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, and with the election just over a month away, you might have heard that there is a big backlog in Bexar County of voter registration applications, but they are working feverishly now to deal with that.

Elections administrator for Bexar County, Michelle Carriere, joins us.

Thank you very much for coming in.

A little background here.

People might not realize when this happened and why this happened.

You would expected.

You came in in March as a new administrator.

You had expected at least a six month extension on the company that does this for you.

The process is a the registration applications.

What happened?

Well, at the, when I first came on in March, you know, we jumped right into the election season.

We had two back to back elections.

And I noticed that.

May and June.

May and June, and I noticed that there was a lack of support in our system.

So as I started doing some research, you know, the talk amongst elections officials was that the Vote Tech was going to close.

So started doing some research, trying to figure out, you know, what our options were met with Secretary of State talked about getting on to their team system.

So we began talks with them.

In July, they sent us a request saying as of July 2nd, stop processing applications were rolling out a new system in about a week.

You'll be able to log in.

This is Vote Tech.

This is with teams.

That there are two different, election systems that are used throughout Texas.

Right.

Vote tech was one of them.

Teams is the states, but it's not integrated or wasn't.

Right.

So the only the only thing that any particular vendor would need to do would be able to communicate with the Secretary of state's office.

Meaning sync.

So if we're using a third vendor software, the software has to be able to speak to the S.O.S team system.

And as I understand it, the team system didn't figure out where certain addresses were like precincts and things like that.

And so that had to be done by hand for a while.

Well, actually, it was a little bit more complex than that.

Once we decided to go forward with the Secretary of State's team system.

We had to provide them with data.

So it wasn't that they didn't have our streets.

We just had to confirm that each each street was coded correctly.

So, for example, your address, we want to make sure that you're able to vote on the proper commissioner.

Proper.

You know Senator, any type of district lines, school districts and other taxing entities.

So what we had to do is provide them with over 60,000 streets here in Bexar County.

And then we had to verify the data once it was in the system.

So it was it was very complex.

It was a lot of going back and forth like, okay, we need this list.

We send it, they send it back what they put in there.

And we had to verify that what was in the system is what we gave them.

And people might think, well, why weren't they prepared for this?

But you vo tech, you thought they were going to extend the contract and you'd be okay through this election, correct?

What happened there?

In communications with the now ex CEO and CEO, they offered us a six month contract, send it over to me.

And then the very next day, they were no longer employed with vo tech.

Wow.

And you also brought on extra employees to deal with this?

Correct.

We currently have an additional eight temp employees that are doing more than just voter registration.

And also we have an additional ten that will be starting on Monday.

So come Monday of next week, we'll have almost 20 temps working in addition to the full time employees that are there at work.

Now, Monday is the deadline for voter registration to be processed or another 52,000 as a backlog.

Where are you now and will it be done by Monday?

Well, the October 6th is not the deadline to process the application.

It is the deadline for someone who wants to register to vote to submit their information to us.

So voter registration rolls are constantly worked on throughout the entire election process.

So we're getting applications that were possibly received, considered on time, or had the post office stamp is being received on time.

We still have to put them in the system.

So we're constantly working in the voter rolls throughout the election process.

There's not a true deadline to input, but our goal is to have everything taken care of in ten working days.

So my team will be working around the clock.

What we're even considering bringing in a second shift to come in in the evenings to work five hours to get everything in place to ensure we want voters to know that if you register on time, you're going to be in the system come election time.

So you should also know that by a couple of weeks out from Election Day.

Correct.

So what our goal is this week, everything that we input, we will have our we have a third party company that mails out our voter registration cards.

We will be submitting a list to them weekly with the ones that have been processed so that the cards can be mailed out.

So over the next several weeks, everyone that's applied that's not a renewal or a duplicate will receive a new card.

Some of those cards will come though, after the early voting has started.

Quite possibly.

Yes.

And, the prop A and prop B that people might have thought generated a lot of interest with the Spurs.

Arena vote for the county and also for the, stocks on rodeo improvements.

You don't think that has actually increased interest in, upping voter registration?

We haven't seen a lot of traffic coming into our office.

Those that do come in, they don't express that they're there to vote or to register to vote for that particular prop A or B, the number of backlog that we have is about average that we see.

So considering we haven't processed since July the 2nd for, you know, three months worth, that's about average.

Now there was a flurry of coverage maybe a month, two months ago about this when it first came up.

And there was a lot of criticism, this kind of thing.

Are there still misconceptions out there that people don't think they would be able to register, or are you getting those questions?

No, not necessarily those that come in or even with our deputy volunteer registrars are bringing in applications, but there doesn't seem to be any type of chaos or anxiety about it.

What do you tell people?

What's the best way to register at this point?

Well, at this point, if you want to register, you can come into our office.

You can download an application from the Secretary of State's website.

If there's a deputy volunteer registrar out there who wants to register, you can register to them.

There's several avenues available for anyone who's interested in either registering to vote or updating their their profile completely online.

Can you do that or do you, Texas does not offer online voter registration, so the only thing that's currently available through the Secretary of State's website would be an application that can be downloaded, completed, signed in, mailed in, or even hand-delivered.

The only option that Texas has is if you move within Bexar County and your address is changed.

You can go online and change your address.

Then as long as you're already a registered voter.

People think, okay, well, I got mine say when I registered for my driver's license and then renewed it online.

But if not, you need to come down to the office just west of downtown.

Correct.

What else do you want to tell people about that?

Now, we had 52,000 backlogged for a while.

Where are you now?

Do you have any idea?

Well, yesterday was our first full day, and everyone is getting used to this new process.

So we we did about a thousand applications yesterday, but now we're going full force.

Everybody understands how it works.

They understand you know we found some shortcuts to help make things go a little bit faster.

Everyone is working in there.

So we're hoping by the end of today to at least have hit 5000.

This is your first year.

This came up boom.

Like that.

Were you like panicked for a while?

And how do you feel these days?

No I don't I don't believe that I was panicked, I knew that I had the support of Secretary of State.

And of course, after meeting with Commissioners court and, receiving their blessing to move forward with that.

It's been very easy.

The Secretary of State has treated us very well, and they've made sure that we have everything we need.

I, if I'm not mistaken, I feel that they did everything they could in a timely manner.

And all this shouldn't really affect voters at all.

From vote tech to teams, it's a technical thing that you deal with, but they won't notice a thing.

Correct.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

Good luck with that.

And the and the dates for everything again are.

The last day to register to vote is October the 6th.

And early voting begins October 20th through the 31st.

And the election day is.

November the 4th.

November the 4th.

All right.

Thank you very much.

And good luck with all that.

Michelle Carew, Bexar County elections administrator.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thank you for having me.

Businesses on the Riverwalk, the city and other leaders downtown are working on a new strategic plan for the Riverwalk, because if you didn't know, business on the Riverwalk has been down recently.

Here to talk about that.

And the new plan for what to do about it is Marco Barros, who is a trustee, for the Riverwalk Business Group.

Thank you very much.

Tell us about this new strategic plan and why you needed people here.

Might be surprised to know that business is down.

And by how much?

Yeah.

Thank you, Randy, for inviting us.

The business is a trend.

The last 3 or 4 summers, of over four years has been declining.

So we we just survive another summer.

And there's a lot of things sort of happened, but we're down on an average 11, 12% in regular in sales.

From several years.

Ago.

Several years ago.

Yes.

And why do you think that is?

I think this summer was a combination of hot weather.

A lot of construction downtown, a lot of detours and a little bit of competition.

Also from other, smaller towns around San Antonio.

But we have lost also visitation in the summertime.

So leisure, business, families, choosing to go somewhere else.

And I think we need to focus again in marketing to those families, in, in nearby states.

And the Pearl as well.

You said that's affecting it.

You think?

Yeah, I think it.

Pearl has done everything that they you know, the added water features, the other things for the kids to play there.

They added more retail, more businesses, more restaurants.

So it's a fun place to go.

I normally go, they even have a farmer's market on Sundays, which is a lot of fun.

So they've done everything that to attract people and families, a lot.

Of national attention.

When people go there, they go to the river, but they don't get down to the rest of the river.

Walk.

Right.

The Central District.

Is second.

And you have you're focusing on a kind of a four block area, or at least you want to.

The main channel is about four blocks.

I would call it the business district, and we need to treat it like that.

We have over 50 restaurants and over 12 hotels on the Riverwalk that are part of their main channel business district, and I think that's where we need to focus on, in the next five years.

How much is, say, all the construction at the Alamo?

Because it's the Paseo del Rio.

Down from the Alamo Plaza to the Riverwalk.

They've been working on that for a long time in the plaza and and getting people to those big sites to and from.

The good news about the Alamo, is that all these construction by next year, 2026, will be completed.

The major things that I've said for the new museum, but the access from the Alamo to the Riverwalk, the.

I think it will be a huge improvement.

From through the Hyatt hotel and the access to Crockett Street.

So, I think that it will be a huge improvement to for access to the real walk.

And speaking about access.

The other thing you said in this strategic plan is it's about better landscaping, beautify the, the Riverwalk, having better lighting on the trees and under the bridges where dark and improving Ada access.

So we need more stairs, also more elevators.

So this will be a full plan that I think will bring everyone together to improve the real walk.

And how much is, how much does locals in terms of visitors and how much is tourism and how do you get locals down there parking?

I hear from people while the city says, you know, there's a lot of places down there.

People out outside of downtown say they don't know where to park.

That's an issue.

It's expensive.

Part of the survey that we did in 2023, we had over 223 respondents who said, yes, we do want better access, better parking, and more retail, but give me a reason to come back to the Riverwalk.

And they mentioned number five is, transform the Riverwalk into an art gallery, do a murals, paint, paint under the bridges.

So I'll have a big surprise in December, thanks to the Alliance family, who has owned Casares in 1946.

They're working on a huge project that will be announcing in December that will spark the interest of creating murals and art, like creating our gallery throughout the Riverwalk.

And now they're also working on a rooftop bar, as I understand it, to transform some of the things that have been there forever, like Castle Rio.

And that's what you want to see more of as well, right?

That would be great to attract younger generations who haven't been at the Riverwalk.

So creating outdoor patios, you know, all that?

I think that we need to also connect with live.

You eat a lot better.

There's lots of plants who love to eat also.

And on the opposite side, Tropicana Hotel, who has been abandoned for more than six, seven years.

It's been empty.

And, it just dirty place.

It's under renovation.

And there is a developer that will work on that for the next two years.

Finally, they have had a lot of plans over the years.

And I think both sides of the river could use that energy and synergy.

How about HemisFair Park?

They've been working on different parts of that.

Some of the developments right off South Alamo and Commerce have been in limbo.

There's a new hotel is about to open.

And then there's construction, you know, and also in the Spurs arena, the Institute of Texan Culture.

So how is that affecting the Riverwalk?

It's a typical example of construction delays and delays and delays.

So, we welcome now that the city government, the city manager's office, has decided to split public works into different areas for capital improvements and public works.

And I think they're going to focus a lot on, major projects so that we don't go through that.

I mean, that Alamo area and, and West as, has been blocked for more than a year and a half, and it does affect, access to the real walk.

And that's a major intersection of conventioneers who cross the street to go, back to the Riverwalk.

So.

And so when people go down there, say, for Dia de Los Muertos or Christmas, you mentioned brighter lights.

I've heard that often on the Christmas lights from years ago or brighter.

Are they going to be brighter again by Christmas or do we know?

Well, the I'm not sure all the projects, but there is technology that you can actually change the color.

So, you know, we could have a green blue or red pink depending on all that.

And I think that a lot of the owners of the Riverwalk, restaurants and businesses welcome that.

One of the things that we need to improve on a city ordinance, he said, a lot of these businesses are not allowed to put Christmas trees face in the real walk.

So we gotta change that mentality.

And that's the kind of thing that we're going to be working with.

There's a, Office of Historic Preservation.

Well, I know that, you know, we're going to hear more about the Riverwalk strategic plan.

Thank you very much for, giving us a heads up on this.

Maybe locals can get back down there and help.

Marco Barros, trustee, Riverwalk Business Group.

Thanks for coming.

In.

Thank you.

Randy.

On our reporters roundtable this week, with the shutdown starting this week, a lot of uncertainty about what that is going to mean for those of us here in San Antonio.

Are there some projects that were in the pipeline and spending bills that are in limbo, if not just in jeopardy or a possibly gone?

Andrea Rush, senior local government reporter and government and politics reporter for the San Antonio Report.

You've been writing about this.

Thank you for coming in.

First of all, this is this is who knows what happens right now.

But I understand across the state, there were 675 million in earmarks in spending bills that haven't been passed anyway.

So we don't know what's going to happen statewide as well as here.

Yeah.

Since this administration took over, there's been a lot of talk about big spending cuts in various ways.

But there hasn't exactly been consensus among Republicans about doing some of those things, cutting into sort of social safety net issues like, Snap benefits and Medicaid and local leaders here.

You've heard a lot at the county judge and the mayor sort of girding for this future of how do we budget around, do we need to be planning to pick up some of these expenses?

But Congress hasn't passed the spending bill to make some of these things happen.

And so, you're in this interesting moment where Democrats don't have hardly any power in Washington.

They don't control the white House, the House, the Senate.

But they do have the power to say they do have some say over whether you keep spending the same.

And so for the Republicans who would like to sort of delay this conversation, they think it might be unpopular and voters might be very mad at them.

During the midterms.

The Democrats are saying, well, we may not help you continue delaying this conversation.

It sounds kind of controversial.

We might like to see you do these things right ahead of a midterm election.

But there's a lot of, discussion right now at the national level about health care.

Democrats want to extend, Obamacare.

Policies.

And if that's not happening, city County is worried that they're going to have to fill in the gaps.

Yeah.

And so now the city and county have just passed their budgets.

But local leaders are both, you know, on both sides are on the city side and the county side are both saying, how do we make sure that we have slack so that we can make changes if we need?

The mayor was saying when the budget was first presented, it's like we know Covid is coming.

We know we have a vulnerable community that relies on a lot of this stuff, and we know that we're going to be picking up the bill if some of these federal cuts happen, but not a lot of appetite to address it in an already tight budget year.

So I think they're going to be going through some at City Hall, some like, she has some tabletop exercises of like.

So yes, they're going to be like, what happens if we lose this funding?

What will we do then?

And then try to like budget accordingly around that.

And that's in addition to the budget cuts that we already expect, because we're facing that fiscal cliff from losing a lot of federal money already.

As a former national reporter, some of this is music to my ears.

I feel like that, you know.

Music to your ears.

Keeping your eyes up and like looking at the state level, like at the federal level.

And it's like, not something that always happens at City Hall or at the county, you know, sort of sometimes exists as though these changes are not happening because sometimes they don't, you know, they might make it to the end of the year and the stuff doesn't happen, and you don't have to worry about it.

It's hard to predict what will gain traction.

But, But it's going to be interesting to cover.

Is that music to your ears?

I'm not sure what that phrase means for a lot of, other things going on at City Hall.

The mayor, as well as others have faced ethics, violate ethics complaints this year, whether or not they're violations still to be determined, whether they're important, I don't know.

We did see a big uptick.

If people have figured out this ethics review process, that you can file these complaints.

The city hires an attorney to look into them, and some have made it all the way through the process that people didn't really expect.

They didn't think it was a big deal.

But then Mark white was fined for pictures with city staff in them, and I think it's in this last one with Mayor Nurnberg.

It's sort of like a realization at the end that maybe they need to reconsider some of the rules that they have to modernize.

He was accused of using city resources to make social media content, and that there are certainly egregious examples out there.

And some of his were, you know, more so than others.

But, like the advice that they're receiving from the city attorney may be a little outdated for people coming in or like, of course, I need a staff member to be filming everything that I'm doing and communicating with the public.

And I'm not sure that they've quite decided whether that is allowed, that that's an allowable use of resources.

And and the current mayor, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, a top Republican Bexar County official, it was the one who complained that she shouldn't have used letterhead to try to get the Democrats to come if she didn't try to get the Republicans to come.

But on the other hand, Republicans preferred their convention in 28.

They chose Houston.

So Republicans chose Houston two years ago.

So there wasn't I mean, if she reached out to them, it would have to be for 32.

What she didn't do.

That same complaint of like, are you using public resources for politics?

That is what sort of all of these have stemmed from.

And the, the Ethics Review Board has taken a pretty broad view of that.

And they've hired an attorney to look into it.

She's forwarded it to the board.

They're going to meet and discuss it.

They will reach a decision.

And then they can issue one of several very tough fines, like a letter of reprimand or a, you know.

But it also comes down on the city attorney who advised her it's okay.

Yeah.

And in each case, every person has said, wait a second.

The city attorney's office has given me permission for this.

But yeah, as you remember, a couple years ago, the Republicans were very upset that the left leaning city council didn't go after the Republican convention and said it was a business opportunity.

This is, you know, economic development and tourism, and we need to be pursuing these conventions.

And but it was the first one of the first things she did after taking office.

She was in DC meeting with the DNC in DC, meeting with the DNC chair.

And then came back and wrote this letter.

A tech block has a new leader better all time around on what?

What does that mean?

First of all, for tech block in the tech industry here.

Well.

And interesting.

I hadn't thought about what it means for tech block.

I think about more about what it means for his political career.

You remember he's the one on election night who said you haven't seen The last of me?

And, and now he's one of three council members from our three, candidates from that group that have taken other jobs.

But he's the only one who has openly said, still thinking about a congressional race, perhaps in 2020.

And he was the one if people don't remember now, we have no memory.

He came in third in the mayor's race.

It was a lot of talk about him.

He's an entrepreneur, owns his own business here.

But to get third out of 27, he had a lot of support, some money.

And so that could translate, you think, into whatever he might.

And is from South Texas in this district that he's looking at is the redrawn one that is, you know, currently Austin down to San Antonio, but will then be San Antonio on sort of southeast, sort of, you know, getting into South Texas kind of at all.

Yeah.

Trying to add on enough Republican leaning counties to offset a little bit of San Antonio and Bexar County in there.

So it's a a race that Democrats haven't found the right or haven't, you know, had a rush of interest to compete in, even though some of them say it's still very much competitive.

Cazares going to run instead in Austin.

Republicans have had a lot of interest in this race.

John Lujan, the state House member from the South Side, is running there.

Several other candidates still looking at it and some from outside of San Antonio.

And from San Antonio.

Also, the people who had run for mayor or run for other things or been in council, a lot of them are considering other runs now.

Yeah, I wonder a lot about what the future is from San Antonio City Council, because you're in these interesting spots.

It was a very, you know, every person on that council for a while was kind of these socially liberal, but pro-business candidates.

And like, competing in these Partizan primaries.

How does that translate?

But there are a lot of talent that has cycled off now that is ready.

And there's some openings opening up.

You know, these congressional races are pulling people and retirements on the state House side of created opportunities, and not a lot of people jumping at them.

But filing opens just days after the November 4th election, so we will figure it out soon.

That's right.

It's going to be boom, one one election over.

And then for a former national reporter, it's going to be what is it again?

You're you're dream dream.

It's going to be an interesting election since, you know, in the past few cycles, November has been a little under underwhelming.

Here there's our longtime incumbents in safe districts occasionally have a primary to pay attention to, but these openings have created a lot of open races and a lot of shifting dominoes down the line.

Interesting stories.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Andrea.

She can read everything that she covers.

A senior local government reporter, and politics reporter.

It's, you send it on your report.

Thanks.

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

You can see the show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can download them as podcasts.

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

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