Speaker 1: Going forward for the future.

I think it's it's upsetting.

Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the 2021 Memorial forum sponsored by the San Antonio chamber of commerce.

I'm Ursula Perry.

Tonight.

Speaker 2: We're going to focus on two candidates currently at the top of the polls of the bare facts case at 12 TV polls, incumbent mayor, Ron Nurenberg and candidate Greg Brock house.

Both of them have the same amount of time in this forum, and both are going to be asked pretty much the same questions.

Although follow up questions may vary joining us today.

First up we have Ron Nurenberg the mayor of San Antonio.

Welcome.

Great to be with.

So I am, I'm really happy to hit.

See here.

I wish we were doing a debate because I guess that would be wonderful that I among my first questions is why won't you debate?

Speaker 1: Well, I'm answering questions now.

And I think in pursuit of a civic dialogue and really examination of, uh, positions on issues, this is the best forum to have a conversation, a in depth conversation.

What we're missing out, which I don't think is in service of that is the mudslinging.

And if the 2020 election cycles and it guide, uh, people are done with that, we want to advance and elevate civic dialogue, not the political, uh, theater that we've seen over the last year.

Speaker 2: Oh, K set.

Uh, 12 has done a thousand stories about COVID-19.

We've put all of your reports on the air every single night.

It's been the center point of our lives.

Where do you think the city excelled and where do you think it failed over the level?

Speaker 1: Well, certainly we've had, uh, in many parts of this pandemic response, one hand tied behind our back because of the incoherent response from the state and federal level.

But where I think we excelled is this community really worked together.

Uh, and, and that was because, uh, from the very start of this pandemic, uh, the judge and I decided we were going to work together.

We're going to do what we can collaboratively, and we're going to put public health data out front so that people in our community, despite the political messaging and the mixed messaging coming from other levels of government would have, uh, the information and data they needed to protect themselves, their family and their businesses.

And I think that that is the consistency that people have needed to be able to get through this pandemic.

And I'm happy to say, um, despite some of the challenges that currently exist, San Antonio for the last month has had the lowest positivity rate of any major Metro in the state.

And that is because people have been working together to protect themselves, but where did we fail?

Well, I think we're where we could have done much better is having a collaborative response from the state and federal level as well.

Um, we were working very hard to make sure that we had consistent response.

Uh, and, and you saw when our surge has happened, it was a result of things happening too quickly.

Um, for instance, in the summer, w the, the governor dropped the mask mandate, and we saw an immediate surge of infections after that same thing that happened during the winter months, and things began to open too quickly.

I think the other thing that we can do much better is having a public health infrastructure that's properly resourced at the local level.

Uh, as you know, we have been working very hard with the state and federal partners to bring in resources, to be able to S to stand up and, and, and fund the efforts needed to test, uh, to trace, to vaccinate.

And we need to do a much better job at every level of government, including at the city and County to fund public health infrastructure on an ongoing basis, so that we're prepared for these kinds of issues in the future.

Speaker 2: Very quickly.

Are you in favor of the vaccine passport or not?

Speaker 1: I don't think number one, we don't have the jurisdiction at the local level to do that.

Uh, are you in favor of it?

Uh, I don't think I am.

I'm not because, and this is the reason why, um, we already know that there is a, a, an abundance of demand for the vaccine that we cannot meet with current supplies.

And unfortunately the hardest, uh, communities to get vaccine to are the most disadvantaged members of our community.

So you're gonna, you're gonna exacerbate the challenge of equity in our community.

If you require certain services to be delivered only to people with a vaccine passport.

So the vaccine passport does not solve a problem.

It only creates new ones for most disadvantaged members of our community.

Speaker 2: Let's move on to the power outages from the winter storms in February, it was devastating.

People are still paying for broken water, pipes, and equipment.

Um, do you think the city and CPS did everything that it could do to keep people informed and prepared for what?

Speaker 1: So I put together a committee that's headed to do an investigation, uh, independent investigation of the entire episode, uh, from preparation to communication to response.

And we know that the triggering event was this, the mismanagement of the energy grid at ERCOT and the PUC, but the local response needs to improve in terms of coordination of communication.

We know that was one area that was significantly challenged by because communication technologies were knocked out, but we need to have better coordination among different agencies, whether it's the city, uh, or our emergency operations with our housing agencies or with our, uh, transportation company, we need to have all the agencies communicating in these, in these events, if there's a contingency like, uh, communications technologies go down.

So I think one of the areas that we are going to have findings and recommendations is in coordination of communication at the local.

Speaker 2: Coming up on election day, we're going to have a couple of propositions to decide upon proposition B would repeal the, uh, chapter one 74 of the Texas government code, Speaker 1: Essentially doing a way with collective bargaining.

Do you support or oppose prop B and why.

I'm not getting involved in the prop B fight because it's my role as mayor to ensure that there is good faith negotiations happening at the collective bargaining table at which we are already currently engaged.

Now we have to make sure that we achieve the objectives of the bargaining and those priorities with regard to chief executive discipline authority, as well as transparency within the contract, to be able to view disciplinary records of cops who have been found of misconduct.

We need to have that into that.

We need to achieve those objectives in negotiation.

So my job is to make sure that there's good faith negotiations getting involved in that campaign that would undercut collective bargaining would not, uh, would be, uh, antithetical to that.

So I'm not getting involved.

We were going to, we are going to go by the rules that are established right now, which is that this agreement is collectively bargained.

If the voters change the rules, we'll go with that.

But right now we are collectively bargaining this contract on the priorities set by the community and by the council.

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong though.

Wasn't there a San Antonio express news article saying that you supported property?

No, there was not what has been always the truth.

Always the case though, is that, uh, we have objectives that have been laid out over the last six years since the last bargaining agreement.

Uh, and we need to achieve those objectives.

If we, if we fall short of, of negotiating those reforms in the next contract, we should not support it, but at no time was I involved in the property campaign, nor will I be.

Okay.

Uh, talking about the police, moving on to, uh, to that subject, the trial of the murder of George Floyd continues of Minneapolis.

Are you happy with the way San Antonio police, uh, offer transparency to the citizens when there is an officer involved shooting and if not, what needs to change?

I think it's improved.

I think there still needs to be improvements.

Um, and, and some of those, as I mentioned are part of the negotiation process.

Some of those are administrative in nature that are controlled largely by state statute.

We talk about the body cam policy, for instance, which I found out after calling for the release of the demos of malt videos was not even in existence.

So we have now a police body cam policy that dictates when the footage will be released under what circumstances and all the con also the conditions in which the chief will be able to say that it's it, it's not going to be released for investigative reasons or for other purposes that they has to make a written statement on the San Antonio website.

So it's transparent as to why this footage is being handled differently.

So I think there needs to be more improvements there.

Obviously there are our officer involved shootings where we want to see the footage.

I am always of the mind that we need to be.

Uh, we need to offer disclosure of those videos as soon as possible service of transparency.

Uh, and we need to do much better job of that.

Speaker 2: This policy though, does allow the police chief for whatever reason, uh, to not release those body cam, um, uh, results.

And that has been an issue for people who say that, leaving it to the discretion of one person.

She's not a good idea.

Speaker 1: That's right, but it's not a function of the policy.

It's a function of state statute, so we can write any policy.

We want that governs how the chief should handle the PR the videos, but ultimately in state law, it allows for the chief to have discretion over when it's released.

We cannot override state law with the administrative policy of body cam footage at the local level in Texas, Speaker 2: On my way, over here to Kayla RN, I went past the, uh, overpass, and there is a tent city that has formed.

Are you okay with that?

Or is there something that you think needs to be done?

Do they need to be eliminated?

Do they need to be, uh, enhanced?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

So first of all, it's very important for everyone to realize that public camping is not permitted in San Antonio.

Uh, but we do have a challenge, uh, and a growing challenge as every urban community in the country has with homelessness.

But we have to understand is that homelessness is not just a symptom is not just not having a house.

It's a symptom of a large continuum of social challenges that we have to address comprehensively things like mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, those are highly correlated with homelessness and ultimately homelessness becomes the symptom of those social issues.

So what we have to do to do to handle homelessness effectively is to connect people who are experiencing these challenges with services to help them address those issues.

And the challenge that we're having is, is building trust with that community to bring them into the services.

But we are resourcing those, those, um, services and doing the outreach.

We have to continue to build that trust, to bring people into services and ultimately eradicate, uh, the, the encampments.

If we, if we don't do that effectively, we're just going to be moving the encampment from one part of town to another, as we've seen in the past.

Speaker 2: So you are okay with the 10 cities, right?

Speaker 1: I am not.

Uh, but, but the challenge is we can't simply just wipe away the encampments.

They're just going to pop back up overnight as they have done, or they're going to move down the road.

What we have to do is effectively get services to people who can, uh, who, who then can address the issues that is causing the homelessness.

Now we do do in Bay abatements on city property.

It's, it's ordered by the city on state property as is the case under, it's ordered by the state when those abatements are performed, it's after a series of outreach efforts.

Uh, and unfortunately not everyone has taken up services, but there's a clear and present danger.

Speaker 2: To the public.

That's the triggering event for an abatement.

Speaker 1: Well, we really appreciate you meeting with us.

Uh, we covered a lot of ground.

I think we hopefully gave our viewers an opportunity to see your view on some very important issues that are facing citizens of San Antonio.

So thank you for meeting with us, mayor Nurnberg.

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: Time now for Greg Brock house, who also ran for mayor in the last go round, uh, came up a bit short, but he's added again and hoping to get your vote on May 1st.

The first question for you is pretty obvious.

Last year, we did a debate with you and the mayor, uh, this year, uh, there is no debate it's forum.

I'm a little disappointed about that.

And I know you are as well.

Yeah, a lot disappointed.

I think anytime you're trying to get this job, right?

Whether you're running for city council or to be the mayor of the city, you got to stand up and answer for your past and the decisions, your votes, and all of that, as well as what your vision is going forward for the future.

And I think it's, it's upsetting and it's disappointing and it really, it really kicks it democracy.

And I think you have to really make a case for why you want to be the mayor of this city.

So look, I'm disappointed, but we can continue to talk about the issues and push as hard as we can.

But, uh, you know, Ron, I think has to really evaluate himself if you want the job.

The only thing I tell Ron Nuremberg is stand up and let's have a conversation about if you don't wanna talk about the past is fine, Ron, but let's talk about the future.

Like where are we going to take our community?

What are your ideas?

Uh, and I, and I'm just disappointed.

It won't happen, but hopefully, uh, viewers and voters will take a look at that and recognize that that was Ron's decision.

And Ron's alone.

Let's go ahead and talk about one of those issues.

COVID-19 has been at the center point of our lives for a year.

Now, can you show me, or tell me how you feel the city succeeded in how it handled the COVID-19 pandemic and how it perhaps failed?

Yeah, You know, I think initially in the chaos of all that, right, the first couple of months back in March, February starts to creep in and March and April, I think, you know, and I give credit to where Ron Nuremberg deserves a credit.

Initially, I think his attitude and approach to the pandemic was right where it needed to be when everybody was in chaos mode, the entire world was upside down.

I think Ron brought a steady set of leadership to it, and I was watching it.

And I think that was a success.

But over time, what we start to see is the actions of city hall and the mayor himself, I think were the exact opposite steps of what we should have been taken as a city.

And that goes back to this.

For me, it's a fear leadership mentality.

I never would have shut down San Antonio, uh, but I would have modeled the way on mask usage and follow the science.

But I think you have to have that balance that goes back and forth.

So initially I felt like city hall had answered the call for the first 30, 60, even 90 days, uh, and credit to that.

But after that, people start to see the COVID-19 pandemic differently and they want opportunities and consistency and hope and people want to get back to living.

Uh, so I would have really led from that hope perspective.

And I really kept businesses open and done my best as possible.

So people can earn a living, take care of their families, be safe and allow themselves that opportunity for personal choice, especially around the business community aspect of it.

I think the lack of communication and the lack of consistency destroyed jobs, and it costs us this opportunity to keep us afloat.

Florida is a perfect example of what happened over there.

They maintain their economy in their business world, people making money and living while it really handling COVID-19 in a very particular manner, respecting the science obviously, but.

But giving people the personal choices to continue with their lives.

Are you in favor.

Favor of the vaccine passport or not?

No, I'm completely opposed to vaccine passports.

I do support vaccination and I will vaccinate myself when the time comes in.

It's appropriate as the mayor of the city.

And I'm look, I'm not, I don't fall into a category that would receive a vaccine priority, but as the mayor of the city, it is my belief.

I would be the last person to take a shot.

If there's a senior, a teacher, a child, a first responder that hasn't taken it yet, I'm nobody to step in front of that line.

I would have been pushing vaccines to everybody first.

So that's more of a leadership moment for me, but we shouldn't tell people that they have to release personal medical information to travel or do anything like that, opposed to mandatory vaccines as well as mandatory vaccine passports.

It's not American.

It's not something we should be.

Moving on to what happened in February.

We all remember it.

Well, the fallout from the power outages of the winter storms, uh, are still being felt by residents here.

We're still fixing equipment and so forth.

Do you think the city and CPS, uh, did everything that it should have in order to prepare us and, uh, also to, um, keep us informed of what was happening?

Yeah, absolutely not.

And you know, I consider that winter storm to be the real eye-opener for a lot of people in this city, it's not a failure to predict, right?

We could not know that the entire energy grid was going to collapse.

It's a failure to prepare.

And this is years in the making.

So preparedness is a leadership trait.

You learn.

I was in the military, myself and everything we planned for wasn't that we could predict the future it's that if things happen in certain areas, we had to go to plan and strategy to make things happen.

So for instance, no warming centers stood up for three days into the storm, seniors in our community left without food and water and access at like for instance, at the San Antonio housing authority, no text messaging or any communication to say your water electricity is about to be turned off.

If we could text people to tell them to stay away from grandma at Christmas time, we could have text them to say, be prepared, right?

Your water's about to come off in the next 30 minutes, fill your tub.

Ron Nuremberg, all due respect had disappeared.

He did not show up.

He was not present.

He was not in the community.

That goes for CPS energy as well.

Whose response has been absolutely tone deaf and abysmal to the entire process.

We should not bill one person.

Any, any of those charges from the winter storm, especially when CPS energy is sitting on a billion dollars of cash and resources, right?

So we have to understand, we cannot predict the future, but we should prepare city hall failed.

They did not have a plan.

They had a plan actually to be truthful five to 10 years old that nobody even looked at.

We knew 10 days in advance that there would be temperatures in the teens.

And up to 10 inches of snow.

I've been in San Antonio, my entire life that turns into catastrophic motive.

It's snowed one inch, the city's going South and it's shutting down 10 inches should have sounded the alarm bells that polar vortex was coming instead.

San Antonio's like mayor Ron Nuremberg.

Well, you know what?

Let's just make sure the roads are taken care of total failure and the city.

This is what I talked to people not here.

The failures now at city hall affect us all that matter where you lived and what side of town you were, did make a difference.

How much your PR your home value was, or how many property taxes you paid when you went to flip the switch on and the lights didn't come on.

That was city halls failure to blame it on ERCOT or Greg Abbott is a total joke.

When you yourself own those leadership moments to be prepared, We're also going to be deciding on May 1st prop B for the city of San Antonio to repeal chapter one 74 of the Texas local government code, essentially doing a way with collective bargaining.

Do you support or oppose prop B and why.

Another leadership moment here?

Uh, the mayor of our city will not take a position to defend our first responders.

I'm opposed to property.

I do not believe we need to remove the police officer contract.

It's their pay.

It's their benefits.

It protects them and their family.

It's educational opportunities.

It's promotion opportunities.

We are doing this right, the fixed SFPD movement and the activist community.

They're really targeting about 10 cops and the facts matter in this decision.

10 cops in 10 years.

That's how many cops have been returned through arbitration?

I don't go.

And look, if I, if my AC goes out at my house, I don't burn down my whole home because I'm upset that the air conditioning's out.

That's what fix SAP is doing.

I think we need to come in and recognize.

We have to take care and fire bad cops, absolutely 100% on board with that, but you don't get rid of an entire contact.

Current contract.

That's protected us for 40 years and protected our police officers and firefighters 500 retirement eligible police officers.

Right now, they lose their pay and benefits contract.

They have nothing else to fall back on right now, we do not go to a meet and confer contract.

There is nothing so that in essence is to me is defunding the police department.

And what we need to do is protect our men and women, our department, and fire bad cops.

Nobody wants a bad cop gone more than a good cop.

So we do that at the negotiating table and hold them accountable.

And I'm all for that, but not getting rid of the entire contract.

