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.

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 Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the right.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for this week's On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and there's a whole lot to talk about this week.

We're going to talk about the business in San Antonio and Arboretum and plans for that on the southeast side, as well as a philharmonic in money.

But first, we're going to talk about Airbnbs in San Antonio, maybe new regulations on that, as well as affordable housing in San Antonio in a push to ban those horse carriages downtown.

Joining us, District one, Councilman Mario Bravo.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Glad to be here.

You're busy right now.

Just we're going to start maybe with the affordable housing, because this week you're going to be approving a number of contracts for affordable housing.

Tell us about that.

We are.

So the voters approved $150 million in funding for affordable housing as part of the 2022 bond package.

And so the city put out a request for proposals.

We had a lot of different entities bid and on and propose projects.

And so we're going to approve 14 of those.

It's half of the money, I believe, that's going out towards affordable housing.

So we're really excited to put that money to work and start working towards having municipal housing.

For rehabbing as well as for putting.

Up.

It runs the whole gamut.

Yeah, so some of it's going to be housing for sale, some of it's going to be rental, some of it's going to be rehab.

We also put out a request for proposals for permanent supportive housing, which is going to be housing for people who have been chronically homeless.

And and so I'm really excited to be able to move that forward.

We are not voting on that tomorrow, tomorrow, this Thursday.

What we are doing is all the rest of the affordable housing.

And how about well, let's look at the Airbnb key recommendations that you have some new regulations on Airbnb.

It has been three years since the council voted on that.

And you want to tighten those up a little?

Well, we do.

And this is a request that we heard from the community.

This is this came to us both from short term rental owners and from neighborhood leaders.

And what it is, is it's creating a task force to review the rules, the regulations we have on the books, and see how we can tighten them up to make sure that we're meeting the spirit of the regulations.

Which means what are some of the specifics?

This is only for short term type two rentals.

So if you own your home and you're renting a garage apartment in the back, this does not affect you.

This is for when the owner does not live on the property.

If they own the house, but on a regular basis, say they may have an LLC and and they also have a permit, but that permit won't be grandfathered anymore as it is now.

Well, that's part of the goal of this task force, right?

So that what the task force can look at is you're not supposed to be able to if you buy a home and you get a type two short term rental, an investor, a short term rental permit, when you sell the house, the permit should not transfer with that.

Then it opens back up to the market.

But there's a there are workarounds right now.

If you have an LLC, you buy the house with the LLC, then you pull the permit.

With the LLC, you can sell the LLC and then you transfer ownership of the house and the permit together.

And that's important because there's a limit on the number of bed and breakfasts or Airbnbs in a certain area, right?

There are, yeah.

And it's citywide and it's per block.

And something like per 12 units or something are at or correct.

And that's another thing that we looked at.

Now I think we actually fixed that issue with the unified unified development codes that we just passed to make sure that you can't have more than one for 12.

You can't round up and let's say maybe there's 18 on there, you can't round up and say, okay, well now 18 is closer to 24 so that you can have two on that block.

That was one of the things that we sought to prevent previously, but that this task force can look at all of the other issues around.

So it's not anything specific maybe yet, but down the road, how long do you think it'll take before task force will get back to the council on something like this?

How long would it take before we'd see.

We actually are putting a timeline in there.

I mean, it's going to be up to council to debate what that timeline looks like, but I'm looking to have them be able to bring recommendations to council within six months.

And now there was another council recommendation from other council people to look at the horse carriages downtown.

Those businesses, they affect your council district.

But you didn't bring this up.

That's true.

That's true.

You know, and I'll tell you, you know, I'm a 14th generation Texan.

I grew up with teens.

I grew up with horses.

So I knew how to ride a horse before I knew how to ride a bicycle.

And so I've I'm probably the only council member whose own horses cared for horses growing up.

And I have a lot of concern for the welfare of these horses.

But I think that the way we've started this off is not the right way to do this.

We need to be talking to horse carriage owners.

We need to be talking to the horse veterinarian that the city contracts with, who actually has certified these horses as all being healthy and being well cared for.

Now, the carriage owners, by the way, they said they were blindsided by this council consideration request that CCR because nobody had talked to them.

That's true.

That's true.

I have talked to them since the CCR was filed and I'm going to continue to talk to them.

I've always had concerns for how they operate and how these these horses are treated.

But what I'm finding out is that they they follow a lot of good practices.

And so you checked out their conditions and.

I haven't gone to do site visits yet, but I've started conversations along with Dr. Benjamin Espey.

