On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilo.

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 Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go.

On the right.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Randy Beamer.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record and the first week of 2023 now.

And we have a lot to talk about.

We're going to talk about first with Sheriff Javier Salazar, Bear County joining us.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

A number of issues have been dealing with recently from what's going on in the jail.

Some good news there to violent crime and guns and street racing.

Let's start with well, first, start with some good news for.

The cowboy breakfast that was recently canceled.

The big one in town, the one that's been around for decades.

But you have one that's going to come on.

Yeah.

We've got our rodeo breakfast that we're doing February 11th at Dave and Buster's starts at about 7 a.m..

But last year was a huge success.

We did it as a drive thru event last year for obvious reasons.

This year we're doing it.

It's a walk around event.

And so, you know, we're we're going to have a couple of bands out there.

A bunch of restaurants are jumping on board and donating tacos to the cause.

It's free.

We just want people to come out and have a good time.

Why are you doing it?

People wonder, Why is a sheriff involved in this?

He used to be a businessman, right?

It started this.

Yeah, we just we did it last year just to do it from on on behalf of the Bear County Sheriffs Foundation, it's a nonprofit that the sheriff's office works with quite a bit.

We did it just kind of for for for fun.

And it went so well that we decided to do it again.

Has really nothing to do with the fact that the cowboy breakfast has canceled.

We're not trying to be you know, nobody will ever be a replacement for the cowboy breakfast.

We love we love our partners over the cowboy breakfast.

We hope that they'll be back next year.

But we think that the two events can coexist is involved.

With the rodeo.

I mean, you people have you have the mountain patrol.

It's it's yeah, it's not directly tied to the rodeo.

I mean, it's it's we have our mountain patrol out there.

We have our cadets out there serving.

It's just another way for us to connect with the community and have a good, good time over some tacos.

That's February 11, February 11.

At 8:07 a.m. and it's at Dave and Buster's at Crossroads.

Okay, now let's get into the bad news.

Oh, man.

We locked me into it.

I have been out of it for a couple of weeks, and we've had an a good holiday.

But you've also had some property crimes, car burglaries and violent crimes.

Where are we now?

In Dark County with that and why?

Well, they're all they're all kind of linked up.

And as I mentioned, property crime is at the root of it.

All right.

Right.

Right now, we're seeing one of the big property crimes that we're seeing is burglary of vehicles.

Well, unfortunately, burglary vehicles have been such a such a success that, believe it or not, the drug cartels have gotten into the car burglary business because they know that there's really so many guns out there floating around now that if they break into ten cars, statistically speaking, they're going to find five or six guns.

And so how does this work?

They go into a neighborhood, they go to an apartment complex.

So they'll have folks they'll have crews that go into neighborhoods, crimes, what's that?

And crew crews that will go into a neighborhood, usually in a stolen car, truck, SUV, whatever.

They will bail out of the car and they will literally walk down the middle of the street trying door handles.

If the car is locked nine times out of ten, they'll move on to the next one and they'll wait till they find an unlocked one.

If it's unlocked, they'll they'll they'll come in.

They'll ransack it.

They'll go, look, whatever.

Obviously, they're going to check under the seat and even then even concentrating only on the cars and street only only cars that are unlocked, they're coming away with all kinds of guns and so now you got them.

They'll they'll move on to hit a whole neighborhood.

They'll move on and not.

Anything usually.

Overnight thing.

And now they've all got guns that they just found in the cars that they burglarized.

Usually they will then steal the last two or three cars of the night and they're off and running with their, you know, ten, 12 guns that they stole throughout the night.

What happens to the guns?

Are you seeing them or the property crimes?

Are they going to Mexico or what.

Do you do?

Well, sometimes we're seeing them involved in violent crimes here locally.

But the information that we've developed is that then those guns are then being resold to to the cartels.

You know, namely, one of the one of the cases that we saw that was similar in nature was the shooting of the balcony heights.

Sergeant a while back.

That was exactly what those what those guys were doing there.

So it's it's not a victimless crime.

It's not harmless.

It's not just young kids out having fun and joyriding.

This is organized criminal activity that's very, very dangerous.

Seeing that more gun crimes per se in terms of the rate going up or the numbers going up.

We are we are you know, right now our deputies are being and are are being they're involved in vehicle pursuits and in incidents, you know, throughout the night and every morning, I'm waking up and seeing emails from the night before or getting the 2 a.m. wakeup call where we're finding a lot of guns out there as a result of pursuits.

You know, again, guns not necessarily being the problem.

It's careless gun owners that are the problem.

How about.

Certain neighborhoods?

Are they being targeted?

Is it one kind of neighborhood?

You know, it's it's happening all over here.

Recently, we we popped a well, we pop chop shops all the time, but here recently we got one with about ten vehicles that were large trucks that are being used for trafficking for for turf or trafficking of humans, smuggling of humans, by the way.

But we recovered ten large trucks that were stolen.

I pulled I asked them to pull me up a heat map of where these trucks were stolen, and it was literally all over the county.

Some in some of the larger shopping areas that you that we all know about, some in gym parking lots, some in hotel parking lots, some in movie theaters, but really all over the place.

So I say that to say that there really is no pockets where where this is going on more so or areas where you're safe.

It's likely to happen anywhere.

Street racing we saw last week there was an incident with street racing and an accident I heard last night from my house about a mile away from a freeway.

You could tell that was street racing.

Sure.

How much are we seeing of that and where?

Well, it happens a bit.

A lot.

It happens a lot all over the county.

Again, this is one of those that if you live near a major interstate, it's a it's a it's a problem in the last week we made we were fortunate enough to make two arrests from a very ugly incident that two two guys were were street racing.

One a very young man around 19 and one, a 33 year old man, certainly both old enough to know better.

But they were involved in a street race over there off of 90.

And W.T.

Montgomery, one of the vehicles, lost control, crossed over onto the other side of the highway, hit head on with a lady that was driving with her little girl.

The little girl actually had a she lost some intestine as a result of the surgery.

So certainly a life threatening incident.

Now, the car clubs here say we're not involved in this kind of stuff.

And are the other people kind of glomming onto that and say, hey, this is a meet up, I want to be part of that And whether I'm part of the car club or not, I'm going to be racing with guys.

Well, look, I can't say that all of the car clubs are involved in this, right?

Some of the car clubs are just people that are car enthusiasts and want to do their thing.

But with that being said, there is a bit of crossover with people that are involved with the car clubs that are also actively involved in highways shutdowns in street racing.

You know, this incident here with the with the car accident and the two arrests, those were just lone wolf kind of folks out there doing their thing, not a car club activity.

But with that being said, it is continuing to be a problem with these street racers.

They're deadly.

All right.

Well, thanks very much, Sheriff.

The next time we have more time, we'll talk about some good news.

The use of force incidents at the jail down last year.

Sure.

Next time.

Next time.

Thanks very much, Sheriff Javier Salazar.

Happy New Year.

Thanks for coming in.

Happy New Year, brother.

Thank you.

This may have your vote in the San Antonio City elections.

You'll be able to vote on more than just the council races and the mayor's race.

It looks like you'll also be able to vote on a charter amendment that would do things like decriminalize marijuana.

Here to tell us more about that is Ananda Thomas, the executive director, a group called Act for US.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

First of all, tell us about what is on this amendment that it looks like you're getting enough signatures to get on the ballot.

Yes.

So there's several parts to the San Antonio Justice Charter, decriminalization of marijuana up to four ounces, decriminalization of abortion, banning of chokeholds, and no knock warrants by CPD and codification of the site release program so it stays permanent.

Some of these the city council has either addressed or decided that they can't go forward with because they decided it's either against state law or would be in opposition to a two state law, or that the district attorney has decided not to pursue criminal charges in some of these cases.

Some people would say, is that enough?

Not enough?

It's not enough.

And one of the things we learned from the overturning of Roe v Wade is how important it is to legislate things and have these policies in place, citing and release, even throwing out some of these low level marijuana cases could have changed if we would have had a new D.A.

in place.

We could no longer be banning chokeholds by police when we have a new police chief.