And speaking of the police and bad cops, the, uh, trial for the murder of George Floyd, continuing in Minneapolis right now, are you happy with the way the city of San Antonio has crafted its body cam footage and transparency issues, uh, regarding officer involved shootings or not?

Absolutely.

You have to have, When an officer involved shooting occurs, you need 100% transparency.

There is, there is, I've been a transparency advocate at city hall.

Since I got elected a 100% transparency, full open records, requests answered, nothing gets redacted or hidden.

Uh, that look, we also have to remember the problems of other cities are not San Antonio's problems.

What Minneapolis and the George Floyd situation that is going to have ramifications across our country.

We can do ourselves.

I take care of ourselves and do the right things.

And that's a hundred percent total transparency.

The public should know every decision being made by a police officer.

And I'm on board with that, The decision of a police officer, allowing the chief of police to make the decision as to whether body cam footage is going to be released.

As in the case that we have seen, uh, just recently here in San Antonio, where the decision was not to release the footage on the request of the mother of the victim.

Yeah, no, we have to release everything.

Uh, if you're wearing the body cam, the purpose is to show.

Now I get, look, anytime a police officer has to go hands-on or there is a situation that escalates to the level of physical activity or pulling a weapon.

It is going to look damaging.

It is going to look terrible.

It is nothing a citizen wants to see, but the truth is the transparency matters when you wear that badge.

And you're part of the government.

You have a responsibility to give total and complete information.

I disagree with the chief.

I think we should release everything and it, but everything has to be in context too.

So it's not just enough to say here's the camera.

We have to have honesty.

You have to be open about the accountability pieces.

And when the family, the family requesting it or not requesting it to me, is it, that is a side situation.

And I understand why they want it released to me.

I release it because it's the right thing to do.

And the public should know everything.

Their government's up to.

Moving on, on my way over to KRM with I passed up, uh, what looked like a tent city to me under the bridge.

Uh, it has been there for quite some time now.

Um, they have tent cities all over the United States, including it, Austin, is this something that you can donate will allow to, uh, exist, grow?

Or is this something you are in favor of eliminating?

No, we have to remove 10 cities, but there is a process that has to take place months before you actually remove homelessness is not a crime panhandling, a crime.

But I think oftentimes we conflate the homeless situation with the panhandling situation and the crimes that do occur in there.

I think we have to clean up the homeless encampments, but I think we've got to get the experts involved in it.

We need the nonprofit community, our faith-based community.

We really need to make sure that we're doing all.

We can to get people to services and help them out.

One thing that upsets me about homelessness is when people say, Oh, that person wants to be on the street.

Nobody wants to be homeless.

It's a mental health issue.

It's a drug addiction issue.

It's a domestic violence issue.

There's a ton of things that go into homelessness that we have to offer respect to, and we have to build trust.

And that takes a lot of time.

City hall is not the expert on that.

I think we fund it.

I think we revamp Haven for hope in the millions.

They're receiving.

Then we go into saying, okay, look, this is a public safety issue, clean it up, but also take care of these people.

And we have to do that before, right before we go in there and mass and try to clean them out and move them out of overpass or wherever it tensity is.

Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to thank you for joining us Greg Brock house.

We wish you the best of luck as well as mayor Ron.

Nurenberg in the May 1st election.

And we want to thank you for joining us and as well, thank the San Antonio chamber of commerce for their sponsorship of this forum and to the candidates for their participation.

I'm Ursula Perry have a good night.

Speaker 1: Good evening.

My name is Richard Bredesen.

I am president and CEO of the San Antonio chamber of commerce.

Thank you for joining us tonight for this important mayoral forum.

We need to make sure that we get out and vote and vote for the best candidate and tonight's forum was about giving you the opportunity to hear from both candidates and understand what their thoughts are on the issues that are facing this community going forward.

So please make sure that you get out and vote early.

Voting is April 19th, the 27th, and of course, uh, election day is on may the first Saturday, may the first please go out and vote.

That's the most important.

One of the most important sacred things that we all holds Americans is our ability to go to the polls and express our opinion on our candidates.

Uh, thanks again for watching.

Uh, you can go to kale, rn.org and watch this.

If you weren't able to watch it all today, it's always available and I'd encourage you to do so.

So on behalf of the San Antonio business community, our friends from Carolina and our partners at Killarney.

Thank you for joining us from.