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.

I'm Randi Beamer, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record as we're finally getting a break from the heat.

The city of San Antonio is deciding how to spend some money that we made, basically the city made because it was so hot.

Joining us to talk about that is Councilman Mario Bravo.

District one.

Thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, people might wonder, wait, how do we make extra money?

CPS made so much extra money because of all of this.

Heat.

$50 million.

Well, you know, CPS energy has to charge more when they have to pay more for their fuels.

Natural gas prices are twice as high this year, this summer than they were a year ago.

So that's an added factor.

Another added factor is that people are using more energy because it's been hotter.

You know, a usual July in San Antonio, we have about two to two days that are hundred degrees or hotter.

This July, we had 17 days that were a hundred degrees or hotter.

It's actually the hottest.

Summer on record in San Antonio.

It's just not something that should be passed on to consumers as they get those.

As CPS Energy has the costs that they could automatically pass that on to consumers instead of whatever percentage that they're getting, they're still taking it.

Well, CPS energy, you know, has to charge the they have a set rate and then they have a fuel cost.

And so those two are what the customer sees and pays.

I think when we talk about the additional 50 million in revenue that's what the city gets because the city gets 14% of all revenues that go into CPS energy because the city invested into CPS energy and owns them.

And so the big question is, should customers get that money back since basically it's extra money that the city has or the city has to figure out how to deal with that.

And you have a and the answer for that.

I do have an answer for that.

So one proposal that's been put on the table is do we just do we give back some of this excess revenue and the average ratepayer would get a rebate on one bill, one time, 3 million.

Dollars.

On average, it would be $31.

There's 40 companies that would get over 100,001 company that would get $1,000,000 back.

Right.

But what my plan does is it recognizes that the only reason we have this additional revenue is because we've had an extremely hot summer we can expect to have more of these.

So we're going to have these more challenging bills in the future.

We're going to have this these excess temperatures.

Let's use that excess revenue to address that problem.

How are you going to do that?

You have it in different buckets in terms of how you want to spend that money, that 50 million.

Yeah, I do.

And so one bucket is weatherization for low income homes, right?

A lot of people have drafty homes, and so their energy bills are going to be a lot higher, whether it's really cold or really hot.

Let's protect them.

Against high energy bills going forward by weatherizing their homes or helping them with energy efficiency upgrades.

It's the same thing that is being offered with the inflation reduction act right now, but those are only that is for you to be eligible for that.

You actually have to have a high income and you you use a federal tax rebate for that so if you're low income, what do you do?

Well, my this is this bucket in my plan would help those those individuals.

And this is part of the city budget work that you're going through right now.

During the 2023 budget that we vote on in just a few weeks.

And if we back up just to the average person who says, you know, that's great but put that in the budget elsewhere, I could use that extra $31 back in my pocket.

And I think on it on face value that's fair that's reasonable to do but it doesn't solve our problem.

Right.

And so we're going to be in a situation where that where we're going to have excess revenues next winter because of the war in Ukraine, because of sky rocketing natural gas prices.

If we have another heatwave, which is very likely next year, it might not be as bad.

It might it might be worse.

We're going to be in the same problem.

And so we're just going to be coming you know, people are going to be having to be having this conversation over and over again.

Oh, we made too much money off energy.

Should we give a little back?

Should we give a little back instead?

Why don't we address the problem?

And there are other ways that you want to address this with more trees.

We talk about the urban heat island effect.

San Antonio has had it for years.

Every every city has it.

But you think there are ways that we can go about addressing that with some of this money?

Absolutely.

You know, on a day when it might be 95 degrees in our surrounding areas, maybe in Petite Seguin Castroville, it might be five, eight degrees hotter in San Antonio because we've cut down so many trees and replaced them with asphalt and concrete that heat up.

If we start planting more trees back in our urban core, we can start cooling our city down.

And then your air conditioner doesn't have to work as hard and you better quality of life when you go out in the summer.

Now, where are the city council members on this right now?

You know, we heard that they were split.

It's hard to count votes and get a yay nay at this point, at least on this, which means I guess it's it's close.

It's possible.

Where do you think you are and get the support?

We didn't have a lot of heads up that we were going to have this additional revenue.

And so people didn't have a lot of time to put together proposals.

I will tell you at this point now my proposal has more traction than any other proposal out there.

And I think it's something that people see as a reasonable plan.

And we're getting support from outside of city council from a lot of other media and other elected officials.

What about the rest of the city budget in terms of spending on weatherization and this kind of thing, preparing for higher natural gas bills?

How much more is the city going to spend on that?

So aside from the 50 million you.

Want, so the city isn't spending on that.

CPS Energy has a program that's been already authorized by council to spend on that.

But, you know, one opportunity we have is if the city does it, we can show CPS energy how we think it should be done.

Well, thanks very much for coming in.

We appreciate it.

Let us know how that goes and when will the vote be, by the way, on.

That September 15th.

September 15th.

Mario Bravo, councilman for District one.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

What do you think should happen to the building that houses the Institute of Texan Cultures downtown?

Well, right now, UTSA is soliciting public input about that as they decide the future for the building.

Joining us to talk about it is Kathy Rhodes, who is president of the San Antonio Conservation Society.

Thank you for coming in.

Thank you.

And you have definite opinions on what should and should not happen to that building.

I've heard people say it's outdated.

It's a big brick that is in the middle of a place that could be turned into something beautiful and very pedestrian friendly or a great place for development.

Why keep it?

What do you tell them?

It's it's a historic building now.

Anything built before 1970 to 50 years is historic plus that is a it was built as a permanent building.

The walls are very thick.

It's like a bunker almost it would be very difficult to tear down.

Now, some people say, well, the buildings from Hemisfair weren't built as permanent buildings.

That one was by statute yes.

Yes.

What was it originally then designed to do after.

It was designed to be permanent.

We have that is in the was.

Designed to be anything specific after.

That, I can't tell you, but it was a place for all cultures to come together.

So cultures that helped settle Texas to come together.

What do you what do you say to those people who say it would cost a tremendous amount of money, millions of dollars to rehab it and to get it up to code or speed to do to even a museum?

I'd like to see the figures.

I don't think those figures have been done yet.

They may have and we not know about them, but we're the Conservation Society is right now concerned about the building grades of school.

Kids have been there to be educated about Texas history.

It's a tourism aspect from from a tourism side of people coming into town.

It attracted a lot of visitors.

So I don't know.

I'm sure it was budget cuts and covered and that sort of thing.

I'm sure a lot of different things played into.

And there have been articles written more recently in terms of tourism that it isn't the draw that it once was.

You go down there and then that there's no one there.

And even before COVID, their numbers were way, way down.

Well, and part of it was keeping the exhibits modern and the dome show working and that.

So I think it was just a confluence of different things that happened and it was probably nobody's fault.

But what do you think is going to happen now with the input that they're soliciting from UTSA, they're going to decide what to do with that building, whether to sell it.

There are different ideas of what to do, sell it and let somebody decide what to do with the building, tear it down, use it for a new space, for something for UTSA, which of those options to you is most feasible.

Well, I would like to keep it, but we received a letter a couple of weeks ago from the UTSA people, and they have turned it over to, I believe, their director of finance, and they're going to further study all parts of it, including environmental impact and those kind of things.

So that report won't be released until May, according to their letter.

Now, in terms of keeping it as a museum and some of the people we've talked to here say it is basically so dark and old in terms of its facilities that you would have to basically gut the building from the inside to make it a 21st century kind of museum.

Would you is there a way to get that money at the same time?

As saving it?

I mean, is that one of your proposals, as you know, maybe save it, but we will come up with the money.

It could be at one time it was under the state and then it was put under UTSA.

So there are all sorts of different scenarios and we've only had two or three committee meetings of various people that just kind of came together and are looking at that and thinking about that and getting all the information on the building and that sort of thing.

So we're in the very early stages.

This is one of those battles that you had to look ahead down the road and say this was going to happen at some point.

Right?

And how about the federal building?

And that's an that's also.

On John Wooden Courthouse.

Board board, minute board motion that we worry about that as well.

We hear some good things about that, that somebody may put something in it and not destroy the structure because it also is midcentury modern.

And people don't think because I don't like to think I'm historic in the 50.

Anything over.

50.

Yes.

You know, they don't think that's important, but it is.

So you don't you see a lot of older buildings in San Antonio really old buildings which gave us our charm and our culture.

But but you don't kind of think of mid-century modern as being historic.

That's not in the realm of consciousness right now.

But now technically, they are.

They are.

Well, thank you very much, Kathy Rhodes.

And for more information, the Conservation Society has a website, right?

Yes, we do.

All right.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thank you.

For a number of years now, we've heard about the digital divide in San Antonio, how so many people don't have access to broadband, but because of what the city of San Antonio and Bear County are now doing about that.

We were just named a digital inclusion trailblazer Here to talk about that is Bryan Diller, the chief innovation officer for the city of San Antonio.

Thanks for coming in.

This is one of those stories that highlights what we're doing.

But also how much we still have to do.

Yet where are we in terms of access to broadband in the area?

Right.

So luckily, the city of San Antonio was ahead of the curve in 2019 when we launched our digital divide assessment, really understanding what the landscape looks like on all three legs of the stool of digital inclusion.

At that time we were at 20% of our residents don't have access to broadband Internet at affordable and quality rates.

So that's really where we're still at the pandemic at solve some of those issues.

But really we're looking at digital literacy as another piece of that.

So even though we were able to distribute hotspots these are areas that don't have the infrastructure backbone to provide quality rates on those hotspots.

So we're really looking forward with our new our new approaches to embed this fiber connectivity to the home.

That's really what's going to close the gap for those 20% of those residents.

Now being named, a digital inclusion trailblazer means things like we have a team that's dedicated to that now.

There's a nonprofit here that's dedicated to that but other than that, what does it mean?

So it's really about do you have a plan and are you executing or are you putting money where your mouth is, or are you actually walking the walk The city of San Antonio, as I mentioned two years ago, we started off with this, but the pandemic pushed them into a position where we needed to do things.

So we have a digital equity roadmap that we're actually executing on with our partners, our community partners.

So we're two community partners tied into that.

Not to mention, we've already started spending on infrastructure pieces like Connected Bee on the classroom, as well as we have an RFP on the streets right now that we're offering up contracts to connect residents to the Internet at affordable and quality speed.

The pandemic really exposed so many households not having broadband, kids not being able to do, you know, remote learning and basically a mind shift that we need to think of it as a utility that it's not just some kind of luxury to have broadband.

Absolutely.

It's definitely a lifeline.

I mean, you talk about digital economy in certain aspects from financial access to institutions to education and workforce.

But we also talk about social isolation among our seniors.

A lot of them were locked in.

They couldn't make contact.

And that's a health impact that at the end of the day.

So it's definitely important for us to really wrap around that holistic approach to digital inclusion.

You talked about the three legs of the digital stool, so to speak.

What are what are we talking about there when literacy as well as connectivity?

So we're talking about broadband infrastructure.

Do you have the Internet at your home?

If I got your Internet at home, do you have the proper device to do what you need to do?

So kids can't do homework on their cell phones for very long.

And then the third piece is I get to an Internet, I get you a device.

But at the end of day, do you know how or what to use it for?

That's a digital literacy piece.

We have to attack that from all three of those legs.

And we take those a lot of people take those for granted that, well, if you have a computer, you know how to use it.

Everybody should know how to use a computer or it's not that hard these days.

But if you're getting it for the first time, you've never had it.

It is or can be confusing.

Absolutely.

It's intimidating.

At the end of the day.

So how do you how do you deal with that?

What are the programs to deal with that?

Right.

So we've actually funded quite a few opportunities there, especially for our seniors, our older adults.

So we've got boats that we funded at a grant amount last year, and then we put it into this year's budget.

We also are funding a group called Oasis, and both of those really train those senior adults on how to use it Internet, how to utilize it for their benefit rather than, you know, jumping in and being afraid to utilize those different aspects and be honestly kind of insecure about it.

At the end of the.

Day, and the bond issue, there was talk of putting some money in for digital connectivity.

And you said there is some mention of it in there, but it's basically just for builders.

It has to be it has to be embedded in each of the approaches, whether it's streets and sidewalks or the affordable housing measures.

We have to be cognizant of building in that digital inclusion piece into those projects, rather than it being a stone bucket.

And what about the funding?

Because we were talking I was reading in one article last year, you're talking about $600 million would be needed overall to get San Antonio 100% connectivity and broadband.

Where is anywhere near that kind of money coming from?

Right.

So the city is leveraging what we can at this point.

We've got about $6.9, $6.9 million in our coffers right now for digital inclusion that's going to be leveraged through that RFP that I mentioned.

Bear Counties put in 25 million.

But as you mentioned, it's just a drop in the bucket.

We are looking the private sector to help specifically ISP's and telecoms to focus in on those areas have been underserved for years, decades where there.

Was that six or 7 million where does that go directly?

Does that go to.

So they tend to that is it will go to infrastructure in our most underserved unserved neighborhoods which if you look at our equity at this map, it's exactly where you think it is, the south, south side, west side, any side.

And we don't have much time.

But you are our chief innovation officer.

And we talked just briefly before about some of the things that you were working on what are those right now?

A lot of smart city solutions on the outside.

You know, externally, we just launched a survey piece that will be going until November seven.

So we'll be in a lot of neighborhoods doing that.

We have a research and development team that we really try to experiment with city services, try to improve them from city residents at a small scale.

And then, of course, we always do internal performance excellence pieces, making sure that city services are continuously improved as we move into the future.

We're just talking about smarter cities, things just quicker more efficient.

It doesn't necessarily have to mean, although it does include, I guess, automated driving and that kind of thing.

Down the road.

Down the road, we want.

To make sure it's not getting dropped in our lap and that we're aware of what's.

Coming.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Brian Dillon, chief innovation officer for the city of San Antonio.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you so much for having me.

On.

Reporters Roundtable.

This week, we're looking at the city's housing bond that was passed in May for $150 billion.

And it hit a milestone this week.

Here to join us to talk about that is Ben Ali.

Though not just a reporter, not just an editor, but the publisher of the San Antonio Herald and you went really in-depth on this whole issue.

What happened or what's happening right now with this whole bond issue?

And I guess there's a little controversy here in terms of whether they're moving too quickly and trying to get these requests for proposals.

Sure.

So this is a very complicated bond.

I mean, all bonds are complicated.

It's $150 million for the housing bond.

It was approved last May.

And then just a week ago, the city issued what they called a request for proposals, which is when they go out and try to find developers to build the houses, the housing, rehab, the housing and so forth, but basically, the the arguments are that, you know, finding building affordable housing is very, very complicated.

Especially building affordable housing that meets the lower or lower income levels.

The poor in San Antonio, that's what this housing bond was designed to do.

And some folks are saying that the city, Mayor Nierenberg, are sort of rushing the process.

The mayor's argument is that there are projects that are ready to go now, and we can't let those projects slip away.

Those projects already have a lot of them have federal funding committed to them, other forms of funding.

And if we don't get those projects built ASAP, we may lose them.

And that's happened already with some because of the changes in financing and writing percentages that they can't they can't make work.

A lot of it has to do with inflation, inflation.

So the rising cost of construction materials, labor, et cetera.

Another huge factor is the fluctuation in interest rates.

And so so those those changes and the they form a gap.

And so the developer ends up having to kind of redo their numbers to try to make the project work.

And how many projects are we talking about here where there's $150 million bond?

You talked about how there are five different buckets that are within that hundred and $50 million, the biggest of which I guess is home rehab.

Right.

So, so, so the home rehab is not an RFP that those are just if you own a home, you can apply for funding from the bond it's $45 million.

So it's nearly a third of the overall 150 million housing bond.

And so the city's really encouraging folks to you know if you own a home and it's targeted for people who make 30% or below the area of median income.

So so the poorest the lowest income of the of homeowners in San Antonio.

22,000 for a family of three.

Yeah it's around that range.

Yeah.

And so so folks so the city really wants to to get the word out there that folks can apply and the home repairs it ranges from sort of minor stuff you know windows doors stuff like that to foundations roofs and so it really runs the gamut but.

Really increasing the housing stock and renovating and rentals and houses as well.

That's what we're talking about here in terms of whether there's been enough advocates say there may have not been enough brainstorming going on to find innovative ways to make this possible for the course of the poor.

Right.

So so again, to to build housing that meets the lower or lower levels of affordability, it really does take some ingenuity.

And you really need, you know, the city and other housing experts have describe you need layers and layers of subsidies.

And so you're getting subsidies from the city, possibly from the county, from the federal government just to make this happen.

And so what housing advocates are saying is now we have $150 million in this housing bond this doesn't come this only comes around once every five years.

This is the first of its kind in recent memory for San Antonio.

This this is these are precious resources that should be spent on the poorest of the poor, not like the median tiers of 30.

Percent of A.m.i.

And then there's a 60% median income that apparently more of these projects would be aimed at.

Correct.

So so currently in the pipeline the city has a list of all the developments that are that are ready to go.

Now they just need a little extra funding or they might have their own funding.

But the majority of those are hitting that 60%.

Amy which the city does define as affordable housing for San Antonio.

But the bond was designed for folks in that 30% and below three median income range or even up to 50 but like in those lower tiers so.

So what do you think's going to happen in terms of most of these projects they are going ahead with the RPI as they are.

So the city will they'll get developers will respond to the solicitation the city has different committees form that those committees are made up of city officials and housing you know community folks and they're they're going to grade you know the solicit the projects and see if they meet those different levels of EMI.

But but that's going to be we're going to we're going to see how that shakes out.

And so there's going to be some controversy there because housing advocates say it's not aimed at the right people right now or some of them aren't aimed at the right people.

Right.

Right.

But if that would slow it down even more, would that slow the pipeline down even further?

Well, it's very important to note that the city is reserving half of the money they have for these for rental production and rehab and home production, the reserving half of the money now.

And they're going to do another solicitation in the spring.

And so that's their way of saying, like, we want to get take care of the projects that are ready now, but we want to give those other projects time to come up with more innovative ways to do affordable housing.

Well, you.

Did a great job explaining this in this article that you already have online and you're you have more in the pipeline as well.

Sure.

Coming up.

Absolutely.

Ben Leveaux, the publisher of The San Antonio Herald.

Check it out, online version.

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

You can see the show again or previous shows as well as the podcast at klrn.org.

And we'll see you next time.

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