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.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record this week, I am Randy Beamer, and we are starting with a project you probably haven't heard much about yet that public input is just starting on.

It is a new project in Brackenridge Park to restore the aquatic ecosystem in the southern part of the park, near the golf course and River road from Mulberry south to 281.

Joining us to talk about that as a general manager of the San Antonio River authority, Derek Boese thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me, Randy.

Now, this is from, Mulberry down to 281.

It's an area most people don't go to because it's next is between the golf course and the River road area.

tell us about what you're looking to do there.

So the purpose of this project, fully federally funded by the Corps of Engineers, is to restore the ecosystem funded through fish passage dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure law.

And it's not just to restore the ecosystem there, but also to add some additional recreational amenities and opportunities in the area for it to make it possible for the public to go there.

Because really, right now, you can't unless you walk from River road.

I guess in this area you would either typically access from the River road neighborhood side, down that public road there, or there is a road called Avenue A that runs on the east side of the river, which is currently open to the public.

But that road is also part of the reason that we're having to do this ecosystem restoration project.

There's a fair amount of vehicular traffic.

people do enjoy fishing in that area, but they tend to park on the bank.

And so that has caused a lot of problems with the bank in that area.

So this project, in addition to the restoring the ecosystem, would actually close that section, and replace that, road there with a hike and bike trail.

There would be a, small parking lot trailhead right by Mulberry for people to be able to park there.

And then they could walk down and still access the same area, to fish or enjoy nature or whatever it might be.

We think of it as close to the golf course, and it's closed off and from Mulberry.

You really can't access it.

Now, what is wrong with the, well, wrong compared to what it should be with the ecosystem there?

You have a number of, non-native trees and plants that have been crowding out some of the beneficial, native plants.

And then you also have erosion.

the banks have some problems in that area.

And so this project is designed to, you know, restore those to a more natural state.

I will say this, stretch of the river is one of the more natural, in the Saint General San Antonio area.

And we want to make sure it stays that way.

And you're not looking to reroute it or widen it or narrow it.

well, you're planting some trees in that area.

Absolutely.

So that, we don't know exactly how many yet, but part of the design process that the Corps is undertaking would be to see how many trees need to be planted in that area, to make sure that the ecosystem is healthy.

And how much does this project cost?

I understand it's all fully funded by the federal government, whereas when you did the study, it was possible the county would pay.

That's correct.

So, when we initially did this study starting in 2018, which completed in 2020, this was envisioned as a more typical Corps of Engineers project, which is, normally 65% paid for by the federal government and 35% by the local sponsor, which had been identified as the river authority in conjunction with Bexar County.

when the corps when the federal government passed the bipartisan infrastructure law, additional funding became available and new programs.

This is actually funded via a fish passage program through the Corps of Engineers.

And it's 100% federally funded, at $13 million.

And now fish passage meaning.

So this project, one of its functions is to allow fish to more freely pass up and down the river through this particular stretch.

it's a, somewhat healthy section of the river.

it does need work.

like the intent of this project.

but there are a number of fish that are in this particular stretch.

I've actually had the opportunity to go out with my scientists and do, electro fishing, sampling, which is where we get in the water.

And waders, we have a backpack that puts a very low current into the water.

It stuns the fish momentarily, does not hurt them.

and then we scoop them up with a net.

the scientists count them and measure them and identify the species, and then we put them right back.

What kind of fish are in that stretch or in all the river?

you've got a whole variety.

I would wish my scientist team was here to rattle them off, but definitely largemouth bass.

and then a number of different varieties of sunfish.

And then you've got very small, you know, minnows and shad and that sort of thing and passage.

So it would come from that upper stretch where they do stock in, what we think of as a park north of Mulberry, south of there in, Riverwalk area, the Pearl.

And below that, people see fish, same kinds of thing.

Now, there's that, flood inlet tunnel.

Correct.

How would they pass through that, under that, into that.

So, you fish can pass through the flood tunnel, that goes under the city and ends up down by Roosevelt.

they can generally go upstream from the Nueva Street, floodgate up to, you know, all the way to the, the headwaters of the river.

but the Nuevo Street Dam is an impediment.

the flood gate, excuse me, up and down, but, in that stretch, they do go.

They do move quite a bit.

You've got.

That's why you have fish in the Riverwalk area.

And the pearl, that people enjoy fishing for and such as?

You're asking for public input now, beginning this week with meetings, the River road Association, the people who live in that area, in the past, have not wanted more access to the river.

It disrupts their neighborhood.

What kind of input have you had or expect, and how do you deal with that?

So when the Corps of Engineers and the River authority did the initial feasibility study from 2018 to 2020, there were a number of public meetings, and neighborhood meetings along the way.

