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 Beemer 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 Beemer.

And thank you for joining us for on the record, I'm Randy Beemer, and this week we are starting with a recent formation of a cool new group to help improve and renovate one of San Antonio's most historic landmarks.

Here to talk about that is Doug McMurray, who is the treasurer of the new San Pedro Springs Park Conservancy.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

San Pedro Springs Park people don't realize all the fascinating history about it.

And you want to help renovate some of that?

How did this get started?

Well, first of all, any day I get to talk about parks is a good day.

So thanks for having me.

So San Pedro Springs is the oldest park in Texas.

My background includes time with the Parks Foundation, the Parks Board.

I helped establish the Phil Harburg Park.

So the conservatives.

Yeah, the conservatives seemed particular.

And so I have a passion for parks as to a lot of other people.

So after the council member core was reelected, I talked to her a little bit about San Pedro Springs, which is really a valuable asset, not just to her district, but the entire city.

So I told her I had some experience with establishing a conservancy and that that might be something for her to consider.

So she's pretty bright and she loves the park.

And she assembled what I'll call a steering committee that met in her district office for a while as a lot of different stakeholders, the Playhouse, SAC, neighborhood groups, and we started to have a conversation about the advantages of establishing a conservancy.

And so it was officially established in January and a board was seated.

And here we are and.

And explain what a conservancy is.

We have one of Brackenridge.

You have a hard burger park.

And then as you said, in a perfect world, you wouldn't have to have a nonprofit.

Yeah.

So I lament that we have to have conservancies because in a perfect world, all parks would be fully funded.

But that's not the world in which we live.

So conservancy conservancies can play a role in supplementing what the Parks and Recreation Department is doing.

We can help raise some funds privately that might augment what the city is doing and what bond elections do.

What in terms of San Pedro Springs Park, are you looking at first?

Well, first of all, we want to follow through, follow through on the work that was done with the 2022 bond election.

There is money that was that hasn't been spent yet, and we're having good conversations with the community and the Parks and Rec department about the bathhouse and shade structures.

Now, coincidentally, as we are talking right now, Randy, the city council of having a discussion about the next round of improvements that will be the 2027.

So we might be able to bring some funds to the table to supplement some of the capital improvements down the road.

We might be able to help with some programing.

There are all kinds of great ideas about programing.

We could have a kite festival, we could have ice cream socials, we could have jazz concerts.

We could do all kinds of fun things, working in concert with the neighborhood associations.

And we might be able to help fund some of those things in Better Springs Park.

And those are some of the current things you want to get people back down there.

But in terms of the history, as you said, it's the second.

Is it the second oldest park in the country?

Boston Commons would be all this, but you could easily say it's the oldest in Texas and probably the top five oldest in the country.

That 46 acres has seen a lot.

It was really established as a public space by King Philip the Fifth in 1721.

Spain, when it was New Spain.

Yeah, exactly.

The land has been there a while.

It has seen indigenous peoples.

It has seen a racetrack.

It has seen a zoo.

There have been all kinds of things.

It has been a military encampment.

It was a Civil War prisoner detention facility way back in the day.

But now we know it for the very unique collection of facilities that it has.

Think about the swimming pool, the playhouse and the tennis center, the library.

It's an interesting collection to have on one city park.

And San Pedro Springs.

People don't realize that.

And the San Antonio Springs north of Brackenridge Park there incarnate word.

That's why there have been people here for thousands of years.

How long has it been since San Pedro Springs were really the springs?

I guess the aquifer has to be a plus.

670 plus hasn't been.

What we know now is that it's dormant.

I would like to be optimistic and say one day again, the springs will flow.

But in the meantime, we have a beautiful park with great facilities.

And it's an old park.

It's a good park.

We want to make it a great park.

And you're working on one of the first I understand is some kind of pump for the pool to renovate that.

Well, the pool is in fairly good shape now.

The grotto is a different story.

The grotto is this very interesting structure.

If you walk through.

It is just east of the pool there, plants growing on it.

You can still peek your head in.

There's water there.

We want to make sure that the grotto is flowing and healthy and adjacent to the grotto, or the remnants of an old Victorian garden.

So one of the first priorities that we would like to work on is the reestablishment that formal Victoria Garden.

And late 1800s is when the city took it over, and that was when there was a zoo there.

Is there any remnant ruin of the zoo?

And I don't think the animals were really well cared for.

It wasn't very well maintained.

I think he wanted the city to take it over.

I think the city assessed the condition and said, thank you, but no thank you.

And then the scientific society took over and then they moved it to and they started.

Where is prospering and doing well, as you well know.

People might not realize.

Okay.

It's 46 acres.

It's not that big.

It's landlocked.

What can you do on that acreage?

You know, on the south side is via we've got sac and then we've got neighborhoods.

So really we want to focus on maintaining the existing assets.

The Playhouse is such a treasure for San Antonio.

The pool.

What we'd like to do maybe, is explore the possibility of extending the pool hours.

The pool really doesn't open until June.

You know, we have really, what, five months of summer?

It'd be great.

We could swim longer.

I'm a tennis player, so I'm at McFarland Tennis Center probably two days a week.

It's a good facility.

It could be a lot better.

They host a lot of junior tennis programs, and I think there's an opportunity to do a little bit better with that facility and expand the youth programs.

Obviously, the green space, the trees are valuable.

We need to maintain them.

We need to make sure there's adequate irrigation.

It's a tough spot for our long summers.

But I think with the Conservancy working in concert with community groups in the city, we can do a better job in maintaining the entire park.

And as you develop programing down there, parking, people wonder, okay, well, where do I park?

Yeah.

So here's the thing.

The green line is going to come right next.

So it's it could be just absolutely perfect.

Good luck with that.

I love history in San Antonio.

It's great to see the park coming back or improving.

It's a great part as it is.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you so much.

With the election coming up, we'd like to acquaint you with the top candidates for statewide elected office.

Lieutenant governor, that race we have Vicki Goodwin, the Democrat, against the Republican incumbent, Dan Patrick.

And we have extended the same amount of time to both candidates.

Have not heard back yet from Dan Patrick.

And Vicki Goodwin is here with us right now.

Want to make that clear off the top?

Thank you very much for coming in.

First data centers is on everybody's mind right now.

And how much water and how much power.

And Republicans seem to have pulled back on their support for this governor in particular.

Where do you stand on data centers and the water and power and moratorium?

Yeah, the increasing build out of data centers is very concerning to me.

I have traveled the state and heard about this from every corner of the state.

Obviously, the amount of water and the amount of energy that they use is very concerning.

And also the fact that they need build out, they need transmission lines to bring that to their facilities.

And who is going to pay for that?

So we should have a special session so that we can put in law that we are not going to allow them to transfer that cost onto ratepayers.

And now the data centers, though some would argue that the power isn't just for them.

And these transmission lines in our has been one I guess paused would also affect West Texas in general and how much they pay for power and gas industry across the state.

What do you tell people who are concerned about the power grid?

Ercot has said it could lead to rolling blackouts in West Texas.

Yeah, I mean, that is a huge concern.

We've seen that if all of these potential data centers were built out, we would need five times the energy that we have right now.

We need Ercot to be able to provide five times what we have capacity for right now.

And so that's a big concern.

We need to slow things down, make sure we understand what we're doing.

I know a lot of these data centers won't get built there.

The companies are just applying for permits and multiple locations, hoping that one of them will get approved and then moving forward with that.

But we still need to understand where are they getting their power from?

Some of them are building plants on site, and that's concerning too, because they're releasing a lot of gases, a lot of emissions.

So where do you stand on a moratorium for this?

It looks like there won't be a special session called before the next session of the legislature.

If you're elected lieutenant governor, what would you do?

You get to set priorities.

Yeah.

Well, I would prioritize three things when it comes to the data centers.

And that would be having them having a requirement that they provide the data, how much energy they're using, how much water, where they're getting it from.

And second of all, having in legislation that they can't push those costs onto ratepayers.

And then third, ending the incentives in 2025, we gave $1 billion worth of incentives, sales tax incentive.

And that's on top of sometimes they're getting local property tax abatements from the counties that they're building in.

So and how about limiting where they can be?

A lot of people in neighborhoods specifically don't want the noise, all of that next to them.

So I want to give counties the ability to have land use authority so that they can determine, is this the right place for a data center or not?

Right now, counties don't have that authority.

How about water shortages and concerns?

The legislature did a lot a year in the legislature about water recently, but then now there, because of data centers, the use of water is predicted to go way up.

Yeah.

Well, and we only look at historical data when we're determining do we have the water infrastructure that we need.

We created this new water fund so that we could build out more infrastructure.

But we're not looking we're not forward looking and thinking, how much are these data centers going to be using?

We keep hearing closed loop system.

And then I hear push back on that, that a closed loop system still does use a huge amount of water.

Property taxes.

And specifically now for schools, we hear a lot about schools.

We've had superintendents in here saying that they don't have enough money, even though the legislature did give some money to public schools.

Where where do you stand on that?

We are completely underfunding our public schools.

So I want to see the state increase the basic allotment.

I actually had a bill last session that would have brought that up to $7,500 per student, which would have caught us up to inflation at that point in time in 2025, but instead they only raised the basic allotment $55, not nearly enough.

And we made the school funding formula even more complicated.

We created a new fund.

We created this thing called the teacher Incentive allotment.

It's way too complicated, and it makes it difficult for districts to be nimble and address the needs in their specific district.

And school vouchers.

You tie your public education policy to getting rid of school vouchers.

Yeah, I mean, we spent $1 billion and that is only going to increase exponentially over the years to come if we expand that, we have in our Texas Constitution a requirement to provide free public education.

We don't have any requirement to provide a private education.

And the Texas Constitution also says that we won't send tax dollars to religious institutions.

A lot of these private schools are religious.

What about property taxes in general?

State wide Republicans have said that they want to cut property Texas taxes.

They have limited what local school districts, local entities can do.

So the way you cut property taxes is you have the state pay its share of school funding, which we could have done in the last session, or at least increased more than we did.

We left $4 billion on the table in the last legislative session.

Our again, our rules say that we can't spend more than our expected revenue, but we spent $4 billion less.

When the state is a better partner in our school funding than our local property, taxes won't have to be raised so much.

And you've talked about using some of the rainy day fund, $1 billion for education specifically or for other things.

Well, actually, for my health care plan, I just launched my Texas Cares plan.

And we would you set it up initially with $5 billion from the $28 billion rainy day fund.

And that.

Tell us about that plan, what it would do.

You would have three tiers in that, from basic expansion of Medicare to those who don't qualify for Medicare.

And then all Texans could qualify for the top tier.

So Medicaid, that's the thing that we have not expanded since 2014, and we have left billions of dollars again at the federal government level.

Our tax dollars that we send to the federal government and income tax should have been coming back to us through Medicaid expansion, but we chose not to do that.

So yes, my plan calls for Medicaid expansion.

Then a second tier is those people that make too much money to qualify for that, but don't make enough to buy their own private insurance.

And then the third tier would be anybody else.

So as a private small business owner, before I got in the legislature, I saw my health insurance costs increase every year, and what was covered decreased every year.

And so we want to have a plan that maybe is for our small business owners or just individuals that don't currently have health insurance.

And make sure we're putting an emphasis on prevention, which is a lot less expensive than having people wait and going to the emergency room.

Critics have said that would create a whole new bureaucracy that is unnecessary.

Could complicate things.

Well, right now we have private insurers that take 15% off the top, so they're for profit.

They're looking at how can we deny claims.

And that is not serving the people of Texas.

My program would be focused on how do we deliver the best health care.

And again, putting an emphasis on prevention even so much as making sure young kids are getting good nutrition, because that has such a huge impact on your health care, on your health.

What about Ice?

Been a lot of issues with Ice here in San Antonio.

Elsewhere, they're talking about building a detention center on the east side.

Here along the border we have the Project Lone Star, Operation Lone Star.

Where do you stand on those kinds of issues and what you could actually do as a state government?

So we are ripping apart families.

The stories that I'm hearing are just really tragic.

There is a rule that we are not supposed to keep children in detention facilities more than 20 days.

If the Flores agreement and we are keeping kids in detention and they should be in school, they should be going to kindergarten, the newest.

But what can the state do about these kinds of things?

We can put pressure on the federal government.

We have to have immigration reform, for one thing.

But we also there in the state of Texas, we oversee those facilities.

And so we do have some ability to make sure that we are treating people humanely.

And border enforcement.

How much should the state be paying for border enforcement?

Would you end those programs?

You know, this is, again, it's a federal issue.

And the state of Texas asked the federal government to reimburse us, I think, $10 billion for the work that we've done along the border.

We shouldn't be doing that work in the first place.

Putting in the barriers, for example, that should be federal.

And I would suggest that we can do better by working hand in hand with our local law enforcement along the border when they see a surge, let's help them out at that point in time.

THC the clampdown on thc products, some thc products.

Where do you stand?

I want to regulate THC like we regulate alcohol, have an age requirement 21 and have packaging requirements, have testing requirements.

Make sure what is being sold is safe because so many people have said they use THC products for pain management, PTSD, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, so many things and we've seen that it's been beneficial.

And now with this new rule that implemented, people can't access that.

As lieutenant governor, you get to a point.

Committee chairs, how would you do that differently than Dan Patrick?

Would we see Republicans as committee chairs?

You know, I'm going to rely on people that have expert background, have the knowledge to be a committee chair, whether that is having served in the Senate for a long period of time.

I will certainly give Democrats an opportunity to be chairs of committees, and I look forward to that.

Not saying that I wouldn't give any Republicans a chair position.

We would.

And overall, why should people elect you over?

Dan Patrick, I know we've touched on all kinds of different things, but what's the number one reason?

Because I want to serve the people of Texas.

He is serving his large dollar donors.

All right.

Well, thank you very much again, Vicki Goodwin, a state representative from the Austin area running for lieutenant governor and want to say again that we have invited Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on.

We hope he comes in for the same amount of time.

And we appreciate your time.

Vicki Goodwin.

Thanks.

Thank you.

On reporters roundtable this week, a look at what is going on down at San Antonio City Hall.

After all the.

Drama of getting the budget passed.

Megan Rodriguez, City Hall reporter with the San Antonio Express-News.

Thank you for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

First of all.

We had Jaylen Rodriguez, district two, an issue before the ethics review Board.

What happened there?

Yeah.

On Monday night, the Ethics Review Board determined that he broke two sections of the ethics code that the city has to follow, basically because of a kind of online dispute between him and a constituent.

A constituent had called him a monkey in this argument that they were having.

And he inadvertently, he says, shared her email address on.

He was not happy, understandably.

But the problem was that, as you said, inadvertently docks her personal email.

Yes.

And the board was concerned.

Of course, because this led to harassment of her.

This led to what they felt was kind of preventing her from engaging with the city.

And also, you know, there is a prohibition under the ethics code that says that you cannot share somebody's personal information.

But now she and the councilman have, I guess, passed things up.

She wasn't angry about this, but it was somebody else.

A filed a complaint.

Absolutely.

Yes.

They had actually made up both in person at a meeting that they had and then publicly on social media, both announcing that they had kind of made amends.

And then Mr.. One writer, Morales, the second, who had just been kind of this outside bystander who read about this on in news coverage about what had happened between the two of them, he stepped up and filed an ethics complaint.

He was concerned about the way that the councilman had treated this constituent.

And even though the constituent and councilman made up, they still wanted to go ahead the ethics review board and maybe make sure that this doesn't set a precedent.

So they find him?

Yes, absolutely.

They find him $1,000, basically $500 for each of the two violations.

And they also issued two letters of reprimand, which is basically just like a formal statement saying that you knew that you were breaking the code when you did this.

But his comment is, okay, I'm not going to engage with people online, I'm just going to ban them if they have a hateful comment.

But that wasn't enough.

Basically.

Yeah, he has, after all of this, said that he is going to be trying to react differently, that he doesn't agree that his, you know, reaction in the moment was necessarily appropriate, that he was basically showing, you know, a screenshot that proved the constituent wrong, showed that, you know, his office had actually responded to her, though she said that he hadn't.

And that's what he was trying to do, was kind of like make a point.

He never, he says, meant to share her personal information.

But he also wasn't happy with the use of the ethics review board.

What's his reaction there in terms of what it's doing now that he doesn't like?

Yes.

He issued a statement basically saying that he's concerned that he thinks that the ethics review board is maybe being used as a political tool by conservatives in the community to kind of tackle folks like himself that are on the more progressive side.

And so he issued that statement basically saying that he is has that concern, but that, you know, he's focusing on his district now.

And speaking of that, the Ethics Review Board has been, I guess, a little more on the news.

They have dealt with more than they have in past years.

Do you think that's a sign of politics?

That is something that they've kind of internally discussed as well, that, you know, folks keep issuing and making these complaints sometimes like this, where somebody is not actually directly tied to the situation, but the code allows for this.

Like, anybody can make an ethics complaint.

It is anybody's right in San Antonio to raise a concern like this.

So it's not that anybody has necessarily broken a rule, but there is this kind of speculation that maybe it's political.

But we also in the past had a couple of DWI and council members, and then the mayor was lodged a complaint against because of actions with other council members.

So it's been in the news more.

And those, you know, items were actually kind of handled internally at City Hall.

So kind of separate.

For example, with the mayor, she was censured by her own council members and the DWI cases that we've seen also, you know, issued censures by their own council members rather than going through the ethics board.

And now you've covered some other things about how some of the council meetings are going to be out in the community instead of down at City Hall.

What's happening there?

Yeah, absolutely.

So this was a pitch that was made by Councilwoman Terry Castillo.

She basically wanted to try to get more engagement.

This is a pilot program kind of based on a kind of version of her pitch.

But yes, there's public comment meetings where people can go and speak about anything.

After 5 p.m.

on Wednesdays, they can go lob their complaints at city council members, usually downtown.

But now there's going to be three meetings that are out in the community on various parts of the town so that it can maybe bring in more engagement.

And it's not just for that public comment section.

They're going to do some other work at these meetings.

So basically it is going to be for public comment.

Councilwoman Castillo had originally wanted this to be something that was what is called a B session meeting, which is like city briefings that go during the middle of the workday that are kind of hard for people to make.

But instead, during this pilot program, they are just doing these public comments.

So it's the time when people can speak to the community or speak to their council members about any issues in the community.

They're concerned about.

And isn't.

It's not for getting those same people that they complain about the same things, to not be able to make it out there, that wasn't any of the the reason that they wanted this.

They really the councilwoman really emphasized that she wanted more engagement.

She wanted to make sure that, you know, sometimes it can be difficult for somebody to make it all the way downtown and deal with the parking and deal with the traffic and try to get there during or right after the workday.

So she wanted to make this something that people could, could maybe more easily access.

And also the library study that you wrote about that I thought was fascinating.

Yes.

So the Texas Library Association commissioned a study that basically looked into the economic impact that libraries across the state have on the state of Texas.

And they found that, for example, every $1 that is put into a library system, $5 in community resources are kind of grow out of that.

So that was one of the high level numbers.

But their whole point of this study was to show that libraries, as they say, matter and can provide valuable resources for their communities.

And how does that work?

People might say, wait, a dollar makes how much?

Through a library.

Yeah, absolutely.

So it's it's really about being able to kind of stretch that money and make sure that these resources get to as many people as possible.

Libraries, of course, you know, they're not giving a book to just one person.

They're having a book that's available for many uses.

Similarly, like a lot of their other community events are touching many people and their databases and things like that that people don't necessarily think of when they think of a library that all touches the community in.

Any way.

But the study is coming out later than most budgets have been made up, including San Antonio's, that also looked at library budgets and things like that.

And, you know, they're in cuts across the state in libraries.

Maybe if the study came out earlier, it might have affected that.

You know, that's a good question.

But I think that, for example, with the city of San Antonio, I think that the city knows and feels that the libraries have a valuable impact on their community.

But they were facing a $158 million deficit that they were trying to fill over the next two years.

And yes, library staffing cuts became a part of that conversation.

And the city did cut some of those library costs.

I don't think that if the city was asked, you know, if you would have known about the study, would you have done things differently?

I think they're responsible.

Probably.

We're trying to just manage our money as responsibly.

As.

They couldn't make anybody happy with.

That budget.

Well, thanks very much.

I know there's a lot going on in City Hall coming up with the Spurs term sheet and finalizing that.

So you'll be busy throughout the next few months anyway after the budget.

Well, yeah.

Megan Rodriguez, City Hall reporter for the Express News, thank you very much for coming.

Thank you for having me.

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 download them as podcast.

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

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