Speaker 1: On the record is presented by launch essay, San Antonio, small business owners.

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 Speaker 2: Welcome to on the record, I'm TJ maze nearly a week after a deep freeze, took our electric grid out almost to the breaking point.

Texans are demanding answers about how we move forward.

CPS energy is owned by the city of San Antonio and provides power to local residents.

Paula gold Williams is the CEO of CPS.

Paula many are wondering how we are preparing for another major weather event.

We've got the summer coming up.

We may have another bad winter next year.

What steps is CPS taking to prevent another grid failure?

Speaker 1: Well, the first thing I want to do is, uh, apologize and say, I'm so sorry for what our community had to go through.

It was a terrible experience that that occurred, and it was driven by first and foremost, the weather being so bad all over Texas.

I think we have to definitely, and we are looking at this as a huge learning experience and dig into the fact that we can see things we've never seen before because of the weather pattern.

And then it exposed that we had design issues in the market problems overall and how fast our systems can respond as far as a total grid.

So we're going to have to look at everything that's happening in local communities across the state, but also look at how fast can we better communicate back to customers around that's the whole state about what's happening so they could be better prepared.

And then we're going to do things internally across all of our systems about how we can do better, weatherization, more resiliency projects, distributed generation, a lot of things I know that you are familiar with and we could talk about today.

Speaker 2: So this has been a game-changing event for CPS energy and perhaps a pivot point in how we think about the company moving forward.

Is that fair to say?

Yes.

All right.

So smart grid, smart meters, advanced metering infrastructure.

I know you've been rolling them out through the nest program and it's one of the concepts they are to improve our reliability response.

Can't you control kind of how people's ACS are working and stuff through your smart grid infrastructure.

Is that a way to help ensure reliability if we have capacity issues in the forward and moving forward?

Speaker 1: Well, every system we have, I think we're going to have to re-look at it and see how we can make it better.

You're actually talking about two systems.

We have a thermostat control system.

We can use to also communicate with customers about changing their thermostat step setting.

And we were able to activate that fairly well, but we need more people on that system and we need to have a better communication system so that everybody gets the message.

Speaker 2: Can I ask you what going to viewers do?

What can viewers do if they're interested in getting that, uh, thermostat system in their home?

Speaker 1: Well, we'll, we'll give us a call and, um, we, we have had promotions in the past, so we're going to re-look at how can we help with the promotion and a discount, but right now, just give us a call and we'll talk to them about what their options are and how to make that work and how to enroll most, mostly what it does is help trigger and remind people about conserving.

One of the biggest issues we had overall in this event was we needed to conserve from every business so that every home had the power that they needed.

And so using that system will be helpful relative to the meters.

That's a different system.

It wasn't designed to be the control system.

And in some cases, the distance between where they're actually pulling the power in the meter is so long.

It can't be used for that type of cut on off, switch down to the note, and then we'll have to redesign again how to, how to make sure that we're, um, making sure that it's not one big circuit, that we can get more accuracy about what can be managed separately.

So a whole lot of design, some technical improvements have to happen, but we're already talking to our partner.

I tried on that.

Speaker 2: So there's been this conversation about the diversity of the portfolio.

As far as generation is concerned, there's coal, there's wind, there's solar.

Um, and one thing that people have talked about is distributed generation.

Can you explain what distributed generation is and how it helps electric reliability?

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

So it manifests where individual customer, whether they be a resident or a business can set up, uh, an energy technology at their home.

Most, mostly people use it and they put solar on their home so they can self-generate their own power, but more and more, we're also seeing people putting batteries or some type of backup system that correlates with managing the energy at their home businesses, I think are better suited oftentimes to make those investments in those types of resiliency products, but that allows them to Island off of the grid and take more pressure off of it.

And then we can, again, help all the other residents who don't have those systems.

So it's a good thing for everybody and individually it can help, but those systems only have so much, um, duration.

And so somebody, as long as that outage was most systems today can't handle that type of demand, but we are trying to insent technology.

So it gets better and it can bridge people who want to want to go off the grid Island for moment and then help the whole grid restabilize.

Speaker 2: So can I ask you one last question?

Um, a lot of people think of electricity as being like water and that you can store large amounts of it.

Saws is able to do that, uh, through reservoirs and stuff, electricity doesn't exactly work that way.

