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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 longtime San Antonio police chief, William McManus, who announced recently that he is retiring as of September.

Thank you very much for coming in.

You have special insight, not just in San Antonio's, crime and policing, but across the country.

Now, you are the longest serving major city police chief.

I think by far.

And you also have 51 years in law enforcement.

So, first of all, why retire?

You know, it gets it gets to a point where, you know, you wake up every morning.

I wake up every morning at 530, and, and the first thing I do is I read the crime reports for the last, you know, 24 hours or so every morning, and it never stops.

24, seven, seven days a week.

365.

So I mean there's, there's, there's got to be a time to go.

And that was it for me.

But you thought that was the case a few years back.

You retired and then as Tom Brady would as a quarterback, you were, you un retired and you had, you said retirees remorse.

What's different now?

Well, I tell you what.

Back then, so so the average tenure for a bigger city chief is 3 to 5 years.

And I had nine years at the time.

I left and went to CPS.

So I figure that, you know, I'm I'm pushing the odds here.

And I'd rather go out on my own terms and be forced out.

So I figured I'd give CPS a shot.

Doyle Barnaby, who was the CEO at the time, he asked me if I had any interest in coming over to be the director of security.

Well, I said, you know, I might have.

And then I saw him about the same time the following year, and he brought it up again.

So I said, yeah, we'll have somebody call me.

And we did.

And so I went to CPS, in January of 2015, and I stayed for about nine months, and I was determined I was going to stick it out and I was going to get promoted and make energy my career from that point.

But I wasn't, I wasn't enjoying it at all.

Cheryl and I started talking.

Cheryl, Cheryl Scully, I was invited back as chief here.

And what are you going to do now?

What do you think you were going to do?

And I've got a couple, ideas I'm entertaining, which I won't reveal at the moment, but I got a couple of ideas.

I got a few phone calls, private sector police, chief policing, anything.

Anything is on the table right now.

So.

But.

But I've not had any, calls about police chief.

At this point, I'm not throwing my hat in the ring for any jobs.

I mean, it's, the city wants to talk to me.

Based on my tenure, my reputation, and I'm happy to do that.

But, but I'm not going to.

But if a city out there says, hey, you know, you're good police chief, we've heard a lot about you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it depends on where the city is.

I'm not going north.

I'm not going east.

Okay.

So.

Well, over the years in San Antonio moved to this direction of.

How much have you seen in terms of crime in San Antonio?

Attitudes toward police in San Antonio.

Change in your time here.

And over the 50 years you've been.

Yeah.

Let me start with the 50 year part of it.

So I've seen a generation of change for the good in policing.

When I started off back in the mid 70s, I mean, it was nothing like it is right now.

You know, we were in our general orders, didn't even allow us to talk to the public unless we were taking a report.

And this was in this in the 70s, DC in Washington, DC, the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police.

And now it's all community, not all community, but a much more.

It absolutely is is much, much more community.

We work with neighborhood groups to, you know, improve the quality of quality of life in those neighborhoods.

We work with community leaders on, on issues that their, their communities may be facing, crime or otherwise, crime or quality of life.

Everything that we do now is, is tenured and, de-escalation.

So, I mean, it's it's just is that a good thing?

Yeah, it's a good thing.

I mean, it's it's it's been a generation of change or generation of change that has actually taken root.

I don't think you'll ever see policing go back to the way it was back in the day.

How about keeping police officers?

We had, Danny Diaz, outgoing chief of the police union here, talking about it's tougher to retain officers because they don't see maybe policing as a career that their grandfathers or uncles or fathers did.

And especially with attitudes toward police changing over the years, do you see that if you're going to come into policing today, you've got to come into it for the right reason.

You've got to come into it for, for because, you know, you want to be as a police officer, you want to be part of the community.

What everybody used to say back when I was applying for, you know, police, police job, you know, I want to help the community.

Well, that's what everybody said, you know?

But really, what everybody wanted to do is change bad guys, and and that's still a lot part of it, but.

But today, there's got to be, the right reason for being a police officer.

It's not just chasing down bad guys.

It's it's, you know, helping people, helping the community, being part of the community.

That's a big, big piece of it.

How about the pendulum in terms of, attitude toward policing from before George Floyd to, you know, defund the police to now, how do you see the support?