That's why it's so important that these are codified into law.

And where did act for, say, the group come from?

Did it come out of the in the wake of George Floyd and the protest here in San Antonio that got a lot of attention also, Then a lot of groups got a lot of energy.

And we saw on TV a lot more.

Yes.

So we are born out of the uprisings from 2020, but also specifically the proposition B ballot initiative in 2021.

And you said also that Roe v Wade gave a new surge of energy to the group.

What can you really do about issues like abortion that are seen more as state issues and others that are federal issues that you may or may not be able to change in the city of San Antonio at all?

Yes.

So what this does is this is really directing our police force and CPD because we are Homegirl City and we can direct our resources, which is our police.

Since we pay through taxpayer dollars, we can say that they are not responsible and shall not enforce or surveil abortion providers or seekers or arrest solely for marijuana up to four ounces.

Right.

So giving them discretion, if somebody has some other charges or something else happening, sure, you might be able to arrest them.

But this is not a sole reason for you to arrest somebody.

No city council has addressed that kind of controversy in the past and not wanting to tell police what they can and cannot do and leave it up to their discretion, because these are laws that are on the books.

What are you going to change then in the language, in the charter, that you are going to direct police to do this or not?

Officer Discretion still exists for each one of these pieces.

I think the best example I could give is you might not be arresting somebody because they have a joint on them, but if you find an illegal weapon on them or I don't know, a break of cocaine or something, you can still arrest them for that officer still have discretion.

It is just saying there needs to be an extra step or reason to put somebody in jail.

So what's the wording on the charter amendment that we'd be voting on?

Because you also have this petition out right now.

You want to get 35,000 signatures here.

Where in that process?

Yes.

So we have a little over 33,000 signatures currently.

We will be collecting through Sunday and turning and next Tuesday on January 10th.

And that has to be certified by.

The city clerk.

By when to get on the ballot.

So she needs to have this certified by February 14 for to make the agenda for the February 17th meeting.

And again, the wording on this will say what is going to be very specific.

So it's a petition to amend the city charter of San Antonio to pass a set of reforms to save scarce public safety resources, reduce unnecessary arrest and stop discriminatory policing practices through the set of reforms, decriminalization of marijuana and abortion, banning of no knock warrants and chokeholds, and codification of site and release.

But it's not going to get into specifically how the decriminalization will work.

So the actual policy language itself is, I think, 12 pages.

Most charter and any charter initiative, ballot initiative, anything like that.

Right.

Because you can't have it all pages on a ballot initiative.

They will have a caption on there.

And it is up to us, those folks that are educating the community and putting it out to make sure we have policy language on us, but we're giving accessibility to everyone.

And the city Council then won't change that after the vote.

It will be according to that document.

Correct.

And one thing that is within this charter initiative as well is a severability clause.

So should any one piece, for instance, be challenged at the state and overturns the rest of this charter initiative will still stay in place.

So just because we potentially get challenged of the state on one thing does not mean the rest of these amazing reforms and initiatives won't stay on.

What do you think the vote will be?

How are you going to have how many you know, how close do you think it'll be?

So we did polling previously to this and we had 68% favourability on the initiative altogether.

Their separate pieces by themselves, such as decriminalization of marijuana, were even higher, closer to 85 or 90%.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

And letting us know about it.

And I'm sure we'll be talking to you later on closer to the election or definitely after.

And on the Thomas executive director of Act for San Antonio.

Yes.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

In this session of the legislature coming up in Austin and expect to see a new push to access for veterinary care for animals across the state, more access.

Joining us to talk about that is the executive director of Texas Pets Alive.

Katie Dahl.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me, Randi.

Tell us about what Texas doesn't actually allow right now in terms of veterinary care for some animals.

Absolutely.

Well, first off, you know, one of the problems that Texas Pets Alive is set on solving is the euthanasia numbers of pets in our shelters.

We recognize that everyone is in agreement that we are euthanizing too many pets in shelters in Texas.

And our organization is looking for smart and effective policy solutions that are going to help us reduce those euthanasia numbers.

That's the bottom line, and that's the reason we do everything that we do up in Austin.

And you got a bill passed before, I guess we get to the new push.

You get a bill passed in the last session for a new group, which is pretty amazing.

What was that bill about?

That bill was SB 197.

It was actually led by Senator Jane Nelson at the time, and it eliminated sales tax on all pet adoptions in the state of Texas.

So we were really proud to work with the now secretary of State to get that bill across the finish line and signed by the governor.

But since that last session ended, we've been really looking at the numbers and the data.

And what we have seen is that a significant number of pets are being surrendered by their owners in our municipal shelters simply because they cannot afford or access veterinary care.

So rendered meaning their cat or dog is sick.

The veterinarian tells them it's going to be now into the hundreds or thousands of dollars.

They can't afford it.

So what happens when those pets go into shelters?

Aside from increasing the number is and then increasing the numbers needed for euthanasia.

Exactly.

So right now, Texas is the only state in the country that does not permit animal shelters or releasing agencies, as they're called in statute, to provide veterinary treatment to animals they reasonably believe to have an owner.

So now let's make sure that point gets across.

They do not allow Metropolitan.

Correct.

Why?

What?

We don't know.

I mean, this bill, this statute has been in place for many years and we are convinced that as a state at this point, we are all in agreement that we need to do something to solve for the crisis in our animal shelters.

And now that we are recognizing that there is a shortage of veterinarians combined with a high poverty rates that are preventing many people from accessing that care, we now see that there is a sweet spot here for us.

We can target these low income pet owners and make sure that our shelters are able to provide veterinary care to them so that they don't have to separate from their pet when they're in crisis.

Now, some state lawmakers may have put this in place and may argue that, well, basically we're subsidy using taxpayer money for somebody's veterinarian care that they could otherwise afford, and then we just give it back to them or they adopt it back.

Sure.

The thing is, we're already subsidizing these pet owners because the government is in taking these animals and putting them into our system.

So right now, if an owner there has been with a pet for many years and loves this animal, but they are in a crisis situation and cannot afford veterinary care, their option right now is to surrender that animal to a municipal government shelter and then walk away.

How likely is that government shelter to be able to provide some treatment or some care?

Very high.

Most shelters in Texas right now have a veterinarian on staff or consult with a veterinarian and do provide veterinary treatment for animals once they are in their care.

And then they put those animals back out on the adoption floor and market them to their community.

So right now, taxpayers are all ready.

So what is not allowed, though?

The treatment of the animal and the return to that to the to the original.

Original owner so that you are getting somebody to sponsor as a bill down the road during this.

Session.

Absolutely.

We're hoping that we get something introduced in the next couple of weeks.

We're looking at language options right now, meeting with stakeholders, making sure that everyone is in agreement across the board that this is the right direction to go with.

And also, we should mention that your group also helps facilitate adoptions, which, you know, would negate the need for all the euthanasia that's going on.

And how much is, by the way, in San Antonio, how many animals are we killing compared to how many would be going into shelters?

Well, it's a really good question.

And, you know, San Antonio, like most cities across the state of Texas and many cities across the country are facing and are experiencing higher euthanasia numbers than they have in previous years.

You know, we San Antonio for a while had reached 90% live release rate.

Unfortunately, now we are dipping down back into the eighties.

And that's something that when we look at the data for, you know, why animals are coming in, we see that financial resources and veterinary care are one of the reasons owners are surrendering animals into that shelter.

So if we at the point of intake, when an owner comes to the city of San Antonio animal Care services and they say, I love my pet, but I can't afford the treatment that it needs, we want the city of San Antonio to be able to say, What if we treat this pet for you and then you take it home and you keep this pet?

It never enters our municipal shelter.

It's not taking up a kennel space.

It's not using our government resources for food and shelter.

And we believe that this is a win win for everyone.

Well, thank you very much.

Katie Dahl, Texas Pets Alive.

People can go to that website to find out more about the push for the bill as well as how to adopt animals.

Absolutely.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you very much.

Reporters Roundtable This week, we're talking about new housing being turned into rentals for investors directly.

And joining us to talk about that is a reporter, a freelancer who writes about housing and business a lot, Richard Wepner.

And he had an article in one of these.

This is the San Antonio Express-News.

This is a newspaper, kids.

I just want to show you that it's also online.

But Richard Weber, this was on Sunday's paper.

Tell us about this article, because this is one of those trends that's happening across the country where people might not realize how much of it is here in our own backyard.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, I've written about this several times over the last couple of years.

You have investors from across the country or even from out of the country.

There's a Canadian firm that does this, and there's a Japanese firm that does this in San Antonio.

And they buy single family homes in San Antonio in large numbers, and they turn them into rentals.

And this most.

This most recent article specifically looks at how home builders in San Antonio, when they build a new neighborhood, they often sell a large batch of the homes to investors.

It's often, you know, 20% or 30% or even higher than that.

Or in some cases, they'll build a neighborhood of single family homes and they'll sell all of them to investors.

Who tend to hold those.

I don't want to say the whole character, but instead of young families buying a new house and a new subdivision going in, instead it's more renters.

Mm hmm.

And what does that mean in terms of the rental market in San Antonio?

What's it doing to prices?

Well, I don't know about what it's doing to prices, but it is due in large part to one of the things that's driving this is that most recently you have rising interest rates, which causes rising mortgage rates.

You know, housing prices over the last couple of years have spiraled upwards, although that trend is kind of plateauing now.

But you have a tight supply of homes.

So people who might otherwise have bought a home, instead, they're kind of being pushed into renting.

So that's good for these companies and it helps their business model.

And rents are going up.

And so it makes a lot of sense for them, for the homebuilders and for the investors to turn these homes into rentals.

And we're not seeing it plateau yet or drop off in terms of investors because of the interest rates up, they're still able to have the cash to come in and and help build or buy these subdivisions in some cases.

Yeah.

What's plateauing is or at least moving in that direction is the home prices themselves.

But this this trend of investors buying single family homes and turning them into rentals, it seems to be that they're they're doing it in greater numbers.

There's a there's a firm called John Burns that kind of looks into this issue.

And they have data for San Antonio that seems to indicate that the percentage of single family homes going to these investors is increasing.

So down the road, that would make it seem like it's going to be harder for people to buy a home, that fewer homes would be on the market because these investors want to just keep renting and would not want to turn over the home, say as a home buyer would when they move on to the next house.

Is that going to affect the prices you see three, five, ten years down the road?

I think that's safe to say.

I mean, when you buy a home these days and it this trend started about ten years ago or maybe a little bit more than ten years ago, starting to really get a really get big, you know, after the housing crisis, that's when this business model kind of became a thing.

So, yeah, when you buy a home these days, you're not just competing against other families or individuals looking to buy a home.

You're competing with these big firms like American Home for Rent or Tricon, and they have lots of private equity money, lots of debt, and they buy the homes in cash.

So you're competing against it.

Just like any other business.

We see a lot more corporate ownership buying up other businesses and buying up smaller properties.

Same thing now applying to housing.

And is it taking more money out of our community?

People might think that's the case, but less of the money is going to stay here.

It's going to be harder for you to get maintenance of some because somebody is not on site, that kind of thing.

You might be able to say that, although, you know, when I speak with people from the industry, they defend the industry.

You know, they they say we have invested a lot of money because, you know, they often buy they don't only buy new homes, they buy homes that are extended for a while and they fix them up often.

And they employ people locally who may have like a fleet of people who are there to make improvements, just like any apartment landlord would have.

And they make the argument that, well, you know, there are lots of people who can't afford a mortgage to buy a home because maybe they have student debt or credit card debt or what's going on with the mortgage rates.

So this is an opportunity for them to be able to have a single family suburban lifestyle that they couldn't afford otherwise.

That's fascinating.

I've done both.

And it's interesting, especially with the interest rates.

Now, I just want to point out again that we thank Richard Romero, freelance writer.

That person was doing one of these things called the newspaper distribution.

But thank you very much for coming in and.

Come back to the fascinating stories in San.

Diego.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see the show you can also watch pretty news shows.

You can download a podcast at KLRN.org and will see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele.Dufilo.