Not much has happened, since the feasibility study was completed in 2020.

Obviously, we had Covid.

That slowed things down, and then there was a matter of getting funding for the project.

bipartisan infrastructure law was passed in 2021, but it wasn't until last year in 23 that the corps was able to identify, federal dollars for this project.

But because of that, there's still some county money that could, as I understand it, and make other improvements along there, including a possibility for, I guess, a kind of, covered with a cage area or trails so that people wouldn't be hit by golf balls from the course.

Yes.

So when, the county passed its Bexar County creeks and trails program a couple of years ago, there was some money set aside in that program, for what was anticipated to be the local cost share of this potential project.

now that it is 100% federally funded by the Corps, we are looking for different ways based on neighborhood feedback, based on stakeholder feedback, to add additional amenities to the project and, short term, for people to wonder, just briefly, the timeline, how much public input and then design and then when would this be complete?

The whole thing, we anticipate design would be done probably sometime in summer or early fall of 2025, and then construction at the latest, complete in 2028.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

Derek Boese general manager of the San Antonio River authority@sarah.org, has more information as a river authority.org.

Thanks very much.

Thank you Randy.

This week you may have noticed temperatures in San Antonio forecast to be about ten degrees higher than average for this time of year.

And we're going to have our first 100 degree day of the year this weekend, which is also earlier than usual.

The city is working on both cool street arts to kind of mitigate the effects of that, as well as Cool Neighborhoods, which is a newer part of the program.

With us to talk about that is Doug Melnick, who is the chief sustainability officer of the City of San Antonio.

Thank you very much for thanks for having me again.

We talked last year about the cool pavement program, Cool Streets and the Cool Neighborhoods is kind of an intensification of that in certain areas.

Tell us about the cool.

Well, how are the Cool Streets program doing?

How is that working?

Well, first I just want to reiterate what you had stated in the opening.

It's getting hotter.

Yes.

last year was the hottest summer on record.

The year before that was the second hottest.

And it's projected that the summer is going to break records again.

And we are, accelerating beyond what we even projected when we, we developed our climate plan.

And this is also because we're talking about a heat island in a city in San Antonio, because of the pavement, because all kinds of things are getting worse, especially in the city compared to everything around.

Correct.

And cities, such as Phenix, LA, Miami, Austin, everyone's realizing, heat is one of our biggest threats.

And so, you're right, we are we're trying to test, mitigation measures.

And so last year we did, deploy a cool pavement pilot program, in every city council district.

The results came back consistent with other studies in other cities, such as La and Phenix, and showed that materials did successfully reduce surface temperature.

we will be working with, our public works department to continue, deploying, cool pavement on a, a pilot pilot basis.

Right now, we're focusing on ten of the city's hottest and most inequitable, neighborhoods, to try to concentrate on the material.

But I think the real big thing is, it's only one, tool in the toolbox.

And that's the idea behind the cool neighborhood program.

Is how do we deploy all of the tools in our toolbox and then continue to work with UTSA to measure, we want to understand what's the magic formula to result in actual neighborhood cooling.

So what are the other tools besides, the new instead of asphalt?

You're putting down something else?

Sure.

It's.

Well, so it's it's again, cool.

Pavement is a reflective, roadway, material.

We're looking at incentives for reflective rooftops.

we're working with our parks department to target, tree plantings in these neighborhoods, low impact development and green infrastructure to help manage stormwater, but also provides cooling, weatherization.

we know a lot of our our residents are struggling.

you know, in terms of paying their utility bills and being comfortable in the home.

So working with CPS to target weatherization, dollars.

The other thing that does is, I'm sure anybody who knows who has an AC unit and emits heat, so if we can, improve the performance of that home, reduce the amount of waste heat coming from air conditioning that can cool the neighborhood.

it could be, spray pads.

it could be, solar pads.

park spray pads, spray pads, and fountains provide cooling.

so it's basically, everything that we could think of that might have a benefit we want to deploy.

the other thing we'll be doing is, installing, air quality sensors, temperatures, temperature sensors.

So we can measure on a in real time over, over a long term.

What is the cooling that we some of the research that you've done does measure the air temperature difference.

How big is that difference.

So 4 or 5 degrees.

Well so with the cool pavement pilot basically what we saw was a reduction in surface temperature around four degrees, which doesn't seem like a lot.

And that's surface temperature.

But compared to a freshly, laid black asphalt street, it's 18 degrees.

So I think in the air.

so, so the air and the research from UTSA saw minimal difference in, in air, temperature.

But again, we're trying to mitigate urban heat island, impact, which really occurs overnight.

what happens is pavement is absorbed, absorbs the sunlight during the day and then all night it radiates.

So if we can reduce that surface temperature, it will help, cooling at night.

But again, that's the reason why cool pavement is one tool.

It needs to be coupled with trees.

it needs to be coupled with, reflective roofs.

the other thing that's so important about mitigating urban Heat Island is when we look at all the temperature trends, that have, impacted our city over the years, the one that's most significant is the number of warm nights, basically, that's not cooling off at night.

And so traditionally in San Antonio, people didn't need air conditioning.

it was able they were able to get, respite at night.

Those days are gone.

And so really trying to mitigate this heat as a, as a public health and as I understand, according to the research, there are the poorer areas of town generally are the hotter areas of town.

And you're still doing research on exactly why that is correct.

we had worked with UTSA, about a year ago to to map the city.

They used satellite data to just look at, surface temperatures.

yes.

As you would expect within 410, you know, where we've got, older neighborhoods, less tree canopy, smaller lot sizes.

we're seeing more roads, more more roads.

You're seeing, higher temperatures, but overlaying, race and income, you really see certain areas of the city, pop.

East side, South side, and particularly the Near West side, are really our target areas right now.

And so you're right, you can't do this for the whole city right now.

And this is a pilot program.

Correct.

Still expanding the pilot program for the streets, but intensifying.

Are the cool neighborhoods going to be in where you have cool streets right now?

Yes.

So what we're doing right now is, we've we've identified four, neighborhoods.

one in the East Side, one in the south side and two in the west side for this cool neighborhood pilot.

And, the first step is taking a look at our public works departments, paving program.

And there's projects within those areas of focus focusing cool pavement there, as well as working with our parks department, our neighborhood housing Services department, CPS and other entities, people who have resources available to, talk with the community, understand what their needs are and ensure that they're taking advantage of any sort of incentives to, to, focus in their neighborhood.

And for those who aren't going to get incentives, though, there are great ideas that you have that you can, you know, if you're putting a new roof on, do this.

If you're putting a new, you know, lawn in, do this or zero scape or whatever it is, so you can go to the square on the web.

So if you go to the, Office of Sustainability, website, that's a good jumping off point.

another, concept.gov.

it's a sustained, if actually if viewers go to, sa sustainability.com, that's our, sustainability dashboard, they can also go to the San Antonio Office of Emergency Management's website.

We have a new, storyboard.

It's a, it's a heat storyboard where residents can learn about, climate change, urban heat island and all the resources available for them to, to help, you know, address what's basically here now.

All right.

Well, thanks very much, Doug Melnick.

Good luck with the cool neighborhoods and cool streets and stay cool, San Antonio.

Great.

Thank you.

Thanks.

On a reporters roundtable this week, we're talking San Antonio water system and some new fees for developers.

But first we're going to talk about what's going on with Toyota on the South side.

They are, just announcing plans to expand their plant, as well as the zoning commission is taking up the issue of whether to implement what's called an overlay district on the area around it.

Joining us to talk about that, Ramzi Ghalioum Gilliam, who has written a story about that for the San Antonio Business Journal.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us about this, controversial but maybe widely misunderstood overlay district that the zoning commission is taking up.

this is one of those rare cases where something the zoning commission is doing is actually interesting.

At least I think so.

but essentially what's going on is the zoning commission is attempting to or at least the city is trying to get the zoning commission to approve a new zoning overlay, which is just sort of like a, a geographic boundary that is governed by a specific set of rules.

That's a very loose definition of what an overlay is.

But, the city is trying to get zoning to approve this new change that would basically block residential development on properties within a two mile radius of the Toyota facility.

And a lot of people who have, land there and want to, you know, maybe pass it on to their kids or maybe make some money with it, selling it to developers that would no longer be possible.

It would no longer be possible, assuming this is passed, that hasn't been passed yet.

But assuming this is passed, it wouldn't be in theory would not be possible.

I'm sure there are variances and ways that people can appeal these kinds of things, on a case by case basis.

But by and large, no, it wouldn't be possible because what the zoning code would essentially say is that residential development is not, it's not a proper use of land around such a heavy industrial development.

and so we don't want people building new homes here.

The code offers protections for people that already have homes in that area, or for people who are already zoned for a residential development.

I believe that it means they would be able to build a home there based on whatever code they already have on that property.

The problem would arise when they go to rezone it.

So a lot of that land right now is zoned agricultural because there's not that much development or there historically has not been much development on the South side.

But that's changing very quickly.

And in 10 or 15 years that might not be the case.

And a very controversial, decision for some people who live there.

A lot of people showed up at the zoning commission, and it was a kind of new to them, as well as to the commission as to what they might do.

Yeah.

So some commissioners I know said that they believe the city was trying to fast track these decisions.

I, I can't say categorically that those I've spoken to a few zoning commissioners at this point who have all told me that it's at least peculiar how quickly it was trying, how quickly it was put on the agenda.

from what I understand, it, typically when items are introduced, it kind of takes a few months of, city staff workshopping the idea until it's on a form that can be presented to the zoning commission.

who will then approve or deny whether they want to recommend it to city council.

City council ultimately makes its own decisions, but they, of course, will take the zoning commission's recommendation.

You know, if they choose to deny that, they need to look at the zoning commission's decision and say why, you know, did they choose to deny it?

And now city council also has to take into account, you know, Toyota's asking for tax incentives to expand the plant, build more, which would bring more jobs to San Antonio.

what does the zoning commission, what's the timeline on that?

They put off a vote.

They put off the vote for two months.

Yeah.

So they postponed the vote by about eight weeks.

60 days, I believe.

July 16th, a that, zoning commission meeting is when they're going to bring the issue back up again.

And, and it's because they wanted to give city staff a chance to bring the issue back up to, Southside residents and give them a chance to maybe understand more of exactly what's going on here, because this whole issue stems from the 2003 agreement that the city signed with Toyota that established actually a three mile buffer around the facility.

The problem is, the city never really enshrined that in the city, code of ordinances.

And so people didn't know that.

They didn't know that they wouldn't be able to put residences on there.

And I think it's been sort of subject there's actually a lawsuit going on right now.

A property owner who wasn't able to build apartments on his property is suing Toyota and the city over this exact issue.

And I think there's just a lack of clarity on what people can and can't do, as well as a lack of clarity on exactly what is guiding whether or not you know, what people can and cannot do, in that radius around the Toyota campus.

And so you're going to be writing on that for a while.

That's, you know, and indefinite kind of thing.

But the, the other story that you've written is about the San Antonio water system and some impact fees for developers changing, going up.

Yeah.

So impact fees are essentially fees that cities are able to not all cities do, but that cities are able to levy on new developments, to help offset the cost of, like, you know, let's say that it's an area that has sort of, you know, a certain water capacity developers, if they start building in huge numbers, which, of course, as we all know, there's a ton of development going on around now in San Antonio because of how many people are moving here.

Fastest growing city, you know, just announced exactly from the census.

Exactly.

And so because of that impact, fees are levied to help, the state of Texas allow cities to levy these fees to help cities pay for new infrastructure that is needed to accommodate those developments.

So the city of San Antonio choosing to increase its impact fees is nothing new.

Typically typically impact fees.

They can go up or down.

The more development you have, the more likely I think it is that development is going to go up.

If you look at it like a line by line, breakdown of the impact fees, you'll see that one of them actually did go down.

The rest of them went up, though, and that's why impact fees are going up.

And part of it is where they are in the area, in the source area, because getting water uphill as hard as they go or.

Yeah, exactly.

Don't think about that gravity.

You go down, they go at the pump it.

and so how big a difference is it for some of these fees going up?

I think they said it was going to be an average 23% increase, which is not too bad considering I say not too bad.

It's not my money that's being invested.

But, it's still, of course, going to be 23% on average translates to developments typically translates to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, depending on the side of overall development.

So the average house for the average single, apartment or house, it would be a 23% increase over the previous fees.

And so what I've heard from developers and home builders is that those fees do, in fact, get passed down to potential homeowners, buyers.

and so that's kind of unavoidable.

And so if you take their word for it, that means it likely does increase the cost of housing.

I haven't personally looked into that, so I don't know.

But several thousand you would think per I say probably a few thousand in San Antonio, maybe a 2 or $3000 increases is likely to be expected.

but it's.

Yeah.

And it's likely to be approved.

This plan that has been approved and city council approved it last week.

And so it will, take effect in July.

Okay.

Yeah.

it was supposed to go into effect in June, but they wanted to give developers a chance to sort of prepare for those increased fees.

But the impact fees here not as, quickly increasing as in New Braunfels.

No New Braunfels again, as fast as San Antonio is growing, New Braunfels is by a relative to its current population, is one of the fastest growing city, I believe in America.

I know that in 2021 is the fourth fastest.

I think last year it was like the 13th fastest.

Most of the top ten are always Texas City is, and a lot of them are out.

And so to pay for that, they have increased by more than 100% in some cases about 120% of their old fees.

before the assessment in 2022 was, something like $12,000.

And that ballooned up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 27,000.

I understand also, you wrote that it's moved a lot of development outside of New Braunfels city limits.

Yeah, yeah.

Which, yeah, I think is was to be expected.

Understandable.

Yeah, yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

You can read all about that in the San Antonio Business Journal.

Ramzi Ghalioum who is a real estate and finance reporter for the Business Journal, thanks very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

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

You can see this show again.

You can watch previous shows as well as download the podcast.

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

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