Speaker 1: On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow Speaker 2: 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 to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on.

Speaker 1: Hi everybody.

I'm Randy Beamer.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of on the record.

San Antonio city council just made some important decisions about where money is going to go.

That is designed to help us recover from COVID.

We're talking to the American rescue plan act more than $200 million of that.

Joining us to talk about it is Phyllis via Groton of district three.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

How was it decided just where throughout the city, this $212 million from the federal government that's coming would go.

Speaker 2: So this started back in the fall and we started to ask city staff and the community to kind of put an input on what we needed to prioritize moving out of this pandemic and how we were going to recover from this pandemic.

So we, we had surveys, we had input through emails.

My staff did their own personal survey of finding what the needs were for the district residents.

So that's where we kind of got the priorities of, of where we were going to put these.

Speaker 1: And these dollars are not the first dollars.

There was a hundred million or so half of it went to the hotel occupancy tax because the tourism was hurt so bad, then the general fund, the emergency response.

But this is going for things from infrastructure to small business, to mental health.

And there was some controversy over where how that money should be divided up when you voted last week.

Speaker 2: The one thing is how, what you have 11 people sitting on a diocese, each of them have different priorities with different districts.

So how do we make the best decisions to put us on that path to recovery, to make the city resilient and move us forward to be competitive as we come out of this pandemic?

So it was a great discussion.

We, we talked about it in B session a couple of times, and then we talked about it in a session and voted on to move this forward.

Speaker 1: We had roughly six hours of testimony from some people, some of it, the nonprofits, there was a little, a little bit of heated exchanges there as Morgan's Wonderland and edgy care.

And well, Texas biomed got some money as well, and that was somewhat controversial.

Speaker 2: So, you know, we, we saw the, some of the controversy come up with bond, but when it came down to it, we asked city staff to make decisions and look for projects that we could green light.

And that were basically shovel-ready so that we could have some parameters of what we were looking for.

And they found three projects that met the ARPA requirements that we were able to approve.

And I feel comfortable with moving all those forward because it addresses the infrastructure issue with Texas biomed Morgan's Wonderland addresses the issues of those living with disabilities and making sure we're servicing our entire community.

And then Educare really addressed that childcare desert that we saw manifest because of the pandemic Speaker 1: And city staff identified those.

And you're moving those forward faster than other nonprofits, those other nonprofits complain, Hey, you're jumping those to the head of the line.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Yeah.

The, these were conversations that we, these were always projects that were considered for the bond and then considered, did they meet our requirements?

So they had begun that process way before other nonprofits did put in their, their, their proposals.

But we were really looking for what was ready to, to what was shovel-ready and what was, Speaker 1: And so that money is going first.

Now, some of the big picture items that you have there, like nonprofit, that's still to be decided where it's going to be going in the spring before you get the money later on Speaker 2: Now with the, and these were all unsolicited asks and we we've got many of them over 32 asks.

So now we're going into committee to, to prioritize what we can move forward, what we can give to in order to, to help get the city out of the pandemic.

So we're encouraging non-profits to put together their proposals, or I am at least, and to bring them forward to city staff.

And so we can review them at the committee level.

Speaker 1: And one of the things that you wanted more money for was for digital access and literacy, but that was moved to another part of the budget from our Speaker 2: Yep.

So I, I was disappointed that 1.5 million was moved from digital access and literacy over to nonprofit social services, which is a great bucket also, but I felt we could take the money from another, another category, but we have the opportunity with infrastructure, money coming down and the opportunity to kind of really focus on how we need to, to build bridges in that digital gap that, Speaker 1: But I thought it was that digital gap.

I thought it was interesting that it did in a council districts, one through five, something like a quarter to more than a third of the people who live there don't have access to the internet right now.

Speaker 2: And that's, that's, there's the lack of affordability and the lack of infrastructure.

And it's one of the things I've been saying from the diocese, we need to address the infrastructure.

We need to address the accessibility and the affordability for our residents.

It's not, it's not just good enough that we have hotspots because they really need to be able to get the opportunity to afford that internet service that will allow them to work from home.

Speaker 1: But you'll be working on that and other parts of the budget, maybe the bond issue as well.

Speaker 2: Yes.

That we'll be working on in other parts of the budget.

And we also, we will be working on it with the new infrastructure dollars coming down and the federal government has made it a priority.

And I've already started meeting with advocacy groups about how we can move that forward.

Okay.

Speaker 1: All right.

Well, thank you very much, Phyllis, via Grande district three.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank Speaker 2: You.

Speaker 1: And we continue now talking about the city and the ARPA funds where that money is going to go, how it was decided.

Councilman John courage, district nine, joins us now to talk about that.

What is your take on the battles that you had in trying to ratify that 200 or okay.

The $212 million with some of it overblown in the media, or how did Well, you know, I don't, I don't call it a battle.

Really.

I think that's probably a misnomer.

Really.

It's definitely a discussion and there are challenges between what different areas of the city may have in the way of priorities.

What different council members see as priorities in their community, and then trying to put all that together if for the entire community is going to create challenges and disagreements and opportunities.

I hope for us to sit down and collaborate on what we can come together with as a final product, that's going to be as beneficial as it can to almost all of the community.

What are you, What's your take on the $10 million going to Texas biomed?

You know, I think that that is a challenge, but the way I look at it is, you know, we've been going through this pandemic for quite awhile and what I've always heard.

And what I've said is we need to follow the science and, you know, there's no one more involved in the science against the pandemic in this city than Texas biomed.

And they have led the way in helping to develop the vaccines that we have today.

And I think it's important for us to continue to follow the science and support the science.

And I think that it's something that was worthy of putting into our funding, Those who were critical of a Texas biomed getting part of this, and it was kind of a loophole around and that if there was money for that, it should have gone through the bond.

You know, it was to be part of the bond or that was talked, but that was taken out of the bond.

Of course, that would have been controversial, the vote.

A lot of people, you know, very vocal about funding, primate research, right?

What's your take On?

Well, you know, we have a lot of people who talk with us everyday about animals in our city, and I've had a lot of emails criticizing animal con animal services because they say they're not out there and they're not efficient in my part of the community problem is with deer.

We have deer all over the place and there are those people who love the deer and those people want to do more about the deer.

And I can see, you know, people's concern about the animals, the primates, you know, at, at Biomet.

But I think that all of the research they do is for the benefit of, of human beings.

And I think that does take a priority.

I hope that someday we move beyond the necessity of having to use primates or any animals, but until that time arrives, I think that we need to go ahead and take advantage of the research that they can do to help us as human beings.

Now, looking ahead, there's $212 million that you just, okay.

That is still going to have to be gone through with different city council, committees and other public input, and make sure that it goes through the big picture that you just okayed, but that's still just a part of the 600 million overall and the different carers act and ARPA-E money that we've gotten.

And there's still some of that to be, to be played with later Future years.

Well, you know what we're looking at with the 212 million right now, we'll go through a process of having committee meetings to discuss exactly how that may be allocated to different agencies or different services that we need to provide.

And so there's opportunities for more public input to, you know, look at the agendas for our committees and to write in or come by and express their concerns or their suggestions on how the city should spend that money.

And so I think that with the continuation of the council, examining these issues and bringing in public input, I hope we'll arrive at some really meaningful decisions on how that money should be allocated.

It's not allocated this year.

How much more do you have down the road?

And some of the other money you have to spend by 2024?

Well, We still have some money related to housing.

And I think that's, you know, going to be used up pretty quickly because we still have a lot of problems or a lot of people suffering from the inability to keep up with their rents.

We know that there's more money.

That's probably coming down the line from the federal government on infrastructure.

And that is something that will help us.

For example, we're reallocating a little bit of money to help arts by taking money out of some infrastructure work that we were planning because part of the money from the bond issue was cut from art in a couple of areas.

So we're taking some infrastructure money on bridges, and we're putting it back into the bond issue to provide more money for art funding.

And by doing that, we're counting on the federal money that's going to be coming in to help us, you know, kind, take the place of that infrastructure.

So, you know, it's almost like dominoes, there's, there's a lot of things that are going to have to fall in place, but we anticipate that taking place over the next couple of years.

And you still have how much, how many millions to spend in the next couple of years going to make it a significant impact on the budget next year as well?

Well, You know, I think that we're finding that our budget is, is really strengthening and it's coming into its own as far as the typical resources that we get, whether it's increases in the hotel occupancy tax or increases in sales tax, things like that.

So I don't foresee right now a major problem with our normal general funding budget in the next cycle for 23, 24 or even 22, 23, but the primary expense expenditures, we're looking at a really that $212 million that needs to be spent by 2026, I believe, and allocated by about 20, 24.

And I think we're, we're certainly on the timeline to get that done.

If you have a concern about where that money is going to go or want to make sure in the pipeline where it is call your council member.

That's right.

John courage in council district nine.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

Ready.

This week, mayor county commissioners agreed to purchase some new tasers with some new technology for the Sheriff's department, as well as okay.

A new contract with the deputy something they had been working on includes a 15% raise.

We're going to talk about that a more with the sheriff Javier Salazar.

Thank you very much for coming Speaker 2: In.

Thanks for having me exciting stuff going Speaker 1: On.

Yeah.

Tell me about the, the taser contracts.

Speaker 2: Well, so our tasers were up for an upgrade anyway, 78% of our tasers that are out there in the fleet right now are beyond their life expectancy of five-year life expectancy.

So we needed to update them anyway, that was going to come with a cost taser, axon, the company that makes our body cameras and our tasers came to us and say, well, if you bundle, that'll open up a whole new host of, of features the technologies that that can be made available to you.

And it's, you know, and it could be done for about the same that you were going to spend on just the tasers anyway.

So it was a win-win for us because we saw Speaker 1: Like car insurance or whatever it means, what you can get different features that if your taser goes off or if your body cam goes offs, another officer at the scene can activate that somehow.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of features, but, but so the, the, the, the main reason that we really like working with taser and axon is the two, those two products are made by the same parent company.

And the two products really interact really, really well.

So some of the features that come with this new system upgrade is that, for example, if I deploy my taser, it'll turn on my camera, but also turn on yours and his, and his, and his, all the, all the cameras in proximity, in the heat of battle, if, as it were, or in, in the heat of the moment, you may forget to activate your taser.

So it's nice to be able to have technology that will remove that human element, and it'll just turn everything, but Speaker 1: The cameras are supposed to be on, right?

Speaker 2: Cameras are supposed to be on, but there's certain triggers that, that have to occur.

So one of the triggers that may have to occur is that the deputy may have to in, in, in, in, under the old system, have to activate it manually by pressing on it.

Now we've got certain, certain triggers built in that.

For example, when, when deputies pulled their gun out of its holster, that can activate the cameras.

So what we're trying to do is remove the human element to the extent possible and use our upgrades in technology to make the system work better.

Speaker 1: And the things you wanted to do with this was pushed to have body camera footage, to be able to release it more quickly.

And this allows for that, Speaker 2: How there is some pretty high speed editing software that will allow us to edit, but redact information.

So let me just give you a perfect example of how that comes into play before.

If I let's say I had four deputies involved in an officer involved shooting, for example, and we had to go through and we have to redact certain things from this deputies video faces, license plates, the maker by, yeah, we had to do it minute by minute per deputy.

So I had to do it for this deputy.

And then this one, and then this one with this new technology, with this, right, with this new technology, I can say, I want this face blurred out no matter where it appears no matter whose video it's on.

And it's done at the, at the, at the click of a button.

And so obviously that'll make us more able to meet with this 10 day ask that the commissioners were, were putting forth.

Speaker 1: There's one, this release body cam within 10 days, how with this new technology, how long do you think it will be before you can impose?

Speaker 2: So we've got to hire some folks we've got to hire, we're going to have to hire the library and people we're going to make a huge push like that comes with a public ass to try to get people to apply for these, these jobs get are gonna be pretty good jobs, but they're jobs that have never existed before within the Sheriff's office.

It'd be people who are working with body camera footage.

So we're looking for a certain skill set.

Once we get those folks hired on which I'm hoping to have within a couple of weeks, then we can start the training process to get them schooled up, to do it.

Commissioners are asking me for a 60 day turnaround to get from the 30 day release that we have now to the 10 day release that we, that we will have, I'm saying 60 days.

Cause I don't want to over promise you.

And I know that if I get a couple of the young young folks in there that know how to do this stuff, they'll pick it up like that.

And we can beat that 60 day timeline Speaker 1: Before we get to talking about the, a new contract with the deputies back to the taser and body cam commissioner, Tommy Calvert, and some others that said, well, we already had this contract before, why do we need to spend more money to upgrade it?

What do you tell people about spending more money on a contract?

Speaker 2: Look, there was a lot of misinformation floating around out there.

This system, this technology is no different than what we have with our cell phones, right?

Cell phones are constantly coming out with new technologies, new features, and you've got to upgrade your technology from time to time.

And sometimes that may come in the form of a bundle.

The company will say, look, instead of us charging you what this device is worth, we'll charge you this.

And then, and then you'll, it'll open up all these new features.

That's all we did here is we upgraded our technology.

Basically what we did was we brought us ourselves up on par with a lot of the other major agencies in the state of Texas that utilize this tech.

And yes, it did come at a, at a little bit of a price, $2.5 million difference over the cost of five years.

But the, the benefits that come with it are immeasurable, literally imagined.

Speaker 1: And about the new contract.

Tell us about that 15% raise with the deputies as well as there's something called the citizens advisory board and no longer arbitration when it comes up for contract.

Speaker 2: Correct.

Well, these are all things that I'm excited about because they were all things that I campaigned on.

They're all things that I've been talking about since I took office at the Sheriff's office, one of which was says, I need more money for my deputies.

This is coming with a 15% pay raise over the course of the contract over the course of the next several years.

So, so I'm very excited about that because it's going to help us out with regard to recruitment.

Arbitration is one of the things that's going away.

That's been one of the main criticisms of disciplinary processes across the country in Speaker 1: San Antonio for the Speaker 2: Police report.

Absolutely is that sometimes an out-of-state arbitrator will come in and make a ruling that everybody's bound by and they don't live here.

They don't have to live with the after-effects.

So w but what we did was we replaced that arbitrary arbitrator with a little bit more local control.

We expanded our civil service process, which is who deputies can appeal discipline that I impose its appeal to the civil service board.

We're expanding that civil service board from three to seven, which again, gives another opportunity for citizens to be engaged in the disciplinary process.

So it really takes that control away from an out-of-state arbitrator and puts it in the control of citizens that live here in bear county.

Speaker 1: Or why is it different than the police contract?

Speaker 2: Well, I think currently the, the police contract still has an arbitration clause in place, but as I see it, a lot of major agencies are going away doing away with that arbitration process and replacing it with something else along the lines of what we did.

I'm proud to say we're on the cutting edge of that here locally.

All right.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much, sheriff, Javier Salazar.

Thank you very much for coming in.

You appreciate Speaker 2: It.

Thank you for having me, sir, Speaker 1: On reporters round table this week, we're talking about one of the effects of growth here in San Antonio.

You may have noticed that rents are going up joining us to talk about that and what it means for all kinds of people living here in San Antonio is Waylon Cunningham is a business reporter for the San Antonio report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for you've had a couple of, I thought fascinating stories within the last few weeks about just how fast apartment complexes here are, are changing hands that a lot of out-of-town investors are coming in swooping in buying these, driving the prices up because they think, I guess the growth here is going to continue.

And these are great cheap investments.

That's right, Randy.

So one big effect of the population growth has been a lot of the folks that are moving in.

And a lot of the folks that you know, are a result of the natural population growth here can't necessarily afford to buy homes.

So there's a growing renter class, but construction of new apartments has not necessarily kept pace.

So, you know, last year I think we saw something to the effect of three new tenants for every new apartment unit that was constructed that, and that's a classic example of demand outpacing supply, and there's big money to be made there.

Vacancy rate then has gone down to something like five and a half percent from close to 10.

Is that right?

Right.

So these apartments are filling to the brand.

And what Does that mean for your average rent or how much of the rent is I don't up?

Rents can go up anywhere I've seen anywhere from 14%, even 30% by some estimates.

A lot of these companies are from out of town, Austin, New York.

You're going to have an absentee landlord.

There's going to be somebody here working for them, but you don't have anyone directly involved that owns it here.

It's only actually 4% of apartments that were bought last year were owned by San Antonio companies Is some of these companies.

And you wrote about that in another article are coming in and raising rents and fees and cutting maintenance and cutting maintenance costs.

And you have a lot of people complaining then about this.

A human effect is, is really a toll layer, Right?

So when you break down this trend of these investors pouring in and buying and selling apartments at this blistering pace, you know, with the price of these apartment complex, going higher and higher, if you look at the biggest buyers, a lot of them focused on cheaper, older properties.

These are what in the industry are known to be rented typically by firefighters, nurses, teachers, blue collar types, folks in the middle to lower end of the income spectrum.

Now the biggest buyer was an Austin based company and I called Shippy properties.

And I spoke to some tenants at a couple of properties that were either owned or very recently owned by this company.

And these tenants describe, you know, frequent water, shut offs, flooding ceiling collapses, mold, plumbing, and electrical issues that would go neglected for months on end, if addressed at all, actually spoke to a, a grandmother and her granddaughter who they say the ceiling fell in on them on one rainy afternoon, whether a napping after months of neglected leak repairs.

So this is, you know, this is serious stuff.

And one of the things that I hadn't realized before there are different fees that are added in one of them is, is called a high risk fee.

If you've had problems in the past, or you're moving into a different apartment, explain what that is, How that works, right?

So that's common at a lot of these second chance apartment complexes and that's kind of a non-refundable deposit.

So it's similar to a deposit in terms of, you know, how much money it is, but it's not money that you're going to be getting back at the end of the lease.

Even if you know, you don't break it or get evicted or I, how have you.

So, you know, for a lot of these folks, that's a pretty steep burden, but often they don't have, And often they don't have really any recourse, I guess you could take them to JP court.

If you know, renters can do that, but it's the code compliance people that really need to come out and enforce this.

And that doesn't happen very often.

How does that work?

Right?

Well, I just want to say real quick that the risk fee is entirely legal, so there's nothing going to be taken to court over to that.

But as far as possible code violations go, you know, renters can call 3, 1, 1 and report what they believe to be a code violation.

Now, code compliance and the city's developmental services department does not proactively go out and inspect apartments, but if they get a 3, 1, 1 call, they can send someone out there to look.

And what they're really looking for, what raises the big red flags and drives a lot of urgency is if the inspector is find a, you know, large structural damage in the building, something that would, you know, really structurally compromise it, then anything below that will give it a violation, but there's not necessarily a lot of urgency to it.

One of the problems is getting enough maintenance workers in the defense of the companies that run these because of COVID and other problems right now, just staffing.

Sometimes the apartments can't get enough workers to really deal with all these problems.

That's right.

So some of the tenants that I spoke to described, you know, there being not enough maintenance workers, then being overwhelmed with hundreds of maintenance requests and frequent turnover among that staff.

So when I actually spoke to a spokesperson from the company, you know, he said that they have, you know, six maintenance folks for this property complex or have few hundred units, but he said, you know, at sometimes there might be difficulties with COVID in terms of hiring.

So the, whether or not there are enough resources given a maintenance is another question.

Yes.

Waylon Cunningham business reporter of the San Antonio report.

Thanks for coming in.

Thanks for Redding.

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

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

And we'll see you next time On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow.