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 special edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week, we're going to take a look back at some of the top stories around San Antonio.

In Texas over the past year, a very unofficial list that we put together.

We may not get to all of these or some of these.

First, the Alamo.

We're going to talk about that, the renovations there, as well as the collapse of the justice charter.

You may remember or not remember or some of these stories back early in the year.

Broadway still being torn up and the fight between the police union and the D.A.

there for a while.

I want to introduce the reporters who know everything there is to know about this.

And editors, I should say.

First of all, Greg Jefferson, who is the metro editor of the San Antonio Express News.

Andrea Drusch, who is a political writer for the San Antonio Report, and Sanford Nowlin and the edito in chief of the San Antonio Current.

Thank you all for coming in.

First of all, we'll talk about the Alamo and what has gone on down there was so controversial there a couple of years ago.

And now as we see some of what is going to happen over the next few years, not as much, although we did have the Moses Rose Saloon controversy.

What stands out about the Alamo and its story this year for you?

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.

Right?

A couple a couple of years back.

There was a lot of controversy about, you know, what the Alamo grounds are going to look like and where the Cenotaph is going to be located and how is it going to be repaired and all that.

And now that stuff is actually opening and, you know, being, you know, redone at the Alamo, that that controversy seems to have subsided.

And the big story of the year really in a lot of ways was the holdout.

Moses Rose It was a tavern down there.

It was sort of in the footprint of what was supposed to be the Alamo Visitor Center, a very expensive project that was trying to get underway.

And the the guy who owned it, Vince Cantu, was holding out for a lot of money.

And it was just you know, it was the kind of story that makes city and state officials hair stand up on the back of their neck because of eminent domain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They had to threaten eminent domain.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In the end, they ended up paying the guy $6.75 million, which a lot of people agree was quite a bit of money, especially since he had.

What did he value?

About a half million before that for taxes?

Yeah, it was.

It was not.

It was, you know, not particularly fancy building.

And, you know, basically where it was located ended up driving the price up, up, up.

And I think they wanted to avoid in eminent domain taking.

But that's really the last controversy, at least for a while.

And you've written about this as well in the Alamo.

What's your take on how that all played out?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's to me, it's remarkable that it's as quiet as it is.

I mean, I think Sanford's right.

The the redevelopment of the plaza seems to be underway.

Money is beginning to flow.

And yeah, the last holdout was Moses versus.

That's over with.

And it just seems like kind of a clear field at this point.

But a lot of people also go ahead to the point about the controversy ending.

A lot of that came from Austin.

Right.

And I don't think many people know that it got $400 million in the state budget this year for the Alamo renovation.

So it seems like toward years ago, maybe 400, maybe 500, but it was going to be a lot from private donors.

And so the state, after keeping the cenotaph where most of them wanted it is is on board big time.

Yeah.

For a $500 million renovation, the state's going to kick in 400.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of a lot of the controversy was generated around the symbolism of the Alamo and not so much whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to, you know, to do this renovation or, you know, put this display up or that sort of thing.

It just it really seemed like it was it was a lot of hot air, but there wasn't too much about what we see today.

That southern wall that is supposedly temporarily built there temporarily for at least three years.

And I think a lot of people haven't seen what's down there.

Are they going to be surprised, do you think, the plans, which aren't, by the way, complete as I understand at this point in terms of the whole thing, what it's actually going?

I think I think that kind of becomes a question of how many San Antonio residents actually visit the Alamo on a regular basis.

You know, if your level of surprise, based on how long ago it's been since you were at the Alamo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And right now with the traffic, I think it's going to be at least two, three years that people haven't been down there in terms of what they see.

All right.

Moving on here, The this is a one from a way back, but it was a huge deal at the time.

The Justice charter in San Antonio and what that meant to the election in the spring, that it was a big deal for a while.

Progressives wanted to to pass that and then it went away when it failed.

Yeah.

So the Justice Charter had lots of components to it.

Had the marijuana legal, is it decriminalization, abortion, decriminalization?

