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.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week, a special edition.

We are looking back at some of the top stories in San Antonio and the area for the past year, how they've affected us and how they may affect us going forward.

With us to cover all that talk about that are two of the experts best reporters and editors in San Antonio.

It says that right here.

Andrea Rush, who is senior political reporter for the San Antonio Report, thank you for joining us.

And Sanford now and who is the editor in chief of the San Antonio Current.

We appreciate you both being.

Great to be here.

All right.

First of all, I, we were talking about, maybe the biggest story of the year overall and going forward in the area is the hill Country flooding and also San Antonio flooding over the summer.

July 4th brought about the special session.

What's your take on that?

What did you see in that?

That really stuck out in your mind, aside from the, you know, the impact on the families in the numbers that were killed?

We're here in Flash Flood Alley, and I think this was our most deadly summer in 27 years.

So first, you had the San Antonio floods in mid-June, killed 13 people, swept off the road, then turned around a few weeks later.

And you have this massive flood in Kerrville where at first we're hearing about the camps and then it isn't until heard about, you know, halfway through the day that it's, oh, wow, there's hundreds more people missing.

And the response as well.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I think that's been the interesting thing to observe is how much finger pointing there's been over who's who's culpable for it, you know, and it goes down to, you know, the camp operators, to the emergency responders up to the state, which, you know, obviously has known that this has been an issue for this part of the state for a really long time.

Even FEMA at the time.

Absolutely.

And their response.

And if you remember, they come back for a special session, but say first, we're going to do redistricting, then we're going to do flood stuff.

And there's still, I think, in moving to have now decided on a grant program for sirens, but these counties are moving forward without them.

Bexar County is already approved its own different plan non sirens.

It's more technology related.

Kerr County I believe is also decided to go ahead with their their self-funding a plan because they haven't seen any money from the state yet either.

Yeah.

I mean initially we were hearing some people at the state level sort of pointing fingers at these counties.

I think we're about 30 counties or so.

They had offers to, funding for early warning systems and in rejecting the state.

Yeah, yeah.

From the state and rejected them.

And then as you started looking deeper and deeper into this, I mean, these programs were offering barely any money, like 5%, perhaps of the total cost of covering these very expensive warning systems.

And then the counties were saying, okay, well, I got 5% of 1.5 million bucks.

And in Kerr County's case, where does the rest of the money come from?

Well, you borrow it and then if you can't pay it back in time, you have to pay penalties to the state.

And that's pretty alarming.

You know, I think to a lot of a lot of people, these cash strapped counties that that's all that that they could get.

And I think one of the interesting things about this whole ordeal, too, is that these are just going to get worse, right?

Scientists tell us, because of climate change, these are just going to get worse.

And you just saw over and over again, state elected officials try to avoid talking about the climate crisis, talking, try to avoid sort of projecting out in the future.

And how do we make sure that we're prepared for, you know, what the next step is as, as our climate changes?

Because, you know, that's just not on their agenda.

And the rebuilding of the river to make it less likely to flood like that.

What do you do with the vegetation?

What do you put on that?

And locally, the city paid for a study of the floods here.

And the one of the recommendations was that they need to raise that pair and vital access road that it creates.

Cars get trapped in there.

They they come in one part and then there's water on either side.

And so, yesterday Bexar County just approved the first portion of its money for a flood sensor program.

They're trying to put in some automated gates looking at how other states do it.

And then interestingly, what came up is that the River authority has already installed gages in other counties that lead into Bexar County, that, you know, everyone is hurting for money on this.

They've decided it's worth it to them to install gages.

I've been outside of this.

County, and it was kind of a wakeup call seeing for the city.

We hadn't had any deadly flooding in so long.

They've been working on other, water projects, flooding kind of projects over the years, flood plains.

But this is just one where you see it all the time on the Transguide cameras.

There, you know, apparent beitel.

But we haven't gotten to that.

It's kind of like the one out on the west side, highway 90.

Wake up call.

They're going to have trouble getting money, but they they're definitely going to have to focus.

Yeah.

I mean, look, this is a very long standing problem in San Antonio.

And we have been sort of chipping away at it piecemeal.

And it seems like we finally we're sort of appeared to be getting out ahead of it.

But, you know, it's it's it's huge.

It's huge.

Definitely going to be covering that.

Yeah.

The county hasn't had another round of its flood infrastructure projects in a long time.

There's been some criticism of you know this has been more economic development type flood infrastructure.

But it kind of leans into I think what we're going to talk about next, which is the city bond, how much of that is going to go toward flood versus how much is already committed for other projects?

Project Marvel, which leads us into and, you know, that was a big story last year when it kind of first came out.

We didn't know about this, but this year more details came out.

But of the whole timeline, what did you what did you make of that?

What do you think going forward is going to happen?

And the Spurs arena, I guess first and separate from Project Marvel or at least split off from it now.

Well, I sort of the the crown jewel of Project Marvel, isn't it?

I mean, I think you can't talk about one without the other.

And I do think the Spurs arena vote to me was very interesting in that it was a completely different creature from the vote to approve public funding to build the AT&T center, right.

As you recall, 22% approval from the community on that.

It was just, you know, we're Spurs fans.

Let's do it this time around.

I think the whole set of circumstances around it are different.

I think Project Marvel, to a lot of voters, felt like this sort of mysterious, nebulous, pie in the sky kind of thing.

The project felt rushed, the vote on the arena felt rushed, and I think getting back to the flood infrastructure and that sort of thing, there are a lot of people in parts of town who feel like, let's get the basics right before we start spending millions and public money on a brand new Spurs arena, when this is not even the oldest arena in the league.

Far from.

It.

And we saw the pushback from the county as the Spurs wanted to vote in May.

And Peter Sakai said, no, let's let's push this off, which mirrored what the mayor said.

Yeah, over the summer.

Yeah.

It's sort of the story that carried us all throughout this year because, as you remember, November of last year is when we first got the first public presentation of what this might be a 3 to $4 billion project that involves convention center upgrades and a new Spurs arena and and and and and so then it comes over to the county who is being asked to put up their venue tax.

And County Judge Peter Sakai says, we don't have a price tag for this arena.

We haven't been in the loop, really puts the brakes on this and then comes back a few months later saying, okay, we need first a plan for the existing arena.

They quickly come up with this whole plan to turn the east side into a rodeo district.

He comes on board with this idea, but then you have a new mayor who's saying, also pause on this.

This is happening too quickly.

But the vote, you know, Bexar County ends up putting it to a vote in November.

The city, new city leadership.

You have four new council members and a new mayor who are, you know, debating whether this the city portion of the funding doesn't need a vote.

It's all from sources.

The terms that this sort of raise, all these other questions about how they can spend all of this money without a public vote, but ends up all tied to this November 4th vote.

Seems like it's really close decision then $7 million campaign to support it.

Spurs didn't even believe it was going to pass right up until the end.

We're kind of holding out at their own watch party and then it passes and it's this should be greenlighting everything.

But now we're back to City Hall, where they have a nonbinding agreement.

And the mayor is saying, I think we still need more out of this.

Community benefits agreement.

I think we should still reconsider whether our entire bond is going to go to this.

What about how we spend this project?

Finance loan money from the state?

Could that be used to fund some of the infrastructure?

So our bond money is for other projects and other council members who, you know, went around her to keep this going with the city manager saying, oh my gosh.

This is more to the business community saying, yes, we have to have we.

Had an agreement.

And also.

What do you think is played in the next story that we're talking about?

Is the new mayor coming in?

She was kind of painted as the villain in that, at least by some for pushing the brakes, saying she came in late, that she was, you know, she wanted the power to deal with this something before she came in.

How did that affect her?

And she had other issues coming in about, you know, personality and things.

How did that affect her effectiveness?

Well, I do think it created some pushback.

But at the same time, I think for a large portion in this community, I mean, remember this, this prop be passed by 4%, right?

Less than 10,000.

Talk about.

22% before that was the.

Spurs 2022.

With that, I mean, this was a very narrow margin, that this passed by 10,000 votes, like you said.

I mean, if the Spurs watch party, they were literally holding off, before announcing victory, Bobby Perez, the Spurs general counsel, we spotted him, down at one of the polling places, literally talking to people, going into the building, trying to close the deal with voters.

They were desperate.

You wouldn't spend $7 million slightly more.

Yeah, yeah, likely more if you if you weren't desperate, right, to get this thing passed.

But I think, I think the mayor was correct to say we don't necessarily have reliable research going into any of this.

This is a huge project.

And so far, the two studies that we've been relying on or studies that either the Spurs did themselves or a study that the Spurs were kind of not necessarily arm's length from.

So how about moving forward?

What is what what do you think's going to happen in the new year, both with the city, you know, moving forward with this and the agreements, the specific agreements out of that term sheet and also the mayor's effectiveness, because it was only by 4%.

She kind of came out with a, you know, more support than we might have expected from at least all that media blitz.

Well, there was a lot going on during this mayoral race.

And when she was part of a 27 candidate field and including four city council members who had already supported this thing, and she was sort of this lone voice out there saying, no, what does it cost?

Is this a good deal?

And then, you know, that spin that forward into when this comes to City Hall, really unusual.

Her saying, we need this independent economic study.

We should wait on this.

And council members siding with the city manager to go around her on this.

It seemed like after the election, they were sort of coming together saying, we need to present a united front.

But there it is, a non-binding agreement is what she's saying now.

And there is still more to be decided at the city, and she just wants to wait out and see what the financial situation of the city is.

They're going to have a study of some sort that they're working on an.

RFP, but you don't think there will be a vote as she is still, you know, talked about of the city since it's already passed in the county.

She came out initially and said, okay, we vote.

We should vote on the city money as well.

She hasn't talked about that sense, but I think she talked about before that wanting to sort of continue the negotiations, which makes some people throw their hands up in the air.

But her saying we didn't have a community benefits agreement a couple of weeks ago, like now we do.

Let's keep negotiating for more.

Why are we continuing to put ourselves in a bad negotiating position and sort of inventing.

I think.

Be.

Interesting to watch is there's no doubt in my mind, you know, from from watching her looking at her past resume and her effectiveness, you know, as a public servant and as a, you know, military officer and that sort of thing that she knows how to lead and that she knows she knows how to manage a budget and that sort of thing.

The interesting thing, I think, will be to see how she grows into the role of San Antonio mayor, which involves bringing people on council along with you, having a lot of discussions offline before stuff gets to a vote right in front.

The image of her.

I think people thought going in and she was going to be the progressive, more, inclusive, but the military side and her, you know, her personality has been criticized that she went through, media people that she didn't make, friends and council being very specific about how she wanted people to stand and things like that.

But going forward, do you think that is still an issue or is are we behind that?

Well, we now have are up against this, you know, effort to move the election to November.

And it seems very just like her.

It's you put out, you put out your idea, try to generate support among outside groups and community.

Meanwhile, the council is like feeling drug along with something that she has a progressive block.

This council, if it were to flex its muscles.

You had four new council members and a new mayor this year.

You, you know, turn over some longtime sort of pro-business, moderate members with younger progressives should they ever work together, they could get some, you know, she would have a firm in her.

Defense with the timing on this thing.

It has to get done.

It has to get done by the end of the year if we're going to do it.

I guess the question becomes, how effective is she being behind the scenes in terms of building the support?

You know, some mayors in San Antonio and knowing how to do that immediately.

Others, like Ron Nirenberg, for example, faced a lot of criticism.

His first term for not being able to sort of build consensus behind the scenes before stuff got brought up to the dias, before it got brought to a vote.

So, you know, will she learn that lesson?

I think, you know, if she wants to serve a second, term, you know, she's going to have to learn that at some point.

And maybe, maybe she is learning it right now.

