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

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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.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Randi Beamer, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

This week, after about nine months of a strike by the musicians of the San Antonio Symphony, the board dissolved basically what was left of the San Antonio Symphony, filed for Chapter seven bankruptcy protection.

And it will be moving on as an orchestra, but under a different name and the assets and liabilities dealt with by a trustee, Mary Ellen Gorrie, who is the principal second violin of the musicians of the San Antonio Symphony, joins us.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, what was it like when you found out that they were dissolving?

Well, it was a little bit of a surprise.

I wasn't expecting that to happen so abruptly.

And I found out the same way everybody else did, which is I got the email that was sent to the donors and the subscribers because I have bought tickets and made donations myself in the past.

There was never any notification sent out to the musicians.

We found out the same way everyone else did.

And what's the mood?

What's of the musicians?

Now and their plans?

Some of them be moving out of town, staying here, hoping that it'll be reconstituted in some form.

Well, I don't think hope is a strategy but we are making plans for concerts in the fall.

We presented three pairs of extremely successful concerts at the First Baptist Church of San Antonio this spring, and we are looking to do more of that.

Now, before we came on the air.

You were talking about the endowment and that that's one of the assets you call that a baby endowment that was only $2 million.

And that that was one of the problems because the model of symphonies across the country has it's been tough over the past few years.

There's been strikes elsewhere because the money hasn't been there from subscriptions and from season ticket sales.

And there really needs to be a lot of charitable giving.

Well, there's not an orchestra in the United States that covers its expenses with earned revenue.

And we were right in line at 40% of the expenses being covered by earned revenue, the remainder being made up by grants, donations and endowment income.

The difference between a stable orchestra and an unstable orchestra is usually the presence or absence of a of an endowment.

And for an orchestra like us, we should have had an endowment of at least $50 million.

A $2 million endowment did not generate nearly enough income to help stabilize our at our expenses.

But there was a bankruptcy, a different kind of bankruptcy, Chapter 11, which back in 2003, which allowed for it to be reconstituted.

But you said that affected the endowment that they had at the time because it spooked people.

Know what happened to the endowment was before the bankruptcy.

It was in the 1990s.

A prior board and management cannibalized the endowment that we had at that time, used it to keep the lights on and pay the musicians.

And that alienated, understandably, some donors who had been very generous to that endowment with the idea that their gifts would help keep the San Antonio Symphony going in perpetuity.

So we never really recovered from that.

And that's a problem across the country.

But why do you think there hasn't been?

Bob Revived wrote an article in the San Antonio report about that San Antonio should be able to support $10 million annual budget for a symphony, but it's been struggling to do four or five or six.

Well, that's true.

And he's right.

And I would say that that with an adequate endowment we should be more in the $22 million.

20 to $30 million range if you look at metropolitan areas similar in size like Nashville and Kansas City or Milwaukee, Cincinnati, which is significantly bigger in their orchestra size, these are all similarly sized metropolitan areas with orchestras that have much higher budgets.

I can only surmise that we have not been able to attract the kind of leadership that has a vision.

You have to have a vision to make this happen.

And you have to sell it.

You have to get the how are you going to get those important charitable donors either back or on board.

Well, there are plenty of studies that show the economic benefit to a city of a professional orchestra, that we are an asset to our community.

And that's the message that we need to keep sending.

Out to have a predictable revenue stream.

Is is some of it going to be maybe more public dollars coming into that, or are you going to lobby for that?

Or is that not feasible right now?

Well, I think public dollars are appropriate, and I think that there are conversations going on.

I'm not actually part of those conversations.

How about individually?

How are the musicians doing?

What are they planning?

Those you've talked to.

I don't think anybody was shocked.

I think the biggest element of surprise was simply the timing.

But people have already been on their own, I would say, not just for the duration of the strike, but we had given back a draconian amount of money, just a huge pay cut to keep the symphony going during the pandemic.

And even before that, our pay has been cut so much and so often that the musicians have long since gone out and worked to develop other income streams just to protect themselves and their families.

And I know it's early, but you look forward to what might be a season this year.

How do you describe that to people who might want to go?

I say follow us at our Web site, MOOC as Performance Fund dot org.

We hope to be making announcements in the near future about concert dates.

Please come here.

US.

We sound great and our audiences have been large and appreciative.

Do you think most of the musicians will be staying here?

I think people want to play here.

I think given everything, all things considered, people would rather play here.

Well, we look forward to the next chapter or whatever it is.

The musicians of the San Antonio Symphony.

Mario and Gary, thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

In the middle of this very hot summer with inflation to deal with, we have the latest now from the city on both CBS energy and some conservation steps that they are continuing, as well as on Homestead tax exemptions and the city of San Antonio.

Joining us to explain exactly what that means, Clayton Perry City Council District Ten.

It's thank you very much for coming in.

Absolutely.

It's good to be here.

And you're keeping busy over the summer maybe not making the big headlines, some of the controversial issues, but you made some votes recently.

First, we'll start with the Homestead tax exemption because people want to know about what that means for them.

Back in 2017, I wanted to start a homestead exemption here in San Antonio.

San Antonio was the only large metro area here in Texas that did not support or have a homestead exemption.

So I fought for that in 2017.

No support in 18.

I got a letter of support.

19.

Finally, a unanimous decision by city council to start a homestead exemption at the very lowest level.

I wanted to raise that.

I saw that is only a starting point for the city because year after year our revenues kept growing and we weren't giving anything back to our homeowners and residents.

Here in San Antonio.

So I said, let's raise that.

So the next year nothing happened, the next year nothing happened.

And finally this year, again, the state said we were well, they had a three and a half percent cap that you couldn't go over on on additional revenue and tax authority.

So I said, hey, we need to raise our homestead exemption.

Here's another opportunity because of the revenue that the city was generating, let's kick that up to at least 10%, if not more.

So we deliberated that.

And lo and behold, I got another unanimous vote on city council to support a higher homestead exemption and not only a homestead exemption, but we're increasing the tax freeze of over 65 individuals and also the disability exemption as well.

Both of those are being raised.

And now that tax exemption is $10,000 worth of your out of your property or up to.

Now it's ten, 10% on 10%.

Yes.

So that is about $55 if you have $100,000 house double that, triple that, if you have 203,000 for house.

And so that's going to mean something to the average.

Yes.

And not only that but the county followed our lead as well and here recently they passed a homestead exemption as well up at 20%.

So you add that and I'm going to go out and talk to these other taxing authorities also to show them how much revenue that they have gained extra over the years, five or ten years.

Same thing as a city it's all relative that and I'm going to go to them as well saying why can't you provide a homestead exemption?

Because the state now has capped what cities can get in addition each year, what, three and a half percent, right.

There's already talk that the city will lower its tax rate for next year.

Is that a definite you think?

That is a definite.

I could tell you that already the staff is recommending that.

And I'm I'm fully support, of course.

No, that doesn't mean a lot if your tax valuation went up by 25% and your tax rate goes down to ten, I still going to be paying more.

We're still going to be paying more taxes next year.

You're absolutely right.

Depending on the evaluations and what the tax assessor is taking a look at and how much your property is being valued at.

And as you know, the property taxes have gone up tremendously over the last several years.

So I'm for anything to help ratchet that back and save save the taxpayer money.

So I'm fully supportive of all of those.

And I'm going to keep I'm going to keep working to raise that homestead exemption even higher.

The state allows 20%, and I'm going to be working to get that up to 20%.

The city council also voted recently just to increase or to continue the step program in terms of conservation goals and giving people things like solar rebates and rebates on appliances, things like that, helping them with insulation.

But you voted against that to put a pause in that program and you said it's been very successful.

Why is that?

Yes.

We had a committee, the RAC Rate Advisory Committee, and the majority of those folks said, Hey, this has been a great program.

Maybe we need to step back, take a look at the full impact of this, as well as redoing our goals.

They met their goals within a year of setting it off last time.

So I'm saying, hey, let's let's step back.

I agree.

I agree with the committee.

Let's step back, take a look at it, do a deep dove into this.

But take a look at the conservation efforts here for the city, because, look, it's great to conserve and ratchet back your thermostats and things like that to save our energy.

But with the growth in this city and things going more and more towards electricity, let me tell you, we're not going to conserve our way out of this program or out of this problem.

We have to start looking at additional resources out there to boost our capabilities.

You know, you got you have a supply and demand type of thing.

Here.

You have to have the supply to meet the demand.

And at some point in time, we're going to outgrow our resources.

And then what are we going to do?

We're going to have to go and purchase more from outside of CPS at maybe even higher rates.

So I'm saying we need to start planning for additional resources to meet that demand.

We can't just conserve, conserve, conserve to get ourselves out of this trick of not having enough power.

And some people had said that they were against expanding or continuing the program because it was really weighted to help more people on the north side in more affluent areas, we'll say because of solar rebates, you need to have a bigger house, make it more effective for, you know, reasonable for you to make the money.

Right.

That's basically true.

And this happens in almost every case when you get bureaucracy involved, politics and and programs and government programs, you know, the best intentions are things always seem to go off kilter or something because bureaucracy has has a way of messing things up.

So in that was another good point that came out of the RAC that, you know, we need to take a deeper dove in this and take a look at it and readjust some things if need be.

But it's been a successful program.

I lauded them for that.

But again, I'm looking at the future when are we going to have to start programing?

And you can't just go and build a power plant no matter what type you're talking about.

Yeah, that's going to be a whole different conversation or conversation down the road.

Yeah.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Clayton Perry, Councilman, District Ten.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

We learned this week that San Antonio is a lot closer to having an advanced rapid transit line running from the airport to downtown That was in the State of Transit address given by Jeffrey Orange, our next guest, who is the president and CEO of the Metropolitan Transit.

The official name that's.

The official.

Name.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Pleasure to be here.

First of all, this has been a plan that's been on works for a while to have rapid advanced rapid transit lines like a dedicated bus line that would come down San Pedro from 410 to downtown Why is it going to be able to happen so much faster than we thought?

Well, first of all, the line just f.y.i continues through downtown down Roosevelt Road to about Steve.

So we do get into the southbound area bit as well.

Just to give the.

Full and then it could go on down farther east to the mission.

And it could go further north it's an expandable line.

So the reason we're in a good position right now is first of all, thanks to the voters November of 20, 20 with 68% approval rate we are lined up in 2026 to begin receiving another 18 cent sales tax that will help fund the operation of that line to help fund the construction of that line.

During COVID, we received relief funds that we used.

We were able to draw down to run service but we used some of the or we took some of the money that we normally would have used and built a cash reserve to allow us to make the local match that we need to do.

There was the matching funds the key to the federal grant?

Yes.

And that's always the way it is.

And this is a what, a 300 and some.

320,000,320.

Million.

And that is from the airport to, to Steve's to Steve's.

Correct.

What will that look like?

So it will look like it will vary by segment because we're building it, you know, within, in some areas that are constrained physically but at the northern end, near the mall, in the center of the street, there would be two dedicated lanes with a station in between.

We'll have a high capacity likely to be an electric vehicle, zero emission vehicle.

That's the goal.

It will operate at frequent service, ten to 12 minutes all day long.

So that frequency is there.

We always say frequency is the number one factor, right?

But this will give us speed and reliability in that we have that dedicated lane.

The busses will talk to traffic signals and within limits, obviously they will be able to influence the traffic signal to our betterment.

Perhaps one of the best things is that the fares will be collected in the station area and not on the vehicle.

So when the vehicle pulls up, the doors open.

People have already paid their fares, they get on the vehicle and they're out of there.

If you think about that picture, it sounds a lot like light rail.

Sounds like I guess you want it to look like or feel like subway or something if you're going from the airport.

So you can just pull your bags on go all the way downtown.

Is there going to be a main station downtown that it will go to at this point?

There are there will be stops along, I believe Saint Mary's Navarro, you know, pair where people would be able to get on and off.

And this is also going to be different than the primo busses, which people see.

And we talk about that bus, rapid transit.

This is not and this will be much quicker.

Faster.

Yes.

Primo service is frequent.

Some people sometimes call primo a light or BRT light because you don't have the dedicated lanes to get the federal funding in that corner.

We have to have at least 50% of that corridor and dedicated lanes.

The Alamo Army has been talking about tunnel by Elon Musk tunnel.

And one of the knocks against that is that, well, VA is looking at advanced rapid transit, basically the same thing from the airport to downtown.

And you're much farther along in that.

What would you tell somebody who says, Hey, I heard about the tunnel thing, but this is another option?

Well, my perspective is the tunnel would serve a completely different market.

I mean, the fares that have been stated publicly at least, and they're still under investigation are eight to ten times as high as the fares that it would take on a VA bus.

Which would be.

A dollar 30.

So it'll be the standard of standard fare?

Yes, it'll be the standard fare.

And so the market, particularly a transit market that we we serve today, cannot afford to pay for the tunnel pricing.

They can afford to pay for our pricing.

And now this will make more frequent stops.

So, yes, they'll be stops along the quarter, not as frequent as today.

More like Primo.

Again, Primo has a little bit more widely spaced stops.

And now East.

West, yeah.

That line is in.

That line is in planning.

So it's not developed to the point where we know exactly which streets we would even be on or where in the stationary We did receive a federal grant earlier this year to provide funding to help us plan the station areas on the east west line.

I will tell you that the Federal Transit Administration, several folks from FTA came to San Antonio about a month ago.

Now they're familiar with the north south line.

Obviously, they've evaluated, they've rated it.

It's in the president's budget.

So obviously they were able to physically ride on it for the first time, I believe.

But then we took them on the east west line, which is kind of an unknown to them as of a month ago.

And as they rode that line, they said, you know, this is exactly the kind of market that this administration wants to focus on.

And you want to get some of this done, as I understand it, because you don't know what's going to happen in the next administration.

You want to have the people that you're dealing with at the federal level that, you know, go ahead and OK, this what is the timeline right now for where you are in the process for the north south line?

So in the north south line, we expect to get to the point where we're at full design by the end of 20, 24 as a full design, because right now we're doing all the environmental work and the traffic studies and then we we get permission to go in full.

So that means that it would open in 20, 27 for service the east west line, assuming we can get the funding together put together, it could open as early as 2029.

Now if we have to wait for the current funding to catch up, the east west line is 2055.

So you can see why it is that we want to bring additional funding and accelerate that line.

And on the long term maps there are other routes that Yes.

Looking at to are those down the road.

We have I think New Braunfels to the south, we have our Fredericksburg Road.

Ultimately we run primo service on there but ultimately Fredericksburg Road we have Broadway interestingly enough at some point.

Also for bus rapid.

Yes.

OK, I have some questions about that one because some of those don't seem wide enough.

But with that work, well.

It's again, it's going to depend upon how the streets are configured.

OK, and.

Also so just to clarify, even in San Pedro, we're going to have sections where we don't have the center running and the station, if you think of through Mono Vista, there's just not room.

So we will have what we call business access lanes, kind of like we have downtown where the right lanes are reserved for busses, people turning in and out of driveways and people making right turns at intersections.

But you still have access to the signals in that area.

So that'll speed everything.

Yes.

And we'll still have stations.

I'll just be on the curbside right in the center.

So we'll still have all the benefits of the offer of our vehicle fair collection for example.

All right.

Well, fascinating.

Thank you very much.

Interesting to see what will happen.

That's Jeffrey Arndt with The View of Metropolitan Transit, president and CEO.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thank you.

Nearly a month now since the tragic shooting in New Valley, law enforcement officers are testifying this week at two different hearings, one for the state Senate, one for the state House about just what happened.

But also at the same time here in San Antonio, education officials, school police, officers are going over what they can learn from what happened and what they can expect for your kids in the fall.

Joining us now to talk about that is Clare Bryan who wrote a story in the Express-News this week about that.

And you had written one really the day after the shooting on what the reaction was here in San Antonio, in the schools and the police.

What what is the latest on this?

Right after the shooting happened, many school districts in San Antonio did increase their police presence on campus.

A lot of the districts felt like that was the right thing to do to make sure parents felt like their kids were secure and to make sure parents were still sending their kids to school.

Even though it was sort of the end of the year in this big tragedy, it just happened.

But now, moving forward, a lot of the police chiefs that I talked to, they feel pretty secure that they have really good active shooter plans and their officers are equipped.

But they said that this summer they will be taking steps to review the plans, go over the plans again with all of the officers.

And something could change farther down the line.

And I guess one of the biggest things that they'll be talking about is who's in charge?

How do you tell who's in charge?

Because right now that's an issue of was Pete Arredondo, the school police chief officer, the guy in charge?

Did he know it?

How would they change that kind of thing?

But some of that you talk to these officers and they say you really can't have a plan that definite.

I found that surprising but really interesting to learn about because you would think in such a high stress situation, you want one person in charge no matter what.

But what I learned from talking to the police chiefs and experts who do first responder trainer training is how important it is to have this flexibility and adaptability.

So when an active shooter incident happens, the first person who shows up on scene will be immediately in charge and that's often going to be the school district police force just because they're closest.

But that command could get passed off to any other agency that gets there.

And it depends on if that agency has if they have more resources, if they have more expertize, if they just have a specific piece of intel that is going to make the situation run more smoothly, then in that moment, those agencies will work together to decide who is going to be in charge.

And there is a training center.

You also pointed out in the story at Texas State University that provides training for these kinds of mass shooting incidents, the alert center.

Right.

And that's that was developed out of Texas State University, but it's now used across the country to train a lot of school police officers, but also first responders in general.

And now with all that's going on at these two hearings, are some of the officers here may be a little defensive, not wanting to say what they're going to learn, because really we don't know.

There's a lot of finger pointing going on at this point of what who did what wrong and what would be the right thing to do.

Right.

And many that I talked to were very hesitant to make judgments or comments about the situation.

And you've all day it's my understanding they actually do that with any sort of mass shooting at a school.

They're hesitant to make a judgment because they're not the people in the shoes doing that.

But I think one thing that they could all agree upon at this point is just how much more awareness and prevention can be done for students.

They felt like one thing that parents and guardians can really do is work on connecting with their kids, learning about what's going on in their kid's life.

Because that will just add to more information that could come out about a student that's unfortunately in distress and could potentially turn violent.

You also had a little bit of the history of the school shootings in San Antonio since 1990.

I think there has been eight shootings at schools and three deaths, but nothing, nothing at a magnitude or a multiple shooting.

Right.

Luckily, San Antonio has not had any sort of true active shooter incident where there's someone been on campus with a gun shooting.

There's been violent situations that have developed at school, whether it's students or a gang or someone that's just coming into the school.

And the police, you know, had to shoot at them.

But there hasn't been luckily anything like an active shooter incident.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

You can check out the latest with Claire Bryan writing in the San Antonio Express-News.

Thanks for coming in.

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

You can see the show again or previous shows as well as our podcast on KLRN.org.

And we'll see you next time.

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