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 this Week.

I'm Randy Beamer.

We're starting tonight with something you may have seen in the mail recently, to be first made aware of a letter that said the words land and water at the same time, which might have scared a lot of people.

Here to tell us exactly what that warning or that letter meant from source San Antonio water system is there.

Senior vice president of water Resources Donovan Burton.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Tell us about anytime people hear the words lead and water hole, we're scared.

And are you sent out a letter slash kind of warning?

What is it?

And what isn't it about?

Sure.

Yeah.

The letter that went out is a requirement from the EPA.

The US EPA, and the statewide TC.

They have a nationwide program to get the lead out, what they call to make sure that there's no lead in any materials throughout the entire nation.

Important, important thing.

We don't think we have, lead issues here in San Antonio.

We don't believe that there's lead lines out there.

There may be 1 or 2 out there.

And so we have to make sure that we're looking, we have to actually classify everybody's material on the private side, on the customer side of the meter, as well as our side to make sure that there is no lead in the system.

And you on your side are sure there's no lead on your pipes.

Right?

Right.

We're talking about you're asking people whether they may or even know if they could have lead from.

It's for from their meter to their system, not from your pipes to the meter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so kind of three different areas where the mains that run in the street.

And then we have what's called service laterals to the, to your meter and then from your meter to your home.

And so there are three different sort of segments.

We are looking at all of our system.

We've we've gone through a vast majority of that.

We haven't found any lead, in our system, on the solid side, on the public side.

The problem is we don't have a lot of data, a lot of information on what's on the on the customer side.

We don't build customer houses and that sort of thing.

So the the information of the material on the customer side after the meter to the home, is lacking what.

The pipes are made of.

We're talking about the material because elsewhere in the country, lead may be in the water supply, but this only would be here because there have been lead pipes across the country in the past.

But here not so much.

Yeah.

Not here, not here so much.

It happened a lot in the sort of the northern areas of, you know, you're northern new Jersey, New York and those sorts of areas.

They have a lot of lead through the system.

Michigan is of the famous, The Flint, Michigan, everybody was very concerned.

Yeah.

And we had some way back when in in the San Antonio system, we went and replaced it back in the 1980s.

So we haven't had any lead in our system since, since before then.

But they outlawed it.

And so it's not a material that, that people use anymore.

So what the letters are, is, are to make sure that we have all the information on the customer side, primarily, starting from homes being built before 1989, when it was essentially.

And how would they know this and what what does this letter ask people to do?

Yeah.

So we want customers to look at their their own material.

Otherwise we need to go and actually put eyes on, the material going from their meter to their home.

So we have to either look in the meter box, we might have to dig a hole.

So we actually touch the line and make sure we see what kind of material it is.

But it's much a much better process if the customer knows what they have already.

And are able to what we call self-identify ourself, test them on your average.

Customer or below average, like me.

I have no idea.

What if I look at a pipe?

I don't know what it is.

How do you.

How do you know?

How do you find out?

Yeah.

So on our website, Saugus lead, we have all of this information.

So everything I'll say is on this website.

It teaches you how to look at your pipe.

Generally lead lead pipes are not magnetic.

And so they don't, you can you can clean off the pipe and put a stronger magnet on it.

And if it doesn't stick, that's something you want to look at further.

Generally it's going to be a galvanized and steel type of a pipe or copper.

You know, those sorts of pipes.

And those are okay.

Yeah.

Those are those are all fine.

All we're talking about are lead and the letters really say unknown.

Most everybody nobody got a letter that said you have lead in your system.

Everybody's letter says you're unknown.

And that's really the issue.

And you have to have these back by a certain time.

Or if I don't know, if I can't tell, what do I do?

So there's no requirement on the customer to do all of this.

This is a requirement on the utilities to do it.

We have to make sure that there aren't any LED systems.

We have to do an inventory.

We have to know what's out in our system.

And this will happen over the next decade.

But we have to turn in.

We have milestones to turn in to the to the EPA.

Who's responsible then for if there is, say, I find a lead pipe from my meter to my house, who's responsible for that?

And it can cost some money, control.

