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'm Randy Beamer, and we're starting this week was kind of a follow up to what we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

And that is the city's negotiations with the firefighters union, the contract they are talking about or not talking about.

We'll find out the latest with City Manager Eric Walsh.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Where are we in the negotiations?

So we started here several months ago.

And, will be working with them through at least the end of June to negotiate a new agreement there.

Their current agreement expires at the end of December.

And so we started early, with the, Fire Association to get an agreement in place before the end of the year.

But our talks actually going on right now, they were kind of in an impasse, I guess, a while back.

We haven't had a meeting in the last three weeks or so.

We are working to schedule more dates with them towards the end of the month.

End of the month.

It's negotiations, right?

We've got to be able to go through the process of hammering out the details of the agreement.

I'm confident that we'll get there at some point.

it's just going to require us to continue to roll over.

We had Joe Jones, who is the president of the firefighters Association, and a couple of weeks ago and said, you're still pretty far apart.

your offer compared to their latest offer right now, what's the difference?

Yeah.

So no doubt that we are we are quite, quite a bit apart.

The, the firefighters are looking for about a 38 or 39% increase in pay over three years.

And the city has offer, a little over 21% over five years.

So there's about a $360 million difference in, in, in those dollars, 360 million over five years.

Over three years.

And why are you so far apart?

Well, because part of that is because of, the difference in wages that the both sides are talking about.

there's also a union request to add a fourth shift within the fire department, and that would require us to add about another 400 firefighters over that five year period.

So those two, combined with the wage differences, is really generating our $360 million.

Now, Joe Jones said over the past.

ten years, well, five years of that, they were negotiating the last contract or the current contract.

And so they didn't get that raise during that time.

After that time, they went to arbitration.

They got a raise.

But over that ten years, he said they technically, lost about 20%, compared to what they wanted.

Well, so, I don't know where that math came from.

The 20% cut, I think he said effective.

There have been no pay cuts at the fire department.

we, before ten years ago, we were highly competitive against other major Texas cities, fire departments.

we are still highly competitive in terms of take home pay and total compensation.

Now, the the I think what Joe's referring to is, the fire union, chose to go to arbitration in 2019.

So we're operating, collectively with the union under an arbitration ruling from, early 2020. that's a decision that the fire union made.

So they didn't get as as good a settlement as they had hoped.

They didn't get as good a contract.

I suspect not, right.

But we had an arbitration panel that takes the decision out of the council's hands and out of the firefighters hands and makes an independent already that's been brought up for this time.

How likely is it you think you'll go to arbitration at this time, even though you haven't?

You're not at the end of the contract time yet.

Well, so the arbitration is at the sole discretion of the fire union under the city charter.

I'm hoping that we get something done at the table.

if we need a little bit of help collectively, then mediation is always an option.

Bringing in a third party that kind of nudges the sides together.

but ultimately, that's a question of whether or not the firefighters want to go to arbitration.

What about the firefighters starting pay?

I understand that's one of the issues that they want higher starting pay to get more people, that there it is.

I think you said a little tougher to recruit people now and brain drain was a word he used that he used to be a destination fire department here.

And now it is not.

So out of our 1800 firefighters, we had eight leave for other circumstances last year.

And we have 2200 applicants, for, for open positions.

So we're not seeing a departure, from the fire department, nor are we seeing a waning of interest to become a firefighter with 2200 applicants.

How about how many can you hire?

Because that's another issue.

They're having to work overtime to figure that there are not enough firefighters right now.

So they're working overtime, but not because it's on the firefighters.

And there's two different types of overtime.

most firefighters work 24 hours on and 48 hours off.

They work a 56 hour workweek.

So within their normal schedule that they go that they have to report to the fire station.

There's a certain amount of overtime that's built into their normal paycheck every two weeks.

That's so that's what they're calling mandatory overtime.

If you're required to be at work at 830, then that's mandatory, right?

So, the other portion of overtime is voluntary.

And so, we have firefighters that will volunteer for fire for fire overtime in that 48 hour period that they're off.

and that is part of their total compensation.

And I'll be honest with you, I think, we have a lot of young firefighters that will hustle to take those those overtime shifts as part of their total compensation.

But, the, the, the viewpoint of that, it's mandatory and they're being overworked.

I disagree with, there have been times during Covid where we had staffing issues in the height of Covid, and it was mandatory overtime.

We needed to have staff on on site.

The fire department was absolutely critical during Covid, but in a normal cycle, mandatory overtime as part of their regular works because, he was saying that your average base rate for some of the people are 60 to 70,000 base pay.

Mandatory overtime, he said, was misleading because it was about 109,000 now.

Well, so so there are there are different.

I'll call three different components of firefighters wages or total compensation.

One is salary.

two are premium pays that firefighters receive for being certified firefighters.

For an EMT being paramedics, there's like a there's a whole layer that's built into the contract.

And then third is the overtime piece.

Overtime can range depending on the the the the firefighter and their willingness to work overtime.

But every firefighter, whether they want to volunteer for overtime or not because of their work schedule, has overtime built in because of their 56 hour workweek.

So that part of that is mandatory.

How much of the city budget?

most of the city budget is public safety, police and fire.

You don't want to spend this much on fire, because are we going to go over that?

Well, so we have a financial policy that we spend less than 66% of our general fund budget on public safety, and right now we're at about 60.5 or 61%.

So as we're gauging, the value of of proposals, in addition to maybe other improvements to public safety, police or fire, our guide is to stay below that.

I think I think we're well below that right now.

that's not a that's not been a major driving factor, as of right now, because we've built some, some cushion into that.

You know, the council will be looking at, additions to the police and fire department in terms of additional personnel.

So we'll need to make sure there's allocations within our budget to be able to grow.

As we were talking before the cameras started rolling in, San Antonio is the fastest growing city in the country.

So with that growth comes the additional demand for services.

So we need to make sure that we've got firefighters and police on more stations are going to get more fire stations, he was saying that we have 54 in San Antonio, much bigger than Austin where they have 52. what what are the planning right now for how many more fire stations can we get?

How soon?

So over the next five years, we're planning on replacing fire stations with larger stations, which will allow us to add additional crews to to expand the capacity.

but they won't be any closer to some of those areas where there's no I mean, farther away.

No, because we've got three of our fire stations, three of our 54 are temporary stations.

So we need to build new stations.

That's included within our capital budget.

We have, a fire station, two fire stations in our bond program that we're replacing with larger stations.

The larger station gives us the ability to have more crews.

More crews give us the ability to respond to different types of incidents.

and some of those stations that we've got that we're replacing, one is over 100 years old.

Some of the other issues that people have seen in the paper are whether the city council should be talking about their the, the negotiations in public or private.

And the city attorney had recommended that they talk about them in public because in private you said there were leaks.

There's the block of five city council people who then asked for Andy Segovia, to lose his job.

You said he shouldn't, but that you were going to talk to him.

Where are we in that?

So we had a very good conversation.

Very good conversation with the council, which was which which was the point of that.

and have, kind of reset that conversation.

I think that probably part of this obviously is a public policy issue in negotiation is under state law, there are certain things we can talk about behind closed doors, as it relates to either real estate or economic development or collective bargaining.

And there's there's some of this that needs to happen out in the open.

And at some point that's going to happen.

that was a, a good effort that we had, we went through two weeks ago where there leaks.

Is that why?

you know, that's what some people that's what Andy Segovia was saying.

Were there leaks?

Was that hurting negotiations?

There was a lack of confidence at the time.

after my meeting with the council, two weeks ago, I'm confident that that won't occur going forward.

What did you say to Andy Segovia?

So I think Andy is an excellent city attorney.

Andy, shoot straight.

does not tell me what I want to hear.

he is a trusted advisor.

there are some things that we can do differently in terms of communication.

with the council, and we'll work on those.

but I have the utmost, respect for Andy.

So going forward, how much of the negotiations talk between the city council will be public compared to private executive session?

Some of it will be an executive session, appropriately so.

And then some of it will be out in the open when we get to that point.

the negotiation sessions with the fire association under state law, we post those those are open meetings.

So anybody can watch those.

We actually televise them.

So all of that process is out in the open.

There are aspects of it that need to happen behind closed doors so that we're making sure I'm getting that.

I'm getting the input I need from the council and feedback in terms of where we're going next.

Are you don't have another meeting scheduled though right now?

No.

We're schedule.

We're we're working with the Association of Pick Dates in June.

How optimistic are you that you'll have this done by the end of the year when it looks absolutely optimistic it will get done and then, you know, all this other stuff is going to go away.

The block of five, the wanting to have all the stuff public, Andy Segovia and the city attorney issue.

Well, I'm I'm confident about the city attorney issue.

I think there's still going to be public conversation, but there has to be this is this is our second largest expenditure in our in our city.

So we'll have that public conversation.

but I'm, I'm confident that we'll get to an agreement with the fire association.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

That is the city manager, Eric Walsh.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Texas A&M San Antonio has a new program aimed at helping the mental health of young people on the South side.

Here to tell us all about it.

It's kind of groundbreaking.

Program for that area is Professor Stephen Lenz, who is a professor in the Department of Counseling, health and kinesiology at Texas A&M San Antonio.

Thanks for coming in.

Oh, thanks so much for having me.

Tell us about this program and why it is needed, especially in that area.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

so this program, the South Bexar County Mental Health Awareness Project is really centered around this idea that, you don't have to be a mental health professional to make a mental health difference.

and whereas I believe that that is true across the lifespan, our project really focuses on providing that early support and early intervention for individuals in that K through 16 pipeline, meaning teachers, friends, counselors, drivers, bus crossing guards, school nurse.

at the college level, we're thinking about things like your resident advisor, for folks who are living in the dorm rooms, teachers, academic advisors, things.

So this is K through 16.

That's right.

Through the college years.

That's right.

And how does the training work?

so the training, we, we have, it's designed to be partner based, right.

So we're doing a lot of outreach and a lot of coordination, with, school districts on the South side, but also within the university footprint.

So Alamo colleges, our own, university as well.

it is an eight hour training.

We're providing mental health first aid certification, to individuals who complete the course with us.

and then really, that's centered around, increasing knowledge about mental health challenges, awareness of the influence of stigma, but then also awareness of the resources that we do have, on the south side.

And then there's a part of the training that's very skill based, because we want folks to leave, feeling confident, but also having some practice in how do I approach someone when I recognize these early signs and symptoms, skill based?

When you say that, what specifically how do you how do you teach that what you tell them to say?

Yeah, well, we don't tell them to say we support them.

And understanding how, they can have these conversations with folks in the spaces where they are given the community that they work in and given the, the backgrounds and the role of, uniqueness.

What are the kinds of problems that are going unrecognized that can lead to something much more serious than a teacher, a bus driver someone can recognize?

And how do they do that?

What are the main things?

Yeah.

So some of this is distinguishing, between noticing changes.

Right.

And one of the things that we we talked to, the folks that we train about is recognizing something as, a new change.

Right.

And how often have I noticed this change in this individual?

how long has it been going on and how intense is that?

And from there really deciding, you know, is this something that is a crisis or is this something that may become a crisis?

And in either case, how do I reach out to this person?

How do I just let someone know, you know, I see you, I'm available.

and develop that approach.

And is that needed a lot more than we think, than the average person thinks?

You know, I, I think I think you can't be too helpful.

And in these cases.

Right.

in the, in the life of a young person, letting them know that you're available, to, to share or to talk or just to, to support, I think a little of that goes a long way.

And there aren't maybe as many clinicians, mental health experts, doctors overall in certain parts of town than there are in other parts of town.

Is that one of the reasons you wanted to do this?

Exactly.

So what we noticed, just kind of looking at epidemiological data is Southbury County is actually a health provider shortage area, for, for many health providers.

And so, you know, again, that that fits nicely with our premise that you don't have to be a mental health clinician to make a mental health difference.

And so there are a number of great universities here in town training clinicians, training your mental health counselors, your school counselors, we recognize that that is a much, much needed push, for the workforce.

And so what we're looking at is this other layer of the workforce, for folks in these high catchment areas, like a K through 12 school setting, who can provide those early supports and kind of be a part of the collective efforts when are they being trained?

Saturdays, evenings.

Or how does that work?

We do those we also, we train folks, Monday through Sunday and we've done things on Wednesday.

It's it's really about finding, that coordinated time that works.

and is this a, the mental health certification is that much like first aid certificate and the similar kinds of courses, that kind of thing.

It is it's a it's a great point.

So the mental health first aid, there's a track for youth and then there's a track for adults, particularly in higher ed settings.

those are bona fide certifications to the National Council of Mental Well-Being.

Right.

Just like we may see medical first aid being offered by the Red cross.

and so completing our course, going through that training, completing that training, leads to a three year certification.

Is this something fairly new across the country?

You said there are other schools here, other people that are doing it, or organizations in different parts of town.

But obviously if it's on the south side near the first, it's got to be fairly new across the country.

Well, you know, I think mental health promotion, and trying to understand how we can support individuals, who are experiencing mental health challenges and, and even apart from that, how we can just, do things that are developmental now, but generally differ across the lifespan.

that's not new.

I think for us, what we're what we're a part of is a wave of understanding how we can be innovative, how we can think in the new spaces to do that.

Is it more important now than ever after the pandemic, or are you seeing more problems and kids that need intervention early?

Well, I think that there's a myriad of, issues that converge on to the development of young people, right?

I mean, think, think, yes, the pandemic, I mean, that that got all of us right.

but think about something like cyberbullying, you know, dealing with an online kind of identity and footprint.

And how do you reconcile that in your non online life?

there's a lot of problems kids didn't have 20 years ago or 30 years ago that you and I didn't have them.

I don't remember that at all.

Thanks very much.

Appreciate it.

Professor Stephen Lens from Texas A&M San Antonio, thank you for having me.

On our reporters roundtable this week, there's been a change at what used to be called the West Side Development Corporation, now called Prosper West.

And out of that has come some changes, or at least a deeper look at some other organizations here as well.

Joining us to talk about that is business reporter Tracy O'Dell Hamilton of the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, what started all this look into, what's going on now, the changes that are taking place.

Right.

So there are three nonprofits that the city supports with money, and each one of them are supposed to help small businesses on the east side, the south side and the West Side.

Prosper West helps businesses on the west side.

South side first helps businesses on the south side and San Antonio.

Growth for the East side or Sage works on the east side.

And several months ago, the city of San Antonio audited the contract between the Economic Development Department and Prosper West.

And what it found was that the department wasn't really carefully looking at and managing that contract.

And so the department decided to look at all three contracts that it had with these business development organizations.

And even though each one of them were allocated money in the 2024 general fund budget, the city put a pause on that.

While it looked deeper into how are these organizations managing?

What do they need?

And in the meantime, they asked another nonprofit called Lisk to help these business development organizations.

They did a needs assessment, and they're giving them board training.

But meanwhile, these organizations have not yet gotten money from the city.

And it looks like it's unclear whether they will in the future.

Is it because of their different goals or the outcomes or what they plan to do and a difference with the city?

Yeah, it's a little bit unclear.

Prosper West, which used to be the West Side Development Corporation, was actually formed by the city to be a local government corporation.

A lot like Brooks and Port San Antonio, but the city never conveyed land to the West Side Development Corporation that it would be able to redevelop and use to help other businesses.

West Side Development Corporation changed its name to Prosper West maybe a year ago, and it has started getting into the redevelopment business and it purchased facility from the old building on the west side, and it's redeveloping it, and it's going to have, office spaces for small businesses.

It's going to have co-working space, retail, maybe even a beer garden.

And the idea is that will give Prosper West a steady revenue stream so that it can then turn around and help other small businesses.

And when we think of helping small businesses, we think of grants, training, things like that.

Is that what the city wants it to do instead of buying and renovating and doing that on its own?

Yes.

The city is definitely interested in making sure that these business development organizations are connecting with the businesses in these geographical areas and making sure that they have access.

What surveys have found is a lot of small businesses don't know where to go.

So even though these groups exist, plus the city funds launch S-A, which is a small business organization that's also designed to support small businesses.

And there's geekdom.

There's a lot of resources in San Antonio.

The hard part has been connecting small businesses to those.

We think of.

Chambers of commerce, which was South Side first, used to be the Chamber of Commerce on the south side changed its name.

And there are other groups here that are also helping to develop small businesses.

Why don't people know where to go?

That's a really good question.

You know, just yesterday I sat through the city, was awarding some what they call second stage grants.

And these are for businesses that are not small businesses anymore.

They're medium sized businesses between 1 million and 5 million in revenue, between 10 and 99 employees.

Only a dozen businesses applied for these grants.

So clearly the word is not getting out.

Whatever traditional ways these organizations have gotten the word out, it hasn't really been working.

One thing Prosper West is doing and the other business development organizations hope to do, is a program that literally sends people out door to door, knocking on businesses doors to say, what kind of help do you need?

Because a lot of times, for example, it's it's great if a business can do business with the city, but they don't know how to get started, they don't know how to get bonded.

And so the resources are there.

We just have to get them connected.

After this order, they're going to be changes in policy, anything from the city before they give money to these different groups.

Again, that's a really good question.

So the city is in discussion now for the 2025 budget and the economic development Department has said that as part of those discussions, they're going to be talking to the council.

What do we want these business development organizations to be doing?

Does it make sense for the city to fund them?

Should they be doing their own fundraising?

And so I think that's going to be determined probably over the summer.

How much money are we talking for these groups that they had or have allocated but haven't been given yet?

It's several it's tens of thousands of dollars, maybe as much as a couple hundred thousand over two years.

And this is money for operating expenses.

So this is paying salaries and paying rent.

and and they also all do their own fundraising, of course.

And they have boards of directors that they can lean on to.

But it's going to be an open question whether the city's going to fund them in the future.

So they may or may not go out of business, or they have other revenue streams, so they may stay in business at a smaller scale.

We'll see and you'll report on it.

I'll report on it.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Tracy.

Adele Hamilton San Antonio reports and business report.

Appreciate you coming in.

You bet.

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

You can see the show again.

You can watch previous shows.

You can download the podcast as well.

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 Dufilho