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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 edition of On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week we're going to talk everything from San Antonio.

Housing prices to housing sales.

Some good news, bad news there.

Also, a push to phase out carriage rides downtown as well as the effects of redistricting for city council districts.

But first, speaking of council, I'm going to talk with a brand new councilman who has been a councilman before but is now interim in District ten, right for the time being, replacing the district and District ten member Clayton Perry, I should say.

Mike Gallagher, thank you very much for.

Thank you, Randy.

Thanks for inviting.

Me.

Now, it was a week ago that you were chosen out of, I guess, 17 different applicants to fill out the rest of his term because Clayton Perry was involved in an accident and was just charged with DWI.

First of all, we were talking about, you know, him and you talked to him last night.

Tell us the latest.

Yeah.

You know, he's really doing much better.

I was really pleased to see that he was in a good mood.

We had a great conversation.

And we just hope that his rehabilitation process goes well and that he gets back to work as soon as he can.

Now back to work, is he going to be running in the spring?

We don't know that yet.

But I'm really talking about filling in until the May election.

Right.

And so there you were chosen Council District ten.

He's a conservative.

You're you are in District ten as a conservative.

And they chose you among those 17 to kind of continue some of those priorities.

And that path that he was on, like Tricia Berry when she was out, they they also nominated the county.

It nominated a conservative.

Do you feel that a smart thing to do in this case?

Oh, sure.

I think it's very important that when you've got to have one of these interim assignments, that you try to keep everything as much the status quo as you possibly can.

I think that's a big requirement.

But one thing I want to say is I was really impressed with the idea that 17 different people volunteered to step forward.

You know, that says something about our city.

It really does that we have people that care about what's going on in the city.

And that made me very happy, believe it or not, that there were that many people ready to volunteer.

Now, you filled in in 2014, the end of an expired term, then a special election.

You were elected then or you were reelected in 2015, but you chose not to run in 2017.

Why was that?

I think, you know, I guess, one, because.

Why are you getting back in?

Yeah, well, I think we have to look at this from an Air Force perspective, TDY, temporary duty and that's what I'm here for.

It's temporary duty.

I feel that the city needed the help at this moment, and that's why I step forward.

And the same thing happened back when Carlton Soles was on council and he decided to run for county judge.

I stepped in for him and so that's why I went ahead and ran one more.

But as Joe Cryer and I used to talk about all the time, there's a time to be there and then a time to get out.

Now, in the meantime, you've been a business of.

Well, a lot.

One of the main things that kept me very, very busy as a retired Air Force officer is working with the community.

And I've been the president of the Northeast Neighborhood Alliance.

Believe it or not, that's 86 neighborhoods that we meet every month.

Plus a neighborhood association.

You're also.

Oh, yeah, I'm.

One of them.

Right.

The one from my own neighborhood.

But it's just amazing that alliance is one of the best things that the city should do, that all over.

And the reason I say that is because you can't get better feedback when you're talking to the leaders of all of these neighborhoods when it's just a great idea to be able to get that sort of feedback.

So in each council district, you would recommend that they have some kind of alliance that could feed them that.

That's right.

And I think that's a real good idea.

District nine has a very active one, too, and I think that's so important for the council to hear what the community has to say.

And it's amazing.

And it's not just people from a neighborhood, it's also people from apartments and condos and so forth that would be there as well at these meetings.

Now, priorities, what what are you looking at in terms of the top priorities for you?

And where are you different, do you think, from Clayton Perry?

I think all of our priorities are exactly the same because they're ones that we've been pushing for, for decades and everybody in the city knows about.

And we've got to do something about our infrastructure.

Sure.

Our city, I hate to say it, but it's falling apart in too many areas.

We've got to get those roads and sidewalks repaired.

I think it's very important, our flooding issues.

I just can't believe the number of areas around our city that people have their homes flooded.

We've got to do something about that.

That's why the bond program becomes very, very important.