And so that's their veterinarian.

Dr. SB contracts with the city, you know, inspects the horses every.

Year.

We had a reporter in here who wrote one of the stories last week and thought that it might be considered a first step toward getting rid of working horses in a big part of Texas, which a lot of people are going to be against.

Well, you know, we have to think this through because what happens to those horses?

You know, one of the horse owners said one of the carriage owner operators that I talk to, I believe she has 40 horses.

She says it costs over $100,000 a year to feed those horses.

Where are those horses going to go if you shut down these businesses?

Horse slaughter is now illegal in the US, but they just send them to Mexico and they're slaughtered there.

I mean, I'm told that we have dozens of trailers of horses every day that go to Mexico to slaughter these horses.

You know, I if you care about the welfare of those horses, you don't want them to go to Mexico and be made in the dogfood.

Now, some people also said because the police are now looking at regulations and traffic enforcement, whereas they did before it was just animal care services.

Is is traffic, you think a concern in that area or not?

Is that a big part of tourism?

I hear that it is.

I know if you get stuck behind a horse carriage and you're trying to get somewhere, that could be frustrating for you.

The the carriages are also limited in which roads they are allowed to travel on downtown in order to in order to help alleviate that.

And when I talk to horse carriage owners, they tell me they're open to new regulations.

They're open to, you know, maybe considering other streets that maybe they should or should not be on.

What would be most appropriate.

They're open to looking at regulations about, you know, when can they operate.

If it gets above a certain temperature, can they not take the horses out?

So and one last thing I'd like to just ask you about quickly, the personal incident you had with another council member.

It's taken you off some committees.

Had you switch.

Would you like to address that and how you're doing now?

I'm doing well.

I'm you know, we didn't miss a day of work.

I've been on the council all this time.

I'm back on committees.

I'm working with my colleagues.

You know, I had to go to my colleagues to get them to sign my council, consider consideration a resolution on short term rentals.

And, you know, it was easy to get them to work with me.

And so, you know.

We're so you're moving forward and getting along with everybody.

You know?

So far, so good.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in and for answering that.

Councilman Mario Bravo District one.

Good luck with all those resolutions and dealing with that one way or the other.

We appreciate.

It.

Thank you.

And now from city government to county government, we're talking about plans for money for symphonic music in San Antonio, as well as a new county park and work on an arboretum.

And joining us to talk about that is pressing for county Commissioner Tommy Calvert.

Thank you very much for coming here.

Yeah, you've been here a few times.

Appreciate it.

Now, let's talk about this arboretum and plants for that.

First of all, as you said, you were a few years back.

What is an arboretum?

How do you describe that to people?

Because they think botanical gardens and it's not.

There's national models in D.C. for an arboretum.

Wisconsin with the University of Michigan excuse me, of Wisconsin, rather.

There are places where we study trees and educate people about their importance to our environment.

And sometimes there are shrub studies as well.

But for some people, their are meditative place there.

They're a place where I believe we can also engage in a very strong tree planting program to help with the huge tree loss that we have because we've got 1.5 million people moving into Bear County and we've lost a tremendous amount of our tree canopy.

And it will be the fourth part of the property on Southeast Military is going to be at the old Republic golf course on the southeast side.

By a lot.

Of creek by Salado Creek.

This property just a few years ago as golf has lost a little bit of the members and users, it went out of business and so it had become a potential blighted eyesore.

And I was getting calls about overgrown, you know, shrubs and grass and things of that nature.

And so, well, I was worried that, you know, there could be a homeless camp if we didn't do something about it.

So because the city was supposed to do a park at Salado, at this area and that area in that area.

You had a different location.

Originally.

Yeah, well, the city was going to do it there, but they reneged on that promise at the Republic Golf course.

I wanted to make sure we had it because it was going to be a park for all accessibility.

So folks who have autism and other sensory disorders, if fully accessible fitness area, fully accessible splash pad, skate park, dog park, all those things that the southeast side often has a benefitted from.

We've got Morgan's Wonderland doing great things, but the folks in the South Side deserve the same kind of close.

So the county park there would be similar to that to Morgan's one.

Well, I.

Can't say we put as much money into Morgan's Wonderland as Harmon has, but we're going to move forward a $9 million park that is fully accessible and there will be some expansion of the Salado Creek Linear Parkway as well, and the Arboretum will have some infrastructure.

Arboretum is a separate thing.

It is its own and it's about that because that is has been pushed up in terms of funding timeline.

Mm hmm.

Former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros is the founder and that board is looking to get additional resources from federal, state, local to nonprofit.

Right.

It's like the Brackenridge Conservancy or a number of other conservancies like that.

And of course, there was a property on the Texas excuse me, the T.J. Mack's 400 acres adjacent to their property that just kind of wasn't moving along in terms of the conveyance.

And so I told them, look, you'll be closer to the downtown tourism at the Old Republic Golf course.

Take a look at this particular site, because I believe it will really be a beautiful those golf fairways where I had very bad golf games.

There will be very nice fairways for our trees to be planted in the education centers that will be built.

And so we just moved money that we had already allocated $7.35 million in your eight of the county's eight year capital program to year two and three with a project that wasn't moving.

And we're really excited that they're going to begin to purchase the land with the help of Brooks.

Brooks is going to expand its footprint as a regional economic development authority.

Through this play.

The county may also be able to develop about 18 acres with housing, and that would be something that could benefit the area that's affordable.

Housing in that area.

Yeah, it could be market rate.

You know, we have a real gap in terms of first time homeowners are having a very difficult time.

So we'll have to talk to my colleagues about that.

And it would be housing, not apartments.

You think.

Probably housing.

But I mean, I haven't even begun to think about it.

We've got to get on the grounds and really walk the land and take a look.

And so the new park, what are the timelines now for the new park?

And this arboretum?

The arboretum is got some planning processes.

They're hiring an architect, an engineer to do a master plan.

The park, I think, is is further along because Dan Pedretti, who was developing the park for the city in the city, Bond has already hired and paid a very good master planner, which I like the plan.

The community likes the plan.

And I say, you know, our Parks department, take another look at it as double check it, but we're ready to really rock with it.

And it's tied in to water.

And are these close?

So the San Antonio water system obviously gave a permit for great water for the golf course.

So it works very well for this property to be able to have recycled water.

And near Salado Creek, but not going to be right on Salado Creek.

You'll be able to access the Salado Creek Linear Parkway as part of it.

There's going to be some expansion of of that linear parkway.

And now you also mentioned that there's another park farther east.

But yeah, this is something that has kind of crept under the radar.

But, you know, the Far East Bear County in the east central area, really kind of the heart of county residents.

And business hasn't gotten a lot of resources.

So we actually are investing 1.2 million in the champion sports complex, which is a jewel in San Antonio that NBA players like Chauncey Billups have practiced during the summer.

When they want a private place, they come in to San Antonio under the radar, and these NBA players practice there.

There's going to be more accessibility for the county as we enter into a partnership to open it up more to the community and develop the grounds around the gym as an athletic facility for an area that is near China Grove on Joe Louis Drive that is beginning to grow in a way that we need additional amenities for the new homes.

And about how big are these developments in terms of acreage.

So you know, I would say that probably around three acres on the first, the Joe Lewis excuse me, the champion sports complex, it's 17 acres on the county park and 177 total acres on the Republic golf course.

And our people are going to be able to go in and get trees and things like that.

Or as well.

That's a whole nother show.

I'm looking forward to launching an initiative with my commissioners in the new Year of planting tens of thousands of trees in San Antonio.

I mean, literally tens of thousands of trees.

We want to have schools participate.

We want to have nonprofits.

CPS can get credits for its carbon emissions by contributing.

We've got to get a commitment from source for water, things of that nature.

So we're developing a program that we desperately need to fight climate change, something the county has not been very active in before.

Now, money for the symphony.

I know that's something that or symphonic music, I should say, is.

Harmonic, right?

The Philharmonic explained to us what the county has done there and your thoughts.

On We've come to Jesus and given 325,000.

To Jesus.

Yeah.

You know, I was disappointed that the county overlooked the Philharmonic because there's you see in the community, you see signs, yard signs in people's yards supporting the Philharmonic.

And those are the people who were in the San Antonio Symphony itself.

Well, these are their supporters.

They're concert goers.

They're the ones.

They're supporting the musicians.

The former symphony, now known as the Philharmonic.

And so we allocated $325,000, which I think is very important to our creative economy, because they draw people in tourism to the city.

The caliber of music was going to be lost with the move that we did.

And it's a worthy organization.

But did it go to the Philharmonic or it went through different organizations.

It went directly to this 325,000 went directly to the Philharmonic.

The county had allocated another 300,000 to a different organization, and that organization has worked with youth.

It's a lot of compassion, yes, but it is.

The musical quality was not of the caliber of the Philharmonic, and there was really a move to block professional musicians through the union of musicians nationwide to going to CMI.