It moves through the grant at all times.

How close are we to storage technology that could help build the resilience that you're describing?

Speaker 1: Well, we have, we have a good functioning, uh, storage of batteries, uh, in particular, but their duration is about four hours.

And so what we need is a whole lot more investment to get, you know, days of storage that can happen all across our system.

I think we are, that's not going to happen tomorrow, but again, that's why we have the flex power bundle.

We're trying to incent people to put more effort in that storage technology and the moment that we can see that it gets better world deplore, and we'll also help our customers with those types of storage abilities, Paula gold Williams.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: The pandemic and electric grid failure have showed us how vulnerable housing is for many in our community.

Ben Oliva covers housing at the San Antonio Heron.

He's the editor there and he joins us.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you, TJ.

So homelessness was a big concern of many during the great failure.

And you wrote about some issues that were addressed by Gavin Rogers and the church downtown.

Can you talk about that?

Sure.

Um, about three or four days before the big storm hits, um, which was Sunday night, Monday morning, um, many of the homeless, uh, uh, non-profits and outreach groups mobilized.

They started canvassing downtown streets to just tell folks who are out on the streets, that temperatures are gonna reach, you know, single digits.

Um, and, and, and even maybe below that with the windchill and they were just trying to get folks sheltered.

And, uh, Rogers is, um, church downtown Travis park church.

They, they were one of several emergency shelters that opened up, um, and just to house folks.

And so when I went out there on the streets, uh, that Sunday night when it started snowing, um, you know, I saw folks that were still in the streets and I just wondered why, why are they still out here?

Why did they not seek emergency shelter?

Is there a capacity issue?

I know that Haven for hope has some pandemic restrictions.

So people it's harder to get in there than it used to be, maybe.

And then we have an emerging Lee, large homeless population.

Is that a capacity issue that needs to be fixed kind of immediately from your reporting?

Are you seeing that?

Well, some of the outreach workers that I talked to say that that is normally an issue now with the storm, um, a lot of the, a lot of the restrictions, a lot of the rules that you have to do to get into a shelter were we're temporarily, um, uh, uh, suspended, um, just to get folks in.

And, and that's what keeps a lot of homeless people from not going to shelters is from what I hear, um, rules like you have to have a proper ID.

You have to have a clean urine analysis.

Well, during the storm Haven for hope lifted those restrictions and plus shelters throughout downtown opened up.

And so there were, there were places to stay.

So I'm hearing you describe this massive infrastructure of independent actors who are all trying to solve the homelessness issue.

Councilman Trevino has been the show talking about it many times, It's going to continue to be an issue.

Um, but there's also a larger issue about housing, uh, mayor.

Nierenberg had a task force a few years ago.

There's been an evolution in how we think about housing at the city of San Antonio, which has historically been viewed as a cheap place to live.

And the city of San Antonio is taking a ballot proposition to voters in may.

Can you describe that ballot proposition?

Sure.

Um, what the city is proposing is to, uh, change the charter amendment, uh, the city charter, I'm sorry.

Um, to amend the city charter charter to allow, um, for bond funds to be more directly spent on housing.

Um, right now the, the way the city charter charter is written, um, they can only do so much, uh, bond dollars can only be spent basically on public works type projects, which is why in the last bond election you saw all the projects had to do with drainage, um, streets and sidewalks, parks, stuff like that.

What this amendment will do will open up the possibility for those bond dollars to be spent directly on housing.

But it'll also open up for those, for those dollars to be spent on anything such as economic development type initiatives.

And so there's been a lot of discussion amongst the city council as to whether that's a good thing or bad thing.

When people hear money being spent on housing city, bond dollars, they're thinking the high rises that are traditional public housing, you saw them in Chicago with Cabrini green.

I mean, that's what people think are they thinking about public private partnerships to make more mixed use housing available to people or workforce housing?

What kind of housing projects do they envision with this bond election?

So w what city officials will tell you is that they're not sure right now, you know, w w what their real their message right now is really let's at least give ourselves the options to do different types of things.

Now, some of the examples they've given to council members are they could, uh, provide direct, uh, what they call a gap gap financing, which is basically we're going to the developer needs three or $4 million to make the development happen.

Let's provide that the three, $4 million.

Um, they've, they've also taught, I mean, Councilman Trevino, um, asked, uh, uh, city attorney, Andy Segovia, whether it could be used to build a homeless shelter, for example.

And he said it could.

So the, the possibilities there, there's a lot of ways they could do this.

One of the other big issues is, um, the housing authority.

They are in desperate need of, of funds to rehabilitate, for example, the Alexon courts and other public housing.

And, and the city attorney said that this money could be spent on that.

What I'm hearing you describe is city of San Antonio brings some money to the table.

Saha, maybe private developers may be together.

They'll be able to ink deals that aren't being able to be implemented right now, which will improve our housing stock.

Is that what they have in mind?

That is what they have in mind.

Now, now the city, and the question that I always ask is, is this an actual problem?

Is it a perceived problem?

The mayor's housing policy task force said it was a problem.

They said there was a shortage of, I think it was like 17 or 18,000 affordable housing units.

The city is In the currently they're recalibrating that figure.

And th their figures currently, they think it's somewhere in the range of 40,000.

So there is a need, and they're trying to address the need.

Exactly.

Thanks for joining us, Ben.

Okay.

Thank you, TJ.

Appreciate it.

echoes from the reconstruction era found on the bed of the San Pedro Creek.

Joining us is Steve Graham, interim general manager of San Antonio river authority.

Thanks for being here.

Speaker 1: DJ's for their pleasure and glad to be here.

Speaker 2: So what did the archeologists find on the Creek bed or the San Pedro Creek?

Speaker 1: Well, uh, almost a year ago, uh, we were digging and doing excavation, which is a normal thing on this project.

And the contractor came upon the old rock remnants of four different, um, buildings that were built sort of overtime in the same area.

San Pedro Creek is really where a lot of the early of development occurred in San Antonio.

So we've known all along, be very, very careful as we're baiting.

And so this is a case in point in about February, March of last year, this was uncovered and stopped the construction in this area at Eastern tomorrow's street and became a, and then it became an archeological Hoover, very significance.

Speaker 2: So you had a public meeting this week about it to solicit feedback from the public about how they think this should be handled.

What was the outcome of that meeting?

Speaker 1: Well, we've actually had to, uh, last night, uh, was the second one.

We had over a hundred people at our first one virtually, which is kind of an amazing for virtual meeting last night.

I think we're up to about 15.

And I think what initially the reaction for people is preserve everything.

It's all very important history, which we agree with.

We explained to people that, that that is an, that is a given.

We are going to celebrate and preserve the history.

The question is how to do that.

Our designers in conjunction with the archeologists and historians have come up with eight options and eight options have different ways of celebrating that history.

Some options keep all of the rocks in the ground and don't touch them, but it is important to say we covered them back up.

That's preserve them.

That's what you do.

Archeologically government, they're not exposed for public view.

The other option would be to take out big portions of the old foundation to create large Plaza, not unlike the artist and river theater, where you can have interpretive storytelling events.

You can even have a Plaza named after this pasture, this area, and you interpret and tell the story.

That's important to tell everybody what's important is the history that occurred here as much as the locks themselves.

So what's the best way to tell that history.

That's what we're asking people.

Speaker 2: So for our viewers who may not have been reading about this recently, the San Pedro Creek cultural park is a project to redevelop the San Pedro Creek, which is sort of the beginning of San Antonio, was on the San Pedro Creek.

And there's a flood control.

There's a celebration of our culture aspect.

Um, there's sort of a community aspect has been a big project.

Can you describe the project just briefly, the reader's digest version for our viewers?

Speaker 1: You bet over four years ago, uh, we'd started construction on the phase.

One portion that's actually open for the public.

This project is primarily funded by bear County roots of $298 million project that the city of San Antonio also has some money in there.

San Antonio river authority acts as the local sponsor and project manager for this effort.

It's a huge, extremely important project.

It's like the second river walk community.

And you're correct.

The primary goal is actually flood control.

Uh, but we all know we want to have a linear pathway.

We went after home development.

You want water quality enhancements, and we want it to be a cultural part.

So we want all those things, but primarily it is about flood control.

And that is why bear County is willing to form a lion's share the, Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit briefly about the economic development benefit we've received for the San Pedro Creek project?

Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a report that we had done by Dr. Stephen Evans with Trinity university that, and I don't know the exact, it was like $2 billion of private reinvestments due to the $298 million public investments.

There's quite a great return on the investment Republic growth and around this area, it's just straight economics.

It's a very positive, Speaker 2: Similar to what we've seen with the mission meet reach, and the museum reach both of which were projects where the San Antonio river authority had a big role.

Absolutely.

Yes, Steve, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: Yes, my pleasure.

Thank you, DJ Speaker 2: police reform has been at the top of the community agenda for many years, especially the past year fix that SAPD is trying to do something about it.

Uh, Nanda Thomas is deputy director and she joins us.

Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me.

So what is fixed SAP's ultimate goal?

Yes, we are focused on police accountability, specifically making, doing a citizen driven initiative to repeal chapters one 74 and one 43 through ballot initiative, which establish our police union contract and have been barriers to change for a long, long time now.

So if your appeal efforts are successful, what does that mean for how police officers are disciplined?

If those, if they pass?

Yeah, so successful repeal of these laws will mean that we scrap our current contract and create a new one no longer, um, defined by things such as delayed interrogation of officers, statute of limitations on how we can investigate when we can investigate officers for misconduct.

We can set up a contract with accountability that also still takes care of officers and make sure they have great pay and benefits as any employee should.

So I think one of the questions our viewers are probably going to ask is what do you do about the good apples versus the bad apples and the, and the SAP D and I'm hearing you describe that you want the good apples to get their pay and benefits and make sure the bad apples are disciplined correctly.

Am I hearing you correctly?

Yes.

Um, you know, chief McManus had said this last summer and an express news article, um, interview, good officers don't need these protections.

Speaking to what's established by one 43.

They don't need these protections, but bad officers do.

And that's what we're trying to do is weed out these bad apples that are fired and returned to the forest.

One, two, three, four, five times officers that feed, uh, try to feed BC sandwiches to a homeless person and win their job back.

That's not right.

Um, that's dangerous to citizens and it's dangerous to our good officers on the force.

So while you're going through this petition drive, there is a collective bargaining negotiation between the police union and the city.

And so my question for you about that is that's a kind of an odd circumstance for a petition drive like this.

And how are you at your organization fixed ACPD viewing that collective bargaining.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's timely in the manner that it's really showing us how much our police officer's association does not want to address accountability.

Uh, we personally, as an organization, I've listed 10 issues within the contract.

The city has presented four of them that they would like to change the negotiations.

The police officer's association has said they would like to talk about one.

So if we do piecemeal reform where we're getting one to two changes for accountability, for discipline, every negotiation, we won't have the contract that we need for up to 30 years evolution.

Yes.

And we need to change this.

Now, these are people's lives, their livelihoods being affected.

Uh, we can't wait for 30 years down the road.

A lot of times organizations will go to these petition drives when they feel like their elected leaders have not taken their concern.

Seriously.

What do you fix SAP D think about how council has addressed the police reform issue in the past nine months, but also in the past five.

Yes.

So, you know, really it's the way that this negotiation system set up this collective bargaining negotiations, the police officers association, their concerns are always favored.

It's very lopsided.

So I think while counsel has shown that they do want to focus on police reform initiatives, their hands are really tied at the negotiation table with how much power they have.

And that's what we're looking to change here.

So you're not looking to change leadership.

You're looking to change structure.

Exactly.

So thank you So much for joining us.

I know you're busy with your campaign and then thanks for telling our viewers what you're up to.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me And now for the reporters round table with us, the Sanford Nolan editor at San Antonio current, thanks for being here.

Great to be here.

So the big news event of last week was the power grid failure.

And you've had some strong ideas about some reforms that are needed to not replicate that in the future.

Can you talk about that?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the first thing is to stop thinking that blaming ERCOT is the only way to get us out of this.

I mean, you've, you know, saw very early on folks from both sides of the aisle, including our governor were saying, you know, we need to get rid of the, uh, you know, bill Magnus, who's running ERCOT.

We need to clean out the board and get rid of all these people from other States who were on the board of ERCOT.

You know, ERCOT is a symptom.

It is not the cause.

Uh, you know, in, in 1999, the Texas legislature, and I'm not being partisan here because it was Republicans and Democrats who were both pushing for this, uh, you know, under governor Rick Perry, uh, you know, basically deregulated the utility industry and, and created this, this, this force that was solely driven by, by market as opposed to any sort of regulatory oversight.

And that sort of set the set the stage for this.

And it was amazing to me that recently, you know, during, during this, this whole power debacle, I heard some of these utility folks say, well, it, everything worked great until it, until it didn't, which is like saying, you know, the Ford Pinto was a great economy car until somebody hit you from behind.

Right.

Uh, you know, so I think, you know, w we need to look at whether that kind of hands-off, uh, you know, light touch, light touch stuff is going to work going into the future.

We also need to look at why in, in 2011, when there was a similar set of rolling blackouts, not as severe, but similar, um, you know, we basically came out of that with everybody saying, you know, with a PUC recommend a public utility commission recommending that, that these power providers have to winterize their plants, but it was a recommendation, right?

It was never in forest.

Speaker 2: What you're describing is that we need a more muscular approach to the regulatory framework for the electricity.

Speaker 1: I think that's, what's that, that is what makes the most sense.

I guess the question becomes whether the Republican controlled legislature and the governor actually are willing to upset the status quo and upset these, these deep pocketed interests, which, you know, include the natural gas, uh, folks which include the, the power grid operators, which include, you know, the people that sell the power, which include, you know, folks who consume the power, you know, the big power users, uh, you know, because obviously I think a lot of those are going to come in and, you know, with the cries and Lamentations that, Oh, this is going to cost jobs.

If you regulate us or we're going to go bankrupt, or people are going to leave the state, you know, Speaker 2: It looks like people are coming to the state.

We don't have the electric assets to keep up with them.

So, Speaker 1: Absolutely.

I mean, I th I think the flip side of this that I haven't seen, a lot of people talk about is, you know, if, if we're all about the state, that's open for business, how many, how many people that we're looking at Texas for a, a relocation or a plant expansion are going well, there's that power grids thing and small detail.

Yeah.

And global warming is continuing to happen, and these events are going to continue to happen.

I'm not sure I want to put my chips in Texas court, Speaker 2: Five reviewers, one thing we have a deregulated market, but in San Antonio, we have CPS energy, which is a municipally-owned utility.

Right.

A lot of our viewers are from Kerrville, which has a universally owned utility.

Right.

But Dallas and Houston have investor owned utilities providing power.

And so there's this weird mishmash of public power and private power.

And are you saying that private power is running the show and the regulatory?

Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

I think that that's definitely the case.

I mean, because when you look at it, when I was, you know, talking to Paula gold Williams or listening in our, to our Q and a, the, uh, the other day, uh, you know, she was basically saying, look, CPS engages in that same market that the, that the, you know, private utilities wanted and, you know, they make money that they use to offset, you know, expenses by selling power and that sort of thing.

So, you know, if they want the, if the, if the privately owned utilities want a deregulated market, everybody is going to play under those rules.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

So ERCOT, public utility commission, they all kind of report up through the legislature.

Do you see this as the emergency item at this point for the Texas legislature?

Speaker 1: I mean, the, the governor has said it it's an emergency item.

Uh, Lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick has said, it's an emergency item.

I don't see how they don't talk about it.

I mean, there are hearings in both houses on Thursday about this stuff.

The governor is going to go on TV tonight.

He's only scheduled five minutes.

So I don't know how in-depth, it's going to be, but he's going to have an address talking about what, you know, what the ledge and he are going to do about this, this crisis.

But I mean, it's, it's unavoidable it, this is huge.

Dozens of people have died.

You know, the, the losses, uh, from a financial standpoint are on par with, you know, a hurricane hitting the state.

Uh, and I Speaker 2: Think we're going to have climate change.

We have more to come.

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

And I, and I think one of the first steps would be for us to recognize that climate change is real, that we need to do something about it.

And even if our lawmakers do not have the intestinal fortitude to say that stuff out loud, we've got to act on it.

They've got to realize it's happening.

And electric cars are going to be putting more strain on the grid.

And the federal government is going to continue to sort of impose solutions, A lot of moving parts, Sanford.

Thanks for being here.

Welcome.

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

We are still here and we'll be here next week as always go to Kayla wren.org.

If you, this episode or previous episodes in video or podcast format,