And another story about San Antonio, and this is definitely is more maybe about the future, but the UT essay, UT Health Science Center merger, the rebranding of it as UT San Antonio, they made a big deal out of how that's going to bring us, you know, maybe more of a researchers, at least more, publicity and focus, selective tier one push to make it a tier one university years ago.

Is that overplayed, you think?

Or is it something that is real, along with the cyber security and rebranding downtown more of a tech university, at least in addition to what they have?

Yeah, UTSA is having its own moment this year.

It feels like we started off with this.

The Cybersecurity Cyber Command chosen for this, in San Antonio and this big merger, the downtown campus renovation you've got then sort of these multiple downtown resurgence projects happening at once.

Project Marvel Baseball, UTSA, and then at the same time, I think a big push on the economic development side for these medical technology related jobs.

You've got, Army North and South at risk with this effort to bring the Defense Health Agency to San Antonio and sort of fill the pipeline of who would work at these jobs.

No, I think I think a lot of people in San Antonio, have don't fully understand just how big an Indian UT health science center is in terms of patents coming out of it in terms of research coming out of it, in terms of the just absolute heft it has in that industry.

And I think putting it in with you, you know, UTSA under the same umbrella, creates more of a critical mass in terms of research and development here.

And, you know, I don't know that we've always been thought it was a tech city, but we've always, I think, had some strength in the medical field, in biotech and that sort of thing.

And, and to a large degree, I think this is a sensible, sensible move.

If we're trying to raise our city status as a research center.

And that's one of the things we've lagged behind.

I think other Texas cities in terms of, you know, having patents coming out of here, in terms of having important research coming out of here, you know, it's those those sorts of things create spin offs.

As we saw in Austin, if you have a world class research university, you're going to have people coming out of it with new ideas, new businesses.

They're starting.

And we do less of what I think it's been a mistake that San Antonio has made for years and years, which is always looking to attract people to move their business here.

Well, you know, sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

But what I think makes the most sense is to have economic engines in San Antonio that can build businesses here.

Speaking of economic engines and plans, the Alamo, the continuing project.

But it's definitely run into, you know, a big snag.

And it's I've always thought it's the third rail how you interpret the Alamo.

For tourists.

And with Kate Rogers being forced out as the president and CEO of the Alamo Trust going forward, and then fundraisers, three fundraisers, top fundraisers have pulled out over that culture war.

Yeah.

So the state, in the I think the legislative session before this had agreed to about a half $1 billion contribution to this Alamo visitor center and museum.

And it is was seeming like things were on track, against all odds, sort of a vision of how they want to focus it on the battle and versus how San Antonio wants to portray it.

And Kate Rogers, the Alamo Trust CEO, held up as this like peacemaker in the middle.

They were going to have this museum that goes through all eight villages from indigenous people and their impact to the Alamo impact on pop culture.

And then.

And this was the.

This was the word started, a tweet from the Alamo about happy Indigenous People Day that I think they've sent in the.

Past, have done in the past.

Gets the attention of the far right media group like.

Quinn Sullivan.

The land commissioner, Don Buckingham, an ambitious Republican who says, we're going to make somebody pay for this and then.

To vote.

To vote yes, called it woke.

The word of the year.

And then and then we've got, you know, Dan Patrick in response, dredging up, Kate Rogers doctoral thesis and taking, objection to what I think most people would look at and go, this sounds pretty reasonable to me that it was.

Hard to navigate the different factions and the she was trying to.

Be.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, I know I think it's a black eye, you know, and I think I think it looks petty on, Patrick's part, and, and I think it's, it's the kind of thing that doesn't do the development of the Alamo any favors.

All three of their fundraised local fundraisers for this.

It's a first.

You need.

To raise a lot of money for.

This project.

Shadow more problems.

Say as it that visitor center opens.

People saying different things in the focus, in the education, in the indigenous people.

Is that going to at least get some national attention as a black eye?

Well, it has gotten national attention.

I see Kate Rogers is everywhere, and a piece of that is that the the scriptwriter was a former Texas Monthly writer.

And so that is another person who was fired in this process.

There was a communications director, the Alamo CEO Kate Rogers, and then the script writer, because that, I believe, is sort of where this now hinges the there's sort of agreement on how this museum will be laid out.

But the script that goes along with it specifically, they were picking out words like, we don't want these words in here, we want these words in here.

And we're not done with the bad publicity either, because she has a lawsuit now, right?

Where she's basically saying, you know, she was put through the shredder because she was exercising her First Amendment rights.

Academic freedom that no doubt say.

Which on the other side is almost a selling point like this is an academic who was and not reflecting the value of the heroes of Texas and.

And she, you know, Texas Monthly has taken a big interest in this thing that one of their former staffers.

But she had a kind of bombshell interview with them talking about how she weathered it from the left all along here and now has been called woke and and a racist in the same day, like was was navigating this impossible situation and and didn't do any good.

It also plays into right now there's so much construction there as well as downtown.

It hasn't really helped tourism and people are hoping maybe we can get through it through that this year or not.

There was some bananas when Dan Patrick was here the last time, the lieutenant governor saying why the state had put all this money into it, they said something like $11 billion in tourism dollars that they anticipate from this new visitor museum.

It remains this incredible tourism engine.

I think the plan is still to open it in 2027.

Yeah.

And and I just saw, another media outlet had voted for the, the receipts on how much the state had spent to buy the Crockett and the hotel so they could own the hotels and make sure that, you know, we were not going to have woke hotels or whatever the justification.

There was $62 million in, state taxpayer money to buy those two hotels.

That seemed like they were doing a fine job attracting Alamo visitors to me.

But.

But you're going to be reporting a lot more on that in the new year.

Another big story for the past few years getting more attention recently, the, controversial subdivision Guajillo, the ranch near hello was, getting a lot of pushback from people nearby because they don't want the wastewater treatment plant and the water effluent feeding into hello, Rose ranch.

You know, sensitive.

Watershed, Lotus Creek.

Yeah.

Is that going to be resolved in the new year?

We had the guy on one of the big, opponents of it and saying he expects he doesn't want it, but that will happen.

It's interesting because you have everyone of every political stripe.

You have our conservative state senator and state lawmaker out in that area and against it.

You have local officials coming out of, I think that was maybe one of our first hints that Ron Nurnberg was really looking at the county races when he started popping up back out there, the return of the environmentalist Ron Nurnberg, talking about this and and it has failed at the county, correct.

For their, for their mud and then and the city to try to get that money from the city.

So rapid then mud.

Yeah.

So, so, so the local subsidies going along with this, maybe one of their little pieces of leverage that they have to stop this.

Now and once, once again, we're seeing another incident that highlights just how ineffective the EC, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is on actually doing its job.

You know, I think there are a lot of people at that organization who do hard work, trying to protect the environment.

And then you have a basically a, a, an appointed commission that is basically going to rubber stamp whatever business wants.

And that's sort of what happened here.

I think there was the, the people who oppose this project, came to that meeting armed with some very effective arguments in terms of, you know, the danger presented the watershed.

And the commissioners just said, well, we'll just go ahead and let this on through.

Does it also show, you know, the state legislators, state lawmakers, the majority of them, not the Donna Campbell, are closer, having more impact over local control, over local pushback.

We're going to see that in the new year.

You know, we saw it over, local education, that they want to have more control, you know, and tax wise, not allowing local communities to tax as much as they need to or as they say they need to.

Yeah.

Anticipating probably another legislative cycle that's all about those issues.

But but in this case it yeah.

The the lack of control that the elected officials at every level have over this is, is interesting.

Right.

It really how.

Much this state agency is a you know it's a landowners rights state and they there's a high burden of proof to prove the otherwise.

Yeah that's a danger.

We thank you very much for coming in.

I wish we had more time for this.

Sam, from now on, the editor in chief of the San Antonio Current.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

And Andrea Rush, senior political reporter of the San Antonio Report, thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

And all through the year.

And we also want to thank the people who support this program, Steve and Adele Duflo.

We do appreciate their support very much and keep watching.

You can also keep watching online at klrn.org I'm Randy Beamer, and we'll see you next year.

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