, and most of the city council seems to be behind that lawsuit, except the man we're going to talk with right now, Mark White, District ten.

Councilman, thank you very much for coming in.

And thanks for having me.

Now, the Death Star, so-called Death Star Bill restricts local governments control that they have now to to enact ordinances on things like making sure that companies who have outdoor workers give them a water break every 4 hours.

And, of course, that's in the news right now.

Why isn't that a good thing to let local governments decide some things like that and much more that this bill will affect?

Yeah, So the regulatory Consistency act, in my opinion, is really going to be good for businesses around Texas.

And so imagine a company that's trying to do work in Austin, El Paso, San Antonio, all these different jurisdictions, and in each one they have to comply with a different set of laws, a different set of rules, which is, you know, as supporters of this lawsuit would say, well, that's what they've been doing until now, and it should be tailored for each city.

Well, it's cumbersome, it's expensive.

It makes doing business here in Texas more difficult than it needs to be.

So I would tell you that this law really attempts to make it consistent for businesses and how they can operate across the state.

And it tells city governments like ours, hey, you need to focus on city issues.

This really makes our job easier.

Focus on maintaining the Street's focus on your local taxes, focus on local issues, and don't try to legislate in areas that are already governed by state law or federal law.

A lawsuit is going to cost the city money, and I know that's one of the things you've talked about.

Is it the money that Santo Tonio is spending in the lawsuit or how much of it is that and how much of it is regulation?

Is it all regulation, basically that you're, you know, opposing?

Yeah, well, first of all, again, I think it's a good bill for business in Texas, so I don't want to see it overturned.

With regard to the lawsuit.

Yeah, it's going to be costly.

We're spending taxpayer dollars on what I consider needless litigation.

And third, it takes, again, our focus away from what we're supposed to be doing here.

We just did a survey at the city about what are the top issues to our citizens.

Right.

Homelessness.

Right.

The problem, their public safety, infrastructure issues.

That's where we need to be.

What should the line be for restrict or for a city to be able to restrict?

Now, in 2015, there was a controversy over one of these things up in Denton, where Denton wanted to limit the ability of oil and gas companies to come in and do fracking in the city.

So you could be next door to a pump shack or something like that.

Should that not be allowed by a city to, you know, to to deal with its own zoning like this?

What's the limit in terms of where there's a line?

Yeah.

So to be clear, cities still have the power to legislate in the areas of health and safety, zoning issues with the streets, all of those things, although they're in the Denton issue, there was a zoning issue that that was affected.

Well, one could argue and what I would tell you is if the area in question is already is in one of these eight areas that set forth in the bill, or it's an area that's been legislated in by the state or the federal government, the city's got to stay out of it.

And that just makes good sense.

And that's the law that that is the Texas Constitution.

That's what the Constitution says.

If it's if it's already dealt with by state law, cities need to stay away.

Well, now, you know, there are those who oppose this bill who say it's ironic or hypocritical.

Some say, for the state to be arguing against federal control in so many ways that they should decentralize and allow the state to decide its own fate, whereas the state isn't allowing, you know, decentralization here and cities to decide their own fate or, you know, issues closer to home for cities, the same way the states are.

Yeah, and I disagree with that.

There's federal preemption law there, state preemption law.

And so what's going on here is simply a matter of our state government saying, hey, these are things that are already legislated by or already governed by state law or federal law.

So cities got to stay out of it.

What's going on here is nothing more than a political fight that our city and our mayor has chosen to have with the state for whatever reason.

And it's really going to be distracting and take our focus away from the issues that we need to be looking at.

A couple of other things that have happened this year is the dog ordinance.

After we had the man killed by some dogs there, there was enacted by local state representatives, state senators.

It was they did work with other governments around and it would only have affected and Bear County, as I understand it, where we've had a bigger dog problem with dangerous animals.

And, you know, we have bites last week where a couple of dogs had to be put down after an attack.

What do you think of that kind of issue?

Because the governor vetoed that bill.

And so, you know, the state versus local took away a local a possible local control there?

Well, I actually think that's sort of addressed in this in new bill.

And in terms of animal care services in their domain, a lot of that is still going to be left to the cities to deal with some of that.

Right.

That's right.

So, again, I think the city and this is a big issue in our city right now, especially in in District 67 and others.

There's there's a lot of issues regarding stray, stray animals and things like that.

And I don't think anything in the Regulatory Consistency Act is going to prohibit the city from doing what it needs to do in that area.

Well, the city, some would argue, including animal care services.

We've had the director of that come on and talk about the need for that bill and that the city can't enact regulations.

What would you suggest that the city do for those districts, especially that wouldn't breach state law, supersede state law?

Well, again, it probably have to go into a legal analysis with our with our city legal team over what's permitted now and what's not in relation to 2127.

Figure that out and move on from there.

And, you know, there's all this talk about what can and can't happen and could there be potential lawsuits and things like that that are going to stem the legal morass that some say is going to happen?

Sure.

And, you know, being an attorney myself, I can tell you, you know, there's there's two bodies of law out there right?

There's there's statutes and then there's the case law.

Right.

And this happens every single year.

New laws are passed.

And then our courts interpret the laws and they do that through lawsuits.

And then everybody learns how to live with and deal with the laws that are on the books.

And that's going to be no different here.

Well, now, some say that it is different here because over the years the legislature has progressive I shouldn't use the word progressively, but over and over kind of, you know, struck down cities abilities to do certain things.

And that that has been on a constant increase.

And it's also going to affect you as a city councilman.

You won't have the ability to do as much.

Do you worry about that?

No, because cities over the past few years have increasingly tried to expand their power and legislate in areas where we should be.

Right.

Yes.

We are duly elected here.

And the City Council of San Antonio.

Right.

But we should be focused.

And we only have the power to focus in a few specific areas.

Right.

When we get out over our skis and try to get into all these other things.

Yeah.

Then the courts and the Texas legislature have to get involved and say, you can't do that.

We're we're coming close to being out of time.

But tell me about how you feel being compared to Clayton Perry and call the lone naysayer on the city council.

What's that like as a new councilman coming in?

Do you think it's fair?

Yeah, I don't because Clayton Perry and I, while we may agree a lot on policy, very different people and I think you've seen already in just two months on the council my very first CCR r right where I put forth my first policy C.R.

for those Council council consideration and request.

My very first one got close sponsored by the councilman from District two.

I'm there to work with all my colleagues.

I'm not there just to say no to everything.

We're going to agree on some things.

We're not on others.

And 2127 is certainly an area where we just don't agree.

Well, I appreciate it.

We're out of time, but I know there's some other things that you're bringing up, say, this week that we can talk about down the road are changing the way council does something.

A little tease there.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Mark White, District ten, the city councilman.

Thanks for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Also this week, we are talking music right in the middle of a hot summer and what you can look forward to coming up this fall with the San Antonio Philharmonic.

Joining us, the executive director, Roberto Trevino, former councilman.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

Now, last time you were here a few months ago, we were talking about, you know, all the changes since last year and the San Antonio Symphony and the remnants of that now being the San Antonio Philharmonic.

Now you are looking ahead.

What is.

Where are you right now in terms of the progress of building back a symphony in San Antonio?

Well, we're really busy, hard at work and rebuilding the administrative part of the Philharmonic and continuing the tradition that existed for 83 years as a San Antonio symphony.

So we see ourselves as a continuation of that.

We're looking for a new home for our administrative offices, a rehearsal hall, a place for our music library.

We have a music library that's worth multi million dollars, and that is very important to have for a symphony in San Antonio.

So we're looking at that.

We're looking at different venues where to play, and of course we're mapping out the kinds of concerts we want to perform.

When you say different venues.

Just want to interrupt you quickly, Towbin Center, because that's where everybody thinks it should be.

I mean, you hope to.

Well, everybody thinks it should be there.

But the truth of the matter is that things have to be in place where it's mutually beneficial for both the Philharmonic and, of course, the Tobin Center.

And right now, there just aren't we cannot afford to play at the Towbin Center.

And it's simply put that, you know, we can play at the First Baptist Church for a lot less.

We can play at the Majestic for a lot less.

We can play in different venues and still get out the performances that we feel are world class.

And you're looking at the Majestic already for Fiesta.

You have a couple of concerts.

Yeah, April 18th through the 20th, we're going to be part of an official Fiesta event.

We call it the San Antonio Philharmonic Fiesta Pops.

So be on the lookout for that.

And before we get to the scheduling and the tickets and the things that just came out this week, how is it in terms of numbers of players and the schedule versus what it was when it was the San Antonio Symphony?

Well, we're part of part of what we're doing is protecting the integrity of the music and making sure that as we create the repertoire and the music that is source we played, that the amount of musicians that play that music is in line with the music that we're performing.

So things like 72 musicians is is critical for the music that we're performing and our classics as an example.

And you're having 72 musicians, this coming series.

Yes, absolutely.

And so we know that there are some that have moved on because of a lot of the turmoil that is that has occurred.

But most most musicians are still here.

We've contracted many of the local musicians, as well as Bay related to what it was.

How much?

Well, actually, we we negotiated a CVA that actually raised a collective bargaining agreement.

CVA Yes.

And so, you know, this is one of those things that was seen as an impossible thing to do.

You know, many folks who were seen as maybe on the other side of this were proposing that we not be a union symphony.

And we disagree.

I mean, we you know, this the symphony has been a union 74 for a long time.

And we were successful in creating an agreement.

And how about fundraising?

How are you doing right now?

And does it depend really on the next season and how you do there in terms of numbers and big businesses coming in to help support it?

So I'm going to a quick little point about how we're funded as an organization.

So just picture a three legged stool and you know, one of those legs is the tickets.

So if if you assume that we sold all the tickets that we produced, that would not fund the symphony.

So that's one leg of the stool.

So even a Tobin anywhere, even at the AT&T Center or the Alamo Dome, I mean just there just isn't enough.

Major League Baseball can't sell enough tickets.

That's why they have advertising and TV and so forth.

Right.

So we're the same.

We have we have to have sponsors come in.

That's the second leg of the stool.

And the third leg is an endowment of some kind.

So those things have to be in place to be a viable, sustainable business.

And we're working towards all three of those.

And what about city and county?

I know that's been a long standing.

Well, the county has been very supportive.

We're still waiting for the city to to fulfill their promise of last year that we were supposed to receive $325,000.

Unfortunately, we did not.

The Department of Arts and Culture does not recognize us as as a as a an established arts organization.

And that is a technicality to be, what, three years?

Well, you have to have existed for three years technically as an organization.

But, you know, as a former city councilman, I can tell you we have we have a really over over overlook that the detail many times for organizations that we know don't necessarily fall under that rule.

As an example, in 2017, as MSA came in and was going to take on, you, symphonic music for San Antonio, came in and was going to take over the San Antonio Symphony Society's role, and that would have been essentially what happened here, where they would have they were supposed to go file for bankruptcy in this MSA take over.

Well, the city didn't have any problem funding them, and they were not an established organization.

There's other groups in town that are funded without meeting that three year rule.

And we're working on that.

We're working on that.

And we're making the case that, quite frankly, you know, this is this is the orchestra.

If it's one thing that's most important about the Philharmonic, it's the musicians.

Right.

And I want to get to briefly what you have coming up.

This is a brochure about that.

This is ten classics and you can get tickets now.

Well, so the classics, the ten classics are for sale now on our website, say Phil Dawg and a flex pass is that you can select the the the just buy individual concerts you get free parking with that as well.

No okay.

That's a short answer.

And also you have some pops and young music concerts, but that is young people's music concerts.

But that's for kids.

Well, the young people's concerts is an important part of our mission as as an organization, as a nonprofit performing arts organization, we consider the education part of our mission and role.

And so the young people's concerts are really about going out into the community and performing for young students and teaching them about music, about classical music, and really exposing them to something that maybe they wouldn't have otherwise.

So free or inexpensive, those are free.

Those are free concerts.

We're partnering with other folks soon to be announced, you know, to really layer on the impact and show that we want to get out there in the community.

Of course, we've done more free concerts than we've done.

And I saw one of those at the Guadalupe Plaza.

Cinco de Mayo is great, so I appreciate it.

Roberto Trevino, who is the executive director of the San Antonio Philharmonic, thank you very much.

And thank you for some reading material here as well, educating me.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you.

On Reporters Roundtable this week, we are talking water issues and energy issues with Lindsay Barnett of the San Antonio Report, an environmental reporter who also covers science and utilities.

And first, we'll talk water.

He had an interesting story about what San Antonio water system is looking at proposing in terms of how they regulate water use in town.

What are they looking at?

So we're anything we're looking at possibly launching a new system where they get rid of the citations that are done by the city, getting rid of that court proceeding and kind of taking it to a level where they can handle it at solved within size, where they issue fees and certain drought restriction levels also possibly a surcharge.

So you may be paying a higher rate.

So they're going to be calling it fees instead of fines.

It's going to be the same kind of I think it's $130 or something like that.

So they're still looking at what the price set will be, but they do know they want to do it higher for each drought stage.

So if they issue a stage one drought restriction, it may only be, I don't know, let's say $100 here.

And then at the next level, maybe it's $200.

And then once you get into stage three, that's where they're talking about a new trigger point based on aquifer levels where they charge you a higher rate per gallon that you use.

But that wouldn't be at stage one and two.

No, that's correct.

It would only be at stage three at this time.

That's what they're talking about.

And what is the reaction of source?

Because I think they had looked at changing some of this before and the board members, some of them worked for this.

So a couple of them had questions about it for sure, but a couple of them were also very forward, including Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

He seemed very for it.

And he also is very pro looking back at the city code and considering drought management there, especially when it comes to developers.

A lot of developers come into town and they build these new homes that have these irrigation systems set to automatically go off every day.

And some of the residents that live there don't even know that.

So, you know, they don't know their sprinkler system is going off at seven, six in the morning every day.

How likely do you think this is to happen?

And I guess the timeline I mean, we're in the middle of the summer.

We may have another month of record temperatures, but by the time saws where they implement this, it seems like it would be, what, at least fall winter or farther on?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So right now they're in the public gathering of information stage from here, they'll take it to their board and then to city council and they're hoping to have it implemented by the spring.

So possibly by next summer we could be seeing the effects of this new sort of stages of drought.

And how bad are we in the drought for those people who don't watch the aquifer reports every day?

Sure.

So Edwards Aquifer Authority just declared stage four last week.

That means that they have to reduce all their permit holders pumping by 40% versus sources only in stage two, which is why they're talking about this stage three trigger point possibly being easier to go into.

Source has never gone into stage three, but kind of making those price signals to San Antonio customers may make it so that we see people saving more water.

Is this also going to save more money or make more money, some would argue for source than their current citation?

That's a good question.

I would say that either way, sources that really focus on the money aspect as much as the saving water aspect, I think it will just depend on if you are conserving water.

If you conserve water, you're going to save money.

If you are using water, when we're in a serious drought, that's going to cost you and it sounds like it's going to cost you, especially under this new system, do we know how much just the growth of San Antonio more houses is, you know, is affecting this?

Because we had, what, 20,000 more people are closed just last year in San Antonio, Right.

I mean, Texas just hit 30 million last year.

It's been a you know, we're continuing to grow.

Nobody expects that to stop.

Size is calling conservation their new source of water.

So they have the Edwards Aquifer, they have Canyon Lake water, they have storage, they have different plants that they reuse wastewater with, but they're calling conservation kind of that new water source that we're going to have to depend on.

Speaking of sources, let's turn to energy.

CPS Energy is looking at a plan to vastly increase what I guess you would call the community solar arrays.

Tell us about that.

Sure.

So community solar is a little bit different than the solar that we're used to seeing on rooftops, Right?

So you'll see people's homes that have solar panels on them.

And those people are usually directly benefiting from their own solar panels that they got installed.

Community solar is an idea where panels are built around the city or in their own farms and people can buy certain panels worth of electricity.

So say there's a farm with a thousand different panels.

You can buy 50 of those panels even though they're not at your home on your house and purchase the electricity from them and use that toward your bill.

How much more are they because they've done something like this since 2009 or had solar projects since 2009?

Sure.

So they only have six megawatts right now.

One megawatt can run 200 Texas homes on a hot summer's day.

So they're looking to go to 50 megawatts, which is a lot more.

And that's actually a really good idea because it'll get more people able to get in on this community solar idea, which will make it easier for people that live in multi-family housing units, duplexes, apartments, all of that able to kind of get access to solar and know that's why it was so expensive for rooftops to be installed.

Yes.

Yeah.

That can cost 20 to $30000 for a rooftop installation even today.

And so that's why now in the report story, you have a map showing up until last year where the rooftop solar is and it showed pretty well.

What did it show?

So yeah, it showed a lot of the solar panels that are owned today in San Antonio are on affluent parts of the city, including the north and north west side of town.

So they realized that kind of the subsidy programs that they had at CPS were kind of helping people that already had means to buy these panels, buy them, and now they're trying to get these community solar panels to help low income customers who are interested in solar.

And now the city of San Antonio has more of an interest in CPS energy.

It makes a lot of money from CPS energy.

How do people in the city feel about the CPS Energy Board and how are they working together on this?

Yeah, that's a great question.

I think this is all just getting started.

So right now the RFP is are going out.

They're going to quest for proposal.

Okay.

Thank you.

Very clarifying requests for proposal so they'll see who responds to projects and they could have up to ten or more projects.

I think the city will be very excited and on board with that because it could even utilize city buildings.

We don't know yet.

Right.

So it could be all over all over town.

There's going to be smaller farms as well.

I wouldn't necessarily have to be the big things like we see on the Southside.

Yeah, correct.

So it could be something as small as a carport in a parking lot.

And we've seen that recently.

I think this week Los Angeles restaurants have done the carport with they call it the electric carport there.

And I thought, okay, well, they're going to be using that power to power electric cars.

But it's not that and what we call electric carport.

Yeah.

So, I mean, the way that works is a little bit different, right?

So the electricity that the panels produce go back into the grid and reimburses companies or homeowners that have those panels for that exact amount of electricity.

You think we'll see more of that?

I do.

I do think we'll see more of that.

As you know, as we progress.

And I think there's more interesting in that kind of solar and especially in a hot summer.

Yes.

Well, I mean, yeah, that's exactly a good point.

So ERCOT has really depended on solar this summer, right?

We've seen them declare broken records nine times as of yesterday for energy demand.

So we're out of time.

Lindsey Kahn, who covers environment, science and utilities for the San Antonio Report.

And I want to thank you for having your grandparents watch me when you were a kid.

That was great of you to tell me.

Brandi, thank you so much for your time, kids, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again, our previous shows, as well as download our podcast at KLRN.org And we'll see you next time on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho