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

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody, and thank you for joining us for On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer, and we wanted to start with a focus on the Texas Hill Country.

Of course, our hearts and thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by the deadly flooding.

As the recovery efforts go on, their needs are now being identified and that's how we wanted to start.

This program is a look at what their needs are, how extensive they are, how the planning for recovery is going to to go with Austin Dixon, who is CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, based in Kerrville.

Thank you very much for coming on and first of all, we wanted to kind of bring it home to people about the loss.

You're there in Kerrville and you knew people who who were in the flooding.

That's right.

Like everybody in Kerrville, Kerrville is a town of 25,000, a county of 50,000.

Everybody knows.

So many people.

I know three personal friends who perished in the floods, and another family friend whose daughter died at camp mystic.

And I'm emblematic of so many people who had so many relationships of people who are now gone forever.

And what are the needs right now that we might not realize the emotional needs?

I mean, as a as a community foundation, you help different groups in so many different ways.

What are some of those needs that we haven't seen yet focused on on the news?

I think right now the news has been really focused on search and rescue and looking for anyone who's still alive and in debris or in the river.

I think now some economic needs are starting to come to the fore.

Businesses that were damaged are worried about payrolls, worried about viability.

People who lost everything or worried about some immediate cash assistance.

I think the levels of government, federal, state, local officials are still worried about search and rescue.

They're still worried about debris cleanup and how to manage that.

I think people are also worried about too many volunteers coming to help after any flood in the Hill country.

We know that water is contaminated and dangerous because of bacteria levels and other things because of the flood.

So people are worried about people who are wanting to help, maybe also getting in harm's way.

There was a drone that hit a rescue helicopter, and the helicopter actually had to make an emergency landing.

I understand, so it a reminder don't do that in terms of how a community foundation like yours works.

You give grants out, and in the best of times it's for things like scholarships, community projects.

What are you looking at in terms of needs long term that you will be funding?

That's a great question.

So our Kurt County flood relief Fund is accepting donations locally and from all over the world right now, and we're going to be making grants locally to vetted organizations that are helping people in various stages of this recovery.

I would suspect the early stages are going to be helping direct support for people through vetted nonprofit organizations.

I think there's going to be a phase of cleanup.

I think there's going to be a phase of grants to local nonprofits and other entities that have been damaged.

I think there's also going to be a phase about infrastructure.

Our entire park system along the river has been destroyed.

Our community theater in Ingram has been destroyed.

The school district administration building in Ingram, Texas, has been destroyed, and many records have been damaged.

Our nature center, our senior center, had been severely damaged.

So there's so much about the rebuilding effort that will come over the longer term that this fund is for.

And people might think, well, the state and the federal government, they promised a certain amount of aid, but it's never enough.

How do you work with that?

Knowing what they can do, can't do and how you help?

That's a great question that we're going to have to figure out between state and federal officials.

And I hope to have those conversations in the future.

We have been declared a natural disaster zone by the president of the United States, which, as far as I understand, is great for FEMA relief.

And I understand that FEMA can help individuals and businesses and infrastructure.

I'm not an expert on government funding, but you're right philanthropy cannot do the bulk of the work.

Philanthropy is going to have to be a gap filler.

When it comes to supporting some of these larger needs with government.

So I hope to work hand in hand with those officials.

And you have experience in this kind of massive, event because your ten county area includes Uvalde.

And after the shooting there.

You helped and still help how?

Yes.

So when the Uvalde tragedy happened, we opened up, a fund for survivors.

And we also opened up the Uvalde Forever Fund, which is a community fund as well.

We worked with a group called the National Compassion Fund.

We partnered with the San Antonio Area Foundation, and we partnered with the One Star Foundation.

We partnered with Go Fund Me and other entities, including the governor's office, to help, get funds directly to families through the National Compassion Fund.

We also have a Uvalde Forever Fund, and we continue to this day to make grants in Uvalde for community healing and restoration.

And that is a good example of how a community crisis takes a long time for recovery and that there are needs, in Uvalde, a lot related to trauma that has reverberated over the past few years.

And there are still needs that are emerging in that community.

And I can't imagine what our future needs are going to be here in ours.

Especially with children affected by this who survived, but through this terrible incident and saw their friends die.

We are I think we are on the precipice of a mental health crisis in the Hill country and not and broader in our area as well, with families and children.

We have so many parents who are gone and children survived or children are gone and parents survived.

We also have people who are friends with those parents or those children and schools, all over the state, and they're going to need mental health supports as well.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

And again, our condolences go out to everyone.

There are support from across Texas, for the Texas Hill Country and Kerrville.

Thank you very much.

Austin Dixon, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Renee.

The incredible amount of rain that caused all this flooding has brought up some questions about just what happened weather wise up there, how rare this event is, how likely something like this could happen in the future.

Here to talk about that is newsroom meteorologist at the San Antonio Express-News.

Anthony, friends, thank you very much for coming in.

Yes.

It's wonderful.

Thank you.

And you have worked in meteorology for years in Texas.

And first of all, I guess the rarity of this event.

Yeah, I've been 40 plus years covering flooding in the area, devastating floods in the hill country, but nothing like this because it was the perfect storm.

The perfect combination of where and how much rain.

Well, how much rain did they get?

How fast?

Yeah.

And over in, like central and like south central Kerr County, which is where the heaviest rain fell in the hill country on Friday.

On the fourth that morning they got upwards of some of those regions, 10 to 15in of rain over the course of maybe just 4 to 5 hours in some of those instances.

And you probably saw ten inches of rain over a three hour period.

On those areas just on the west side of the Guadalupe River.

So it was a lot of rain in a really short period of time.

And this goes back dates back to I read that, since 1910, in Texas.

Nine out of ten of the most intense weather events have happened since 95.

And still really nothing like this.

If, say, if that had happened 20 miles one way or the other, the flooding wouldn't have been as devastating.

Right?

And that's why forecasting for flooding is so difficult, because a few miles makes a huge difference, especially when you talk about river flooding the valley and the kind of the hill country dynamics.

Because if the flooding happens, if the intense rainfall happens in just the right spot, it funnels into the river valleys.

And then those river valleys, the Guadalupe River valley especially, it's really narrow and spots and really winding.

And when it gets when all that water kind of funnels into the valley, it really accelerates the water and causes the water to rise more than really any other river valley in the U.S.. A lot of people think, okay, the flooding, if it raises 20ft on a different river, it's a whole different, you know, it's spread out so much more.

But the banks are more steep, the.

Banks are steeper.

And it's kind of like when you put your thumb on a water hose, you you get rid of a lot of that surface area.

And so it goes out faster.

Right.

And that's kind of what happens in the hill country.

You have a lot of water going into a very kind of narrow area.

And so it just goes quickly through that river valley.

As a meteorologist, what did you see on Thursday and Friday?

And again, the state had, I believe, flood warnings or watches, I believe.

Was it Thursday?

Right on Thursday afternoon, even 1:00 Thursday afternoon, a good 12, 15 hours before flooding even happened, in the hill country, we had flood watches in effect for upwards of seven inches of rain.

Possible was what the National Weather Service, issued that day.

And then by overnight hours, by midnight, I think 1 a.m. actually, we had the first flood warnings issued for Kerr County, which was a good three, 3.5 hours before the flooding, happened along the Guadalupe River.

And we could tell in meteorology, a lot of times we can tell when there's a good chance of flooding over a wide area like that, because we had a lot of moisture coming in from the Gulf.

We had a really kind of slow moving, low pressure system, kind of remnants from, Tropical Storm Barry that made landfall a few days prior on the east coast of Mexico.

So all those things came together.

So we knew there was a lot of moisture.

There's likely going to be some areas with some flooding.

It's really hard to pinpoint exactly where it's going to happen.

And that's why we had a flood watch for a wide area.

And then finally, by like 1 a.m. Friday morning, we had that flood warning in place in her county.

But even with that flood warning, could you have predicted that much rain and that big wall of water?

It's really no.

Even at that 114 when they.

Issued at 114, they issued it.

And so they knew there's a chance that we could see some pretty bad flooding.

They even had a considerable tag.

It's a kind of a higher warning than normal, a flash flood warning, and it makes all the phones in that area kind of ping with with the warning when they when they add that considerable tag to the flash flood warning.

And so they kind of knew that really heavy rain is coming but really didn't see it didn't still didn't look like it was going to be as bad as it ended up being.

People don't realize, okay, there's a flood warning and we see these on your TV all the time.

Flood watch, flood warning.

Usually it's for several counties, but then if there is a warning there are different levels, different wording that it's in, but it's not numbered or anything like that.

There's some different wording they have that just a regular flash flood warning.

You have a flash flood warning with a considerable tag, which is when they do that it pings all the phones in the area.

And then you have the flash flood emergency that wasn't issued until about 4 a.m..

When that got issued, that was about 20 or 30 minutes before the river hit major flood stage.

It's really hard to tell when a flash flood emergency is going to happen.

Really, with more time than that to spare.

It's an unfortunate circumstance, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the highest rain is going to fall.

What was the, weather event it was called?

Was it a mesoscale something or other?

What does that mean technically, and how small an area was it?

How tight in the air?

It's MCH mesoscale convective complex.

And it's basically just a it's just a basically a low pressure system that's moving extremely slow.

It's kind of disorganized.

And because it's moving slow, it's disorganized in terms of, how compared to some of our other weather systems that we see, weather models have a really tough time kind of picking those up and can can't really tell exactly where the heaviest rain bands are going to set up within a, within an MC.

So it does make things really hard.

We do know that they cause flooding and they cause they can cause insane amounts of rainfall over a short period of time, but it's just hard to figure out is it going to happen?

And this side of the county, or five miles to the east or five miles to the south?

It's tough.

Now.

You've worked in TV in Texas.

If you were on the air at that point, what do you say to people?

How how close can you get on the radar to showing them?

You can show them real time, but you can't really.

I mean, even those forecast predictions, computer models can't be as specific as you want, right?

And you see that you see a storm sitting over an area over a long period of time, and you know that there's going to be some flooding in that area.

So if I'm on the on air at that moment in time, I'm telling people in that region to take shelter first of all and also get higher ground.

You don't want to be along that riverbed at that point, obviously, because it's going to be rising.

And that's the really unfortunat because in the middle of the night, right, a lot of people are sleeping there.

They're not really paying attention, to warnings that are happening at that moment in time.

And it's really tough because the way that we see, we think of weather and warnings now, you kind of disregard it.

Even if you do see a flash flood warning on your phone, it's like, oh, it's not going to happen to me.

Whether fatigue or.

Wonder fatigue, normalcy bias, like it's not going to really happen to me right now, is it?

But in this case, it did.

And it's really tough to kind of figure out exactly what we need to do there.

There needed to be some some sirens along the river.

Right.

For, for extreme situations like this.

Unfortunately, we didn't really have that.

It's it's really tough trying to figure out what exactly the answers are.

People also across the country see this and they think, well, okay, hurricanes, you can predict, much better.

Days in advance the wheat cone.

Of, certainty or whatever much different in this kind of situation.

Are these things even likely along the Gulf, or do they stay away from coast because they're, because of the coastal winds, this kind of mesoscale right.

This is micro.

Event.

Yeah.

This is kind of more common, the kind of the the central U.S. away from away from the away from the coast.

And you get flooding a lot with the tropical cyclones.

But like you said, there's a lot more warning involved.

People would kind of understand, when it's coming.

And also it just being in the hill country with all the valleys and the rivers, like it's worse here than really anywhere else.

As a meteorologist, what do you think of I don't know if it's criticism, but critiquing of meteorology and warnings and things like that.

After this, what's what's that like to see in your business?

No.

It's tough.

Because from a meteorology perspective, the National Weather Service did a great job with the warnings here as best as you really can in a situation like this, there is watches out 12 or 15 hours beforehand.

Warnings were out three hours before the river even rose.

But I understand the frustration.

I even understand some of the you don't want people to finger point and just give blame to, to officials and to meteorologists and to really anyone else.

But people are hurting.

I get it.

Like, you want to have someone to blame.

And I can imagine being, someone that has family that was there in the along the Guadalupe River.

So I don't I try not to let it bother me that people, like, want to blame meteorologists or the National Weather Service, but I'm not going to let it bother me too much because I get how they're hurting.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

A lot of great information.

Anthony France, newsroom meteorologist.

You can read his stuff in the San Antonio Express-News online.

And I guess there's still a paper, right?

Yes.

This.

All right.

Publishes every day.

Thanks very much.

We've been introducing you to San Antonio's new council members over the past few weeks.

And this week we are talking with Ivelisse mason Gonzalez, a new councilwoman for district eight.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

We have been talking with people, first of all about their background.

So we'll get to your priorities and what you want to do right away and especially with the budget.

But tell us about how you grew up here really in the political world.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

So yeah, born and raised here in San Antonio, grew up in a family that was pretty dedicated to public service and so really learn from that.

Every day we were at a meeting or, campaign or some sort of event, and it was always centered around how to move our city forward.

And so that has stuck with me.

And then professionally, I had my own experiences, working at the San Antonio River authority, working in the mayor's office, from 2018 to the end of 21.

All of that came together.

And that's what brought me here.

And your mother's name.

A lot of people know that.

That must be kind of a double edged sword when they talk to you.

Yeah.

Legendary in politics here and in the background.

But activism.

Yeah, I know it's it's always a blessing.

Right?

We've lost my mom, too soon.

About ten years ago.

And so, I mean, just hearing her name, she's always with me, but now more so than ever, right?

I hear her much louder.

But in college, you went to UTSA.

You didn't plan on getting into.

No, no.

Not really.

I mean, I was always involved in, like, the background and, supporting candidates, things like that.

But I really wasn't until, after my mom passed away that, I had my second baby and really try to think about where I wanted to, put myself, to be helpful and to, work for the community.

And an opportunity came up in the mayor's office.

And so I started there when my son was four months old.

And.

And now also, you work for the River Foundation.

The river.

Authority?

Yeah.

The river authority.

And say.

And the community, there was a community group that you worked for with Martinez Street?

No, I was on the board of the Merchants Street Women's Center.

Healthy Futures of Texas.

So, yeah, I've had different nonprofit board experience.

Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women.

So, I've always wanted to give back.

And in any which way I could.

Right.

And so now we're here.

And long term, you have seen San Antonio grow and change in many ways, but in some ways not changed nearly enough.

Yeah.

Which brings us to your priorities as district eight, Northside Councilwoman, what are your priorities for not just district eight before the city?

Yeah, I mean, for me, I grew up in Lavaca.

I grew up in district one.

My mom was the neighborhood president, and so I've been in district eight for 15 years with my family.

And we are, there's a lot happening in district eight.

I feel like sometimes we're a city within the city.

We have large employers like USAA and Valero.

We have a strong medical center, a university, UTSA, that is now merged with UT health and growing.

We have 27 parks.

We have tourism with Fiesta Texas and La Cantera, and we have really strong neighborhoods throughout the district.

If you just name one of them, somebody goes, oh, I know somebody that lives there, you know, Woods of Chavez, no Hunters Creek.

So those are just for me.

It's about protecting everything that I just listed.

Right?

Making sure that none of that, goes away, and that we add, we enhance it as much as we can.

A few years ago, we heard a lot about, equity funding and the council, for the first time, really getting other districts on the southwest side, south and west sides, east side, more money because they need more money in certain areas and affordable housing.

How do you feel about that as, a North Side, council member, you know, representing a richer part of the city?

I mean, I think the equity budget, is useful.

And I think, for me, I've worked in that space when I worked in the mayor's office, went through three budget cycles.

Those were all equity budgets.

And so continuing that path, we know that the Councilman White has introduced a new, budget priority.

So I know that we're going to go through that, city manager is going to lay that out for us.

And so, I'm open to all of those possibilities, making sure that district eight continues to receive those basic services that, you know, we pay for your priorities.

Yeah.

What are there you talked about public safety and supporting seniors as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, Bob Ross senior center is a very first senior center built in the city or Councilman Bob Ross was a huge advocate of senior centers and had the first one built there.

I think that needs some love.

So renovating that space is important to me.

It gets used quite a bit.

We're the only district without a community center.

I think that's necessary.

So those are two kind of, specific needs that I want to make sure that we meet.

But overall, infrastructure in district eight is important because of everything I listed out ahead of time before.

So.

Right.

It's it's getting folks go in and out of district eight all day long.

If you just take I-10 west, that's district eight.

So people are coming in and out of that district every minute.

So making sure we have the infrastructure for the meet that meets the demands, important to me.

I've talked to people at UT Health Science Center, UT health, concerned about federal funding and what the cuts in that, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty what they will what they won't get in terms of research and other dollars.

How do you deal with that as a city government?

I think being for me, I think it for me of dealing with that is, is being involved and proactive in those conversations.

Right.

We know what's coming.

We've heard it on the news.

We need to get briefed on all of those matters and how they affect the city as a whole, how they affect the folks that do business in district eight.

Like you said, our UT health, our university, nonprofits that do work in the district.

So all of that is going to impact us.

And so we have to be as proactive as ever.

Job training.

Yeah.

No, absolutely.

We've got to continue job training.

It's not just about making sure that we have a strong education, you know, higher ed, but it's also about making sure that folks can get into jobs as soon as possible.

As a, as a person working for the mayor, you also work with many police who you succeeded in, district eight.

How will you be different as a council person in many police?

What will you focus on?

Maybe differently?

I mean, for me, it's just about continuing to stay active in the district.

I think Barney did a good job of that.

I think district eight residents have very high expectations.

They've had really strong, leaders, representing them.

And so just meeting those expectations is important to me and making sure that we are in front of them as much as possible, meeting them where they are.

We have coffee with the councilman.

We have back to school bashes, neighborhood meetings.

So just again, making sure that we're there.

How do you think the new council will do there?

You know, in some ways, we have another conservative in district nine again.

And then we have more progressives.

Knowing the makeup and Gina Ortiz Jones's new mayor, will there be splits along those lines?

And and what's it going to be like, say, for the budget?

Yeah, I mean, there could be, right?

It wouldn't be a council if there wasn't.

So, you know, that's what makes the job.

That's the I think the best part of the job is really coming to some sort of compromise with folks that you normally wouldn't.

But this is really where I think you have a council that is dedicated to their districts and making sure that San Antonio is moving forward.

That looks different for every council member.

But it's about weighing all of those options, and making sure that council, stays strong.

And I think the only way we can do that is working together.

On a spectrum.

Progressive conservative.

You lie.

Where on the one of the ten.

I'm.

I am a get things done person.

I don't know where that puts me.

I know my district is pretty much there as well.

Right?

I think district eight is very much the bellwether of of the city.

And so, that's where I stand of just making sure we have the money, to get things done.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Mr. Gonzalez.

District eight, Council member.

Good luck.

Especially with the new budget.

Thank you.

And a new council.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

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

You can watch the show again or any previous shows.

You can also download any of them as a podcast.

Just go to KRLN.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

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