And we've got to efficiently try to get through all of those projects.

And that's what you're here through.

May you'll be here, I guess, through June as a councilman or if there's a runoff through the middle of June whenever they would take office.

Yeah.

And during that time, they don't do I mean, not all the budgeting process is done, but what are the priorities of the things that you can do that are in the timeline of the next few months or.

For the most part?

All of them have to do with roadwork and things like that, you know, trying to upgrade all of those areas that where there are problems.

And we've seen them all over the place.

And so we'll be getting those done in the.

Bond issue for 2022.

The implementing of that is going to be done in the next few months.

So is some of that money going to be used for that?

And fortunately, I know.

You can help direct where it goes.

Exactly.

You know, that's very, very important.

And the other thing I say is a priority that we get feedback from in the neighborhoods, in the community as security, and that falls within both the police and fire and how that quickly we can have EMS respond to incidents and so forth.

They and everybody talks about that one that that's one we want to make sure that the city keeps funding it and that, if anything, that maybe there's a little more funding for them.

And now you're also going to be addressing some issues that come up.

Recently, we had the carriage rides.

We're going to talk about that later, the horse carriage rides.

Do you know where you stand on that, whether they should continue or be phased out?

You know, that is a difficult one because it just popped up out of nowhere for us.

But I have to look at it really from the horse's standpoint.

If you think about it, if you took your shoes off, your boots are off right now and are walking down on that pavement to 100 degree weather, what would you feel like?

Well, I have metal knees, so it's different for me.

Knee replacements.

But so that I think that's so important that we have to think about put the animals first and you know, and if there is a problem for them, then let's do something about it then.

If it means saying, okay, we've done enough carriages, well, fine, you know, but whatever it takes to protect.

How about housing?

Is that one of the priorities that you can get into in this amount of time?

Because that's been a priority for council?

It's going to be tight because I think most of those issues, the votes have taken place and so forth already.

But as far as my own personal perspective is on it, we've got to do something about our homeless population.

We really do.

And if that were lacking in housing, then let's get busy and make sure there's some solutions for it.

But you know, Randi, the one thing I want to emphasize is this isn't something just for San Antonio.

You know, I've been all over this country and I've been amazed lately at just how big the homeless population is and how that we need as a country to think about how we can help resolve some of those issues.

And I should also mention that I want to thank you for the feedback that you gave me back in the 1980s when you were at Randolph Air Force Base.

And I was a young, younger reporter.

And you knew about ties that apparently mine were definitely not well done.

I was out there at Randolph, and of course we care about that when we're in uniform.

So I made sure and wrote you a letter that said, Now get that fixed and talk to your dad about it.

Well, I got it fixed somewhat.

You know, it's just a clip ons.

I worked at Sears.

So thank you very much for all kinds of feedback.

You were trying to make the world a better place.

And there you go.

Thanks very much.

Councilmember District ten Interim Councilman Mike Gallagher.

Thanks.

You bet, Renee.

Good talking.

To you.

We have the latest now on the housing market in San Antonio and the prices and sales which are going in different directions right now.

Interestingly, the chairperson of the San Antonio Board of Realtors Realtors, Tracy Hasslocher joins us.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Oh, thank you for having me.

So the chairperson is chair for a year or so, you're just about to leave office and you've gone through maybe a roller coaster in that past year.

You've been in the realty business for 15, 20 years.

What is it like right now with prices still going up but sales going down?

So what we're saying to people and is true is that San Antonio's just going back to a balanced market.

We're going back to the way home sales were before the pandemic.

When the pandemic hit, I think people realized they needed to have more space.

They needed things for their kids to do.

And they needed home offices and so they looked around and said, We don't have a pool for our kids.

Maybe we should buy a new house.

We both need offices now because we're both working from home and we can't do it at the same time in one office.

And so I think a lot of that is what created some of the rise in home sales when when the pandemic started.

