Speaker 1: San Antonio is a fast growing fast moving community with something new happening every day.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on Speaker 2: I'm Randy Beamer.

And thank you for joining us once again for on the record.

KRN every Thursday night looks at important and interesting topics with Newsmakers and reporters.

And this week, one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest is CPS energy and talk of a rate increase.

And the effects of the winter storm joining us is Paula gold Williams, a CEO.

And thank you for being with us.

First of all, we talked a moment ago about a provisional rate increase in a rate increase you called this week and inevitability.

What does that mean?

And how much are we going to see power bills go up here?

Well, Speaker 1: Randy, thank you so much.

And thanks to your viewers for tuning in to this very timely topic.

Uh, first of all, the, the concept of provisional it's, it's meant to catch people's attention because we are, we look every year at our business and it is a cost plus business.

All the money that we make here gets reinvested back, but all of the revenues that we have, have to cover all of the expenses and, you know, every year, my team and I, the 3,100 employees that work at CPS energy byte to make sure that we don't need a rate increase.

We, we look to have savings every single year, but we've had some big things.

The pandemic, our delinquent accounts have grown and storm Yuri and just the economic downturn has happened.

And so those pressures are out there and we have not declared a rate increase there isn't, there isn't a process that starting tomorrow, but we want to have an open and transparent conversation that these are looking like real pressures.

And that is possible that we may need one.

Sometime if we need one, we think we'll be coming in the fall of this year, right?

Speaker 2: That would be by, as I understand it, somewhere between six and a half and nine and a half percent, that would be somewhere close to $10 to $15 to the average bill per month.

Um, and that is needed because of what you said about a hundred million dollars in delinquent bills because you haven't had shut off since last March plus growth.

Are those the main reasons those are the, Speaker 1: Um, growth and keeping the operations up.

I mean, we need to do some major things.

And I know we want to talk a little bit about URI.

URI made us really realize how much more work across the state that has to happen.

But even outside of that, San Antonio have to keep investing in our infrastructure because normally we have very good reliability, but that happens with investment.

So we have to keep the operations up.

We have to keep making sure that we're able to answer the phones and keep our call rates high, all of those operational things and the pandemic inside of that estimate though, we also have a provision for the financial impact of URI.

Now I want to assure everyone we're fighting those charges.

We're trying to get them down right now.

There are billion dollars more for the year that is more money than we spend all year long.

And those types of costs fuel and energy.

So we, but we put it in there conservatively because we're trying everything we can from talking to elected officials at the state regulators, we're trying to negotiate and we're using litigation.

You're suing, Speaker 2: You're suing ERCOT and about 16 natural gas providers that during this storm, uh, raise rates up to what is it?

16000%.

Now, some have said that the lawsuit, the cost of the lawsuit, uh, could be a detrimental to CPS.

If you don't win, what do you think your, your net is going to be?

And when will you see that?

Well, Speaker 1: You know, I would say that our fees, we haven't tallied them yet because we're early in the process.

I mean, we think it'll pick up some more in the summer, but even if we spend, um, $10 million or $20 million on that, that's nothing compared to a billion dollars and we're using those monies.

And seriously, we already have saved some money.

We saved about a billion dollars in exposure and cash.

The ERCOT wanted us to pay cash up front and take a risk on the market and float our credit.

We fought that and we won.

We also saved about $17 million from another natural gas.

Speaker 2: And how about shutoffs?

You haven't shut off people for those delinquent accounts since I guess more than a year since last March, that's costing CPS, but people want to know still is my power going to be shut off or are you going to resume those shutoffs?

And when well, Speaker 1: That is a great question.

When we are talking about this, our board has very much wanted us to have a public discussion, which intensely started last month, but we talk about it all the time.

It has been over a year, we haven't set the date.

We have monitored across Texas.

Many of our peer utilities have already restarted for us are the whole point is not the cut people off.

What we really want is to make people aware that this is coming, it's becoming eminent, that we will have to do it, but we want to hear from customer.

So if any customer who is delinquent and gives us a call, we're going to help you get any funds that we can get ahold of.

We're looking for some more federal funds.

We have some reap dollars.

We also have an energy angels program.

We have a payment plan, whatever that is.

We want to work with the customers, all of you to make sure that we can help you manage through this process.

And we do know that we're about to hit summer.

We will not shutting people off on high heat days.

This is, it took us over a year to work through the pandemic, the heart of it, and the pandemic still going.

We're going to keep working with our customers, but we have to ultimately get back to normal operations.

And we just want to figure out how to do it working with all of our customers.

All right, Speaker 2: We don't have too much more time, but one of the issues that came up this week, again, uh, through some of the protesters outside that board meeting is one that you had addressed or talked about in January.

And that is possibly closing that JK spruce, uh, coal fired power plant early, but you didn't have a plan yet as to when, what do you tell people about when that might happen?

Speaker 1: Thank you, Randy.

Right before the storm, we put out our resource plan that talked about all of our generating units and how that ultimately you have to retire everything.

And we have looked at our spruce units and talked about whether or not, and how we can close those.

Um, you know, the, the question was we definitely had planned to close them by 2050.

Then there was a conversation about what can we do by 2040, um, the challenge to try to get them both closed by 2030 is a pretty hard task.

And, um, but I think what our point was to put that document out there, and we're going to open up some discussions with all of the community that thought talk about the best way to do that, the best way to make sure that we can maintain reliability as much as in difficult as it is during winter storm URI.

Every single plant had some challenge, but every single plant was needed.

So we wanted to make sure that as we talk to the community, we do it thoughtfully together.

And so more conversations Speaker 2: And back to that rate increase at everybody.

That's what catches people attention.

When you talk about maybe in the fall, when will you announce for, for sure that there would be a power, a rate increase.

When do you think that will happen?

That we'll know it's coming, even if it doesn't happen yet.

And when we'll know it's coming well, we Speaker 1: Really want to get through the summer.

I mean, summer is our big period.

That's our peak period.

So if that has the opportunity for us to potentially make some more revenues in the wholesale or cotton market, and if we can do that and everything stays well, that helps lower any, any rate increase that we might come for in, in past years, it's actually made it.

So we didn't need, once.

We want to get through the summer, our team still is fighting to get costs down and look for other alternatives.

So it won't be till after the end of the summer.

I think we would come forward and talk very definitively about whether or not this is going to be another year without one, or whether we need one probably in the September, October timeframe.

Okay.

All right.

Well, Speaker 2: We appreciate your time.

Thank you very much.

Paula gold Williams of CPS energy.

I know you've been busy and we appreciate, uh, we're talking with us Tonight.

Thanks.

Thank you.

A big change this week at city hall.

It's been in the works for three years or more because city hall is open again after a, now a $40 renovation downtown with us now to explain is rod Sanchez, assistant city manager.

Thanks for coming in.

This is, I guess you said the biggest makeover at city hall since 1927.

Why was this important and why did you need to spend $40 million or Speaker 1: Whether the building was in, it was pretty bad shape.

We must admit, uh, every time we'd have really significant rain, the basement would flood, uh, elevators w we had numerous people get stuck in the elevators, elevator, just old, uh, the electrical system, the plumbing system, uh, you know, mechanical system, the AC, everything was just a need of a major overhaul.

We were band-aiding the building.

They just were spending a lot of money just to upkeep the building.

And, uh, we decided we needed to bring the building up to code.

And while we're doing that, why don't we modernize the building and let's make it have all the modern conveniences of a brand new house.

Speaker 2: And now when people think of city hall, they may think of where the council meets, but that actually moved out of city hall.

A number of years ago, it's in the old, old frost bank building, which is now called the municipal Plaza building.

What's going to be in city hall now again, once it's, Speaker 1: Oh, well, there's a start you out.

We at the basement.

Cause it's, it's basically five stories.

It's four stories in a basement.

So we will have numerous conference rooms in the basement, including a council committee meeting room.

So council committees can now meet in the basement.

We have a room with all the AAV equipment so they can have their meetings there.

Uh, you'd go up to the first floor, the first floor, we're going to have a big B session room.

A recall council right now is meeting there'll be sessions across the street, uh, or bringing that to the city, the city hall.

So big B room.

It's kind of the same size of the old council chambers that used to be there before we made the move.

Speaker 2: B sessions are when the council gets together and formally and meets before the big Thursday public meeting at the council chambers, Speaker 1: Correct?

They meet on Wednesdays at two o'clock in the afternoon and don't take any official action, but, uh, the chance it's usually big, heavy media items.

We get to brief them on and get, get some feedback before we take it to them for official.

Speaker 2: And then the officer's like the mayor has moved up to the second floor.

Some of the other city council members are second floor and above city manager Speaker 1: As well.

So the second floor is the mayor and his staff and the manager and his staff on the second floor.

And then on the third and the fourth board, those are our council offices.

And what we did is we created council suites.

So the third floor is districts one through five.

The fourth floor is six through 10.

All suites are identical.

You have a council.

The council person's office is in the back and their staff is up front.

So we're not going to have the same situation that we used to have a few years ago where the senior council member, one of the corner office, or one of the office that had this or that all the offices look the same.

Speaker 2: Now, when you say sweet, it sounds fancy, but they need that basically for their staff in terms of the size of the office.

Correct.

And now this also, uh, was a little tough because, uh, the, uh, ADA requirements to get a ramp in the front of that historic building, and some of the other things you need to do for security.

Now, I understand for some of the changes to make it a little more expensive than you thought it, Speaker 1: It was sure, uh you're right.

Uh, for folks that were, you know, in a wheelchair, the only way for them to get in the building was, was through the basement.

There's a back in the back of the building, there was a ramp and that was the only way for them to get into the city hall.

Uh, so Councilman Travenia really spearheaded that effort and no, I mean, they should be able to walk in front of the building like everybody else.

So we put two big ramps going to the corners of the property.

So anybody in a wheelchair could have access to that front, uh, that front door of city hall.

Uh, so that was, that was costly.

Uh, and you're right.

Uh, uh, there were numerous incidents, uh, at government buildings for people to walk in with guns.

And what have you, people tragically died.

And, and our city manager, you know, took the position.

He didn't want that to happen there.

So we spent an extra $900,000 upgrading all the security in the building.

So everybody, uh, visitors will continue to walk through the metal detectors, but now staff will as well.

Uh, we've created these rapid gates where we flash our badge and it scans us for any, any metal.

And then it lets us, let's just go through Speaker 2: And now people might think, oh, this is going to make a palace out of it wasting taxpayer money.

But really some of the things you had to do, where to get it just up to code and to keep some of the old, as I understand it, like the old tiles still going to be there, some of them historic stuff, Speaker 1: Right.

It was a, it was a huge effort, uh, cause we it's a historic building.

So obviously you have to take extra care with an historic building Speaker 2: If I'm just the average citizen and I want to come down and I see it, what can I see from the inside?

Because you can't see all of it because of a security, right?

Speaker 1: You can get on the first floor, you can see those meetings rooms that we talked about.

You can see the, just that entrance, you know, that there's all the panels and what have you there, uh, obviously folks that have appointments, we'll be able to get access through the rest of the building.

Speaker 2: Did you discover anything unusual in there when you were redoing a historic building like this?

I know it was a Luby's in the city council chambers now, and they found like forks and catch-ups and things like that when they read it that the old city council did, they find things from way back.

I didn't hear of anything Speaker 1: Crazy.

Uh, I do know that there were numerous stops on the job when they were outside doing some work.

Anytime you, you dig below so many inches in the ground, the hit something that looks suspicious, they had to stop and bring in the archeologist and, you know, make sure we weren't disturbing a grave site or, or something like that.

So, Speaker 2: And now this is going to be a domino effect of people moving back to where they were.

And also some of the city people moving out of that municipal Plaza building, and eventually over into the, the frost bank, the old frost bank, which is going to be city tower, city tower, that's where all the city officers are going to be, that you want to go in and see.

Um, and then above where city council chamber is.

Now that's going to be Western urban and housing.

Speaker 1: That's right.

It's going to be condominiums.

Speaker 2: And how about Plaza artists where the city council offices are now and the mayor temporarily, um, what is that going to become or go back to, Speaker 1: Right.

It's going to go back to, there was a department of arts and cultural affairs.

We'll get to go back to their offices and our government office.

We'll get to go back in there as well.

What's the next big project for you?

Yeah.

We're going to focus on getting that city tower done.

That's that, uh, you know, we still have another year or so of renovation.

Uh, that job is actually a little bit more complicated because folks are still officing in that building.

So we're having to, as they're working work around it.

So with city hall, uh, as long as it took us, I mean, we, we had the luxury of moving people out and getting the whole building, uh, 30 towers a little bit more complicated because there's folks still Speaker 2: There.

And so no break, appreciate your time.

And good luck with that.

I remember back in the eighties when it was a whole different building there at city council, not that I was complaining, but rod Sanchez, assistant city manager.

Thank you for coming in.

Thank you.

And as city council is moving back into that newly renovated city hall, some changes are coming for city council aids in terms of more money, better retirement plan and covering that Jackie Wang of the San Antonio report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, what does this mean?

This has actually been in the works for a year and a half or so, but council aids had gotten together.

The reason this happened, I understand is they had an anonymous group that got together and were, were protesting really for, for some kind of standardization of what they do and how much they get paid and what they would uh, know about their jobs.

Yeah, I understand the same thing.

Um, I think this is actually, maybe even even longer than a year and a half now.

Uh, I believe Councilman Trevino first filed a CCR, uh, council consideration requests for the council to look at pay ranges and all of that pain better, um, back in August of 2019.

And it's almost June, which makes it two years, um, which is crazy.

Uh, but yeah, so this has been in the works for a really long time.

Um, that anonymous group, uh, I don't know what became of them, but you know, they've got those standardized ranges.

Now they've got more pain and they've got better.

And now each city council member right now has roughly what seven aids they can.

They can decide what they want to paint them, which is kind of surprising to me that, uh, some council aids are paid differently because of which council person they're, they're paid by.

And it's not, they're paid by, but the council person can decide now that's going to change.

Now.

There's also going to be benefits.

Yes.

So the benefits, I think, were the biggest part of what happened last week.

Um, because before, uh, city council, staff, city, council aids, whatever you want to call them, um, I think they had access to an IRA.

Um, but now they get to have a retirement plan through the Texas municipal retirement system, which is a pension.

And then not only do they have to contribute 6%, um, the city will match that twice over.

So they're approximately matching my 12%, I believe.

So it's not bad.

It's not vested until they're five years in.

Yes.

But also a big difference.

Now, we're not sure.

I don't know what this means is that until now they've been basically independent contractors.

They're more or less going to be.

City employees are treated as city employees.

Is that going to change what they do, how they do it and whether they can stay in that position through different councils.

I don't think that changes really any of that.

The only thing that's different now is that their pay and their benefits mirrors that of civilian city employees.

So everybody else, um, and now they're going to be housed under a local government corporation, um, which just gives them, I guess, structure to be a body instead of each one being independently.

But they still have to work basically at the pleasure of the city council person, because somebody is going to come in with one set of ideas and they don't want the same people who are implementing those Before.

Yeah, I imagine that will not be changed at all.

Okay.

And now is this having any other practical benefits in terms of making it easier for a person to get hold of people?

You think there's, there's going to be a little more standardization in how they do that.

Each of the council people before had a paid city employee as secretary, Right?

That's still in place.

I don't think that changes either, But, uh, this is one of those things that it's not going to change anything in terms of a budget as well.

It's not that big a budget change and they had already budgeted for this.

They had Already budgeted for this.

That also happened January, 2020 when they first establish what pay ranges they wanted for each position.

Are you looking forward to that new city hall and covering it down there?

Yeah.

So, oh my Gosh.

That was my first time seeing it back on Friday.

It is very nice.

I have no idea what it looked like before.

Um, but it has a lot of natural light and that's kind of, I'm a sucker for That.

Yeah.

I can tell you what it looked like before, but we're out of time.

All right.

Thank you very much, Jackie Wang, you can check out more on the story at the San Antonio report, after the long battle about what's going to happen on Alamo Plaza, it looks like the latest plans are set in place.

Kind of our next guest is going to tell us all about it because he knows everything there is to know about the Alamo you've covered this forever.

Yeah, that's right.

That's what it says right here.

Uh, Scott Huddleson and the San Antonio express news.

Thanks for coming in now, you've reported on all the controversies and the different Alamo plans have been.

I don't know how many over the past couple of decades, what is the latest on what's actually going to happen in the Plaza?

And in this specifically, now that Woolworth building, where we are going to see the museum, Speaker 1: There've been three plans by my account, but who's counting.

Um, so there was a major development last week where the bear county commissioners agreed to commit up to $25 million in matching funds for a museum.

And we saw conceptual designs for that, uh, for the first time, because the project, as you know, has been at a standstill for about six months since the Texas historical commission decided not to, uh, provide a permit for relocation of the cenotaph.

Um, and then, uh, some of the fundraisers with the project, um, decided to pull out.

So what we saw was a design for retaining preserving those three, uh, historic state owned structures on the west side of the Plaza, the Crockett palace and Woolworth buildings, um, would remain mostly intact.

At least the, the Crockett in the Woolworth would, um, the palace would be essentially gutted Speaker 2: And in the middle, right.

Basically a facade, right?

Speaker 1: It would, it would serve as kind of like a center, um, atrium open space, uh, for ticketing and with, uh, some kind of a bridge system connecting the two buildings on either side, which would house, uh, galleries of this new mule.

And Speaker 2: Also there would be a civil rights museum or area or a recognition of what the Woolworth building meant in the civil rights history of San Antonio.

Right.

Speaker 1: Um, as you know, it's been kind of a long involved, uh, process of understanding what exactly happened in 1960, but the Woolworth building housed one of seven lunch counters that peacefully desegregated that year, um, at a very important time when lunch counters across the country were a focal point in the civil rights movement.

Um, and so that's considered a very large milestone for San Antonio as part of the civil rights movement at that time.

So there will be, I think about 800 square feet set aside for a ground level, um, exhibit associated with that, that people can come and access for free, um, probably through an entrance along Houston, Speaker 2: But people might be most interested or very interested to find out there's going to be some kind of 4d, uh, representation of what happened at the Alamo, uh, in where tomb writer 3d was, what's that going to entail and look like, or what do we know about it, Speaker 1: The conceptual plan that they showed for that, um, that would be on in the Crockett building on the ground floor.

But, um, as you probably know, there are basements under each of those three buildings.

Um, and the fact that there are basements or, or why, um, archeologists believe that there's nothing left of the remnant of the Alamos, uh, west wall that was on, that would have been, um, under those buildings, it was all taken out.

Um, so what you're talking about, the 4d theater that would be on the ground floor of the Crockett building, and they would use that basement space to kind of raise and these different kinds of sets, um, to, to convey like a sense of depth and provide different kinds of perspectives of the now, Speaker 2: As, as much as we've had controversy over how to represent the Alamo, you know, the, the battle of the Texas historical commission last fall, you know, some people want it, the Davy Crockett style, some people wanted the entire, the other direction.

What are we going to have in terms of battles over what that representation is in this museum?

Speaker 1: There's a nine page vision and guiding principles document, which is, um, the, what they call their north star for the project.

Uh, this is a huge $450 million public private project.

And so, um, that's kind of explained in this nine page document, um, obviously the battle and the siege are the most recognized event that ever occurred at the site, but the goal of the project is to tell all of those periods of history, um, starting with, you know, um, the indigenous people of the land and then the mission era, and then the conversion of that mission.

Speaker 2: And you don't think this is going to run into the same kind of controversies that the plan has before you think this is actually gonna happen.

And, and what is it now down to about $250 million total project we're looking at now, and they're still raising money for it Speaker 1: 50 to 300 million for the museum itself.

Um, but I think that there's enough consensus enough of a general idea.

Yes, there's always going to be these controversies, uh, you know, disagreements about, you know, specific issues.

Um, but I think that there's general agreement that there will be a true and accurate telling of the stories of the Alamo based on primary sources.

All Right.

Well, thank you very much.

Scott Huddleston, speaking of true and accurate stories, kids, this is a newspaper I just like to bring in kids as a prop to show people Scott Huddleson in San Antonio express news reporter.

Thanks for coming in here.

Appreciate it.

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

You can see this show again, or previous shows as well as our podcast at KLRN dot org.

We'll see you then.