Speaker 1: On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow Speaker 2: San Antonio is a fast growing fast moving community with something new happening every day.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on, Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us for this edition of on the record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and we are talking money in San Antonio.

The budget of the city of San Antonio was just passed, but we're also talking now about how to spend some bond money coming up are going to be voting on in may and then the ARPA money, uh, from the federal government and joining us first is Councilman Mario Bravo of district one.

Thanks for coming in.

And first of all, the bond money that we're looking at passing a $1.2 billion bond, you're in the process of formulating just what you want, what kind of projects in there and what are your priorities, uh, for those bond projects, Speaker 2: My priorities are to get as much public input as possible to make sure that I'm representing the, the priorities of the community.

And, you know, we have an opportunity there.

We're going to be able to appoint, I believe 18 people, each council member will be able to appoint 18 people to the bond committees, whether it's, you know, parks or streets and sidewalks, um, drainage infrastructure.

And so we're going to be able to appoint a bunch of people to carry forward the priorities of the community.

But even if you're not, even if we don't want to point you on there, I want to get your public input.

And so Speaker 1: Are there meetings about that aside from the committee meetings where people can go and say, Hey, this is what I want it done.

Speaker 2: Our office is going to be organizing, uh, input sessions to do that.

Right.

Speaker 1: And how about yourself even before that input?

What are your priorities?

You think the city needs?

Well, Speaker 2: Um, we, we need more drain.

We, we need to invest more in drainage infrastructure for sure.

Um, you know, one of the things that I want to make sure that we're doing in with this bond is have a resiliency lens.

So looking at the fact that our climate is changing, whether you believe that it's, uh, from a mankind activities or not, it is changing and we need to prepare, prepare for more severe weather, more, more frequent, severe weather.

And so I want to look at, uh, what can we do, especially given that we can't count on the state to keep our power on during severe weather events.

So what can we do to become more resilient as a community and prepare for, for more rainfall.

Speaker 1: Now you just came on the council in June and then the budget was passed in September.

And that's one of the things you were frustrated with.

You didn't have as much input as you want to be.

You also had some amendments that were voted down, but you say some of those projects could still happen in terms of changes in the budget in this coming year.

What do you want that might happen still this year?

Yeah, Speaker 2: It's a frustrating process, but I did learn from it.

And it's, the timeline is really challenging for newly elected council members because it's such a short timeline.

Um, but I was excited even though I didn't get some issues that I tried to amend the budget with, uh, supported financially.

I did get commitments from three different committee chairs to take those issues up in their committees.

Um, one of them would be to look at, uh, an outside study of CPS energy's management structure and their corporate culture and make recommendations for best practices for a public utility.

Um, I also got a commitment to, from the audit committee to look at what are our procurement processes and, uh, whether it's contracts or purchasing.

And can we get an outside study there to look at, uh, whether or not we're meeting all the best practices necessary to make sure that every dollar that we spend of the tax payers is cost-effective and is a good investment.

Speaker 1: Now you said, you're you obviously the money was voted down in the budget as an amendment, but how could that happen this year?

So, Speaker 2: Um, a lot of council members don't like it when you bring up new policies in the budget.

And so they say that they like you to use is bring them through committees.

The challenge there was, um, you know, my first committee didn't meet until three weeks before the budget vote.

Not all of my committees had even met yet before the budget vote.

Right.

So my thought was I wanted to, um, get some funding set aside and then we could work out the details in the committees in the next few months.

The good news is if we work out the details in the next few months, we can still go back and do budget adjustments.

Speaker 1: And now the $10 million in amendment, I believe you brought up for homelessness and mental health that, um, kind of was dismissed by some council members.

Is that on the radar for this year or for next year's budget?

Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

So it was just missed, uh, not because there isn't support for that.

It was dismissed as what I was asking for was way out of the ordinary for, uh, an amount for a budget amendment.

But really what I was looking to do is start a conversation, plant some seeds because I knew the ARPA funding conversations were right around the corner.

And so I wanted to get that going and make sure that that way we can be towards the front of the line to be able to ask for permanent funding for permanent supportive housing, for chronically homeless and for mental health services, because that's a gap that we need to fill.

And that's not only is that the compassionate thing to do, but that also is going to help free up nine 11 call centers and emergency services.

So they can go address a lot of other issues, Speaker 1: Uh, processing in terms of coming up with the projects and the proposal that has to be done, basically, I guess, by the end of the year, but then the ARPA money, uh, from the federal government that COVID, you're working on that.

And you just talked about it, but where are your priorities in that?

Because there are not as many strings as one might expect, right?

When you get that money from the federal government.

Speaker 2: I mean, the purpose of that funding is those are federal dollars for relief because of the pandemic.

And so we're going to be looking at who needs relief and how can we give the most direct aid because often a business or an individual they know best what their needs are.

And so I'm going to be looking at how can we reduce barriers and give as much direct aid as possible.

And where are the biggest needs right now because of the pandemic.

And how about before Speaker 1: Portable housing and the bond, I guess, early talk of the proposal is 200 and some million.

Uh, and how would you like that spent because everybody has a different theory.

Speaker 2: I'm excited that the voters approved the change in our charter because PR which allows us to do what a lot of other Texas cities did.

And it allows us to now, uh, spend, uh, invest tax dollars on affordable housing if approved by the voters to the bond.

I'm, I'm really excited about that.

Um, one of the things that I'm asking for right now is I'm asking council to consider, uh, PR uh, contracting for an outside study to look at how have we incentivized affordable housing in the past?

What are the programs that we have used in the past and which ones were most, cost-effective Speaker 1: The controversy over that, right.

Different projects, whether they're aimed at Speaker 2: I, a lot of questions from the community about where, where has that, that, um, spending benefit, active and achieve the intended result.

And so when we do put a large amount of funding for affordable housing on that bond, I want to make sure before we spend a penny of it, that we are well-informed on how we can invest those tax dollars.

Speaker 1: Well, I wish we had more time, but thank you very much.

Councilman Mario Bravo of a district.

One good luck with, uh, all of that.

And, uh, I know it's been a busy few months for you on council.

Thanks for coming in.

Thanks for having me Joining us now, another member of the San Antonio city council, literally on the other side of the desk.

And, uh, he is Councilman from district 10, Clayton Perry.

Uh, we've been talking a budget, the past budget, and now again, the ARPA money that you're going to have to decide coming up, but first the bond issue, that's what you're working on right now as a priority.

What do you have as priorities for that $1.2 billion bond from your perspective?

Well, my priorities are roads and streets, streets drainage.

In fact, this is what my priorities have been over the years.

It's taken care of our infrastructure here in San Antonio and people don't realize it, but we have today a bill of about $5 billion, 5 billion that's with a B and a that number keeps getting bigger every year because we're not putting enough, uh, resources towards eliminating those requirements or helping them stretching out further, that kind of thing.

So my, my priority has always been, let's take care of the infrastructure was $1.2 billion would be a great step.

Yeah.

That 5 billion you're talking about.

That's a list of things that we need to get done, not a debt or anything like that.

Right.

Um, and now in terms of other things that are going to be included in the bond right now, we have affordable housing, which is, uh, was okay by voters in, in, uh, may to be part of bond funding like this.

What do you think of the bond for affordable housing and how big that portion should be?

Well, I understand the need for affordable housing, but again, I'm looking at that other side of the equation on all the facilities that we own, you know, police stations, fire stations, uh, drainage requirements, parks, libraries, our streets.

Uh, I got to remind everybody that we have over 4,000 miles of streets here in San Antonio, 10% of them, or 400 miles of that.

Our F streets that's street set have totally failed, uh, hard to drive on that kind of thing.

And to me, we need to take care of the things that we own and, you know, provide safe driving conditions and all of those other resources.

Before we start looking outside the box for other places, suspicion Proponents of the bond for affordable housing would say, well, you're in district 10, you don't need, or most of the people that are don't need that affordable housing help like a district one.

Uh, what do you tell them?

Well, I can say that, yes, we do need affordable housing in district 10.

In fact, uh, the number one priority for, uh, uh, the tax program, uh, through the state is in district 10.

And, uh, we have several of them that are lined up already and, and develop are still coming into district 10, looking for different areas to provide affordable housing, but with the tax credit citizen system and not going through the bond process.

So yes, district 10 has just as many requirements as other districts in San Antonio.

And now in terms of how you would like to support affordable housing, there are different strategies for that incentives for builders, for developers, help for actual people trying to pay the rent or get a house.

Where are you on, on your theory, your philosophy of this?

Well, we get hundreds of millions of dollars over the years for construction of affordable housing.

And that's all done through this tax credit system that is offered that has to get approved by the state and then, um, you know, execute those, those projects.

And I'm all for that.

Uh, again, it's a tax credit system was established.

Uh, gosh, I think back, uh, by president Reagan, uh, that started that program.

And over the years, we've seen great results from that.

So I, I'm a supporter of that, where I, where I have a rub is for San Antonio and scare coming out of our, either our general fund, which we've increased funding for affordable housing, a general plan this year, as well as our bond programs.

Should we be taking tax money from our general fund in bond to pay for affordable housing versus through these tax credit programs that we're already getting.

And, um, um, um, I'm very skeptical about that on reducing the amount of money that's available for all of these other needs that in our charter, that's how bonds were established to take care of our infrastructure needs that we have here at San Antonio.

Yes, it was approved by the voters to change that, but, um, I'm still skeptical.

And now Mario Bravo is one of the things he talked about as being a freshman and some of the other freshmen, uh, Councilman council members as well have said that they, not that they were ignored, but that the process since they get in, in June and then the budget has to be approved by September that their input, your input, I guess when you were a freshmen council member, isn't what it should be.

Do you foresee a process of changing that?

Like he would like, You know, I would have to step back and think about my freshman year I was prepared and I asked for things, I voted on things.

Um, you know, and I, I guess, I guess I was prepared for that.

Um, I don't see with, Did You feel like I was not ignored?

No, I was not ignored.

And, and I don't think that anybody was ignored.

In fact, um, you know, I can point to district two that got some funding for a couple of organizations, uh, that he wanted, uh, to the tune of about $50,000.

If I remember right, plus this affordable housing, whether it was the, uh, remodeling of housing or the under one roof program, um, those were all programs that they supported, but we go through this long lengthy process every year.

And for all of this to come up on the day that we're voting, um, you know, we could have sat there for another week on council trying to get all of these issues sorted out As quick question, you had, uh, an amendment that you would like to raise the homestead exemption, uh, at least some, uh, do you expect that to happen next year?

It was voted down this year.

I'm going to push like all get out.

I, you know, this, this was a, an attempt to raise that homestead exemption.

And I'll say that $20 million that is additional revenue for this next year was coming out of property taxes.

And I want it to fund about $5.6 million out of that, uh, to give back as, uh, a higher homeless To raise it from a minimum of 5,000 to 5% of whatever the home values.

Yeah.

Yes.

In that, that was the plan, uh, Councilman courage.

And I worked real hard on that to get that through.

And, um, but it didn't happen this year, but I put it in the minutes that we're going to talk about this, this coming February and be more prepared where we don't have to rush that through the, uh, session at the very end, We had more time, but thank you very much and good luck with that bond and then the ARPA money as well.

But you'll be, uh, discussing if not battling over.

Thank you very much.

Just Clayton Perry council member of district 10.

Thanks.

The musicians at the San Antonio symphony are now on strike after they got an email about a contract just Sunday night and joining us now is the chair of the musicians of the San Antonio symphony, Mary Ellen.

Gorey.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, where are you in terms of even talking to the symphony board and what's the contract hold up if you will?

Speaker 2: Well, we are always ready to discuss reasonable proposals with them, but at the moment, this is not reasonable.

Uh, they had given us their last best and final offer a few weeks ago, which, uh, the musicians voted on and rejected unanimously.