Some significant money, and ultimately from the customers on the customer side, from the meter to the home, it will be the customer's responsibility to decide whether they want to change it.

And they could not leave it.

I can't imagine they would.

But, it would be on the customer, the customers.

How dangerous is it?

What can they do?

They can put filters.

Your average filter can deal with that, right?

Yes.

Filters can do it.

You have to make sure you look at the packaging, some filters, you know, they're not as good as others.

So make sure you look at the packaging.

It has to make sure that it, takes the lead out.

So filters are fine.

Those work work just fine.

In the meantime and, ultimately as we go out through this process and we identify, we'll send people, letters and we'll make sure that they know that they don't have, lead.

Thanks very much.

Donovan Burton, senior vice president, water resources.

The San Antonio water system.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Thank you.

San Antonio lost one of our icons this week at the age of 100.

Rosemarie Kowalski passed away.

She started the arcade group catering group.

But she did so much more for the city of San Antonio than that.

Here to talk about Rosemarie and her long and remarkable life is Jamie Kowalski, the granddaughter in law of Rosemarie, as well as vice president of corporate relations for the arcade group.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

First of all, people might not realize is just how big an impact she had.

They might think, well, she is a president of a catering company.

She started this, but she pushed for so much more in San Antonio.

How do you describe her impact to people who who didn't know her?

It was so far reaching.

Because when we and I got the privilege to work with her for the past six years and, and see, she was involved in just about every nonprofit that you could think of and every different aspect of, across San Antonio.

She was involved with the city and city leadership, and she was friends to all.

It was a Southside kid.

She was a South Side kid.

Yeah.

She grew up, on the South side.

Went to a small little Catholic school, Blessed Sacrament.

And you've never really thought that she would be an icon or an influence or a legend or all of the things.

But we keep getting so many messages of these incredible ways to describe her.

And she was so humble.

She was like, oh, that's me.

And then she, but started the restaurant with her husband, on the west side.

Correct.

On North Zamora.

They opened a small little barbecue shop and beer joint.

She called it, to serve some of the former military, getting out of World War two and the college students around, that area and just, enjoyed doing that every day.

And I love how she would joke that she didn't.

She didn't know how to cook.

She didn't know how to boil water, but she was a relationship builder, and she always knew how to treat everyone with kindness, respect, lightheartedness.

And she did that to everyone.

It wasn't.

It wasn't just one person.

It was like she always said you could treat the Queen of England just like you treat the person that comes in the back door to deliver.

She served the Queen of England.

She did, as well as the Pope, John Paul the Servant as well.

And now when the when it kind of evolved from a restaurant to, catering business, how did that happen?

There was a bazaar that was going to happen at a church.

And the man came to her and said, hey, could you help me cater this bazaar?

And she was like, absolutely, that sounds wonderful.

I would love to do that.

I understand you want to have an event, but what is catering?

So she had no idea.

But she said yes.

She always had this positive attitude of you say yes and you figure it out.

And that has been kind of the philosophy that our company has lived by, since day one.

And, and it, it progressed from, from there.

So they started doing a lot more offsite, instead of in the restaurant.

And, as many people know, the restaurant world is it's a it's a hard job.

And to balance both was difficult.

So she decided her and Hank decided to close it down and focus purely on catering.

And when they did that, they closed the door.

They had these fixed bar stools that were sitting around the bar and she got a crowbar and pulled them up.

And to make room for more catering stuff.

At 100, she was still and I interviewed her last year, went out there, she had an office and she would go in several days a week.

Yeah, absolutely.

She still even to to last week we would go she would be at the office a couple days and working she was, she was she called it working.

But you know we would go in and she would have lunch with our employees and shake hands and give everyone hugs.

And she was just a remarkable woman in that way.

And Kayla and, we did a documentary with, with the company as well, helping out, about her and that'll be airing, so people be able to see that.

But in that and then and then other stories, that I've seen, the personality really comes out.

I remember interviewing her just in August when they showed that documentary at the San Antonio Film Festival.

She was so excited about celebrating 1/100 birthday.

Yes, because she was going to have dinners here with small groups of people.

But then she was going to go to Vegas.

Yes, yes.

Tell us about that.

She loved Las Vegas.

And when in 60s and 70s she would frequent at her.

And I think it was Mayor Cockrel and they would go sometimes and she said all I played was penny slots and had so much fun.

So when we decided that that was something that we wanted to do and, we took her up there and, we went to the mob museum, and she was like a mob mob museum.

She's like, I knew some of those guys.

I think I ran into them when we were here one time, and, so we did.

We got a chance to eat some beautiful dinners and spend some great time there, and I loved that she was.

So again, her attention to detail was phenomenal.

I'm watching.

You're like, is she okay?

And she's sick or something wrong?

She was great.

She's like, did you notice that there's different sconces on every wall and the carpet is the different color?

Like she was just taking it all in and and loving it.

And well, she had a can do attitude.

It's very positive.

At the same time, she had something in her personality that the mural that Jesse Trevino did, a good friend of hers on the side of Crystal Santa Rosa Hospital and did the documentary on him.

I didn't realize it was really her influence that got him to get back to work and finish it on time, because the hospital called her to tell her, get your friend back to work, and she was the only one who could.

She was then she.

And that was another great story about how they met and how they became lifelong friends.

The intricacy and the detail of that mural was very time consuming.

So actually, we gave him space at our office on East Commerce to come and help to lay it out.

But yeah, she was certainly the one that was like, Jesse, let's get back to work.

When the convention center opened and she had the, I guess, ability that, nobody else had to do events of that size at a convention center size and to do them.

Well, it wasn't just rubber chicken catering.

She had an adherence to quality and to the utmost quality and that level of service, food and everything had to be done.

If you're serving a party of one or a party of 10,000.

She pushed and she said, no, we're going to do that.

If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right.

So I need to fly in and dives from Italy.

We needed fly in, dives in from Italy.

We need to get fresh avocado from Mexico.

We have to have fresh avocado from Mexico.

If we're going to have a Japanese food, it has to be authentic or it's not going to be good.

And so she made sure when she was at that table full of, you know, Tom Frost of the world and the big, big dogs of the world, she, she pushed so.

Well.

Thank you very much, Jamie Kowalski, granddaughter in law, as well as vice president of corporate relations for our group.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Please pass on our thoughts and prayers.

Certainly.

Well, thank you for allowing us an opportunity to celebrate her life.

Another San Antonio leader we lost recently was former Mayor Howard Peak, who passed away at the age of 75.

Joining us to talk about Howard and his impact is Arthur Amerson, who is not only the current president and CEO of Clarin, but you've been in all kinds of businesses.

You were, chairman of the board of Port San Antonio, right back in the day.

Work with Howard knew Howard very well.

First of all, what what do you remember most about him?

Well, what I'd like to remember most is his, his modesty.

He was a wonderful, wonderful citizen of San Antonio.

Native.

Went to, went to Alamo Heights High School, graduated from the University of Texas, came back and got his MBA from UT San Antonio, became a wonderful city planner, and through his, service to the community, he was always approachable and modest.

He drove an old Chevrolet pickup truck with no air conditioning and, didn't want to be chauffeured.

He wanted to be a citizen of San Antonio and needed a wonderful job.

He didn't have that political politician personality, and people might have picked him last to be a mayor.

Yeah, just you picked him on the street.

But I think his sincere attitude for the goodwill of San Antonio and serving the greater good for the greater whole is what made him a good a good mayor before that, a good city councilman.

And before that, a wonderful city planner.

He was key in organizing what became the Howard Peak Greenway trail system, which if you hike or bike and you're benefiting from what Howard did to organize these trails and connect them all, they were known as a Nicholas of the trail system in San Antonio.

So you can go from one trail to another without being, hampered by traffic or, barriers.

And this is we think of it now as just something we take for granted.

But it was rare across the country at this time to think of creeks and other, you know, drainage ditches as a way to link people together.

Yes.

He saw the vision of the of the linear park system and, and use that same technique to connect trail ways and, hiking bike trails.

And he was just, very influential in, in making the city of San Antonio being so, accommodating to the lifestyle of the citizens of the time.

And now, how.

Did such a quiet guy become a city councilman and then a mayor?

Well, he had served at City Hall as a planner, and he was a wonderful planner.

So he had knowledge of how the city should work.

And so when the opportunity came to run for city councilman from 1993 to 1997, he served two, those four years.

And then it was, an influence to run for mayor, which he was successful.

And he served two terms as mayor.

So he we owe him a lot.

We owe Howard Peak a lot.

And hopefully he will be remembered for what is a quality of life for neighborhoods, for trails and for parks.

You were just a wonderful man.

Neighborhoods.

He also works.

Yeah.

You were telling me before on neighborhood groups that I had not heard of.

You'll remember the San Antonio Light.

Yes.

One of its bitter publishers was George Irish, and he developed a neighborhood conference during the 80s and 90s.

But that was successful thanks to the partnership that he had with Howard Peak, because Howard Peak understood what neighborhoods needed to do to be better organized.

So Howard Peak led those neighborhood conferences with the San Antonio Light, and I, George Irish, to teach, neighborhood organizations of how better to deal with the cities, with the counties, and how to get a how to get things done.

If you wanted simple things like, somebody having a a car on blocks in front of the driveway, there was a way to talk to the city council, interim city manager of how to correct neighborhoods so that they became better environments for for families to live in.

So San Antonio has is rich with, with organizations for communities thanks to Howard Beach.

And he was it looked like going to follow in the footsteps of, Leland Cockrell.

He was going to be the Parks Foundation president.

Was.

Yeah.

Or La Capo did a wonderful job.

We will always owe Lyla a great deal of gratitude, not only for being a great mayor, but also for, being a great organization of parks.

And, unfortunately, Howard didn't get to realize that success.

And, and we lost him way too early.

Well, thank you very much, Arthur Emerson.

Appreciate you coming in all the way from upstairs to talk about just a great.

Guy, Howard.

I'm downstairs more often than you are.

You're an upstairs downstairs kind of leader.

Thank you, thank you.

Randy.

On reporters roundtable this week, three huge business stories.

We're going to talk about that, I guess is still going on recently, but maybe some of the biggest of the year as well.

Ed Arnold, who is the editor in chief of the San Antonio Business Journal, knows everything there is to know about these stories and everything else.

First of all, we're talking about a new star a San Antonio corporation just bought out.

Yeah.

How big a deal is this for San Antonio?

How much will it hurt us?

It's.

It's a painful move because New star was one of San Antonio's public companies.

We are not a city that has a ton of public companies.

And public companies tend to bring a lot of esteem in the business world.

But worse than that, to some degree, it was just a blow to our ego, to some degree, to have Sunoco reach in from Dallas, snatch up one of our gems of companies, and kind of quietly disappear with the assets.

It is a pillar of the San Antonio nonprofit and philanthropic community.

Sonoco is almost certainly not going to be continuing those kinds of donations going forward.

So there's going to be a big a hole left, not just in the business community, because New Star was an important element, is always involved in the business community at all levels, but also in the philanthropic and nonprofit world.

That loss is going to be missed and.

This is also going to be missed.

Unlike some other, corporation buyouts that have kept headquarters, here are a good part of their headquarters here.

They're not likely to.

Not at all.

In fact, at this point, we we believe that NuSTAR is pretty much a ghost town over their former corporate headquarters, and 99% of all operations are going to be done out of Dallas and Sunoco.

And people might not realize what new star is or was.

And you new star.

Sure, sure.

It was an offshoot of Valero.

Originally it was part of the midstream pipeline business, which helps get oil from one place to another.

And it was a really, really well run company for a very, very long, long time.

Unfortunately, that part of the oil and gas business is not as dynamic as it used to be.

So it made them a really, really attractive buyout option.

But unfortunately, it just left San Antonio holding the bag.

Unfortunately, again.

Second story, the airport.

Some good news maybe we don't know.

Some good news there yet.

About what Reagan Airport and the connection to Washington from San Antonio is going to be.

Exactly, exactly.

The airport has been generating news every week all year long.

So we fully expected there to be a direct flight to Reagan by this time or at least an announcement of who it would be.

And we still are waiting on it.

And from what we can gather, they're punting for the next administration for that flight, which.

Is the FAA.

The FAA, thank you very much.

But yeah, they are kicking this decision into the next administration, which I mean, who can read the tea leaves on that at this point?

Unfortunately, I still believe that flight is going to happen.

The business community still believes it's going to happen, but it should have happened long before now.

And there's a cap on, numbers of of airlines at Reagan.

And that's why we've been waiting forever.

Exactly.

ExAC.

Plus, there's no shortage of other cities west of the Mississippi and in our region that want that flight.

It's not just us who was competing for it.

And with John Cornyn not getting the Senate majority Leader job, you think that hurts us?

It doesn't help.

I would say that with John Cornyn being the Senate majority leader, I think there would be a very, very good chance that he could fast track such a thing, have the ear of the FAA.

That does not going to happen this time around.

Maybe it won't make any difference, but I certainly would have felt a little more confident if Senator Cornyn.

But Texas is a red state.

It's true, it's true.

There's no reason to think that they won't get it.

I just wish we'd had that one inch closer.

To the Senate.

Ted Cruz may not have the.

You know, Ted Cruz is certainly been advocating for this flight since the very beginning.

And he is out there charging for it, but he is not necessarily someone who's going to be bringing a lot of allies to the table.

I would say Project Marvel.

One of my favorite name projects.

And, Senator.

How could you not like Project Marvel?

So private Project Marvel to me is when the city finally said the quiet part out loud, which is that downtown has got to change.

The dome is not going to be able to host the Final Four again in its current form.

The Spurs, quite frankly, want a downtown arena, even if they don't want to say it out loud.

The convention center needs to be upgraded, even though we recently did it because of the competition coming from other large cities near us.

But, you know, downtown is no longer the central business district for the city.

If you think about Vision Works moving out of downtown, you think about all of the large offices that are sitting empty.

Something different has to happen with downtown.

The city knew it and has known it.

Now they're actually going to do something about it.

And in the past, some of those big office buildings have been turned into hotels.

But now it seems like we're looking at more apartments.

Apartments are a great option.

But let me tell you, every time I speak to a developer and say, can't we just turn these into apartments?

They go, we cannot.

If you think about how much different the plumbing and electrical is in an office building than an apartment building and my office building, there's one bathroom per floor that is not going to get it done in an apartment building.

Yeah.

Yes.

Well, tower light building, it's being turned into apartments, but it's, it's a huge.

Endeavor and a unique endeavor.

And it has subsidized.

It's been subsidized.

That is what is required for those.

Not every one of these apartments or one of these, conversion projects is going to be able to qualify for subsidized project Marvel.

And the mission downtown baseball stadium.

Obviously, it's the tax part of each that is holding up a lot of sentiment.

Understand?

Is that going to happen?

You think?

I think it's going to happen because at the end of the day, a lot of stadium deals end up in these kinds of turnstile.

You know, where exactly where you're collecting taxes from hotel, stays.

You're collecting taxes from parking.

You're collecting taxes from other areas that aren't direct to the consumer.

And property tax.

Not a property tax increase.

So I think they will happen is the city will figure out a way to make it as painless as possible for the taxpayer.

But it's going to be necessary if downtown is going to be viable as a tourist destination in the future.

As and it will be in that southwest corner.

You think so?

It where the Institute of Texan Cultures is right now?

I think so that's the game plan as it seems.

And what else is on your crystal ball about how downtown is going to change and evolve with that?

And we're talking about what, ten years.

Ten years, 15 years take.

I think one of the things that's really important to realize about the Spurs moving downtown, or the desire for the Spurs to move downtown, is that sports teams of the future are not going to be able to make money off those giant TV deals that they used to.

That's why Jerry World in Dallas is so rich in Arlington, is so attractive because he makes so much money on lease rates, on retail, on the grounds around his stadium.

That will be important for the Spurs going forward, because they're not going to ever get as much money from their TV deals as they just got in their most recent one.

They will continue to go down from this place forward.

Don't tell me TVs, downward trend friend.

I'm working newspapers.

Well, thanks very much.

And I get the paper up.

The San Antonio business paper.

Please do.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see the show again or previous shows.

You can also download the podcast at 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