And here in San Antonio, has it been a challenge for you?

Yeah.

No.

You know, the support here in San Antonio has always been strong and and what I try to pass on to the, to, to the officers is, you know, when you get involved in an act of misconduct, you know, these days, your name and your and your picture wound up in the newspaper or even on the television, you know, telling, you know, the community what you've done wrong and how many days you got suspended.

When you do that, you chip away at the foundation of support that we've built up over the years.

You know, we've got a we've got a big checkbook right now of support in the community.

And, you know, every time we mess up, you know, that, you know, there's a withdrawal made there.

And then we've got to go back and kind of build that back up again.

But the community support here is is fantastic.

We have the best police department in the country.

Why not stay here?

That when I was an officer back in the third district in in Washington, there was a, I had probably three years on and there was a deputy chief who was in charge of the district.

There was a captain who oversaw every shift, and then the deputy chief oversaw the whole district.

So and I heard that he was leaving, and I was coming up the stairwell.

He was coming down the stairwell.

I said, chief, I heard you were going to be heard.

You were leaving, man.

Why are you going?

Everybody likes you, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And and he.

Yeah.

And I never forgot this.

He said, Mac, he said, when it's time to go, it's time to go.

I never understood that.

But that's what I'll give to you when it's time to go.

It's time to go.

Okay.

Well, thanks very much for spending time with us and good luck.

And whatever you do, and come back before then to Police Chief William McManus, San Antonio.

Thanks again.

Thank you.

Renee.

Last week, the state Board of Education gave initial approval to some literary works that will be part of the English curriculum.

They also gave initial approval to part of the social studies curriculum.

And here to talk about that is San Antonio's member of the state Board of Education, district three Marissa Perez Diaz, thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Randi.

This is, making headlines because there are Bible passages included in the literary works and no other faith based, works that are referenced in this.

And this has been contentious for some time.

What happened here and what's going to be included?

Yeah.

Randi.

So I think, you know, as we started this process, this is a result of House Bill 1605 from the 80th legislative session.

So it's a requirement of the Texas Education Agency or the Texas State Board of Education to create this list of literary works that are going to be required reading at every grade level for our students, per the language of the law.

We were only to, we had the ability to assign only one required reading, and then allow our school districts to decide our campuses to decide, all the supplemental reading, throughout the rest of the course of the year.

Right.

What Texas Education Agency did was create a preliminary list that initially included, you know, upwards of 20 required readings at every grade level, including kindergarten.

So these educators were going to have to teach these, these, literary, pieces at every grade level.

There was an uproar from our English language arts community from, you know, subject matter experts just talking about not just the, the, the scope of how many we were having to require at every grade level, but really the inability to dive deeply into content.

So our kids aren't actually critically thinking, they're just reading to check off a box.

In addition to that, they're it's blatant with Christian literary pieces, specific passages from the Bible.

And when we're talking about the separation of church and state in schools and public schools, because that is, you know, that is that is what should be taking place, in our, in our campuses.

This sort of violates all of that.

And so, you know, it would make more sense if there was a mix of all kinds of passages from different faith, communities.

I think perhaps that would be more palatable for, for the broader community.

However, that's not the case.

It's it's either, you know, old school, literary pieces from the 19th and early 20th century, or Bible.

Now, the people who support the Bible passages say, well, this is these are the foundations of Western culture.

Kids don't get the references to Jonah and the whale or David, Goliath or whatever, and that's why they want them in there.

Yeah.

If you know what there are, there are different ways to teach those same kind of stories.

And then it's a fallacy to talk about how, the U.S., which is a Christian nation or founded on Christian values, we had we absolutely had founders who identified as Christian.

We also had founders who did not.

And so they were very purposeful in how they wrote our founding documents.

And, and specifically only referred to a creator.

A creator can be anything in any faith.

Right.

And I think that's kind of lost in how things are interpreted.

And so for those that want to see biblical passages, specifically in our literary lists, they're very literal in how they're reading the, the.

What, what are they?

Okay.

And what was initially proposed and what is what has been okayed last week.

Yeah.

So, initially what was proposed was, a blanketed, you know, 20, we'll just call it 20 reading requirements per grade level.

And that's what that was going to be, what it was.

And we had some supplemental, readings in there.

As of last week, what we've identified is, I think for to the extent that it can be considered more moderate, more moderate readings, identified as anchor readings.

So it's the, the, the actual whole text of a particular, particular literary piece.

We read the whole text, and then you have supplemental supplemental readings that help to support the lesson and the anchor text.

Again, all of these are going to be required.

But it's not the the anchor texts aren't necessarily the Christian text.

But you have a lot of Christian passages that help to support the messaging and the anchor text.

The discussion over this.

There are ten members who are Republican out of the 15 on the Board of Education, and that in the recent meetings, it has been more personal and contentious than you've ever seen in your 13 years on the board.

It really has.

Randy, you know, like as you mentioned, I've been on the board for 13 years.

I've seen a lot across text is a piece on tell me racism doesn't exist.

It absolutely does.

It shows up at our state board meetings.

It has for years.

But I think what's different is, in the last three board meetings, I think, you know, just over the last maybe a year and a half, it's become increasingly apparent to me that, it's a lot harder to show up in that room and not be angry because, for the first time in my 13 years of service, where the discrimination and the racism and all of those really horrible things nastiness that comes in has come through the, you know, through the through some voices that are coming and just using the First Amendment right.

And our testimony as testifiers in the board.

That's shifted now to where we actually have board members, state board members who are behaving in xenophobic and homophobic and Islamophobic ways.

The amount of disrespect to women who show up in hijab at our board meetings to only practice their First Amendment right and simply request inclusion, in, in curriculum standards, right, so that their own children who are sitting in these board meetings watching their mothers testify, they can be reflected in the curriculum that they're reading.

Right.

And and those things are lost on two board members in particular who just seem to be riding this agenda wave.

They, they're not there for kids.

You say they're talking to them directly, saying they're terrorists.

Absolutely.

They were, and multiple and multiple meetings at this point, we've had women who show up who are speaking, and before they can even begin their testimony, we have board member Hall who, then stops them and accuses him of being part of an Islamic terrorist organization and questions whether or not they have a right to be in the room.

Our chair has had to look to to our attorney in the room.

The attorney says, no, they're here practicing the First Amendment.

Right.

And by the way, the CARES organization is not a terrorist organization.

They are a civil rights organization supporting, the Muslim community.

And from here, what's going to happen?

The timeline of adopting this curriculum and the, literary works that are involved with that happened in June.

Yes.

So, but the literary works piece and our social studies centers are set for final adoption in June.

So from here up until our state board meeting, the public has the ability to go online, look at what has been created by the state Board of Education and submit their their recommendations, their suggestions or concerns.

And I would implore anybody that has any interest in what, you know, public education looks like moving forward to really take some time and look into this and, and think about, you know, not centering, political views or anything like that center the students, all of our students in Texas who are benefiting from public education.

That's what we need right now.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

Marissa Perez de, San Antonio's District three representative on the state Board of Education.

Appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Randy.

A couple of big things happening in downtown San Antonio this week.

First, South Alamo Street is finally opening up after years of construction, and Centro San Antonio announced a tres initiative.

Our trees everywhere.

And you should have here to talk about that is Tricia Barry, president and CEO of Centro San Antonio.

Thanks for coming.

In.

I always good to be here.

Hallelujah.

South Alamo Street is open this afternoon.

And there are all kinds of reasons why we don't want to get why exactly.

But people should come back to downtown if they haven't because of the construction there is over south of, market there.

Right.

And South Santa Rosa is on, that whole area.

Between La Vita and HemisFair.

Is open finally just over there this morning.

It looks beautiful.

And just in time for Fiesta to tell us about the trees initiative you just announced.

Yeah, this was really about trying to bring more shade in the downtown.

We know there's a lot of impervious covers, sidewalks, asphalt, all of that.

And downtown, whether you like it or not, is a heat island, meaning 10 to 12 degrees hotter than the rest of the city.

For all the reasons I just mentioned.

So in.

Place?

Yes, exactly five years ago we did a study, a shade study with a consultant that informed where was the opportunity for more shade.

We didn't just let it sit on a shelf, we innovated ideating and said, hey, let's raise money.

Let's hire a student at UTSA geotechnical engineer to go around and really map underground utilities, see where there are places we can plant trees that are less complicated due to the utility.

So that happened.

Got on the phone, started barking up trees.

Pun intended to raise money associated with the effort.

And we've got about a $200,000 budget right now associated with planting those trees.

And we got a big watering truck through a grant because the big thing was, if you're going to plant 100 trees a year, a thousand trees in ten years, it's not enough to plant them.

You have to maintain them.

So we got a grant.

We have $125,000, 200 gallon watering truck.

I never thought I would be so excited about a watering truck in my life.

Where are good at it?

Where are they going to be?

And people might wonder, okay, is that mean I'm going to have less, street space?

You don't have room to be able to navigate for sure.

So Nueva Street was where we were kicked things off yesterday.

Anyway, it's that street right behind UTSA connects UTSA to HemisFair.

Not a whole lot of traffic over there right now.

Makes it perfect to have a tree lined corridor with 10,000 students.

Yeah, they're walking around that are seeking relief from the heat.

Convent and area, big sidewalks.

Not a lot of greenery there, but we're going to have to do a little more work there.

So we had to dig in the sidewalk, but we got a plan to be able to make that a shaded corridor as well.

What kind of trees are we talking about?

If people think live oaks in San Antonio, they eventually get big.

They, Yeah, but they're climate adaptable trees that we're looking at.

Lacey Oaks is what we planted last, yesterday.

But Spanish oak crape myrtles are very hardy.

Right.

So anyway, we've got a list and inventory of trees that we know will survive as long as we're watering and maintaining them.

One other thing.

Parking downtown.

You did had a study says there is plenty of parking which people you know out that are nervous about coming downtown don't believe or may not believe, but it's getting people to those parking spots connecting them.

That's what you want to get, right?

Well, I think when people come into downtown because of the construction that we've had, it's been a little tough to navigate a lot easier now.

But people need to have wayfinding signage to be able to direct them to where there is parking and be able to reserve a spot or navigate parking before they even get into downtown.

So we don't really have a very robust web application for that or an app to be able to get that done.

Parking study is done, indicated and informed.

We got plenty of parking.

We just need to show people where it's at.

So next step upgrading the city.

That's not as it's on the city technology and the parking garages, but how are we going to get people the ability or give them the ability to be able to reserve a space and really know exactly where they're going to park when they come to a show at the majestic or go to Travis Park for an event.

So how do you think it's going to happen?

An app that's going to work all that out?

Yeah.

We're benchmarking against the city of Phoenix.

Regarding their platform park Phoenix.

And so we'll do something probably similar to that, but more to come.

Short term strategy, long term strategy.

But if I do tell you what the number one issue for me regarding downtown is complaint parking.

Is it.

So the more we're doing about that, the better off we're all going to be.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

And, wish we had more time to talk.

We will talk again, of course.

Tricia Berry, president and CEO of Central San Antonio.

Thanks.

Yeah, great to see you.

On Reporters roundtable this week, Sanford Nolen is the editor in chief of the San Antonio Current and joins us to talk about you've done a number of stories recently, but we'll start with, Ted Cruz.

That's a good place to start.

Is any of your stories.

A couple of stories recently on him not only pushing for Am Radio and Cars, which has been, an issue for a lot of politicians in recent years, but also some campaign finance issues that he's had.

Yeah.

Where do you want to start?

Let's jump.

Right.

Oh.

Campaign finance.

Sure.

Great.

Yeah, yeah.

Now he's, cruises have been an interesting because he's, a big fundraiser.

He's got a a, PAC, a super PAC that works for his reelection called the Truth and Courage Super PAC and the, Federal Election Commission, which is the sort of oversight, agency for campaign finance, sent the PAC a letter saying, look, you've got some major discrepancies in how you've added up these quarterly totals of money.

You've received from a San Antonio company called iHeartMedia, the giant radio station ownership group.

And their math was off by like $400,000 in one case and $100,000 off and a couple others.

The PAC responded very quickly.

You know, pretty much the next day they sent it back and said, yeah, we had some additions, errors, and we've corrected it, which means that there's probably not going to be any kind of, you know, further investigation.

But it is it was one of those things where the numbers were off by so much, that, you know, I talked to some campaign finance experts say that had they not responded immediately, had they not gotten back and corrected these quickly, they probably could have been some some further scrutiny.

You know, the interesting thing there is that iHeart media is the group that distributes, Ted Cruz's thrice weekly podcast, you know, and I pays his.

Yes.

And not.

Him.

They don't.

Pay him.

He could not legally receive money for them from the for the podcast.

But what happens is they send money, advertising derived money, to truth and courage, the super pac, the way super PACs are organized is that they can take unlimited money, including direct corporate funds, which, you know, individual candidates cannot, but they have to be at arm's length.

In other word, Ted Cruz is not involved in running, Truth and Courage, super PAC.

He has to not know what's going on.

The PAC has to operate independently, even though its main reason for existing is to make sure that Ted Cruz keeps getting reelected to.

The sand so that it's not going to be an issue.

The campaign finance right now and and the I heart media.

Yeah.

That that particular the iHeart media deal came under scrutiny in 2024.

There were two watchdog groups that said this doesn't pass the smell test.

We don't believe that Ted Cruz is doing this arm's length.

How did this deal get negotiated for iHeart media to have this complex relationship where they're giving, you know, advertising, you know, derived dollars to the super PAC?

There's got to be more to this.

The FEC, heard their argument and voted five one to basically say, no, it's it's on the up and up.

It's an acceptable deal.

I think that probably would have been a long shot.

The FEC tends not to be super aggressive in chasing down these deals and punishing people, unless they're the most egregious sort of, violations.

And now Ted Cruz, also, as other Republican, politicians are related to iHeart Am radio.

Oh, yeah, there's a big part of their portfolio and talk radio.

Large part of the right wing.

But Ted Cruz wants to make sure that Am radio of stolen cars.

Yeah, yeah, there has been a trend, recently where automakers have said, look at people who were buying new cars, want to be able to listen to their their digital music.

They want to be able to, you know, listen to Pandora or satellite radio or any of these number of other options out there that are more exciting than Am radio.

Well, in your opinion, right.

I mean, they just wanted, I guess is another option.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So the.

Argument against it.

Well, the, the argument Cruz has made is corporate America want to shut down right wing talk radio because quote, let's be clear, big businesses don't like things that are overwhelmingly conservative.

Yeah, I think the campaign, if you look at Ted Cruz, who finances his campaigns, that would tell a whole different story about big business, his agenda, but he he was claiming that basically they wanted to pull the Am radio out of the cars to kill conservative talk radio.

He introduced a bill, that was, considered last year.

It got some traction, but it didn't ultimately didn't pass last year.

So they reintroduced the bill this year.

But what's interesting is if you look at the statement that Cruz put out about the bill, instead of talking about, oh, this is conspiracy to shut down a Am radio to silence talk radio voices, it was you know, Am radio is a really necessary thing.

If we have natural disasters or weather problems and people can always tune in and it's available to everybody and we can't, we can't have this valuable bandwidth go away.

Ted Cruz didn't get him in in a mention of free speech and talk radio, but there was no no sort of conspiratorial bent over that case.

Also, NAB and some other industry groups, National Association of Broadcasters argued the same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

Why not just keep it in cars?

Because it is local to a degree.

Yeah.

Depending on the station.

Yeah.

And interesting.

So where is that media popped up again in that they, you know, they gave around the same time that the, the bill was, reintroduced.

They gave $2,500 to Cruz's Truth and Courage PAC.

And then they hired a, really well known GOP lobbyist by the name of Dan Mattoon, guy who's probably been in Washington a longer than a lot of the monuments there.

That's a joke, to help them push the legislation.

We're going to see, I mean, how much traction it gets, it's, you know, do you think it'll be like it's it seems likely.

I mean, it got two floor votes in the House and Senate last session, but ultimately, Tim didn't get it, didn't get across the finish line.

But there is bipartisan support in both cases.

Okay.

Well, thanks very much for coming in to talk about that.

Sanford, now an editor in chief of the San Antonio Current, both in print and online.

Have not a Am radio.

Not Am radio.

We're working on it.

Okay.

You're going to be the king of all media.

Thank you, Sanford, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see the show again.

Any previous shows, you can download it as a podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org I'm Randy Beamer.

We'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to.

You by Steve and Adele Dufilho.