Speaker 1: 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 2: Hi everybody.

Thanks for joining us for on the record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And once again, this week, we were looking at some of the top stories of the week and of the summer, uh, with the Newsmakers as well as, uh, news reporters and joining us.

First of all, is the bear county sheriff Javier Salazar.

Thanks for coming in.

We're going to get to some of the stories that have made news for a couple of three weeks.

Uh, that boat story, that's still cruising along.

We'll get that in a minute, but first of all, we were talking about crime and you believe there will be, and you were preparing for an uptick in crime this summer.

Why?

Speaker 1: So look, we enjoyed a more quiet than usual summer, last summer, partially due to COVID.

Everybody was afraid to come out, I believe, and reading some of the, the trade journals that I keep up with.

A lot of major city chiefs and sheriffs are expecting the same thing.

They're expecting a big bounce back and not in a good way, uh, for this year, we're expecting a little bit more, more violent than usual summer we're ahead of the curve.

Uh, we brought back our, our uniform gang unit that are out proactively getting folks documented, picking up, uh, you know, violent felons for, for, uh, warrants that they might have, uh, and trying to keep the right kind of folks locked up behind bars.

Those are they're too dangerous to walk amongst us.

Uh, but at the same time, as one of the other things, we're going to talk about trying to keep folks that are non-violent out of jail, out of the jail settings, Speaker 2: But, uh, jail overcrowding, or at least jail, under-staffing sure to call it, tell us about that.

Why it's an issue and why we hadn't heard about it for Speaker 1: A while.

We have bed space in the jail.

We absolutely have bed space, but the problem is we're staffed for only a certain number of inmates.

It's a staffing issue.

You have to maintain ratios.

And so, uh, we're trying very, very hard to, to you make better use of our jail space, make better use of our personnel.

And what I mean by that is jails are for people that society is afraid of jails are not for people that we're mad at for some sort of a minor infraction that's non-violent in nature.

Jails are not for the mentally ill and jails are not for people that are there simply because they can't afford to not be.

So the poor kid with a dime bag of weed that just doesn't have two dimes to rub together.

He can't buy his way out of jail.

That that's not what jails are for Speaker 2: Now.

The governor's order says what the, you have to keep, uh, some people in, uh, in jail because of the background, right?

You would like to, and some others would like to let some people out as many as 200 of our jail, what is the exact challenge?

Speaker 1: Well, the challenge is that the governor's order stands in the way it basically takes away.

In some instances, my ability to give time off for good behavior, it takes away the discretion of certain judges to give a PR bond to certain people.

And these are people that what they're in jail for today may be relatively minor.

It might be a dime bag of weed or sleeping in a doorway downtown, which are non-violent offenses to begin with.

However, a couple of years back, they may have committed terroristic threats or got, you know, gotten in a, in a situation where, uh, they weren't, they were under under investigation or under arrest for something violent five, 10 years ago, but that's there, they're paying the price for that today.

And Speaker 2: I understand Harris county and Travis county are already challenging that and not going by that.

We're waiting for judge Ron, Ron hill here to rule on this.

So when do you expect that?

Speaker 1: Apparently he's gonna, he's gonna put out, uh, or he may be challenging the constitutionality of, of.

So we're all anxiously waiting to see to what, see what happens.

But for us, it could translate to a couple hundred people, uh, being let out of jail.

Now, with that being said, people hear that and go, oh my God, Hannibal Lecter is going to be walking amongst us.

That's that's not the case.

If you're violent, you know what you're here for today is a violent thing.

We're gonna keep you in jail, right?

If you're too dangerous to walk amongst us, you're gonna stay what I'm talking about as non-violent misdemeanors.

That may be there's another way of handling them Speaker 2: For you.

We go too much longer.

We have to talk about the boat headlines all summer.

Tell us about why you need a boat.

And then this whole controversy afterwards, where, um, Jared from black rifle coffee company, uh, gave you $32,000 for the boat and then social media, mayhem ensued.

First of all, why do you need it?

Speaker 1: Well?

So I regret that it became such a huge issue.

At the end of the day, we're trying to get what we perceive to be necessary, needed life saving equipment at no cost to taxpayers.

I've got a foundation that we set up for this purpose to help us buy and buy equipment that we feel we need, uh, without burdening taxpayers for it.

And then you went to the commissioner's court, went to commissioner's court, not to ask them for money.

I want to make that distinction not to ask them for money.

It was to say, Hey, we've got this need that we established.

We've got this equipment that will help us fill a need.

We've got the money to pay for it.

Will you accept Speaker 2: It?

And Trisha Barry called it a shiny new toy.

And you took a fence at some of the other, a supporter, took a fence.

And that's when it became this, this big issue.

Where are you right now with, with say Trisha Barry and Nelson Wolff, who was not happy with the response as Speaker 1: Well, a whole lot more than that to offend me.

BEMER you?

And I both know we got skin like an elephant, having been in journalism and law enforcement for so many years.

So I can't say that I was personally offended.

People have taken offense to it.

People, people voice their concerns.

Uh, at some point during the process, black rifle, coffee stepped forward and to help us out, uh, one of the founders made on his personal Facebook page of posts that then somebody started commenting on absolutely.

Some of those comments were objectionable.

Uh, but it, it, it, to me kind of clouded the issue that look, I'm just trying to get equipment Speaker 2: And we're about out of time, but you're going back to commissioner's courts and within a couple of weeks, Speaker 1: And my plan will be to not cost taxpayers, any adult, any money.

Speaker 2: So stay tuned.

The crews with the sheriff absolutely continue through the summer.

Sure.

Holly, Javier or Holly as our, thank you very much for coming in.

Appreciate it.

Yeah.

I live in the city of San Antonio right now is your chance to tell a city leaders what you want in the city budget, what you don't want for about the next three or four weeks.

You can do that.

And then there will be a budget adopted by the city council, middle of September.

Joining us now to talk about how you can get your input across is Scott Hughes, Houston gay of the office of management and budget.

The director.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, you can take a survey right now online.

What 12 questions to let the city know what you want?

Where did you come up with a question?

The questions are based on what the city is called.

It's it's trial budget, and we've held a trial budget.

This is the second year the city has done that.

And that's, uh, the trial budget is much slower.

Like, it sounds like it's a way for both the public and the council to get a first look at what the upcoming city budget could look like so that we can get early feedback.

Make sure that's from a staff perspective, we're heading in the right direction so that when we propose the formal budget in August, that we have crafted a budget, the best fits the priorities of the residents and the council.

Yeah.

The trial budget came out about a week ago, two weeks ago.

What kind of reaction has there been?

I think overall it's been positive.

It's we've, we've had a lot of great feedback to the proposed priorities in targeted investments and immediate community needs in the city.

We want to make sure that again, what we propose reflected, what we thought the priorities of the council were.

We got a lot of feedback from that and I think we're, I think we are heading in the right direction based on what we've Heard.

No, it's a $2.9 billion budget.

That is basically what they had in years past.

Now there had been projected a deficit at least up until a couple of months ago, but that has changed even with their recovery right now, sales tax, hotel, occupancy tax.

Right.

And yeah, we, we were projecting something of a recovery of coming out of the pandemic.

Obviously the last, you know, 14, 15 months plus had been really hard for the whole nation, the world, the community, and specifically to city revenues, we issued a five-year forecast to the council in may, where we were projecting a, a modest recovery over time, just since getting figures back just in the last couple of months, April, may we have seen those areas that you mentioned that particularly sales taxes within the community or hotel occupancy tax, those activities, leisure and industry are coming back much stronger than we initially thought.

So we expect that recovery to, to pick up much faster than we first anticipated that allows some flexibility in the budget that we weren't again, honestly, anticipating here a few weeks ago.

So that gives us, uh, from a staff perspective and from a community perspective, a chance to look at what are the community needs that we can use.

Some of those increased resources to, to fill in some gaps, the $2.9 billion overall city budget.

There is about a, what is it?

1.29 that goes to the general fund.

Things like public safety.

Most of it is for police and fire already kind of outlined where that will go.

Um, and then you have streets and sidewalks and parks and things like that.

How is it split up right now?

And what are some of those things you're asking people about?

Do they want more streets, parks libraries?

Sure.

So the, the survey itself, um, the essay speak-up survey, we'll ask a series of questions, very, very short questions.

Just a few that will ask a series of questions.

First, that based on last year's proposed reductions, as you, as I mentioned, we were planning the deficits.

What are the areas that are most important to you that you do not want to seek cut as a resident if you had, if you had to choose and just selected priorities, where would you go?

We also to also ask on the survey, a series of questions about investments, the city through the trial budget has proposed investments in high priority community areas, such as public health, affordable housing, addressing homelessness, are these the areas that best reflect the needs.

Since we have some infusion of increased revenues, infusion of federal dollars through the American recovery act, where are those?

Where are your top priorities to invest funds as well?

It's a unique opportunity for the city to redirect and to reframe its budget towards those high impact areas.

And This doesn't affect the, um, the bond program that you're also developing at the same time for the next five years.

Uh, this isn't specifically input on that directly.

The yeah, the, the bond process you're talking about course, we're wrapping up the 2017 bond and those infrastructure projects.

Now the 2022 bonds will begin in earnest in the fall, right after the budget.

We will come back with the council, with the public and start talking about what are the priorities for those bond areas as well.

And the hotel occupancy tax, the hot tax, if that goes up, those monies are tied to be spent on certain things, right.

That kind of go to the general fund.

That's correct.

Yeah.

The, the, the hot tax, the hot fund is what we call restricted funds.

That means by, by a combination of state and local laws, local, those can only be used to certain areas related to convention activity, tourism attracting those markets.

And what's the outlook for that.

That's one of the places where you hope to get the sales tax up if you bring in people.

Sure.

Yeah.

We've seen the leisure activity in that area picked up substantially really just since really March and April this year, of course, hitting, hitting a low, low point last year, uh, where we're seeing is, uh, a huge increase that pent up demand that people probably heard about coming up big time in that sector.

The we're still looking at how soon the business side, you know, business travel side of that we'll pick up in that fund as well.

So we're looking at does, whereas we initially projected a recovery that would take an upwards of five years to fully recover to pre pandemic levels.

We're looking at a much shorter time period now.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in Scott Houston gay, which I just learned is Dutch that's correct.

And place in the Netherlands.

I did not know that.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you very much.

This week, governor Abbott invited former president Trump to go to the valley to look at the border wall.

They held what they call a town hall meeting.

There didn't take questions, but it was interesting, uh, what they had to say, Democrats say it was all political joining us to break it all down and tell us exactly what it means is Gilbert Garcia, the Metro columnist for, with San Antonio express news.

Thanks very much for coming in.

First of all, what was your takeaway from that trip?

Speaker 1: Well, I think the, the, obviously this was to kind of, uh, allow Trump to make the case that he had solved the border problem and we're it's and Joe Biden has sort of, uh, caused this crisis.

It was also to help governor Abbott, who is facing reelection 2022 to complication with the Trump argument is that he made simultaneously made the case.

We had the problem solved.

We built all this wall.

Everything was great.

You know, that wall still there.

I mean, Joe Biden hasn't torn down the wall.

Uh, Biden has made, has made a couple of changes in, in border policy.

But if Trump's argument was that the wall, this was the solution, this, this took care of everything.

It's hard to explain now why the numbers are surging Speaker 2: So much or moving ahead, we haven't gotten our Abbott up for reelection next year.

We also have a special session are going to talk about a border wall, border fencing, whatever, what do you think is going to happen?

The state said $250 million and he said 250 more million can be spent on that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's going to be tremendous pushback.

I think there are a lot of legal questions about whether the state, you know, can do this, you know, and, and the, the thing about it is that, you know, when we look at the border wall that was constructed during the Trump era, uh, I mean there were 458 miles built, but only 85 covering areas where there had been no barrier.

Um, and so I think that, uh, there's a lot of politics surrounding this, but think it's been questionable, whether, you know, how much impact this has.

I mean, if you look at the patterns with migration in recent years, sometimes they, they don't really, uh, it's hard to, to really find causation.

We know that they are spikes during certain seasons, but, you know, for instance, uh, Trump instituted the remain in Mexico policy, which he is touted, uh, as, as having a big impact in reducing the amount, uh, number of people at the border when he did that in January, 2019 in the middle of that year, we saw the highest, uh, uh, number of apprehensions at the border that we'd seen in 13 years.

So sometimes these things don't, don't correlate in the way we Speaker 2: Expect and the Biden administration do though, at this point, I mean, Kamala Harris went to central America talking about, stay there.

It's not going to help you to come closer to the border.

Uh, and yet people are still coming.

Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

It's a really difficult question.

I mean, I think that, uh, you know, the, the changes that he's made, one of them was to say that the remain in Mexico policy, he was going to undo that basically that required people to stay on that side of the border Southern side of the border while they're there, uh, asylum cases were being processed.

That has been a nun, but that hasn't really had, I don't think the big impact that we've seen.

Um, uh, I think there were so unintended consequences with title 42, which Trump instituted last year as, as a health, uh, precaution during COVID saying, uh, we're going to expel people who come to the border, uh, because of health reasons, Biden has kept that in place, but he has made an exception for, um, for minors who are unaccompanied.

There has been some thought that it's had an unintended unintended consequence because some parents are maybe sending their kids unaccompanied thinking you can get in.

I think they're going to have to look closely at how that's working Speaker 2: Now.

Also the governor wants Sheriff's deputies and other jailers and former jailers to go and help, uh, staff these detention centers and has asked for people like, uh, you know, sheriff Salazar to send them as we heard earlier.

Uh, is that as much a political, uh, point that he's making before next year?

Or is that a real, a real request you think?

Yeah, Speaker 1: I have to think it's political.

I mean, one of the things that really struck me about the way that the governors handled, uh, the border situation in recent months is, you know, we, he came to Freeman Coliseum where we had, uh, uh, migrants being, uh, you know, uh, a shelter for migrants and he made a lot of accusations.

Uh, I think there had been some, uh, there had been some reports of some, you know, mistreatment of the, of the, the kids that were staying there, but he, he made a lot of acquisitions before he actually visited, went inside the center.

And we haven't really heard anything about that since then.

So, um, it felt a little bit like a political Stein.

And I think that that's unfortunately politics around the, the immigration issue at all times.

You Speaker 2: Cover all kinds of things.

What you wrote recently this week on, uh, a person who works up at the state legislature who is going to lose his funding.

If the legislature doesn't override a governor's veto or come up with a supplemental budget at the end of August, what do you think is going to happen in this special session in so many different ways?

Obviously, I think they'll, you know, they'll pay staffers and things like that, but what, what else is going to happen up here?

It's always a free for all, when it's a special session.

Speaker 1: I think there will be, uh, an election bill passed, which is, this is the thing that, that, uh, incense to governor Abbott, the fact that Democrats, uh, broke quorum because they objected to this, uh, voter, uh, voting restriction, uh, built, there will be something passed.

There are a couple of provisions in it that Republicans have kind of disowned, uh, since the regular session ended.

I think that we will probably see a bill that, uh, Democrats won't necessarily like, but would probably, they would prefer to the one that they walked out on.

Um, and so it would possibly allow both sides to say that they got something out of the deal.

And I think governor rabbit in that case will then back away from that veto.

Speaker 2: Sure.

If you were here then, but you expect there's a chance that we'd have the runaway legislature like we did when they went to New Mexico 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago.

And yeah, Oklahoma, I guess as well.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Uh, you know, th we have, I guess that there was a voter ID issue.

I don't think we're going to see that happen.

And I think Democrats had to know that when they walked out on that last day of the regular session, that, uh, you know, it was more of a statement than anything there.

They know they don't have the power to stop this from happening.

And if they, if they walked out on the next session, there could be another special session.

I mean, ultimately they can't stop it, but I think that they already believe that just by calling attention to that, they've maybe caused some embarrassment for Republicans on a couple of issues.

One of them being the one o'clock voting on Sunday, uh, which many people interpreted as kind of a way to restrict the souls to the polls, uh, movement.

So, Speaker 2: Oh, now we're about out of time, but as a columnist, do you like writing about when things get crazy in terms of politics or, or do you dread it?

Speaker 1: There's the internal conflict between the, the, the citizen who says, what is wrong with our political system?

Why is it so dysfunctional at all times?

And then the other side of you, the evil side of you, which says I've got a lot to write about.

So you got a long, hot summer to ride.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Gilbert Garcia, who writes for an actual newspaper that is the San Antonio express news.

I started when I was seven delivering papers.

So I got a big plug Gilbert Garcia.

You can read them all the time, San Antonio express news or online.

Thanks for coming.

And thank you.

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

You can see this show again, or previous shows as well as our podcast.

Just go to rn.org and we'll see you there..