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, and thank you for joining us for On the Record this Week.

I'm Randy Beamer.

We're starting with a couple of projects there or talking about at City Council this week at least one of them was started by district nine Councilman John Kerridge, who joins us.

And the other one is something we're going to be talking about probably for months.

We'll get to that marvelous project in just a few minutes.

But first, the voluntary weapons exchange program that, some people use different names for.

But that's coming up this Sunday.

Why is it important to do this and exactly what is being done this Sunday?

What can you do if you have a gun?

Well, thank you, Randy, for inviting me to talk about this.

You know, this is the second time we're doing this.

About one year ago, we had the first weapons exchange and the concept behind it is people today may be accumulating weapons in their home that may have come from another family member, or may have come from an inheritance.

Or maybe they were hunters for years or enjoyed, you know, guns.

But at this time in their life, they feel like they no longer need them.

Maybe they have more children or grandchildren in their family and they want to make their home safer.

And so, you know, this is an opportunity for people to take weapons they no longer want and exchange those for H-e-b gift cards so that, maybe they can have a little extra something for Thanksgiving or buy some gifts, for children, grandchildren come Christmas using, you know, those, gift cards at H-e-b?

How much money can they get?

It's different for different kinds of guns, right?

If you bring in, let's say an old shotgun or a long hunting rifle, you're no longer using, you'll get $100 in H-e-b gift cards if you bring in, a, revolver, a pistol, a handgun.

That'll be $150 if you bring in a semi-automatic rifle and along the lines of an AR 15, or what some people might call a machine gun, you'll get $200 in H-e-b gift cards.

And where's the money coming from?

Well, I've asked out into the community to support this.

I've had several council members who have helped support it making contribution.

We've had, religious organizations that have made contributions, the Archdiocese of San Antonio and individuals who feel like they want to contribute to helping people make their home safer.

And any time you bring up, getting guns off the streets, some people see that as, oh, they're coming for my guns.

Some people call it a gun buyback.

What do you tell people who are a little worried about that?

Well, you know, I guess if you just hear bits and pieces about what we're doing, you may feel that way, but this is all voluntary.

No one's being, required or demanded.

We're just offering an opportunity for people to get weapons out of their homes if they don't want them.

And I think it's critical right now because we're hearing too much of gun deaths in our city.

You know, in my district, just last week, a young person killed their mother, their father and themselves with a handgun in their home.

And I'm afraid there's too much opportunity for those things to continue as long as there are unwanted or unneeded weapons in people's homes.

And accidental deaths.

Oh, absolutely.

And suicide.

And you see, you know, today we have children finding a gun at home and taking it to school.

I mean, that makes no sense to us as a community and keeping ourselves safe.

Where did you come up with the, the cost or how much you're giving people per gun?

It's a little less than last year.

Right.

Well, we we just did an analysis of if people wanted to go out and purchase, a weapon out in the open market, whether it's, going to, a store that sells guns or something that sells used guns or anything.

We felt like we're pricing them a little bit more at the market rate.

And there's a limit on the number of guns.

You think that will come in.

And again, this is Sunday from noon to five at the Alamodome.

That's right.

This Sunday, the 24th.

And yeah, we're we're limiting it to no more than ten weapons that they can exchange for the gift cards.

Last time we let it be up to 20.

But we had people waiting that had been there an hour or two in line, and we ran out of gift cards.

So we wanted to give more people an opportunity to make their home safer by, you know, getting rid of any guns in a while.

And now, where did exactly did you get the idea?

It's been done similar programs across the country.

And what's the, the take away from last year's.

Is there any way to measure how successful it was and what you wanted to do?

Well, I think it was very successful.

You know, there have been weapons exchange programs or what other people may call a gun buyback program in other cities.

And I was probably more inspired by the success that Houston has had over the last few years.

And they've had several, and they felt it's been very successful for their community.

It's something I really wanted to do in 2018, but I didn't see the community support financially at that time.

But I think over the history of what's gone on in our community and around Texas and around the country, a lot more people are thinking more about making themselves, their homes safer, their children, their grandchildren.

You know, there's too much suicide.

There's too much domestic violence with handguns, things of that nature.

And so we're getting more support from the community.

And, we've got more partners working with us on this.

So it just seems like this is a good time and a good opportunity in our community.

And briefly now, the project marble that, been in the news, you've been briefed on it earlier this week and be talking about it.

It's up to a $4 billion project that would include possibly a new arena for the Spurs.

Do you think that's overshadowing the rest of this project?

That could include a hotel, renovation of the Alamodome, convention center, etc.?

Well, you know, I'm going to say that there's a lot of speculation out there.

$4 billion is a speculation.

I have not heard anything like that from anybody that.

We've heard up.

Yeah.

But I think it'll be, a lot less than that.

However, as far as I'm concerned, the city is not going to spend $4 billion on a project like this.

If there are developers, if there are sports teams, owners that want to go ahead and help expand the entertainment area, downtown San Antonio, it's going to be on their dime more than our dime.

I've felt that way with, baseball stadium that we're looking at right now.

It's the developers who are going to be paying for all that in the long run.

And I have a belief that growth, whether it's, homes or commercial property or sports growth, needs to pay for itself.

And so I expect that we're going to be looking at plans and ideas.

But the bottom line is going to be what can the city do to support this without taking on the cost of doing the work?

And aside from the sports, stadium part of it, what's important to you and the city, in terms of the Alamodome convention center hotel?

Yeah.

You mentioned several key areas.

We believe we need more hotel space in the city of San Antonio.

And there's interest in building another convention center related hotel.

The convention center itself has been doing very well, but it could do better.

We've missed out on opportunities for about $450 million worth of convention business over the last 3 or 4 years, because our convention center isn't quite as big as some of the larger conventions prefer.

So we do need to expand the convention center.

And then the Alamodome is 30 years old, and we recognize that it needs more upgrades.

We do have the Final Four coming next year, for NCAA and a couple of years later, we have the Final Four women's NCAA tournament.

But if we want to keep drawing that kind of large sports activities to San Antonio, we need to continue to upgrade the Alamodome.

People might wonder, how do you expand the convention center?

The footprint is pretty much there right now.

Well, there's.

A little more to it than people know.

Sometimes if you drive behind the convention center to get on to, highway 37, you see, there is a big open area where there's parking for, you know, some of the people work there.

So it's a matter of adjusting parking to allow for expansion of the facility.

And, you know, that's where you bring in professional planners.

And you you do what it takes to make sure you can accommodate the parking and the expansion.

And the timeline on this.

Given the fact that we're just hearing about it publicly for the first time, we're talking years and years.

Yeah, I think you're talking about 3 to 5 years before you see a lot of this.

Take place.

If you're talking about the Spurs building an arena somewhere down there, too, you're probably talking more like five years or longer, because they still have a long term commitment to the county to stay at the Frost Center until 2030 or 31.

But still, Wembley will be in its prime still by then.

Let's hope so.

And still in a Spurs.

Uniform plan that is young.

Well, thanks very much John Courage, district nine.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Randy.

In the recent election, some officials here won reelection some more easily than others.

One of those who won easily is Sheriff Javier Salazar for another term.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me, sir.

First of all, one of the reasons that you've been in the news recently, or it's about the sheriff's department and the police department, some of the police departments here is the intake of prisoners to the jail that you put out a memo in October that said what?

Well, it said that people with certain medical conditions, won't be allowed to be booked into the facility unless they've been signed off on by a medical professional.

You know, things like heroin withdrawal, unchecked diabetes, people that are coming into the jail.

We've seen this for some time.

The trend has been that our inmate population is getting sicker and sicker, and we're seeing some serious medical conditions that, unfortunately, in some cases have wound up, in a custodial death within the jail setting.

And so, again, we're not telling people you can't ever bring people to jail, but we're just asking them to have them signed off on by medical before accepting.

You've had a number of deaths was more than a dozen just this year.

Sure.

And that's up from years past.

It's actually trending downward from years past.

We've done a lot of things to to help ourselves out.

Training some some different equipment that we're trying out in the in the jail.

You know, but with that being said, we're doing everything that we can to keep these folks, out of the population that don't need to be there.

But with the thousands of people booked into the jail.

How do police departments do that?

I know chief McManus has said this is, against the law, as he puts it, I guess, or.

Well, it would be questionable.

It would be against the law if we're refusing people that have been committed by a judge.

Right.

That's that's certainly something.

So we are we are in compliance with the law as far as that goes.

But if they haven't been, committed by a.

Judge, if they're magistrate.

If they're magistrate and they're committed by a judge, then clearly then they then that person will still have to go to the hospital.

It'll be one of my deputies taking them to the hospital.

But if it's somebody that hasn't been booked into the facility yet by a magistrate, then we have the ability to say no.

We would prefer that you take this person to the hospital first before bringing them in.

How much of it is the high profile number of deaths that we've had recently?

That's that's absolutely what's behind it.

We're having to, you know, this this thing with custodial deaths has been a game changer for us.

It's not something that it's it's only to the Bexar County jail that that it's happening to and, you know, meeting with other sheriffs.

This continues to be an issue across all of us.

The whole the whole jail system, in the state of Texas.

But with that being said, we try to lean forward into any issue that's coming, and that's what we do.

We're not looking to create any hardship or extra work for other law enforcement agencies, but we also need people understand we can't just allow people to come in that we know are at higher risk for dying.

So how does it work now?

Or how do you want it to work with police departments?

You work for the police department here for years.

What's different for a police officer if they even if they don't know whether it's something somebody is.

Well, medical rejections are nothing new.

You know, our whole career.

Say, for example, you booked a DWI that was involved in a car crash.

You get to the jail, and he's got a big bruise on his chest from hitting the steering wheel and the head contusions from hitting the windshield.

Clearly, that's not somebody that that's going to be accepted in.

He may have something going on inside that that person typically is going to get medically rejected.

Now we're having people that come in.

And if they say that they're withdrawing from heroin, okay, we'll take them into the jail.

But we want a medical professional to see them first, to make sure there's not a life threatening condition before we accept.

How many of those people actually admit that they are or know to say that they're withdrawing, or there is some kind of fentanyl issue or a drug problem, and then they don't say that, but they get into the jail.

Well, those those are the ones that we'll have to deal with.

And if we start seeing signs of symptoms of of withdrawal occurring and it looks like it's going to be something life threatening, then at that point, my deputies will have to transport him to the jail because they're already in our car.

And it's not on the police officer to diagnose that or no.

And you're not going to get, you know, go back to the police and say, hey, you should have known this guy had something.

No.

In that instance, that person's already in our custody.

They've been remanded to our custody by a magistrate.

They're in our custody.

If something becomes apparent at that point, then my deputy will have to take them to the to the hospital and either sit with them or they get admitted and they'll be in the in a special part of the hospital where they're in a jail cell.

Aside from all that.

How do you deal with the number of jail deaths that you've had?

What are you doing?

Well, we try to mitigate the conditions that lend themselves to that.

So obviously our our deputies, we have to put them through extra training.

In some instances, we doubled the amount of training that's required by the state, for life saving procedures, CPR, things of that nature.

All of our deputies carry medical kits.

That's something that's never happened in the history of the sheriff's office.

But every single deputy that graduates the academy is is graduates with a medical kit that they wear on their belt.

They're trained to use every piece of equipment in there.

Additionally, we've got some technologies in the jail that are available to us that have never been before.

For example, if you if you're booked into the jail and you've got, say, for argument's sake, a heart condition, you're put in a cell that has a sensor on the wall that can literally read your vitals remotely.

And so if you're we can set it to where if this person's heart rate drops below a certain level, alarm start to go off and a deputy will respond along with medical, and they'll get that person out of the.

Room about psychiatric issues.

We've had some suicides in the jail.

How do you deal with someone or try to deal with someone that that may have an issue?

Well, with us, that was one of the reasons I created the detention mental health evaluation team.

You know, we've got a gifted law enforcement side mental health team that's been operating for decades now.

We mirrored that, concept within the jail setting.

And so I've got detention deputies that are specially trained.

They dress a little different, and then the other deputies, and they're able to more, effectively get in, evaluate somebody.

And if somebody has made it past booking or maybe they didn't have any medical issue or mental health issues at booking.

But now, two months into their stay, six months in a year in, some things have changed in their lives.

They're starting to manifest.

The mental health issues are starting to manifest themselves.

Our detention mental health team can come in, pull that person out of the population and get them to help before they become a statistic.

Now, this is an issue obviously big on your mind and has been one of the priorities.

What are some of the other priorities going forward into a new term that you see as problems or possible problems coming up?

Well, on the law enforcement side of the House, certainly, domestic violence continues to be an issue in our community.

For us, for example, we have seen homicides.

We've already surpassed the number of homicides for all of 2023.

Half of those, about eight have been domestic violence related.

And so clearly, we've got a domestic violence issue that continues to to be pervasive in the community.

So we're trying to attack that not just by arresting the offender, which we absolutely do every single time, by disarming the offender every chance that we get, but also through education.

We need to let victims know ahead of time that, look, there are resources out there.

Just we need to get you out of that situation and get you to the help that you need, because the situation's not going to solve itself.

One of the other things we continue to attack is organized crime as well.

I was just about to asking you about that.

And when people might wonder.

An organized crime in San Antonio.

What kinds do we have as a cartel?

Is it other than.

It's all of the above?

Look, it's.

I think with the with the election and all the rhetoric that was going back and forth with border crime and cartels.

Yes, there are cartels operating here in Bexar County, but we've also got our fair share of homegrown, gang members that we're having to deal with.

And so we've got a very robust, organized crime unit that that's what they do.

They're attacking, and they're seeking to dismantle and disrupt organized criminal activity.

What's the trend in that kind of thing in terms of up down compared to years ago?

Where are we in, say, as well as the domestic violence deaths?

Organized crime related.

Well organized crime, I think has has kind of held steady, you know, with the influx of, of, of, crimes from South America, from Mexico, certainly that, that, that that is a game changer for us.

But again, we're rolling with it.

I've got an organized crime group that is second to none.

We're in the process of getting a really, nice, Intel Center built for them to be able to capitalize on, not just jail or our law enforcement assets, but additionally jail assets.

We sit on a goldmine of information.

That this this Intel group will be assigned to mine that information from our inmates and dog bites.

That's been in the news off and on for a couple of years, especially since the death we had.

What do you tell people about what you're doing about that and what you can do about that?

Well, people absolutely need to call in.

You know, we've seen our calls for animal related, stuff go up dramatically.

And I think that that part of that is because we've increased awareness.

So whereas a year or two ago, people would not have bothered to call law enforcement because a dog or a dog bit them.

Now they are calling and that's a good thing.

We're asking people to call us every time one of these things happen so that we can act appropriately.

Maybe it may be seizing the animal.

It may be, having to in some, some extreme, situations, destroy the animal, you know, get it, get go through a court hearing and sometimes that ends up with the animal being destroyed.

Additionally sighting or maybe even arresting the the owner for carelessness or neglect.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

I appreciate your time.

Javier Salazar, congratulations on reelection.

Thanks.

Being.

Appreciate it.

On reporters roundtable this week, the city of San Antonio just officially celebrated the grand opening of a mixed income housing project just south of town, right by HemisFair.

And here to tell us everything there is to know about it is Iris Dimick, the senior reporter for the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having.

Me.

Tell us about this.

It's called 100 Labor Street.

I didn't realize there are still some parcels of the old Victoria Courts that are being redeveloped, and this took years.

This particular project has been in the works since 14 or 2015.

Under previous leadership of the Housing Authority, which is now known as Opportunity Home.

It is 213 units.

Most of them are market rate.

About 20% of them, or 44 units, are reserved for very low income residents.

26 of them are actually being used as short term rentals.

Which that's the controversy for some people.

Tell us about that, because short term rentals, that's controversial across the city for a number or a number of years ago.

And they crack crack down and I guess they change it.

What is different about this, project that some people are upset about?

Yeah.

Well, the Lavaca neighborhood housing stock was hit particularly hard by, short term rental companies coming into San Antonio before there were any regulations.

Another pain point for some folks is that the developer was given $700,000 as part of an incentive program that the city had had been running.

And that was in 2015.

In 2018, city council passed an ordinance saying that none of that money can be used to go towards projects that allow short term rentals or to promote none.

Of that kind of money.

But it's a question of whether it meant that money specifically for this project.

Yeah.

So since that money was approved in 2015, the city says that, it's it's there is no violation of that, of that ordinance because it came in before that.

So, the opportunity home, leadership has said like, this is not going to be something they do often or everywhere, but in this particular location, it kind of made sense because it's so close to HemisFair, Alamodome.

You know, there's lots of conventions and things and these short term rentals, which are operated by another third party, the profit from that will go towards, subsidizing affordable housing across the Opportunity Zones network.

That's not the affordable housing.

It's the short term rentals that can be like an Airbnb or any anyone comes in for X amount of time and can rent that.

Right.

Yeah.

Only certain units are designated for that.

Those are not the affordable units.

Those are the market rate units.

And and yeah, you can rent to, for a month for a day or two, depending on how long you're there.

They're all you can find them on Airbnb.

The Lavaca neighborhood, as you said, they're kind of upset with the Airbnb.

And those, people might not realize have been regulated to the point where you can only have so many on a block.

Correct.

And, opportunity home leadership, told me and the city confirmed that the number of, of short term rentals in that, apartment complex does comply with the current ordinance.

But, yeah, there's supposed to be a certain amount of certain types of short term rentals per block.

This appears to be above board.

And this also is, as they're saying, say, if you're working on a project and you come here for a couple of months or a few weeks, is this one of the only places in the area that you can do that aside from a hotel?

Oh, certainly not the the neighborhood is covered.

In the neighborhood.

You know.

Short term rentals.

Yeah, but not a whole, area where there are apartments like this.

Right.

Yeah, I think this this is particularly unique because of the ordinance restricts so many of such buildings from allowing so many short term rentals.

And this is an issue as well across downtown.

Now, we've seen the baseball stadium that complex, that West and Urban is wanting to build that has, the issue of low income housing is a big issue there.

How are we doing in the downtown area with low income housing?

And is this a drop in the bucket to what they need?

At least something.

Yeah I mean the, the the amount of naturally occurring affordable housing or subsidized affordable housing is rapidly declining in downtown San Antonio, with the soap factory, apartments kind of slated for demolition pending some, some moves with the school district and other properties.

And then the Robert E Lee, apartment being kind of being scoped out by the same developer, Weston Urban.

You know, there aren't any, major, major downtown projects that Opportunity Home has slated, for downtown.

There's there's limited space.

And, it's really expensive to develop downtown.

But, they are also hyping, I guess, or advertising this new 100 labor as a transit oriented project, because people can get to wherever they need to fairly quickly.

And aside from downtown.

Yeah.

It'll be, I believe it'll be close to both the Green Line and the Silver Line.

And those are the advanced rapid transit, corridors that Via's currently working on.

And and that city council will be later this month, or later this year deciding on on how to control development around those lines as well.

So you're going to be busy.

I am very.

Busy quite a while, even at Christmas.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Iris Dimick, senior reporter for the San Antonio Report.

You can read her stuff at RSA report.org.

Correct.

Okay.

Refresh.

Thank you.

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

You can watch this show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can also download it as a podcast.

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

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho