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

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving community with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with the news makers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the Reporters Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the.

Hi, everybody.

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

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week we're going to be talking about issues with elections with a power plant here and with a park.

But first, we're going to start out with money and the city budget and the latest on that joining us is District Ten, City Councilman Clayton Perry.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Oh, it's it's great.

It's always a pleasure to be here.

Well, thanks.

Now, first, where are we in the issues that you really were fighting for in the last budget?

Now, there are a couple of things.

You wrote an editorial about why the ARPA funds should not be spent on the nonprofit organizations.

The American Rescue Plan Act funds city council voted nine to one.

You're the one for those funds.

But you said there were some restrictions that you're going to be watching closely about where that money goes.

Sure.

My big problem with it was that, you know, the first Cares Act money tranche of money, we got $270 million.

And out of that, we we had about a $50 million help to small businesses across the city.

This next tranche of money $300 million.

And that's the ARPA funds that we're talking about.

And only about $30 million are going to small business almost matched with that was mental health services and money going to nonprofits, arts programs and things like that.

And what I was saying is that they should have been included in the small business category and compete with small businesses.

We had about 38% of our small businesses here in town shut their doors through the COVID pandemic.

38%, the worst in the state of Texas.

And I was trying to increase the amount of money going to our business community for them to keep their doors open, keep people employed and keep those services going.

But that kept getting ratcheted back for these other programs, and one of them was for non-profits.

And I said, Well, these nonprofits are really small businesses as well.

They should be competing with the small business community for these additional funds.

That was an additional 25 to $30 million that went to them versus small businesses.

So that was my biggest hang up on that.

And in addition to that, the arts community got a big plus up in the arts program the last month.

They got about $8 million in in arts money because we gave them 1% of the total program.

This one they got right at 16 million so double the program, but yet we're giving them additional an additional $5 million on top of all that in the arts community.

Well, now people would argue, well, the arts was really, really hit during the pandemic and also that the effects of the pandemic really played into things that the nonprofits are helping with, with the homeless and those who are, you know, can't pay their mortgages and those kinds of things.

How would they compete directly with small businesses anyway for those money?

Well, OK, we had we had additional programs for those that couldn't afford their rent called the rehab program.

That was probably our biggest expenditure So the nonprofits didn't play in that as much as the city did in setting up that program and helping those that were struggling with their rent.

The all those all those programs together.

And I'll give you another example for the homeless population here in San Antonio, we spend anywhere from 50 to $80 million, close to $80 million per year in that program.

And that didn't that didn't slow down during the pandemic and yet we you know, a lot of these nonprofits are getting additional money from the city to provide those services.

So those those programs are businesses that are doing work here in San Antonio, employing people just like other small businesses.

And I was saying we need to have them all compete in the same.

Do you think.

They're getting too much money then?

Because people would argue that the homeless problem is a business problem, especially downtown where we have such a tourist industry.

That's the first thing they see the mayor pointed out in one of the meetings.

And so it's a business issue when you deal with the homeless and that they needed more money.

You're absolutely right.

And we're putting more and more resources towards that issue downtown as well as around the city.

But when you take a look at $80 million and is the population going up or is it going down or is it staying the same?

Our last true point in time counts was actually about the same.

It didn't increase.

It didn't go down.

And I'm saying, $80 million a year.

You should be getting some kind of results from that.

And if you're not, how much money do you need for that?

All across the country, it's the same issue people are having in big cities right now.

Let's get to the CPS money and the surplus there.

Sure.

Was estimated back in the spring to be $35, million more than I expected.

That would they would make because of energy costs.

The city would get then went up to 50, then 75.

What's the latest on where the money is going in wind.

Right now people should be getting their rebate back in their December bill based on their July usage.

So the final number was about 42 million is what we're getting the rebate back out.

I wanted the full 75 million to go back to the CPS customers because those were additional charges that you know they won't responsible for it was because of higher gas price and natural gas prices and we actually voted a rate increase this last year.

I voted against that because I didn't think it was warranted, but we did vote for that and that all that all put together raise that up to $75 million.

So that's the difference between the 42 million and the 75 people might wonder wait where's that money go.

That money went the city first off pulled out that almost well a little over $25 million for other requirements there's a resiliency building that we were is included in that along with sidewalks and resilience aquifer.

Yeah to store supplies and things like that for if we ever had another winter storm or whatever.

Whatever emergency happens here in town it holds water sand and you know, all these different, different things that you need during an emergency and then OK for protection that was built in there.

Also the $10 million that we had made a commitment several years ago to include that and keep paying for that.

So that money came right off the top and that's what pushed it down to the $42 million.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

We're out of time.

But you said what you're doing now for next year is already seeing where that money is going and absolutely thinking about next year's budget.

Absolutely.

Thanks very much.

Clayton Perry, District Ten, appreciate you coming in.

This week, Bacardi served with a lawsuit from a group claiming there are not enough polling places for Election Day.

It's actually something that one of the county commissioners had asked that group, Texas Organizing Project, to do to sue the county.

Joining us now to talk about this is Jackie Cowan, a bear county elections administrator.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Now, you have been at the center of a storm again this year, like you were in 20, 20.

The county faced a lawsuit then that there weren't enough election poll, election day polling places.

Where are we now and the number of polling places.

And what do you say about this lawsuit?

Well, again, I have not seen the lawsuit.

I have not been served.

I saw it in the paper this morning.

Today we have 267 polls right now.

The poll site misnomer is we have vote centers.

We have 267 vote centers in 2019.

You're counting petitioned the state.

We went through a rigorous application process to move from precinct poll site voting to vote centers in the vote centers allow any voter to vote at any poll on election day.

But now people say that's more efficient which is what you argued for even if it's the 12 or 14, if it's just one voter an hour it's still important to them.

That's still some say their only way to vote.

So efficiency wasn't at county commissioners first concern and they they can't order you to put on more polling places, but they sure want you to and so does the lawsuit.

So how do you respond to that?

Can there be 302 like there were last year?

Like they're pushing for at least.

Well again with the efficiencies with our voters have told us where they would like to vote.

We've had vote centers now for three years and as part of our application process and as part of us staying is vote centers, we must report to the Secretary of State who reports to the legislature or how many people vote outside their precinct where they vote.

We're required to have all of this information up to them after every election.

And our voters have shown us where they choose to vote.

It's amazing that we have voters and people will say, well, there was a line to vote at, let's say Lion's Field, and we'll hear that there's a line or unsealed.

So we'll contact the officials and say, please go tell the people in line that right down the street is stack.

They can go over there and the people don't move.

They want to stay hidden or.

Something because know about those other centers.

And state law, as I understand it, says you have to have 50% of polling places of the number of precincts that you have which we put it up higher or roughly that.

That's not true.

There's one line in the election code that compares polling places to precincts their county has 776 precincts.

Which would imply you'd have to have half of that.

Right.

Which would.

But the Law Vote Center application goes by.

The polling sites you had open, for instance, a little known fact that many people don't know is their county has 68 of those 776 poll site precincts there's zero precincts there's absolutely no one living in them.

It's due to redistricting.

We have precincts that go down the middle of 410 one side of it is one precinct the other is the other strip.

Anything that happens we do so we have 68 that have absolutely no one.

But still 267 wouldn't be half of those where people are living.

And in 2020 the judge said that, you know, ruled against the county and that it was, you know, it's unacceptable the county turns its back on that.

Well, this is from Milwaukee and Gonzales unacceptable that the county turns its back on the promise, especially after legal action they faced back in 2020.

He's one of the lawyers for tops.

What do you say to those people can you do it is it is it a question of of will whether you want to do it or whether you can get the people to do it.

It's a combination of access to the sites.

As you know, we just came off of you valley on May 24th.

We just came off of that horror and we have been very successful in dealing with some of the school districts to make that a school holiday.

So proud of the fact North side, north, northeast, east, central and southwest of all made it a student holiday.

So that the.

Other of those.

Polling sites that you were concerned about.

So you can put them in schools.

That we do have 60 but 68% of our sites are in schools.

Are you putting more on schools than is 267 the final number.

That's where we are right now.

Yes sir.

But you don't expect it to be the final.

Number it is now.

It was 259.

We went to do 67.

Because of the.

Law that's been in with also getting experienced.

Election officials were not willing to open a site just to have a site there and have all new staff there who have never run an election before.

Do you expect it to be three.

02 or somewhat higher than 267?

I don't know.

At this point.

A month right now.

Right.

But the election's already been programed.

We've mailed out mail ballots, we've received some mail ballots that already voted ballots.

Let's move on to another issue right now, since it seems like that's where it's going to stay right now in terms of numbers.

Well, we'll know more later, but elections administrators across the state have been inundated with requests for information.

You facing a number of lawsuits or open records requests as well, and some administrators have quit the entire Gillespie County staff.

Why is it so tough right now?

How do you describe what it's like to work in elections.

That's a great question.

And I've seen a lot of my friends leave leave the the elections world.

I think in Texas in the last two years, we've had about literally 50% of the elections administrators resign or retire it.

It's different when your days are consumed with open records requests that we get ten and 12 a day.

And they're not only coming from voters here in their county legal firms now they're coming from all over the United States.

We saw a huge uplift when we saw the attorney general's opinion of his 0411.

We have requests for people to come and look at every ballot that was cast in the 2020 election now that's 774,000 pieces of paper.

Some people have said it's political, that there are fewer polling places what do you tell those people?

And they look at you and say, it's your politics.

We have run nonpartisan, wonderful legal elections under my purview.

And in the past you have said that you wouldn't do another presidential election because of the frustration in the past.

Is that.

Yes, it's it's it's very difficult.

It's it's very difficult.

And the politics of ramped this up.

You know, when we have training classes for election officials, which we see all the time, we have advisory boards from them.

And when you have a judge who's worked for years, 15, 20 years, and they're now questioning whether they're going to serve at their poll site because of the politics that.

That brings up, are you accepting applications together?

Absolutely.

To get higher than 267?

We have we are receiving applications all of the time for people who are willing to work.

OK, finally, the last days for voter registration, mail and registration, that kind of thing.

Yes.

October 11th is the last day to register if you are going to vote in the November 8th election.

And Election Day, November 8th.

November 8th.

Early voting.

October 24th through November 4th.

And all over the county.

All at 51 sites all over the county, go to our website.

Jackie Cowan, and thank you very much for coming in more than a year after city officials and the Brackenridge Park Conservancy unveiled plans for a makeover of Sunken Garden Theater that is on hold and also part of the 2017 bond project that is going to improve small part of Brackenridge Park that's on hold.

But here to tell us where we are in this whole process is Joe Turner, J.T., the interim director of Brackenridge Park Conservancy.

Thanks for coming in.

Glad to be here.

First of all, in the paper recently there was an article about the BRAC, the Sunken Garden Theater Project, and where that is.

What do you tell people about for more than a year ago where that project is?

Well, we tell them is, you know, we were asked by the city to put that project on hold.

Currently, the Sunken Garden Theater, while we move through the process of the 2017 capital bond project for the park, we think the two projects need to be separated And so when I say put on hold, the city asked us to wait until they got through the process of the bond and seven days just because of the backlash of the River Road, residents were concerned about traffic and parking, thought it was too big.

I just think you don't need two competing issues at the same time.

And, you know, we we have as a conservancy of raise money for the 2017 bond project.

So we would love to see that start and get that.

Quite honestly, that's the first major capital campaign that the Brackenridge Park Conservancy has ever accomplished.

And we'd like to get that project moving so we can show to our donors what we raise funds for so they can actually go out there in my language, see it and touch it and understand what they helped improve that piece of the park.

What you're doing is kind of gotten lost in the controversy over how many trees would be cut down for this.

That's a big controversy people hear about on the news, but it's in different phases.

That's part of phase one.

You're helping $4 million and more in phase two.

In phase two, you know, when that project was put together, there were a lot of pieces that were going to be possibly put into it.

Uh, luckily, the city allowed the landscape architect firm.

It was hired to do this project to design those pieces so we could get cost dollars.

And then we looked at those and working with the city and the landscape architect decided those projects that we would try to fundraise and put those dollars into that project.

So what is in phase one and what's in phase two?

So phase two, we really have no fun.

We as a conservancy have no funds.

That's bond fund delivered.

And really that's the walls and the trees and the steps that reach to the river and then stabilizing the Pumphouse the bottom of it.

When you move into phase two, of course, that's the restoration of the pump house, that whole area that's taken the road out, that's opening the arches back up that's improving the raceway, that's putting the H-E-B Cultural Trail in, that will loop that whole area.

Raceway is the old channel races down to the river from the ditch most people call.

Yeah, the rice wine.

A lot of that is in disrepair and needs to get done, but can't be done until the first phase.

Is done.

They're doing the first phase first.

That's just the way they have decided to do it.

You know, a lot of park projects are done in phases, and that's what the city's decided and we support their efforts.

And where is that right now?

We had all these meetings about basically about the trees and the plans to how many they should be cut down.

That's gone now to the state.

So the city, you know, after the last meeting they had the city is authorized.

The landscape firm is to come finish that design piece for phase one.

That should be completed if it hasn't been early in the next few weeks.

And then they will submit that piece to the Texas Historical Commission for their review and recommendations.

And then it comes back to the Historic Design and Review Commission.

Here it goes for it'll do that.

I'll come back to the city to make sure everybody agrees with THC.

And then once that, like you just said, then it'll move through the city process.

When do you think we'll get back to the Sunken Garden Theater Project and will that change?

There's a different oversight board.

Yeah, it'll you know, as we said in or not, we but as assistant city manager Lower Houston said in that article that came out probably early of next 20, 23, we know we have a process that needs to be put in place to move that place through and then something garden theater.

Quite honestly what happened you know we put a program together quietly.

It was all during the pandemic.

No one wanted to talk about a project like that during the pandemic.

We've been asked not to, but we'd also been asked to see if we could develop some kind garden theater from an ability some point.

Right.

It desperately needs something.

Porta potties and and so what happened was we were up against a wall, honestly, that if we didn't come out with it, there would have been no capital bond funds.

And if you miss a capital bond process, you know, that's another four or five years down the road.

And so we came out with what we had as a concept.

I think everyone took it as the only way it was going to look.

It was a concept.

And so there will be a compromise.

And so there has to be you hope that there will be you know, I mean, all our great park projects have compromises involved in them.

And my other little line will always be having been a former parks director, all great park projects take time.

And that time is not normally the timeline the public likes to see, but it's a time line from a guy who dealt with them the A philosophy parks are forever.

So when you take this short timeline in a forever timeline, it's not very long.

It's just people want to see it happen quicker.

And there's a lot of hoops, especially when you have historic structures.

We'll come back when we're through a few more of those hoops.

JT, Joe Turner, appreciate it.

Thanks.

On Reporters Roundtable.

This week, we are talking to business reporter of the San Antonio Express-News, Diego Mendoza Moyers about a story you had about pollution both into the water and into the air.

Down at Calabasas, like the Spruce one and two coal fired power plants, there's a new analysis of some data from 2020.

Tell us about what that found and why it's important.

Yeah it's a report from a group called Environment Texas, and it sort of is working off of some EPA data from the Environmental Protection Agency that found that seeps dumped around £72,000 of heavy metals in a Calaveras lake in 2020 primarily chromium and barium and kind of some manganese metals like that.

And so this report was kind of compiling all this data and really shedding light on some of the pollution that that seeps discharges into the lake where a lot of people are you know fish for catfish.

Yeah you set it up with people fishing for catfish and red drum and obviously it brings up and this group also brought up whether the fish is safe, whether the water is safe.

What did you find?

Yeah.

So they didn't test fish tissue, which is obviously would be a key and to determine the toxicity there.

And an EPA or CPS says that the EPA and other regulators say, hey, the lake is safe, people can eat the fish.

So for what it's worth, the regulators haven't raised any alarms.

But this report was, I think, just kind of shedding light on this issue that people don't really know about.

And it wasn't just water that there's new data on.

It's also what's into the air from that plant.

Yeah.

I mean, it released 6 million tons of spruce plant, 6 million tonnes of CO2 last year.

So it's I think the sixth highest emitting power plant in Texas as far as CO2.

So it's clearly one of the dirtiest power plants in the state.

Now, this is one that CPS does want to close.

Where are we on the timeline for that?

A lot of environmental eyes have pushed for that.

They have been out, you know, protesting for that at CPS meetings.

Is that going to happen sooner than that timeline?

Well, so Cypress produces around 20 to 25% of the city's power.

So important to note, it's a huge source of the electricity that we all use every day.

But I think for now, CPS is eyeing closing the older spruce one unit by 20, 28, converting the second unit to natural gas around the same time the timelines you know to be worked out still but that's the plan for now natural gas still has methane emissions and other things associated with it that environmentalists aren't too happy about.

But that's the plan.

For now but it's supposedly half of what it would be from the coal.

Natural gas is supposedly.

It produces about half as many CO2 emissions.

But but the methane emissions from natural gas are an issue that people are calling attention to and.

CPS is also spending money on upon.

Its fire.

$50 million to prolong the life of the spruce plant.

They have to build this coal ash pond for all the kind of waste product from the, you know, the burning of coal.

And it costs $50 million to build over the next couple of years.

And they're really doing that to stay in EPA compliance so they can keep burning coal at the plant for the next few years.

Wow.

So interesting.

I wish we had more time but that you can read about it in the San Antonio Express-News, Diego Mendoza, Moyers always a pleasure to have you, business reporter for the Express-News, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can catch more programs or you can check out the podcast at klrn.org And we'll see you next time.

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