First time abortion had been on the ballot in the state since the Supreme Court's Roe versus Wade decision had some restricting chokeholds and no knock warrants.

The creation of a justice coordinator for the city.

People thought it was going to pass easily and then a very coordinated campaign from the business community eventually.

Mayor Ron Nuremburg, people coming out against this thing, it failed miserably, 72% against.

I mean, I think it even if the campaign against the the Justice charter had been half of what it was, I think it still probably would have failed just because it was so much I mean, that that was really the Achilles heel of this bundle of of charter amendments.

So much but largely popular things that suffer that piece about the site.

And really people really took issue with.

Yeah I mean I think the site release thing, you know it's funny because I had friends call me and ask me, what do you think about this?

And I would talk through the site and release stuff with them.

And a lot of times after I was done with the conversation, they're like, Oh, that's not so bad.

I think I could support that.

But the reality is that it was the easiest thing to attack.

It was the thing people were most afraid of.

And if you turn on the TV and saw those commercials that the police union was finding, you know, they were showing people with with you know, guns, wrecking jewelry stores and people rioting in the streets.

So there was a lot of it was very easy to build fear around that component.

And I think had that not been in it and it been a more slimmed down proposition to me, I mean, cannabis decriminalization that would have passed very easily in San Antonio.

And I think very many, you know, some of those other components would have passed very easily as well.

Bigger picture, did it mean anything for the direction of the city council in terms of it had gone quiet, progressive?

Has it pulled back from that in any way in terms of the membership of the council or what they're doing?

It's definitely a mile marker for the sentiment for public safety right now.

I think immediately after that you had the budget where they called for 300 more police officers in the coming years, and it's definitely having an impact on the politics over commissioners court and some of the things that we're seeing with the DEA.

I spend a lot of time at political events and people are still talking about this.

One of the interesting things about the, you know, why there was that sort of overreach with that that particular charter amendment was, if you look at it, it was it was folks at the state level and folks at the local level who had been successful or at least almost successful and I think saw those successes as, you know, carte blanche to go big.

Right.

Because the people at the state level had had, you know, about half a dozen successes in getting municipalities to decriminalize cannabis based on public votes.

Right.

So they were emboldened by that.

The local activists had had a near-miss with a previous ballot proposal that would have stripped the police union of collective bargaining rights.

That came very close to passing.

And I think a lot of them saw those victories in that near victory.

As you know, we got the strength to do this.

There's clearly an appetite for criminal justice reform.

We can make this happen.

Yeah, that cannabis element was so popular, the opponents of the Justice Charter were very worried that that would pull the rest over the line combined with the abortion piece of it.

But then some very expensive research went into how to precisely message this thing to be terrifying.

And it worked.

As a follow up to this is another story that happened a few months after the Justice Charter, and that is the police union and others with the police department fighting the DEA about crime and shootings in San Antonio.

When you had the shootings of police and what should be done about that.

And definitely the pendulum swung toward the police, I think, on that after those shootings.

Yeah, Joe Gonzales was reelected with like 60% last 2020 to November and now is like the number one mentioned enemy number one on the Republican side and on the right in San Antonio because of this last few months.

I think, though, where I think he's he's been targeted and there's a perception that he that he's that he's a weak link.

But I also think that there is there has been a less than truthful effort to to besmirch him here, because when you get right down to it, the stuff that the police union keeps bringing up, the stuff people are worried about, which is folks getting released on bail and then committing other crimes, that that comes down to magistrate judges write, magistrate judges set the bail.

The district attorneys in Texas cannot basically let people out of jail early.

And so I think I think the the police union in these ads where these online ads where they're targeting Joe Gonzalez, are being less than truthful about what control he has over that situation.

And lastly on this, do you think that will have legs?

It doesn't seem to be the topic right now.

And you know, the topic a moment in head of the news for three weeks, a month even is forgotten quickly.

Yeah, I mean, it's impossible to look ahead to a couple of years when Joe Gonzales is running for reelection.

But you can you know, you can surmise from the campaign against him by the police union that they're not going to go away.

That will factor into his next election.

And you always hear that public safety element, whether it was the Justice charter, whether it's Joe Gonzales, whether it's fair or not.

People see this seems to be a very viable argument.

Moving on, you also have a special insight and all of you do driving in here today about what's going on on Broadway, both Lower Broadway as well as the state versus city on the upper Broadway above, where the pig pig stand was what can and can't be done now and how long it's taking to redevelop this whole area.

Well, in terms of the redevelopment, I don't think it's just Broadway.

I mean, you know, there was a debacle on St Mary's Street, you know, that took way longer than it was supposed to have taken.

And, you know, initially, the businesses down on St Mary's were very excited to hear about the improvements and then it dragged on and dragged on and they kept breaking, breaking stuff and having to fix it.

You know, they became very angry.

I mean, there was a groundswell of anger around that.

And I've heard that, too, from from folks who who live around Broadway or have businesses on Broadway and and a few people are talking about because it's on the east side, the north New Braunfels corridor that's been torn up for a long time, too.

And there were businesses that were basically in assessable that were very, you know, small and mall trying to stay afloat.

But Broadway, the project, the multimodal corridor, the bike lanes, the boulevard.

I think we can kiss that goodbye at this point.

That was a 2017 bond item with federal money.

Is state money local money.

That's above the freeway and would have continued all the way to downtown.

It's a several mile project, but that the state is not interested in anything that closes lanes on that road.

And the public works director told us that they would use that money on another project and they'd have to.

It's complicated.

It's held by the APO, which facilitates those funds, but maybe they could use it on a road that the city does own.

I think you guys maybe got a different story on those, right?

Yeah, we did.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's important to go back nearly two years ago, so basically the city had been proceeding on the idea that it could make lower Broadway into a complete street, which is, you know, that which is friendly to pedestrians, cyclists, bus riders and vehicles, motorists.

The state stepped in and said no, this I mean, effectively, it's a lot of people were unaware that that Broadway is a state highway.

So the Texas Transportation Commission, led by Bruce Bugg, who's a San Antonio banker, stepped in and said this is under stake control, you know, complete streets, No nice idea.

Maybe in another part of the city it's not going to happen here.

And the city has been scrambling ever since.

And that's everywhere.

Every state highway is said no lanes will be closed.

That was put into the state Republican Party platform last year.

And and but Texas just agreed to put an $18 million you know, how much some ungodly amount of money into bike lanes they've tried to this has been like a sore subject is that a chamber event a couple of weeks ago where they were asking when is this relationship with Texas not going to change in the city?

They've been.

So it's been such a friction point like state don't want to see what a number of the city and state fighting like this.

They want them to work together.

For some people, this is a big, exciting story.

For some, it's they dreaded Spurs moving downtown possibly.

Do they dread it?

I hope that because I've spent a lot of time writing about it.

Yeah, well, instilling fear.

Well, people on the east side are concerned about what is absolutely true, as they should be.

Right?

Right.

So over the summer, we learned that and this was an open secret.

We just kind of reported it out.

The Spurs have been in talks with city manager Eric Walsh about the possibility of moving to a downtown basketball arena.

And this would probably cost in excess of $1,000,000,000.

If you look at the most recent, you know, the newest NBA arenas, that's that's kind of the the four this happened way before Wembley.

I mean, this was something the Spurs wanted to do probably, you know, as far as I can tell.

Eric Walsh had been talking with the Spurs since at least January, but probably even earlier than that.

And it's not surprising because the the Spurs lease at the county owned AT&T Center, sorry, for Frost Bank Center will expire in 2032.

The Spurs, I believe, want to be downtown.

They want to they want fans to have more of an experience.

So it's it's kind of a stickier thing.

They'll they'll come back more frequently if there are restaurants around the arena bars they can go to after the game and they have a great experience at the game.

I think that's that's the idea that's driving the Spurs.

So, you know, they've opened talks with the city and at the same time you've got a new ownership group that controls the San Antonio missions or minor league baseball team.

They acquired the team a year ago for about $28 million.

They play on the far west Side at the Wolf Municipal Stadium.

They acquired the team knowing that, you know, this was going to work.