And I think once that checkmate was done, the commissioners court could not break up the Union of the Philharmonic, and we caved in, and that was a good thing.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, county commissioner.

You gave me this car.

Where it's upside down, but I'm upside down all the time anyway.

But if you come to Jesus County Commissioner, Precinct four, Tommy Calvert.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Good to be back.

On Reporters Roundtable This week, we are focusing on the business of San Antonio, the economy, and the possibility of what would happen in a recession.

The man who's written about that recently is Diego Mendoza Moyers, who is a staff writer but focusing on business for the San Antonio Express-News.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Now tell me about this story you did recently about a study on what would happen if not that we are definitely going to have a recession.

Yeah.

So this economist John Hawkins, who's work with the City of San Antonio for several years now, he gave a kind of an economic outlook for the city.

And his conclusion was really that a recession is really likely, that we're probably not going to avoid that.

But but he emphasized that it's really not something to be scared of.

I think what we're seeing is kind of a reversal of some of the financial mania we've seen over the last couple of years, you know, with, you know, people kind of piling into things like crypto or some of the meme stocks or, you know, a lot of residential investment.

So we've seen kind of asset prices and things like that, I think kind of get out of whack.

And so I think we're kind of seeing a reversion back to kind of pulling out.

Exactly.

And now what is that translating to or would translate to in San Antonio in terms of jobs and unemployment rate?

Yeah.

So I think I mean, I think in any recession it's likely unemployment would rise, right?

So I think that's something that we should keep our eye on.

But but as it relates to the, you know, I think say to tell you, it's got a strong economy and kind of strong economic fundamentals.

Right?

Housing costs here are relatively low.

We've still got a lot of job growth.

So I think relative to other places in the US, like California or New York, that would probably feel the effects of recession more.

I think here in San Antonio where we're pretty well insulated.

But that's not to say some people would likely lose their jobs.

Where do you think we're most vulnerable?

What kind of industries?

Tourism, tech service industries?

Well, certainly we're seeing a lot of layoffs in the tech sector.

Right.

And so, so far, those have been concentrated in California.

You know, particularly in November, we saw, I think I think over 100,000 job losses in the tech sector.

So I think, you know, San Antonio doesn't have a really pronounced technology sector.

That's a possibility.

We could see some job losses there.

Of course, tourism is always affected by the economy, so that's another potential area of threat there.

But but like I said, I mean, I think compared to other parts of the country, San Antonio would probably not feel a recession.

So we're not seeing it yet, even though we've seen those tech layoffs and other layoffs across the country right now.

Yeah, So so something kind of interesting.

So since about summer 2021, since then, we've seen record low jobs or record high, excuse me, job openings, record hires, record number of workers quitting their jobs.

Right.

Kind of.

We've seen sort of a worker's market right over that time.

We've also seen layoffs at a record low.

And in the last couple of months, we're starting to see those trends reverse a little bit.

They're still kind of not kind of their regular levels.

Right.

But we're starting to see job openings decline a little bit, hires to kind of little bit.

So maybe we'll see some of that.

You know, I guess, you know, strength that workers had in the market to go find other jobs, get higher pay.

I think we're starting to see that wane a little bit.

Maybe people are less inclined to leave.

Their jobs because some businesses, you still see hiring now apply and it's like they're still trying to recruit hard.

Yeah, well, it's kind of interesting if you think about it.

What we're seeing right now is kind of reversal of the pandemic era trend where, you know, if you worked at a restaurant or in hospitality industry, you were out of job and if you worked in tech, you were comfortably at home, you know, you know, making good money, able to work and avoid the the pandemic, things like that.

Now we're seeing, you know, those tech jobs, you know, a lot of layoffs in that sector.

Meanwhile, restaurants can't hire enough workers.

And so I think it's just kind of a reversal of what we saw a couple of years ago.

And how about the job training programs that have gone on in San Antonio?

Very high profile.

Successful, not.

Yes.

So so, you know, one of the things that you hear economists say a lot about San Antonio is, you know, we've got a good economy, but we really need to focus on developing, attracting and retaining well-educated people.

Right.

So that's something easy to say.

But the city is is devoting a lot of money.

A chunk of every sales tax dollar generated here in San Antonio goes to fund the ready to work job training program.

During the pandemic.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And so that was kind of a precursor program, the ready to work program that voters approved in 2020 launched in about June.

And so six months in, it's a free education, right, for people that that, you know, below a certain income level.

But six months in the city has enrolled 750 people in that.

And their goal for the entire first year was 5700 people enrolled in the training.

So it's free education.

You know, they help with all sorts of, you know, case management.

I mean, they're just really not able to get people know the lack of applicants.

Well, they're having lots of applicants.

But, you know, sometimes people will apply and not go to their their follow up interview or things like that.

I think they're kind of wanting people to get a quick job as opposed to enter training.

So it just, I think, important to know, you know, we can say we need to elevate, you know, the level of education here in San Antonio, but the city is investing in that.

It's not really.

Now is a job training really for the higher paying jobs of tech or is it just for an entry level job?

You said there are some truck driver training and some others.

Yeah.

So so so far, really what we're seeing people and are ready to work for is for truck driving, is for careers in the medical field, you know, medical assistance, things like that.

I think the city long term, you know, this is a four or five year long program where you can get an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree.

So I think the city is hoping in a couple of years this program ready to work with, start producing, you know, workers in the tech sector or workers and more technical skills.

Certainly right now, I think, you know, it's lower skilled jobs, but, you know, graduates are ready to work.

There's I think I've been about 50 people that have gotten jobs through so far.

I'm making about 20 bucks an hour.

And you mentioned the health industry.

There's a lot of need still for nurses, but this would train them not obviously for nursing, but maybe for a first job.

Could they still get more training?

How long is the training limited to?

Well, so like I said, it's a four or five year long program.

And so certainly I think the thinking is that people might enter phlebotomy or some sort of, you know, entry level job in the medical field and, you know, ideally work their way up after a couple of years.

I think that's the city's the way they're looking at this, right, to sort of get people that, you know, who otherwise maybe, you know, dropped out of school or didn't finish college, things like that, get them back in the fold in the workforce and then maybe, you know, down the line could they'll elevate.

Now, what about the homeless in San Antonio?

A lot of talk about homeless across the country.

Los Angeles having big problems elsewhere here in San Antonio, also very visible.

And a problem we're looking at again, is this helping the job training with the homeless population at all?

Yeah, So so, you know, certainly, you know, driving here, there's people sleeping under the overpasses I was getting here.

So certainly it's still a scourge of San Antonio.

I think, you know, the city, I think they've seen people kind of living on the edge, just try to apply for ready to work and maybe not necessarily be ready to enter the workforce.

So the city has seen that and they're trying to get people, you know, high school equivalency or sort of, you know, get them even dental work, just kind of basic needs before they can enter the workforce.

So I think ready to work isn't necessarily targeted at the homeless population, but I think they're trying to help people that are really kind of living on the edge like that.

And homeless people say.

But those in houses, you know, there's a lot of talk about the housing price is still rising.

But how how is that doing in San Antonio?

Yeah, So I think I mean, we saw residential investment just absolutely rocket up in 2021.

And so, you know, we've seen house prices really elevate, you know, rapidly.

And so I think that's we're seeing a reversal there.

I think we're seeing sales slow down.

And then, of course, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates.

And so it's, you know, harder to get a loan.

And so I think we'll see prices decline there.

But even so, I don't think affordability is improved, right, Because even if prices decline, they're going to have a bigger interest rate on your loan.

So, you know, I don't know that the housing situation has really improved much, but maybe a year from now we'll see.

You know, there was a time when there were a lot of companies from out of town that were coming in buying houses for rental.

But I've heard that that isn't as big as it was just because of the rates and the prices.

Yeah, well, I think we've seen, you know, companies like Zillow really lose out in that kind of strategy.

But I do think there are still investors, you know, coming in and trying to develop, you know, apartment complexes and things like that.

I know that that has the residential investment has slowed, particularly in Austin, just because it's gotten so expensive.

But, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if we're, you know, a year from now if housing prices decline and we see, you know, big time institutional investors get.

Then finally, you said, John, how can you thought there's going to be a recession as a business reporter, use your crystal ball.

What do you think in San Antonio?

Yeah, I mean, I think we likely will.

You know, I don't think we're going to be able to escape the effects that around the country.

But, you know, we saw a really low unemployment rate here.

I think it's around three and a half percent.

So even if we have a you know, the unemployment rate rises a percentage or two, I think we'll still be in a pretty strong position.

We hope you have a a strong crystal ball and are seeing clearly.

Appreciate it.

Diego Mendoza Moyers, who is a staff writer focusing on business for the San Antonio Express-News.

Appreciate it.

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

You can see this show again.

You can also check out the podcast if you just go to k l r n dot org.

We'll see you next time.

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