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.

Joining us now as we go on the Record with Randy Beamer.

All right, everybody, And thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week we're going to start with some possible changes, tax exemptions for child care facilities here in San Antonio, as well as some possible changes to the city charter.

That could mean differences in how long city council members serve and maybe how much they are paid.

Joining us to talk about this is District nine City Councilman John Courage.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you, Randy.

First of all, the idea of tax exemptions for child care facilities, you brought this up and I guess I don't want to say it's fast track, but where where is it now in the process?

Yeah, I think it's fair to say, you know, the the citizens voted to go ahead and approve a proposition last year that would allow taxes for child care centers to be abated by a city or county government.

It could be anywhere from 50% of the tax value up to 100%.

And I've been proposing 100%.

It didn't move very fast through a lot of cities.

Right now, there's only three others that have moved on it so far.

And I talked to the city manager about two months ago and suggested, what are we doing?

And he said, Councilman, we're going to go ahead and look into it.

I talked to some of my fellow council members.

They were in agreement that maybe a council consideration request would be in order to make sure it moves through our system, continually talk to the city manager, he said, Councilman, this is an important issue.

We can move it through more quickly.

So I've kind of held that council consideration right now, abatement from 50 to 100%.

What would that mean in terms of if there's an average child care facility from the smallest to the biggest, Do you have any idea how much?

Well, I can give you a couple of examples that people have talked to me about.

Anywhere from $2,000 a year to $5,000 a year to one very large facility, which saved them $11,000 in taxes.

If you combine both the city and the county, both authorities have the right to abate tax.

This is city taxes.

But what are they levied on?

Is it its property general property tax?

It was say it's in my home has that word.

Yeah.

Well, it's not eligible for a home.

It has to be a commercial building.

It can be owned by the child care center or they could be renters.

In that case, the property owner can get the deduction.

However, they have to pass every dollar that their taxes are abated on to the rent that's being paid by the child care.

And people would ask why?

Why is this important, especially here in San Antonio?

Well, you know, throughout the state, but particularly here in San Antonio, ever since, you know, we went through the pandemic, there were a lot of child care centers that closed.

Many been reluctant to reopen the cost rates involved are pretty high.

And and if we can lower some of the costs, the expenses for daycare centers, we think we can expand them.

We can improve the ones that are there.

It's more than just lowering their taxes, though.

I've been advocating that the city get involved in helping train more of the people who work at these daycare centers and these early childhood learning centers so that what you're doing is you're providing a better education for these children as well as caring for them during the day.

Would there be any strings attached or could there to keep their rates to parents the same?

I mean, you want to pass that on as much as you can to parents as well as the child care providers?

You know, there isn't anything in the law that was put forward by Texas in order to go ahead and allow the tax reduction.

But we would hope it would at least help prevent increases and would allow companies to hire additional people or to give a raise to their people or to buy more resources to have available for the children.

And we're also working with the Ready to Work program, asking them to try and help people who want to go through the Ready to Work program, find more child care, better child care if we can expand what's available.

Do you have any idea yet estimates of how much tax revenue this would cost the city or how many child care centers are out there?

The city is still looking at that.

But we know right off the top that there's about 175 child care centers in San Antonio that are going to be immediately available.

There could be more.

And then we think that, you know, this is really going to help, you know, thousands of children and hundreds and hundreds of families be able to care for their children.

And those are the most important parts of this.

And now you say it's kind of fast tracked with the city manager bringing it up.

What does that mean in terms of the timeline?

When could we see those tax exemption?

Well, hold on.

Right.

And there was some wording in the law that said you need to apply by the beginning of May in order to be eligible.

And so that's the timeline that we that the businesses are going to be under.

In the meantime, we're working with the Bear Appraisal district to have them put out the proper documentation that they need to assess Are these organizations eligible for the deduction?

That's kind of a quick timeline, right?

Is that could the council voted in May and it could still happen or.

Yes.

Yes.

We're we're looking at voting for it in April and taking it and it being available even soon.

Or people can file the paperwork now contingent on the council approval.

Where is that?

Where would they go?

Their appraisal district is offering that paperwork because they're charged with determining is a business eligible.

And then what would be the tax deduction?

And we're looking at somewhere between maybe 500 and $600,000 in tax deductions this particular year.

All right.

We talked about charter amendments or I brought that up.

Tell us what that could mean.

Possible.

They're talking about pay raises for council as well as a change in term limits, because right now you have two year terms and then a four year term limit.

What would you like to see on that?

What do you think will happen?

Well, right now it's actually eight years total, right?

So two four years for two year terms.

And I've found as a council member for six and a half years that it's very challenging to be a full time council member and be campaigning, you know, after a year and a half on the job every two year cycle.

And and you really need to because there are always other people who are interested in serving.

And if you feel like you're doing a good job for your constituents, you want to remind them how you get out there, how long a term and how many terms do you think they should serve.

You know, I think the term should be four year terms and two.

Now, I know that the Charter Review Commission is thinking two and possibly even three, three terms.

Yeah, three or four year terms.

But, you know, I don't know that I as a council member is ready to support that yet.

Also, they're talking about increasing council pay.

I think this is an important issue.

The council pay was set eight years ago at what the average salary was for a family of four in San Antonio eight years ago.

The council hasn't received any pay increases.

So that was, you said, 45, 45,000.

And now the average salary or average home of four is 60,000 within the city limits.

If you go broader in our community to Burnie, in New Braunfels, etc., it's a little higher.

But, you know, I think that meeting at least that minimum average salary is reasonable to expect from a full time council member.

And I remember I'm trying to think of back in the eighties, it was four year terms also.

Then they were they were all two year term, two year terms, but it was not the term right.

The back in the eighties.

And then they went into term limits in the nineties, 2 to 2 years to two years.

And I remember everyone complaining about that because you're councilman, you couldn't get to know them.

You couldn't get to know what was going on.

Yeah.

And so Phil Berger, I think, pushed for the change.

This wouldn't happen, though, unless people got to vote on it.

That's right.

There would be charter amendment suggestions taken to the council and then the council would decide, do we want to put these amendments on the ballot?

And then the voters would have the opportunity And the target date right now for any proposal changes are December of this year at more or less the bottom of the presidential ballot.

December would be November.

sorry.

Okay.

Yeah, it would be December of November of this year in line with the general election.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, John Courage, District nine.

I appreciate you coming in to explain all that.

Thanks.

Thank you, Randy.

The decade of downtown for San Antonio may be over, but the city and county other groups are now looking at kind of a reviving updating a plan for downtown.

With us now to tell us everything there is to know about that is Tricia Berry, who is president and CEO of Center of San Antonio.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Always a pleasure.

First of all, the decade of downtown started, what, 2009?

And and what kind of impact did that have?

Well, it had a huge impact.

It informed a housing first strategy, meaning the consultants came in and looked and said, look, we need to develop housing in downtown, all kinds of housing, whether that's affordable, whether that's market rate.

Yes, even luxury.

What does that look like?

But the beauty associated with housing in downtown is it brings density of people, which is what you need to activate, because what is density of people mean?

I want a grocery store, I want a dry cleaner's, I want a dog groomer, I want a health gym.

All of those things come with people, not just hotels that bring people in for a while.

Right.

And when we talk about clearly, we talk about the CBD in urban vernacular, the central business district is downtown.

But I would argue with you what we have right now, and not that there's anything wrong with it, but we have a central hotel district because we don't have the kinds of businesses that we need in downtown.

So the beauty associated with a decade of downtown is there was laser focus associated with it.

Thanks to Mayor Castro.

So we got housing.

It identified hemisphere as a huge opportunity, which obviously we've seen phase one and what that has meant to have a civic park in downtown.

So, you know, it's ten or 12 years later and we need to update that plan because I would argue, too, that, look, every decade is the decade of downtown.

The only the blessing and the curse associated with the decade of downtown, as we call it, is they put an expiration date right on downtown.

We never stop investing.

Ideas innovate in downtowns because the downtowns and the great cities that we have that have great downtowns do exactly that.

And central San Antonio or Centro s.A your baby is doing just that and but you can't do all of it.

What are you looking for in this new strategic framework plan, as it's called, and who's involved in coming up with it?

So visit San Antonio has been a really great strategic partner as well as the city of San Antonio.

And I think what we saw in not operating in silos, but coming together to be able to accomplish something significant in downtown, i.e.

holidays on Houston Street.

Right.

So first time we had all worked together on something.

We brought in the month of December, 450,000 people down to Houston Street during holidays on Houston.

And I'd been working for 15 years to migrate that lighting experience from the river walk up to the street level.

So that tells you people are looking for an urban, gritty, great experience in downtown.

And so holidays on Houston provided that and we're going to do it even bigger, getting locals in.

And how much of that is still one of those things it's tough to do so while it's a huge part of it.

So in partnering with GSA, clearly they're focused on the visitor industry and bringing conventions of visitors to town.

But we have a huge opportunity in downtown to bring locals into downtown.

Whatever we can do, whether that is parks, that we create their connectivity micro-mobility options, which, by the way, Micromobility rolls off the tongue.

Yes.

Which we're launching tomorrow as we speak, Actually, an electronic golf cart opportunity, a shuttle through downtown will have four of them for UTSA or UTSA, right?

Yeah.

And also city employees too, to get them from the parking garages into their place of work, whether that's UTSA or whether that's the city of San Antonio.

But that's during the morning, noon hours in the late afternoon.

Periodically throughout the day they'll be circulating through downtown, hence a circulator on a fixed route through the public improvement district.

So you can hail it just like you would a cab.

You can download an app so you don't it's not on a regular route.

You can say, Hey, I need to go.

Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, hopefully, obviously within the constraints of downtown.

But we're we're subsidizing the effort from a pilot project standpoint because I think there's a huge opportunity in the micromobility space.

We see it in other cities like Austin, we see it in Nashville, whether that's electronic golf carts, whether that's pedicabs that are moving through.

But as we talk about bigger conversations regarding sports and entertainment districts, we're going to have to tackle the parking issue.

And what does that look like?

And how do we bring people into downtown parking?

So Micromobility is a big one.

Yeah.

So before we get to the sports district, what is the timeline for coming up with this?

Who comes up with that and and who pays for it?

Yeah, so we've hired consultants and they were the same ones that we were in 2009 during the original study.

So we have some new blood on board, obviously some young folks that are a part of it.

But we also have a woman who's very well-respected in the space across the country, if not internationally, who was here the last time.

That's a part of the project, too.

So she can see kind of the accomplishments and the strides that have been made in downtown and provide kind of historical context associated with the first study.

But where do we go from here?

Do we you know, is there an opportunity associated with districting in downtown?

Which is there a theater district?

Is there a West End district associated with where Weston Urban is?

Is there a tech district where the School of Data Science and UTSA is I mean, giving some context downtown associated with what are the opportunities, the land bank land that we have downtown for future opportunities associated with that, as well as transit oriented development.

Obviously, via has air lines coming through.

What is the opportunity advance, rapid transit, What is the opportunity associated with that from an economic development standpoint?

So we have put the pedal to the metal to these folks and said, hey, do not let the grass grow under your feet.

We want to see a draft plan or recommendations by September, October with a final plan in November.

The idea would be that the city adopts it and then we all like county.

Yeah, the county is not involved in it.

So it's the city.

Yeah, City DSA and Centro.

Yeah.

That are associated with it.

But clearly the county will be pulled into conversations.

Right.

But the funding partners really are central to San Antonio and being say to a slightly smaller standpoint, the city of San Antonio from a housing study standpoint.

Finally, you mentioned sports district that's been in the news a lot.

Is that going to be part of this plan or can it be at this point they wanted it to be originally, of course, that drove the cost out.

But since we don't have any solidification around exact locations, what that might look like, and I feel like there are powers greater than me, obviously.

No, no, no.

That are planning this.

I took that out for right now because we don't know what that looks like yet.

So certainly we can engage the consultant in that conversation when we know more about that.

But for right now we have a huge critical housing supply shortage.

So that's got to be addressed.

And right now, events going on in central San Antonio, downtown Shasta coming up, what else is coming up that people out there should come back?

Yeah, we have some amazing things that are planned.

We're going to have an eclipse watching party in Travis Park.

You can't see it from downtown, but we're going to livestream.

We're going to do a national livestream because people want to gather.

Right, associated with the eclipse, because it only comes, what, once every 400 years that you've got, as I remember.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's a party that comes across every once, every 400 years.

Why better fest coming to Travis Park, which is going to be awesome, April 13th, right before Fiesta and then a big 4th of July.

All right.

Well, thanks very much, Trista Barry, CEO and president of Centro, San Antonio.

Thanks for coming in.

Always good to be with you, Amy.

The city of San Antonio is running out of money to run the Migrant Resource Center up on San Pedro.

That is the place where the city of San Antonio helps all the people coming from the border.

The asylum seekers legally move on from here throughout the rest of the country and that is an issue that a lot of people are concerned about.

Joining us now to talk about that, Andrea Rush and Antonio report.

Reporter thank you very much for coming in.

They're not out of money yet, but it's close enough.

They have time to think about it, but they're looking at what what does this mean for San Antonio?

Yeah, this is a big part of the discussion at last week's city Council eighth session meeting, you heard a lot of city council members say that they would like to have a plan in place for when this money runs out.

They view the Migrant Resource Center as something critical that they think the city has done right in this process.

But that's all money that's coming from the federal government.

And Congress hasn't passed the spending bills that would provide the FEMA grants to the DA, to the Department of Homeland Security that has been used to fund the Migrant Resource Center so far.

And that so that's causing cities around the country to have the same sort of discussion right now.

And people don't realize just how many people have come through San Antonio.

These are asylum seekers.

They are dropped off here.

That's the city is not paying for that.

But they help people for a few days before they move on.

600,000 people, 600,000 come through since 2021.

And the San Antonio is pointing to the fact that they don't have work authorization while they're seeking asylum.

They cannot stay in work.

So the city's approach from day one has been let's try to help them continue on to where they have friends and sponsors elsewhere in the country.

But that has that started with a migrant resource center on San Pedro Avenue that has was giving people a short term place to stay while they were taking them to the airport, taking them to the bus station.

Catholic Charities was helping connect them with flight, airfare and bus fare if they needed it to keep moving.

Certain Catholic Charities has already run out of money for that.

They said that's being funded by private donors.

If people show up now without that ticket onward, Catholic Charities runs it.

And so their money is running out.

In December.

The city is September.

Yeah, the city estimates December for Catholic Charities, but it asks the federal government for 57 and a half million dollars to keep this going through the end of 2024.

That's how much they think they need, which sounds like a lot.

But there has been millions of dollars spent already because there are so many people that come through because they have to lease that facility, janitorial services, staff, transit people as well.

The city manager has said there's no way that the city can come up with $57 million for this.

It would have to do something less.

But the city council members last week, it's a fascinating meeting to watch back because you have so many mayoral hopefuls on there trying to sort of navigate this public safety and what's the right thing to do and the ethical thing to do and the spending aspect of it.

Councilman Mark was pointing to Denver, which had some migrant resource centers, and it's closed them.

And it's also said it's going to cut back on some city services to try to afford its migrant efforts.

In the meantime, people were opposed to cutting city resorts, cutting city programs for the residents.

But without that migrant resource center, people are concerned that if the migrants would just be waiting in the park would just be waiting at the airport while the city started.

There are some estimates that could be, I think John Courage said five 10,000 people.

Who knows how many people would have to stay here and again, without work authorization or a place to stay.

That's a city issue as well.

So that's a part of what the city was asking for.

They wrote their members of Congress.

We have Henry Cuellar, who's on the the subcommittee dealing with the DHS funding, asking if they can have some exceptions to the ban on working while they're waiting for their asylum cases.

But then big picture, a lot of these things were people were hopeful that they would be addressed in this big border package that the Senate shut down recently, sending some more immigration judges down to the border and making these decisions quicker.

And because it was the Senate that shut that down, not the House, which you would think would be the House, what's your opinion about whether this is going to happen before an election?

I think the city needs a plan for how it's going to fund this thing.

I think a lot of the city council members where they're having that same thought, that they're not super confident that Congress is going to get this together.

They did pass some spending bills for the first time since Republicans took back the House.

They've passed them spending bills earlier this month.

And but the sticky ones are still to come.

And so that is what we have.

And this is money from Department of Homeland Security, FEMA.

So it could be more likely to be passed.

Leading questions about what security would be, the sticky.

We have, you know, two congressman who are up there, who are appropriators, Tony Gonzales and Henry Cuellar, who will be working on this.

And, you know, Tony Gonzalez has a primary opponent who he's got into a runoff with, who has said, why don't I shut down the government over that?

There's a group of 80 or so lawmakers who have forced out the previous House speaker over this issue of spending bills.

And now in San Antonio, I believe nine council members have indicated they want to spend some city money or at least keep that place open.

Mark White, on the other hand, is open to shutting it down.

Is that right?

Yeah, which comes with a lot of implications.

The city started that migrant resource center so that people wouldn't be accumulating in the park and waiting in the airport.

And then you heard Councilman John Courage is running for mayor to talk about.

Like what expense does this create if these these asylum seekers join our homeless community in San Antonio, what resources might be taken away from locals?

And now also there had been talk of all these people.

I've heard people go by there and there's just so many people outside.

But the crime, as I understand it, the neighborhood, they say, has not increased.

And maybe businesses have been affected one way or the other because all the people there.

But that is not an issue now that people might think it is.

So an interesting part of that last council meeting was that so far a lot of this has just happened really quietly.

They've asked for permission for reimbursements for opening the center that they've already lined up.

The center.

It's been a source of consternation for residents in that area.

When did this decision get made?

How come we didn't get to weigh in?

So at that council meeting, you got to hear some of the Sheriff Hills residents come and voice their opinion on it.

Their neighborhood association president said even are really compassionate.

Members of our neighborhood association have concerns about the number of strangers in their neighborhood and interestingly, you heard Councilman Jaylen Rodriguez say apologize for the way that it happened and the disruption to the neighborhood.

And so if it takes spending city money on this, maybe we should do that and maybe we should move it somewhere around permanent.

Yeah, Now it's a possibility if they move it somewhere else.

So as he put it, is not in somebody's backyard and not just put there.

Is that a possibility?

Is the city even have anything like that?

Because they're spending I don't know how much it is some big money per month for that big facility.

I have to assume there's a reason that they did not bring that up for discussion with it before they did it the first time.

But and then they opened up the second center over by the airport.

That's a transit center for people who have plane tickets.

And that also drew some backlash.

People didn't like the way that came together quietly.

So I don't know what it would look like if they opened that up to what neighborhood wants to put this here permanently.

What about private funding?

How is that going up or down right now?

Private funding for for Catholic Charities and helping them out?

Unclear.

They're relying on that to keep people moving.

But I don't know how many people are arriving without tickets right now.

The the crux of it is that the numbers have been fairly low for a little stretch here.

So it has been manageable.

Is what the city is saying if the numbers go back up?

Yeah, the numbers in terms of the people coming through has actually been lower than they've had before.

Any reason why the people know that the city is running out of resources on the border or they're just going through other places or going off grid or above your pay grade.

Okay.

Runoffs we have in District 23, a big runoff coming up.

You mentioned that earlier.

Yeah.

Talked to some folks in Washington who said that they were not super sympathetic about Tony Gonzalez, the situation that he was warned to take that primary more seriously.

These are Republicans who have money to spend and they don't want to spend it.

Yeah, he had four opponents in that race.

He had a ton of money.

So he is if you remember, he was censured by the state Republican Party and has sort of been we haven't seen him in a little while.

They didn't talk to the local press much about this race has been stuck in D.C. since then, working on spending bills.

He's got an opponent who has Florida Republican Matt Gaetz coming for an event here on Thursday.

So and this is a fairly safe Republican district now.

It was a swing district, used to be the will her district used to be one of the most competitive districts on the House map is no longer considered that.

So the primary is a bigger factor.

All right.

Well, thank you, Andrea did Drusch There's nothing above your pay grade.

We'll ask you all those questions next time as well.

Thank you for coming in.

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

You can see this show again or previous shows.

You can also download the podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org I’m Randy Beamer.

We'll see you next time on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele.

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