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.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are starting with the county and how county commissioners have been busy in the last few weeks passing a budget, working on, baseball stadium issue on the northwest side of downtown, as well as being sued by the attorney general and in the process of dealing with that.

Joining us to tell us all about that is County Judge Peter Sakai Thanks for coming in this.

Morning, Randy.

Let's start with the county budget passed recently.

The basics of that you had to cut back because less federal money is coming in.

And $160 million less.

I think this time was the budget.

How did you deal with that?

What did you cut?

Well, what we did was we had a unanimous vote of commissioners court to pass this 2425 budget.

We decreased the overall spending for the county.

We also maintained the tax rate that is not had been increased in any way for the last 30 years.

We also wanted to make sure that we took care of core issues public safety, public health, economic development.

And so we're proud that we were able to do that.

The reference to the federal money, the American Rescue Plan Act money, Arpa money is going to come to an end.

And so it's it's not a continuation by the end of the 2026 year.

That money needs to be all spent or we'll probably most likely have to return that money to the federal government.

That budget cliff, some are talking about it next year are going to be worse.

No, because we took the steps to adjust our budgets.

And so what we did was do basically a back to budget, where we focused in on increasing the amount of deputies and the sheriff's office.

We increased the amount of constable deputies.

We gave increased funding to the DA's office, crime lab.

we really focused on nuts and bolts of the county crime lab.

We had a backlog there.

So you're giving more money for more overtime as well as people?

More overtime, more people.

The crime lab is an integral part of criminal justice.

Without their work, cases might be dropped.

And we don't want to let violent repeat offenders out on the street because of that.

Another issue that's been in the news recently with the county is the baseball stadium development on the northwest edge of downtown West.

And urban, wants to and the missions baseball owners want to get a plan in place that can send a major League Baseball, or they're going to lose a franchise.

Basically, they have to get a letter to them by October 15th of the general plan.

where are they in that right now?

Well, first, let's back up to why the county and the city signed a letter of intent back in August 1st.

Right.

Was to give a letter to Major League Baseball.

I hope the public recognizes that Major League Baseball controls the franchises now from the major league level to the minor league level.

They have the power to take the missions baseball team away and go to a city that perhaps will accommodate their request.

They have made it very clear that the current baseball stadium, Nelson Wolff Stadium, is inadequate.

That for several years they've talked about that and there's a deadline coming.

Up.

So in talking to the baseball ownership, the county myself, I made several stipulations.

One was no homeowner property tax to finance this baseball stadium.

Two, we wanted substantial equity in whatever we built in regards to the land, the stadium.

We would have some type of ownership.

And finally, we wanted to see a significant contribution by private equity.

And so that financing that was agreed to initially in the initial letter of intent on August 1st, was to come up with the financing scheme that we're using to call a Ters a tax increment, reinvesting and so on.

So the property taxes that are increasing as a result of the private equity, namely Graham Weston and Weston Urban, are putting in $1 billion into this whole area, which is really, if you know, this area from 60 to the north to Martin to the San Pedro Creek to Flores is basically open land and a few buildings that apparently Weston Urban has owned.

So what we need is that private investment is going to increase the taxes that will then pay for it.

So in essence, the private equity is paying for the financing and.

You think you'll get by October 15th.

The okay from the 60 to sell the last piece of property to Weston Urban.

Because that and the soap factory apartments residents not wanting to move.

Those are the two hurdles, right?

We're going to have continuing negotiations whether we make that deadline or not.

I want to make sure again, that it's the right deal for the taxpayers.

I want the public to understand that this economic development, and I realize people are calling it a baseball stadium.

I look at as economic development that is going to create significant cash infusion to the Tony Independent School District.

They capture all the taxes they don't get.

They don't have to put any of their property tax into this repayment of the bonds.

I'm also wanting a discussion of affordable housing, which the county has been involved with, especially with Weston Urban, in regards to the affordable housing.

And so affordable housing needs to also be in the picture.

It's a complex discussion.

I'm hopeful that we can try to make the deadlines, otherwise we'll need some type of an extension, hopefully for Major League Baseball.

Last, lastly, we wanted to talk about the Attorney General Ken Paxton, lawsuit against the county for what you did to get people to register to vote here.

Tell us about that.

Where are you in the process?

You've sued.

The judge has put it on hold.

We started this at the summer, Randy, where we, made a bona fide attempt to increase voter participation.

And from that came a contract in September, to which, the day after we passed that, we got notice that we would be sued.

So we indeed got sued by the attorney general and behalf of the state of Texas, alleging that what we did was unlawful.

And what you did was send out, voter registration.

And no way are we touching the ballots or the election process.

Other dynamics is the fact that all voter integrity is insured by our elections administrator and the secretary of state that double check all these registration.

So this past Monday, there was a request for a restraining order, temporary injunction on the issuance of those registration letters to the newly moved in residents to Bexar County.

It was a targeted mailer so that we would capture people who just came into town, so to speak, or people that perhaps have not ever been on a registration.

And we'd hope for is to increase voter turnout.

This not just among one part.

Of what the county did Monday, was to defend the right to vote.

And where in that process, do you think?

Well, you'll be in the next few weeks and before the election?

Well, right now those registration letters and mailers have been sent out.

And so we're going to hope that we're going to get a significant return and get more registered voters.

I don't care if they vote Democrat, Republican or independent.

We want voter turnout.

We have an important election this fall, and I want to make sure everybody's voice is heard.

This is all about the right to vote.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, sir.

Coming in, judge Peter Sakai, Bexar County, a lot of information there.

And you're going to be busy for the next couple of months at least, or at least.

All right.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

San Antonio City Council just voted to go ahead with the latest plans for a minor league baseball stadium on the northwest edge of downtown, though it is not definitely a final deal at all.

And the vote was 9 to 2.

One of the city council members who voted against it, Terry Castillo, district five, joins us to talk about that, as well as affordable housing.

We'll get to that in just a minute.

But first of all, tell us why you voted against this plan.

It's really a concept, right now for a stadium in the northwest part of downtown.

Right now, the city of San Antonio's currently going through a budget process.

And on the 18th, we're going to vote to approve, the city of San Antonio as a budget and through the community engagement process, hearing from San Antonio residents, their top priorities of investment are connecting the unhoused to services, affordable housing and basic infrastructure like streets and sidewalks.

And when we look at the past budgets in my community in particular, oftentimes there's far more need than resources that are allocated to our district.

And when we look at the financing structure for this proposed stadium, it had been pitched to the voters that zero public dollars would be going towards the facilitation of this project.

However, when we look at the financing structure through the tax increment Refinance zone, those are dollars that if the Ters did not exist otherwise, could be going to the general fund.

Some would argue, if that tourist tax increment reinvestment zone or whatever, if that didn't exist, then there wouldn't be as likely an increase in the tax.

revenues without all this development.

So it would just be taxed at a lower rate.

So there really wouldn't be at least the argument that the city is going to get close to $1 billion in investment over these three phases.

You don't buy that.

Or so when we look at ters in the financing structure, that investment goes back into the Ters to finance that project.

So that increment doesn't go beyond those boundaries.

It doesn't go into the general fund.

And this is a very unique, project in that it stays with the project itself.

There are several ters throughout the city, and we don't see this structure with other projects.

And I'm sure if any San Antonio resident or small business owner had the opportunity to have their taxes go directly to their home or their business, we'd all love for that.

so why is this exception when it's not, practice for everyday San Antonians?

Now, while the city and county have moved forward with this, or given their blessing so that the, ownership can, can give a letter they need to give to MLB to, assure them that there is a plan.

They have to do that by October 15th.

There are a couple of hurdles, and one is the Sisd has a parking lot that they haven't yet sold to this group.

And the other is there's a lot of community, input from the soap factory apartments, the residents there who don't want to be moved out.

is that a big part of your thinking in why your.

You voted against it?

So there's a number of moving pieces, right?

CIC recently shuttered the doors to 15 schools, and one of the three reasons that they cited that they had to close schools was lack to access of affordable housing.

And here we have a project that's requesting public land.

And if residents look at their property taxes, the highest, tax that they pay is for their independent school districts.

And now we're seeing the potential, gifting and we're selling of our public independent school district land for the construction of a baseball stadium and or market rate housing.

the proposed development around the baseball stadium is going to be the construction of new housing.

Yes, but when we look at, the cost for that housing, it's going to be market rate.

It's the housing that the majority of San Antonio residents and C-I-S-D parents can't afford to pay.

so we're kind of seeing this contradiction of what are our priorities and housing goals and how are we going to help facilitate, the lack of affordable housing and or the production of deeply affordable housing?

so I think there's opportunity, to one, have an affordability covenant.

So that way we can ensure that families have opportunity to afford to stay in the new, newly constructed housing units.

at the same time, the city of San Antonio has a strategic housing implementation plan.

It's, a goal that we've set with housing affordability.

And within it, as the city of San Antonio should seize the funding of market rate housing.

And this this project, with the city's memorandum, a memorandum of understanding goals and opposition to that.

and what we're seeing is naturally occurring affordable housing being removed from the market.

and many of these families that live at Softworks don't necessarily have the resources.

and when we look at the data, there's not many units available for us to relocate them to.

And, in the downtown area specifically, are you looking at the the movement out of affordable housing or lower income housing where people actually work downtown?

but don't make a lot of money, need that kind of housing.

In conversation with tenants.

the majority work downtown in the service and hospitality hospitality industry.

or they work in some of our hospitals, doing blood work.

And they live there and they walk to work.

And the city of San Antonio, we're so excited to build, live, work and play communities downtown.

But we're we're removing that opportunity for working class families.

and I think to your point, right, we are seeing citywide the flight of working people to the outskirts of the city and the purpose and what it's being pitched to the city of San Antonio and city Council was a downtown stadium would bring more people.

There is wide sprawl throughout the city of San Antonio.

If you drive past 1604, it's just rows and rows of suburbs, and we don't necessarily have the housing stock yet to help sustain and fill up a stadium.

So I'm still trying to understand if we're so we have so much sprawl, and the goal is downtown will bring more people.

We're going to have to pay for parking.

What are the chances that they will get a covenant?

like if you wanted for X amount of affordable housing in the development there, or because council is going ahead and voting for this concept that that wouldn't be part of it at this point.

So so WeWork tenants attended the CAC school board meeting where they expressed their concerns with their relocation and how, the selling and gifting of this property would impact their livelihood.

my understanding is C-I-S-D has said they have not reached an agreement and they have not had conversations yet.

so with that, I'm hopeful that there's opportunity for.

Leverage that the C-I-S-D would would not sell the land unless there is some kind of covenant like.

That.

Yes.

I believe it would be a disservice to San Antonio residents without that.

And speaking of affordable housi affordable housing programs, including some land banking, a land trust tiered affordability program.

What is that?

And what would that do?

Yes.

So, Community Land Trust is a housing structure which oftentimes nonprofits.

And there's different models depending on the nonprofit to essentially, capture housing that's on the market and or vacant lots.

and the nonprofit can then, pay the property taxes for the property itself and then lease the structure, which buys down affordability and provides more opportunity for San Antonio homeowners and renters to access housing downtown.

And you see that there's a community groups, nonprofits, but they would be working with the county as well.

So there's opportunity within the structure of the CCR that we drafted is, any vacant lots that the city, has access to, that there's essentially an affordability process.

So, if you are providing the deepest affordability you have the first opportunity to say we have the resources, we have the capacity, and we can build the deeply affordable or maintain the deeply affordable housing.

And then it moves on to the next to 30, 60, 80.

And this is just a plan right now.

You have another plan for a bonus program.

what does that mean, a fee in lieu of kind of approach?

Yes.

So the second approach that we're proposing is called State Essar, to ensure that San Antonio residents who want to stay in the city of San Antonio have access to affordable housing and what we look at is current city codes and incentives to incentivize deeply affordable housing.

So we have these codes already within the city of San Antonio.

But we don't tap into them.

So how can we pull those out and incentivize with new construction to have a deeply affordable housing?

because we have an opportunity to get ahead of the lack of displace, the lack of affordable housing and community displaced.

I think these are just plans right now.

What your timeline hopefully would be in a few months next year, the council would vote on that.

Approve that?

Yes.

So they've gone through the governance committee and they've been assigned to the Planning and Community Development Committee, where we'll have further debate and discussion on what that could look like.

So, I'm so stay tuned.

Yes.

Stay tuned.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Terry Castillo, district five.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

On reporters roundtable this week with the election just a couple of months away, we are looking at, race at the top of the ticket in Texas anyway, for Senate joining us to tell us the latest on that is the editor in chief of the San Antonio Current Sanford now.

Nice to be.

Here.

Thanks for coming in.

Now, we have some polls that are pretty tight and, what do they show right now, anyway?

And Ted Cruz and Colorado.

Yeah, the latest snapshot we've got, poll from Erickson College in the Hill that shows Colin already.

Democratic U.S rep, North Texas, four within four points of Ted Cruz.

And there's another one from the University of Houston, Texas Southern University that shows him within two points of Ted Cruz.

And the thing to remember on both of these as that those those numbers are within the margin of error.

So, you know, people looking at that, consider that a statistical tie.

and the interesting thing on top of that is there was a recent, rundown of polls that the Hill did that sort of, compiled, you know, the average support that both of these candidates are seeing across a number of polls.

And it showed that Cruz's support stands at 48.4%, which is ahead of all it.

But when you're coming into the final weeks of a campaign, especially if you're an incumbent and you can't crest above 50%, that's usually a pretty troublesome sign.

Trump is expected to win, I would guess, handily for all the latest polls in Texas.

I mean, we're not talking a purple wave like.

No.

Has been rumored for 40 years, but, but the.

Longest I've been in the newsroom anyway.

Beto O'Rourke.

Although I remember Ann Richards back in the day.

Yeah, yeah.

but Beto O'Rourke came within a couple of points, of Cruz.

But that was as high as Democrats got it.

Yeah, but the thing you remember that was in 2018, which was not a presidential year.

Right?

That's how O'Rourke brought a wave of Democrats into office, even though he fell short against Cruz.

There were there were significant gains in the, Texas House.

There were some gains in the Senate.

A lot of judges, chairs turned over as well.

And there was no presidential candidate right.

Running that time.

This time we have a very consequential election.

and I think what could put, alred over the top is if you see a lot of enthusiasm among Texas Democrats to get out and vote for Kamala Harris and send a signal about Donald Trump.

And likewise, if you see, perhaps there are some, Texas Republicans who are less than enthusiastic about Trump, you know, as opposed to, you know, the first time he ran or the second time, that also, if they stay home, that could also help.

Colin already, it'll be interesting to see whether that happens.

But one general rule of thumb is Democrats tend to do better when there is a presidential election on the ticket.

It brings out a more diverse group of voters.

And in other places in the last couple of years, we've seen abortion as a big issue, maybe not as big here in Texas, women's reproductive rights as immigration.

We saw in the Republican primaries, the governor used immigration as a hammer against people that he wanted a primary.

Sure.

And it worked for him.

Are we seeing the issue of abortion rise to where it would hurt a Ted Cruz or Republicans?

Yeah, I.

Do, I do think it's damaging, to Cruz because he has has repeatedly been among the most, you know, hardcore, advocates for taking away a woman's right to, to seek an abortion.

and it's also been interesting to see that one of the first things that all Red did in terms of, you know, significant ad buys was to basically say, look, I was the guy who was out there supporting this legislation that would have, you know, updated our our immigration system.

You know, here are the Border Patrol guy standing next to me saying I, you know, I was doing the right thing.

And meanwhile, Ted Cruz voted against it.

so I think there was a preemptive, some smart preemptive moves, by his campaign to sort of try to neutralize the border issue.

However, you may have noticed in the last few days there have been negative ads, you know, taken out, it appears by a Cruz surrogate, you know, criticizing, him for, you know, being against a border wall, which, if you know anything about border security, you know that a lot of people who are experts in border security say the wall is just window dressing.

It doesn't need to be there.

You're better off investing in boots on the ground in technology and that sort of thing.

and also, you know, trying to to sort of draw a line between, Cruz's opponent and, you know, let letting criminals into the United States, which, you know, I mean, again, if you if you look at the statistics, people who are here seeking asylum are much less likely to commit crimes than than people who are, permanent residents and fundraising.

Beto O'Rourke in 2018 got some national money, a lot of national money from Democrats.

Sure.

What are we seeing in terms of fundraising?

Well, the interesting thing in 2018, right, was that nobody knew who Beto O'Rourke was, and it was basically him having to hit to hit the ground running, going county to county to county to county.

And eventually he started to build this momentum.

And a lot of that money was coming from, you know, grassroots support from all over the country because people were excited about it means a charismatic candidate.

He was unabashedly liberal.

He didn't, you know, try to, you know, present himself as middle of the road, which has been all red strategy this time around, though, the money started flowing in very early and and it was big Democratic groups, not just, grassroots support because, I think very early on, the Democrats recognized that if there was a chance to flip a seat in the Senate this election cycle, it was this one here in Texas.

And also you've written about the, issue of, voting registration and mailing, registrations out here in Bexar County.

Sure.

Where are we on that?

And a lawsuit against it?

Yeah.

That lawsuit, as, as you know, has been was dismissed by a state district judge who said, look, they already mailed out the stuff.

Attorney General Ken Paxton suit is, you know, it's moot.

There's there's no read to no need to issue this injunction because it's already happened.

Paxton said he's he's, going to file an appeal.

The concern a lot of voting rights advocates and voting rights experts have is that whether or not that suit is allowed to go forward, whether there's any any penalty against Bexar County for doing that mail out, is that Paxton's larger goal here is not necessarily to win court cases.

It's to create confusion among voters, to create fear among voter intimidation.

Yeah, basically, and you know, where where people think, oh my God, if I don't have the right paperwork, I may not be able to vote.

Maybe I just need to stay home.

Or what if I have people over to my house and I hand out voter registration cards while I'm, you know, having a political discussion, do you.

Think that's the same thing as the raids that he has conducted?

He conducted raids of Hispanic Democratic activists in South Texas.

They, joined with Lula, in asking for the, the Biden White House, the Justice Department, to do an investigation of what Paxton, did.

You know, even if it turns out Paxton didn't find anything on this raid that's going to intimidate activists.

Or they're really.

Yeah, it's going to be interesting.

So you got a couple of busy months here?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Stanford now in San Antonio.

Current editor in chief knows everything there is to know about elections from here to Washington.

Thanks.

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

You can watch this show again or any previous shows.

You can also download the podcast.

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