People appreciating just staying at home, more.

Now, is it also driven by people moving in from out of state?

And how is that?

Because that's the thing in Texas.

But how how big is that market right now compared to what it was?

It's to me, it's still it's a very big issue here.

We have people moving from California, Washington State, Oregon, Indiana, New York and they're coming in and looking at the prices of homes in San Antonio going, this is cheap and they're paying cash.

So that has.

Driven and helps the prices go up.

Absolutely.

I mean, we have an 8% increase in sales, even though we have a 19% decrease in sales for the last seven months for San Antonio and in Texas, overall, it's a 22% average decrease.

But our home sales prices are still going up because people need to have a home to live in.

And some of those people are coming from places, California or wherever, where the price of a home is double or more, what it is in San Antonio.

So your people coming in with cash after selling a house for 600,000, being able to buy it for half that in San Antonio, we.

Have people paying cash in the millions right now.

Wow.

Yes.

It's it's it's interesting.

And how about where is the market hottest, I guess you could say, or selling more homes or a higher prices around the area?

It depends on where you where are you going to work?

Every to me, every inch of San Antonio is hot.

North west is because it's new growth out there.

People want new homes.

There's a lot of growth in the northwest area.

And we're.

Talking also west, west, far west in San Antonio, like.

Highway 91.

And nine.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Big growth out there.

And what about average and median home prices these days?

Where are they?

Average home prices around 305 for San Antonio, up to about 350.

You still have people buying in the 299 category.

That's probably our biggest percentage of home sales is from 102 to 99 and then to 400.

And then the rest of the market is 500 and above.

And 500,000 for San Antonio is considered a luxury market.

And sometime in the past year I can't remember, but New Braunfels area huge in that area and all up through 35 still the case.

Yes New Braunfels is really big and home sales you can get land out there with homes, big homes.

You know, it just depends on what you're looking for.

So we have people asking for all types of areas from San Antonio, even in the Saint Hedwig's area now is getting popular.

For a time.

There was also during the pandemic, a lot of companies coming in and buying houses to rent.

Is that still a thing here?

And if you're talking about like BlackRock or companies like that that are putting rentals in their portfolios, that was big.

I don't know if it's so big right now.

We still have investors that are out there looking for homes to, you know, upgrade and turn out as rentals.

But as far as block buys like that, I don't know that that's still happening.

Could be.

How about the growth in terms of subdivisions still?

And we're seeing there's controversies over developments near Leigh Creek out there.

How many new subdivisions are still being or are we seeing sprawl?

I guess are growth that.

Area still new subdivisions in fact, you know, builders are providing incentives on some of these new homes now to get them sold so they can start their next development.

So there's still a there's still a short supply and there's still a big demand.

So homebuilders are going to be just fine.

How long are homes sitting on the market before they're sold now?

An average of about 44 days.

And how does that compare to before?

It was much shorter, wasn't it?

Was maybe half that.

And the also the prices as listed housing being sold for the actual price listed sometime before we had seen the price listing even you know you're having to pay more than that listed price.

Absolutely still.

The case.

Having we were having bidding wars and even on the lower prices you can still see multiple offers on those properties.

What do you tell say I'm a seller or a buyer?

What's your advice?

Price it to move it.

And then if you get multiple offers, that's great for a buyer.

I would tell you, make sure you are pre-qualified with your loan officer before you even start looking so you know what you can afford.

Get a realtor to help you navigate the market and get you through that process if you come into a multiple offer situation.

During the pandemic, more people were using the video, you know, that's already out there and going through houses that way and some of the buying them, I understand, sight unseen.

Are you still seeing that as much?

People not wanting to go in or not needing to go into a house.

And not seeing that as much and I as a realtor, a broker, would not recommend any buyer, anybody buy a house unseen.

And are you still seeing the higher end when you talk about $1,000,000 plunking down $1,000,000, how is the high end market?

Compared to most of it?

The high end market is still moving.

If your home is moving ready has all the bells and whistles, the right countertops, kitchens are updated, you've got the right color on the walls.

It can still move in a day.

Really?

Yes.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Interesting.

Tracy Hasslocher, congratulations on a year almost now done as chairperson of the San Antonio Board of Realtors.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

On Reporters roundtable this week, the latest on horse drawn carriages and whether they should be downtown or not.

A saga that's been going on literally for decades.

Joining us with the latest is Andrea Drusch who is San Antonio, a reporter, politics reporter, San Antonio I-report.com.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

First of all, this is a thing off and on that I've covered here for a long time.

A lot of us have covered, but it just came up again recently and for some, the carriage owner companies say it's out of the blue.

What happened here.

Also happening in the background before this happened, the carriage companies have been talking to the transportation Advisory Board to change some of the rules related to whether they're allowed to operate the carriages on ozone days and how hot it can be when they're operating the carriages and the city's mayor said that wasn't that the rules hadn't really been enforced before.

But obviously, those are two things that would have been a big deal this past summer.

You had so many ozone alert days, you had so many days, over 100.

So they were working to change those rules, get the temperature requirement taken away.

Those rules have been some of the things that they've changed over the years when people first started to push to get rid of those downtown and the compromise was okay certain times, but this is one to phase them out completely, this push.

So that was happening on the side.

Then council kind of came out of I wouldn't say coming out of nowhere.

It was discussed in a meeting where the mayor expressed support for doing this a few months ago.

But they said that they wanted to phase the entire industry out by the end of next year.

And.

Replace it possibly with either electric carriages, horseless carriages that look similar to this or with pedicabs.

What kind of response of a guardian, first of all, from the owners of these companies with the horse drawn carriages?

I think that they think that that's a pretty ridiculous notion that they would be the people operating these pedicabs or that they would operate electric carriages.

They're equine people.

And they've also brought on there's a national lobby to protect this industry.

Obviously, these battles are happening all over the country.

And I thought that was fascinating.

They're actually going on offense in some states, trying to pass laws, preempting, saying that you can't ban working animals from doing certain things because they believe that the animal rights lobby is going after rodeos and going after other.

That's the next domino to fall would be they'd go after rodeos and all kinds of things.

So and interestingly that the person who runs the the lobby, the cavalry group, said, I just couldn't San Antonio wasn't on our radar.

We can't believe that this would happen in Texas.

And I think maybe more interestingly, is the idea of outlawing a business overnight in Texas and trying to regulate horses.

But that could be then a battle with the state because the governor, Abbott and certain people in Austin are notoriously against local ordinances that are against state rule.

So that can come up in the legislature.

Yeah.

Or something from the attorney general that somebody we probably need to check in with soon.

And now the carriage owners, what are they doing right now, though?

This is early in the process.

There was a council consideration request, a CCR that's filed, and then it has to go through committee and more.

So it's a while before anything will happen on this, right?

Right.

But it has the support of the mayor and it has the support of most of council.

So that but then that is that directs the city staff to come up with a real proposal with all the details in it and something that there's a lot that they would need to figure out, obviously, how they would transition people to a different industry.

That's important to this council as well as if they're going to stop renewing these permits.

That would end somebody, some people's business much sooner than others.

Are they going to grandfathered people in?

Is everyone done at the end of next year?

Can all of this happen in time to be done next year?

You've read some of the things the carriage industry has said, which is that if they have to do it all in a year, these horses are going to go to slaughter.

And that's why I thought that was interesting.

Plus, there are 30 employees of one of the companies, and they also argued that the horses are well cared for and that they enjoy this.

Right.

Hard to weigh in on that, right?

I'm not going to say anything about that.

I am not a horse person.

I don't know.

But now what other cities have to address this as well?

Yes.

Well, so the city has an equine vet who has defended this practice, has said no one has asked him about it, that these rules are fine.

He wrote the rules for the Animal Care Services Department, updated them so that the horses are microchipped and there's much better methods of keeping track of them in their health and that they are inspected.

And the veterinarians for the companies have talked with the city before, and the veterinarians say that they're well cared for and taken care of.

Yeah, I believe that's all through the city back.

All right.

Well, I wanted to move on to another issue that you covered recently, which is the redistricting.

And I thought it was interesting where you looked at each of the new council districts from slightly redrawn.

They haven't been redrawn in a major way.

The ten council districts and how they divide up in terms of politics are Republican and Democrat, because actually the city has the independent or non partizan.

It's supposed to be nonpartisan, political, but what did you find there?

The upshot is that they're, from a partizan standpoint, aren't very many competitive districts, but there aren't.

There weren't before.

And you could broaden that out to all of Bear County and say there aren't very many opportunities for conservative candidates in a county.

The results of the last election showed that it's more Democratic always the cities are more democratic leaning than the rural areas.

Well, in Bear County, 62% for work, so 58% for work in the city, 62% for work.

So but then getting down to these council districts, you have one that went for Abbott, which is District nine, John Courage, who is seeking a fourth term.

And overall, these council races, there's no one who's term limited.

Right now, it's a two year term.

Right.

There's probably better opportunities in two years for a lot of people.

If we don't have a high profile mayor's race, which right now to be seen, the filing doesn't even open until the middle of January.

But the Republican Party chairman, Burt County, said he hasn't talked to anybody from his party who wants to run for mayor.

Well, I thought it was interesting that District ten, which we think of as conservative, they that district went for better.

O'Rourke by 53, 54%.

But it's always gone to a candidate who's campaigned as conservative in District nine.

John Courage.

He's seen more as middle of the road or not as conservative as you would expect in that district.

But these don't you also talk to some people who said this don't match up local politics, don't match up with Republican Democratic politics.

Right.

The turnout is so much lower from a general election to these municipal elections and it's even more so in the districts that have more Democrats than it is in the ones with Republicans.

And I think one of the fascinating things looking at this, this is my first municipal election in San Antonio, but just even in that gubernatorial race, the turnout between District one and District ten is like a 20,000 vote difference.

So you just have a lot more voters in those seven, eight, nine, ten than you do in the first.

That's what I thought.

I also had a number here.

I think it was like 58% of the vote in San Antonio.

It comes from District seven, eight, nine, ten to more north side, maybe leaning conservative in the municipal elections, but then in the general election, it's a little more evenly spread.

Mm hmm.

Well, it important to note that in these districts, it's not really a change from the last time these are redrawn.

This will be the first election that we and these numbers are based on the newly drawn districts.

But Perry's district has has sent has voted for Democrats statewide in the past before.

Also important to note this, I didn't compile this data.

This came from Bert Ibanez at the flagship campaign, which is progressive, and he's worked for the mayor before.

And this so this is going to be interesting when we get into council districts, maybe one in ten more competitive than they were in the past because of the controversy.

This is Mario Bravo and and Clayton Perry.

So what's going to happen in each of those 20 seconds or less?

Well, I think it's interesting that that's you know, you're not seeing politics driven races.

You're seeing personality like perceived weakness in both of those races.

You've had a handful of candidates announced to challenge Mario Bravo, who was able to keep were able to keep some committee assignments, was issued a vote of no confidence by his colleagues earlier this year.

But who plans to run for reelection?

And then you've also got District ten.

You had 17 candidates sign up for that temporary position.

So I think there would be candidates from both sides, the candidates from both political perspectives, signing up for that race.

Range of the spectrum.

It's important to note that the placeholder that council chose is also somebody who worked for Ronald Reagan, who does not plan to run and hold that.

So you might get one more.

Thank you for coming on and thank you for coming on.

Andrea Drusch San Antonio Report, local politics reporter.

Appreciate it.

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

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