If they could have a downtown baseball and they have some high profile supporters, former spurs on that team, which they do.

They do.

I mean, in a way, those they you know, I'm sure they're you know, they've got they've they've got money in the team that probably a fairly marginal amount, though I think the key players are Graham Weston was, you know, one of the co-founders of Rackspace and now he's a downtown real estate development.

And Randy Smith, who is CEO of Weston Urban, which you know, owns a ton of downtown property, is really the most active developer with Graham Weston in the Center City.

And they want a downtown baseball stadium, I mean, in part to augment the property properties.

And they have, you know, several apartment projects kind of in the works, ones getting close to completion on Houston Street.

Now, I'm sorry, I always get that.

Of course, the big hurdles to that would be how much public money would have to be into it, whether the public's into that.

And location, location, location.

Yeah.

What have you found out about the latest on that?

Because that's really they they seem to be zero in at least as far as the Spurs arena on hemisphere, specifically at the side of the Institute for Texan Cultures GSA.

They want to move the institute out of that facility because it's old too, behind the alley and pretty ugly, too.

Yeah, exactly.

And the building there would be obviously would have to be demolished.

That footprint is large enough to accommodate an arena, but parking would be a problem.

It's it's but, you know, modern you know, NBA arenas aren't you know, aren't like the frost Bank center.

These palaces, you know, sitting in the middle of an ocean of asphalt, that just doesn't happen anymore.

And that wouldn't happen here.

They'd have to work out some kind of parking arrangement, probably with the Alamo Dome, which is also.

What do you make of that decision this week and how does that impact that the the decision to pursue this state tax money?

Oh, yeah.

That conceivably the Alamodome renovation and the convention center station.

But maybe something else if we actually if we got further along.

Yeah, that's right.

So she's talking about a state it's a new I hate this phrase tax mechanism passed in the Senate right.

And then everyone else wanted one too.

Yeah that's right.

So the city of San Antonio kind of won this in the last Texas legislative session.

It allows them to take in all of the states hotel, hotel and sales tax revenue from hotels within three miles of the convention center.

The state analysts estimate that will raise about $222 million.

Eric Walsh says they'll use a big chunk of that money to make improvements at the Alamo Dome and the Convention Center.

But if the city estimate comes in significantly higher than the 222 million, nobody would be surprised, I think, if the city suddenly said, you know, there's enough here, maybe we could put a little effort toward an arena.

Now, speaking of tax mechanism, it was the county that really helped fund the Frost Bank Center 20 something years ago.

But now county commissioners have changed quite a bit since then.

Nelson Wolfe was there about 20 years in the make up for that is changing.

They have Tommy Calvert and the budget brouhaha here where each of the districts only got $10 million in discretionary funds.

What do you make of that change in terms of what's going on with the county compared to what did.

Yeah, the changes at the county when this when Peterson guy first took over, he and Tommy Calvert seemed really closely aligned.

And Peterson I had is a longtime county employee.

He was a judge.

He had all these ideas about reviewing things and the process that they do things at the county made every department justify their existence and go through how they're going to determine the budget, trying to add transparency.

And he and Tommy Calvert write together.

And then after the budget was approved, Tommy Calvert got upset in the final stretch saying that he had projects in his precinct that he wanted funded, that he couldn't get funded, and he abstained from the budget and created a citizen's committee to investigate the budget that has taken on a whole nother life.

And now that is kind of the main attraction at Commissioners court.

Is this dynamic between him and the guy, I think is do you think that is a function of Peter Sakai?

He's he's new to the job.

He's not made a very deep impression on anybody in this job yet.

I mean, it's I mean, yes, he's talking about reorganizing county government.

He's talking about transparency.

But I mean, does anybody know what he's about?

He seems to be kind of I mean, not an empty suit, but we don't know what he wants for better county is my sense.

It was easy to interpret increasing transparency.

However, you wanted to integrate.

Yeah.

And in Tommy Calvert's mind, it meant become more like the city, I think.

But I mean, do you think is Calvert taking advantage of that?

Like there's a vacuum in leadership and he's kind of trying to fill that jump to his side.

There's an interesting crew of people from sort of the budget hawks that maybe terrorize the city and who are like, Yeah, we'd like to have to our budget meetings to look closely at your departments over here and figure out how you're spending money.

And I think I think Calvert, too, right?

I mean, is trying to play catch up, right?

I mean, this is a historically underfunded section of town, and I think that's got to be frustrating to be told, okay, you'll have some money, here's some money, here's but not enough to really fix the the the the you know, the deep he's the I mean that was true under Nelson was true.

And, you know, I don't recall yeah I think the brouhaha in previous years.

Yeah.

You know I, I think you're right too that he he he is he sees some leverage here.

Yeah.

And I do think Sakai is interesting too, because you know, with Nelson Wolff as as a member of the media, I had his cell phone number and can call him any time for a comment.

And Sakai, it's I feel like there's gatekeepers all along the way to even get him to comment on anything.

Hm Yeah, I mean, he is much more sort of withdrawn, I think.

Don't get me started on access to the medium caliber thing, I think right or wrong, he's baffled some of his colleagues with this behavior in the way that he characterized the budget process.

People were very his colleagues, who he's worked with up there, were confused about how he was confused.

I mean, is it is it possible he's positioning himself now to challenge Sakai in three years?

I think that it's not it's not out of the realm of possibility.

And speaking of Sakai, he and a county judge in Austin have been among those talking about cooperation between San Antonio and Austin and what some are now calling the mega metro.

We did a whole hour long special here on Keller in on the emerging mega metro.

And what that means.

And there's been talk again of reviving the idea of rail between here in Austin.

What's your take on that?

I mean, I thought it was interesting that over the summer, Andy Brown, who's the he's a Democratic county judge in Travis County, he's the one who started talking about commuter rail between Austin and San Antonio.

And after the demise of the Lone Star Rail district in, what, 2000, 17, 2018, nobody's really talked about it.

It was just, oh, we assumed that just was not going to happen.

It happened 50 I mean, 15 years they've been talking about.

It's been 20 years.

That's right.

Yes, exactly.

It was a lot of wasted money.

And at the end of it, we were seriously no closer to, you know, having, you know, a dedicated rail line and a train between here and Austin as we were 20 years before.

So it was surprising to hear Brown say that.

And at the time, this was in June, July, Peter Sakai, he was taking let's wait and see how this plays out attitude that's changed.

I think he seems more receptive to the idea, but we are we still up against the same ups?

Yeah, I mean, it's more so union.

Exactly.

It's like there's not enough I mean, I think it's almost Union Pacific.

I don't think their position has changed.

They've they've got a rail line between here in San Antonio.

They were never going to lease it.

They were never going to give it away.

The only way it really works, I think, is to, you know, if if that's the line you want, you're going to have to build an alternative for up.

And that's a ton of money.

Is it going to happen in 5 seconds or less?

Oh, I was going to say on the federal level, the first Department of Transportation grant San Antonio has gotten in a decade would be the the bus line, the North-South.

And and there's a lot of coordination between the city and the federal government when it comes to transportation issues.

I don't know how the federal government feels about multiple Texas municipalities being able to work together with the Department of Transportation in the state to to make it going to be a pretty high hurdle.

Yeah, they have all these goals about airplanes and all that that maybe all that could happen by the time you're my age.

And you have a lot to report on this year.

Thank you very much all for coming in.

Greg Jefferson, San Antonio Express-News Metro editor Andrea Dries, who is a staff writer, business expert for the San Antonio Report.

No political reporter or political reporter.

I try to promote everyone at Sanford now and who is still just editor in chief.

It's not yet Owner No, not yet.

Of the San Antonio Curran.

Thank you all for coming in.

We want to wish you a happy holidays here from all of us at Cal Lauren.

We want to thank Steve Adele Dufilho for supporting your program and everybody here working really hard on the crew and Sheri up on the booth and everyone here having patience with me.

We'll see you again next year.

You can always watch KLRN’s on the record.

KLRN.org on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele.

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