Speaker 1: It's a cut in the number of full-time musicians from 72 to 40, Speaker 2: 40 to 70 40 point.

Speaker 1: The others would be part-time and they wouldn't get health insurance.

And then also there would be a pay cut.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Uh, they would, they would re uh, cut the full-time compliment from 72 to 42, then of the remaining 30.

They would just eliminate four positions that are currently vacant.

And the remaining 26 musicians would see their jobs reduced to very part-time, uh, with no benefits, no health insurance and an annual guaranteed salary of approximately 11,000.

Yeah, Speaker 1: They had said that the, it is a nonprofit and the last year before the pandemic, they took in about $6 million in revenues and spent about eight are heading to the expenses and they just need to get the finances in order.

Speaker 2: Well, it is true that that the ne the money needs to be there to pay the musicians, but the answer is not to destroy the orchestra.

The answer is to get out and expand the fundraising net.

And, and, and the truth is that what they offered us is well below the 6 million that they admit that they brought in.

This is, this is, uh, unjustifiably Speaker 1: Projected would have 5 million in the coming year.

Speaker 2: Well, their projection is based solely on known, known donors, uh, and, and very low projections.

They project 90,000 in corporate donations, which is extraordinarily low.

And in fact, lower than we have received in past seasons.

Yeah, Speaker 1: This is the first strike by a musician since 1985, but there had been a bankruptcy in the early two thousands.

And, you know, I've covered stories for a number of years about how tough it is to get support for the symphony.

What do you tell people, uh, you know, to get out and support the symphony, first of all, and, and how, how viable is it to have the size of the orchestra that you have?

Speaker 2: That's a fair question.

Um, it's, it's, it's urgent to get the word out to people, uh, but I can tell you that over the last month or so, I have heard from people they're just coming out of the woodwork, telling me they had no idea the symphony was in trouble.

Nobody ever asked them nobody ever approached them to see if they could donate.

Um, there's a number of extremely large corporations in San Antonio that have never donated to the symphony.

And they're projecting actually lower corporate donations than they themselves have received in the past.

So as far as how realistic it is for San Antonio to have an orchestra of this size, if you look at the list of metropolitan areas by population, uh, the population, the metropolitan areas that are very similar to San Antonio, all have bigger orchestras, um, Nashville, Kansas city, uh, Milwaukee is smaller than San Antonio and Milwaukee is a good comparison because that is basically a blue collar city.

Yeah.

Speaker 1: What do you tell people about, okay, how long you might strike and what do you really hope to happen here?

That it gets that, uh, awareness so that there are more donors and then the board can then say, okay, we're going to pay you this much.

How long are you prepared to go out and strike Speaker 2: The, I can't tell you how long the strike will be.

We will strike as long as necessary.

Uh, we will not be complicit in the destruction of the orchestra.

And so we, Speaker 1: You think it would just, it would go away if you had to go down to 42.

And Speaker 2: I think that their projections do not work the way they think they will.

They are assuming that the musicians who are reduced to a part-time status will stay in town.

That is not a safe assumption.

I have several colleagues who are already leaving town, and not only would we lose these very talented colleagues, but we wouldn't be able to replace them because nobody is going to come to San Antonio to audition for $11,000 a year when they can make much more money than that, staying home and playing in the orchestras around where they live.

Okay.

Speaker 1: They also are proposing to cut the, uh, the season, uh, down from, I guess, I don't know how many weeks, right?

And so if you are on strike, uh, already next week, you have some things, or this coming week, you have, uh, some things scheduled with the San Antonio opera.

Will those happen?

Will you know, how long do you think it'll be?

Speaker 2: Well, I, I can't predict it, right.

We are ready to come back to the table and discuss reasonable propositions.

Reasonable is not cutting the salaries in half, and reasonable is not cutting the orchestra down by over 40%.

Uh, reasonable is something that is sustainable and the problem with their, their plan, as I was saying earlier, not only are they assuming that the part-time musicians will stick around, they're assuming that the full-time musicians whose salaries would be cut from a base of about 31,000 and something down to 24, and the week's cut would stay.

And the truth is that if people need to keep food on the table, lights on, they're going to do what they have to do to feed their families.

And that is not necessarily going to include, uh, being available.

Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much, Mary Ellen, Gorey the chair of the musicians of San Antonio symphony.

I hope things get worked out.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: Finally, we're talking about real estate and development.

It has been a very hot market, and there are some controversial, uh, developments or sales in the works too, along rivers, and one along and a Sekiya on the south side, very busy business reporter Madison is Lira.

The express news comes in for that, and you have been covering all kinds of sales and plans.

And first of all, we're talking about why very interesting in the downtown area next to the San Antonio museum of art, the CPS energy owned some land and was going to give it to the museum, but that's in limbo right now.

Yes.

So back in 2015, CPS declared about seven acres on Jones avenue next to the museum as surplus and decided they would donate about half of it to the museum of art next door.

The timeline for finalizing that deal ran out at the end of 2019.

And CPS is also now in a different financial state after the winter storm and the Corona virus pandemic.

So they revisited what to do with this property, the other half of this property, uh, this week.

And as of right now, they're exploring selling it and also continuing discussions with the museum about the highest and best use of the property.

But they had a couple of recommendations put before them.

And then they went with the third option, uh, which I thought was interesting.

Yeah.

So they basically combined elements of both of the options that were before them.

One of the options being put the property on the market, the half that they had planned to donate to the museum and the other option, being a reopen negotiations, essentially with donating that piece of land to stream, Uh, there are negotiations to take free a piece of land, but I'm sure there's some strings attached, maybe some tax things that they have to deal with.

What does it look like?

You think that is going to happen, or is it still, who knows It's still up in the air?

Um, I'll be interested to see what happens.

It's obviously a great location and it's a big piece of land in the downtown area, close to the Pearl, uh, close to downtown.

Um, so it's, it's If they sell a lot of loss, things like that, going in, uh, also development along the Guadalupe river, up in new Braunfels, a big plan development up there, but conservation in certain happy.

So a developer up near canyon lake wants to turn about 155 acres along the river into high-end housing and recreational amenities.

Um, about 242 home sites are what he's, um, looking at currently.

And the recreation would be kind of a mix of swimming pools and kayaking and things of that nature, But only a limited number right along the river.

Correct.

And that was some of that land would be used for conservation, but not along the river.

It'd be on the other side.

Yeah.

About 30 acres, uh, would be used for conservation of the 155.

It looks like it is going ahead.

Yes.

And now on the south side here, along the SAQ or near the Sekiya four, 10, not too far from a spot on mission and San Jose, there's also a little controversial development.

That's still in the works.

Where is that?

Yes.

So SIBO development, which is based in the Austin area, wants to buy some land, basically near, um, mission San Juan and mission a Spada near the sake.

Yeah.

As you mentioned, um, and neighbors are not happy about that.

Um, it's contingent the sale of the property to the developer is contingent on its rezoning to allow for, um, higher density and neighbors are worried about density, but also traffic in that area.

It's next to some single family homes.

And they're worried about the safety of, of school children.

I'm just understanding the planning commission has okay.

That or recommended it, but it still goes to the zoning commission before it goes to the city.

So it could be a in limbo.

Do you think what, what's your gut on this one?

Um, I'll be interested to see if the developer and the neighborhood association come to any compromise over some of the elements that the neighbors have been upset about.

Um, as you mentioned, it still has to go through zoning commission and then council ultimately votes on the planning and zoning commission recommendations About needing more housing there.

We just learned university hospital is going to build a hospital on the south side or university health.

Um, uh, Brooks has some new development as well.

So that whole area is being redevelop That whole area.

Yeah, there's definitely a need for more housing in the area, especially with prices just skyrocketing during the pandemic Madison handler business reporter for the express news.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of on the record.

You can see this show again, or previous shows as well as the podcast at dot org.

Tell your friends and neighbors about it, and we will see you next time.

on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele do follow.