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.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week, ice, of course, has been in the headlines across the country, but also here in San Antonio.

This was yesterday's paper here in San Antonio.

Ice is buying a warehouse here to talk about ice in San Antonio.

The latest on that is district seven Councilwoman Marina Abbott.

I think of Ito.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

And this headline is about ice buying a warehouse on the East Side along for ten.

And it's controversial.

But the city, as I understand it, can't do anything about it with zoning laws for those people who don't want that warehouse here.

That's right.

Yeah.

We seen a lot of misinformation being spread that council can vote down.

The zoning request for this warehouse to be sold to Ice.

But in reality, we won't even have that zoning decision ever come up to council?

And it's not just because of, you know, the controversy of ice across the country, but the location and, you know, people wanting that area to be less industrial or industrial instead of they think it'll push out other businesses.

That's right.

Yeah.

I mean, I know that that area struggles with a lot of big warehouses.

And so for one of them, to be sold to Ice, and used for a detention center, it really is not creating a great environment in that area.

And this wasn't talked about, as I understand it or remember it, at the special session on ice a couple of weeks ago.

Right.

I did hear one resident bring it up.

And in the several hundred that we had speak at that special session, I do remember one person bringing it up at that time.

There was speculation about it.

Nothing was sold.

But but it was interesting that it wasn't a bigger topic then.

And the city, as the city had any conversations with DHS or Ice about that warehouse, what it will be, as I understand, a 1500 bed immigrant detention center.

Yeah.

You know, it's it's seems like it's pulling teeth to get any information about ice.

You know, we know that our, our city, executive leadership team and the mayor has requested information from Ice.

But, you know, we're not getting any information back.

And after that meeting a couple of weeks ago, you want a kind of a detailed you want plans, you want something to happen?

What would you like to see?

Yeah.

What we saw happen in that meeting is that there was a lot of frustration.

There was a lot of venting.

We all are feeling the pain in our community.

Just as we're seeing nationwide and with so much hours of talk, I also would like there to be action.

And so one of the questions I asked during that, during that special session was when residents feel that their rights are violated by Ice, who can they turn to?

And and who do they report that to?

And we saw the answers across the board, right.

Maybe ACLU, maybe the council offices.

And so we huddled up with city staff and SaPD afterwards.

And what we're trying to do is direct residents to call SaPD if they're feeling that their rights are violated by Ice.

The reason we're doing that is because the city of San Antonio can then pull that information from SaPD.

Our police officers have to track every single call that comes in, and now the city can pull that information and see our San Antonio residents rights being violated by Ice two times or 20 times, you know, and then we'll have a better, grasp of of what that looks like here in our city.

And what about cooperation between police, local authorities and Ice that was brought up?

A lot of that meeting.

Was, you know, and I will say this, our SaPD have been phenomenal.

You know, chief McManus was, at the special session and said our police officers are not pulling over and asking anybody for their immigration status.

You know, chief McManus and our police officers, they're with me at several neighborhood meetings.

They know the people here.

They work with the people here.

And so they're not going to change their behavior and start asking people for immigration, their immigration status.

That would put them in harm, you know.

And so I do think that we collectively should take a step back and, and be grateful for the police force that we have here.

And I'm talking specifically about SaPD because they they have worked well with our community, and will continue to work well with our community.

What about, as criticized in other areas, police, cooperating or not or protecting or not Ice agents when they go on these raids.

Right.

And so what one of the some of the information that we looked at at the special session is how many times Ice has contacted SaPD, and I believe it was like maybe two times in the past year, you know, and so we're going to be monitoring that to see how many times Ice has been contacting SaPD or asking them, to, to use our local.

And do you want them to contact, do you want them to have greater contact or and do you want police to, be there to protect ice?

Well, I will I will say this, you know, our SaPD is not willingly giving up information to Ice, you know, and they and Chief McManus was again on the record saying.

Willingly or not, proactively.

Willingly or proactively.

Right.

If Ice is requesting information, of course they have to comply because they're they're a federal agency.

But again, we are looking at the exchange of information between Ice and SaPD.

And and again, it's only happened twice in the past.

Year where Ice is requesting information from SaPD.

Another issue you're working on is possible.

Source rate increase.

Where are you on that?

One of the issues that I've had and I've been pretty vocal about with us is how much water we see on our streets through broken pipes, and water laws.

You know, I think in, 20, 24, over 20 billion gallons of water were lost through water leaks.

And we see that a lot in district seven.

I also think that we should look at how much the, water leaks cause, cause the city to continue funding these streets to get repaired over and over again, you know, when there's water leaks.

I mean, that does so much damage to the streets and yet we're trying to repair these streets again and again.

And so it's an issue I'm going to continue to push on and we'll see how that comes.

And you want to audit before any rate increase.

That's right.

I joined, Councilwoman Misty Spears and District nine and Councilman Mark White in District ten to say, let's do an audit of shores.

Before we do, before we vote on a rate increase.

I know Saws has said that they need a rate increase, partly to fund those repairs of old pipes.

Yeah.

That's right.

They do say that, we've been asking for a plan.

For a while, you know?

What is their plan?

What pipes are they addressing?

What?

What are their goals here?

And we just haven't seen a whole lot of, information about that.

And so that's why we put together for an audit.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for busy time at city council.

Marina Alvarez.

I think a Vito district seven.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

Over the last couple of weeks, the city of Bernie and its planning commission have voted to move along plans for a controversial buc-ees to be built off I-10 in that area.

And here to tell us all about it with the latest is on possible construction is Tim Banuelos, who is a former city councilman in San Antonio but now the chair of Bernie's Planning and Zoning Commission.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for inviting me.

It's been a long time.

Well, speaking of a long time, nine years since they first talked about the buc-ees there.

And a lot of people are still pushing back against it for a number of reasons.

Where is it now?

In the timeline?

Well, planning and zoning just earlier this week approve the plat for their surplus property they purchased from Tech Start to become an employee parking lot.

But to back up a little bit, this really is a positive story.

And I know you like to report about positive stories.

I mean, this.

Is a positive in this.

I mean, this is for some people, it's positive.

For some people it's not.

It is.

Well, it started for many people not to be positive, but I think it's turned out to be positive in terms of community engagement and civic pride.

Let me give you an example.

I mean, last late last summer, last August, residents were told by the city that there were no changes to be made, no amendments, no modifications to the Buc-Ee's development agreement.

But citizens residents persisted, led in part by the residents of Mango Springs, and they kept coming to city council, coming to planning and zoning and looking to make changes to the original development agreement, which we've discussed before.

Going on air was signed almost 9 or 10 years ago, back in August of 2016.

And what are some of those changes that have been made since in the past year?

Some real positive changes.

For example, we've limited the size of the store.

The retail footprint of the store itself is now restricted by contract.

Is it?

So it's not going to be as big as now.

It's one of those small items.

Oh goodness no.

It's going to be one of the smallest buc-ee's you'll find anywhere only 54,000ft².

Compared to.

Oh, usually you see 75,000.

Now is there a prototype store?

Maybe even larger?

I think the Luling store, which is the biggest buc-ee's, maybe larger, but 54,000 is the total square feet that they can have that's restricted under the amendment.

We've limited the city has the number of fueling stations to 100.

Again, compared to, I don't know.

100 and 2040.

So only 100 here in Burnie.

And then, we've limited the height of their site.

Bucky's actually had a city permit to have a 70ft tall sign on the top of the hill where they're going to be, which you would see from miles around, and certainly for the residents of Major Springs, literally right next door, that would have been a constant reminder, an eyesore of the Bucky's that's there.

They've agreed to drop that to 60ft.

So a number of positive developments in large measure, because the citizens of Vernie, the residents of Mega Springs, got together and said, we can do better.

And now the also this, the Texas surplus land that's next to them for their employee parking lot.

I guess they had bought that for a while, but it wasn't part of the plan until recently, or the public plans and people would push back against that.

You're correct.

Initially, when the development agreement was signed back in 2016, it was contemplated to have the Bucky's main store with its pumps, fuel pumps, filling stations, and then 3 or 4 retail pad sites.

And the tax abatement they were given was 50% of sales tax for 20 years on the store.

And then whatever retail developed on those pad sites, Bucky's came back and said, we reconfigured things we need.

For example, we need 26 charging stations now for electric vehicles.

We didn't contemplate back in 2016.

It wasn't on anybody's radar.

We also need more parking for employees.

We're going to have 200 plus full time employees, so we want to get rid of those contemplated pad sites and put in a parking lot for our employees.

What about the tax abatements?

Because I know from the from the outset there, you know, a lot of people didn't like it.

And some people still don't because it they say it doesn't fit in with Bernie's image that people getting off a road for Bernie in the past would think it's a kind of a quaint older that's part of the Main Street kind of thing.

And then they see a Bucky's the tax abatement there for that.

Some people didn't want it.

Is that comparable to other tax abatements in Bernie for other developments?

Well, I. Don't know about other developments in Bernie, but I can't speak to other developments of Bucky's across the country.

And typically you see Bucky's go in and ask for a 10 to 15 year tax abatements.

Getting 20 is I wouldn't say it's unheard of, but it's rare.

In fact, that was part of the perception.

I think this last go around with the Bucky's amendment was when this development agreement was signed in 2016, the perception of the community among many was that it was kind of a backroom deal.

City council came out of executive session one night, announced there was a development agreement that we're going to vote on.

I don't even think the entity Bucky's was named and they adopted it in the past.

It, to council's credit, this time the city staff's credit.

It was a much different process, much more open process.

I mean, we had at the Planning and Zoning Commission a lot, 3 or 4 public hearings.

Council had 3 or 4 public hearings.

So the process was much better this time around, and I think it resulted in a better product.

I mean, we have, for example, additional open space behind Bucky's to buffer it between its retail site and the Minger Springs neighborhood next door.

Hvac recapture.

That was something big that Councilman Macaluso was pushing as part of the amendment to require Bucky's to capture recapture there.

Eight vac equipment and liquid.

You know, the stuff that you get when you cool a system, the water condensation is can be recaptured and reused on site.

And then you got light and it's going to be dark skies compliant or it wasn't going to be before.

So a number of improvements have happened because again, the residents got engaged and they got active in the process.

Now, you mentioned some people earlier who were against it.

I think some people also in that group are still wondering about the impact on traffic.

And if you haven't been up there in a while, you know, not sure about how where 87 that intersection, I guess, has been changed somewhat and 46 people are worried about or have been worried about, cars getting off for the I think it's a methodist emergency room on the same exit.

Is that going to be an issue?

Well, the traffic impact study shows that it won't be.

But I will tell you that, you know, just like anything in life, studies, reports don't always mirror reality.

We're not going to know until it actually opens.

But the good news is we've got a city engineer.

Jeff Carroll was very diligent about this.

He's visited other Bucky's sites elsewhere and the infrastructure that that Bernie has in place, courtesy of tech start and large measure is, I think, going to be more than adequate to handle the additional car load and car traffic we see when this opens up, probably sometime next year.

And speaking of that timeline, now you voted the city voted a couple or last week.

Commission voted, this week.

What about construction?

When does that start, and will there be any changes possible from here on?

I don't think you'll see any changes to the overall nature or structure of the transaction.

The retail pad site, the fueling stations, the dark sky compliant lighting, and it's construction should start sometime this year.

I would think in the next 60 to 90 days they've already done some site prep, if you remember where the original Jennings Anderson Ford dealership is located.

Yes, this is just northwest of there at the intersection of 87 and ten.

And text has spent a lot of time.

In fact, that was part of the delay for Bucky's was they were waiting on the text on improvements to be completed.

They're done now.

Bucky's bought the Texas surplus property, the texted property to be part of their own development.

And I think you'll see construction start fairly soon.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

I know this has been an issue for a long time, and thank you very much for coming in and explaining the latest on this, Tim.

Ben Wolf, again, former city councilman for San Antonio and chair of the planning and Zoning commission for Bernie.

Always a pleasure visiting with you.

Good to talk with you.

Take care.

Thank you.

On reporters roundtable with the election coming up, the primaries fundraising has been in the news.

And whether that will have an impact on the race or races.

Andrea Rush, who is the politics reporter for San Antonio Report, thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, some of the big races here, there are disparities in the fundraising and some because there are so many candidates, not that much fundraising for any of them, or at least most of them.

What are the big races that you feel are important in terms of the fundraising?

Yeah, I love watching these fundraising reports come through because in a lot of cases, you're looking at an ocean of candidates here.

And this helps us sort of distill who is raising the money and putting together a real campaign.

And so these are kind of they're on separate schedules.

The congressional races are on their own schedule.

The state and local candidates are on a different one.

So we now know sort of where everyone is on the county level races and the state level races up to January 22nd.

They just filed.

And what.

Was know the races are later or they're there.

We have the reports from filed about the same time, but going back a little further.

So in the local races, something that stood out, I think, in this latest round, in the county judge race, Peter Sykes had been outraised at the end of 2025, came back and outraised former Mayor Ron Nirenberg in the first month of January in a big way.

Then we also got to look at the state House races.

We have ten of them that touched Bexar County and of those, five are incumbents who have challengers in the primary.

There's big spending in the Republican ones.

Mark LaHood has a challenger, you know, remember he unseated Steve Allison two years ago in his own primary, has an expensive primary race of his own this year.

But the biggest group that was spending in that won seems to have backed off a little.

This Texans for lawsuit reform.

He has a challenger, David MacArthur, who got a bunch of money for them, but they seem to be backing off some of the races that they were spending against incumbents in and and didn't show up on MacArthur's last report.

And some of those groups are spending directly on the candidate.

But there's also been some PACs directly making their own anti campaign ads for, say, Mark LaHood.

Yes.

And so then you see the same group, this Texans for Lawsuit Reform that is pro-business tries to limit how much businesses can be sued.

They they didn't get some of their priority legislation through last session.

And they're coming after Mark radio and House district 122.

That's the old Larsen district.

He has a primary challenger, Willie Ng, who came sort of the closest in the last round to matching an incumbents fundraising.

He also got some money from the casino industry.

And then we also have, three Democratic incumbents who have challengers this year who all got endorsements from the AfL-CIO, one of the biggest labor groups.

And those are challengers.

Getting really interesting.

I think that, yeah.

It's unusual for outside groups to come out against any incumbent unless they have some big disagreement, like like Texans for Lawsuit Reform.

And LaHood did.

But these groups, the labor groups endorsed challengers up and down the ballot.

And so, but when it came to fundraising report says incumbents, it was Phil Cortez, Barbara Garvin Hawkins and Liz Campos, and they all came back and massively outraised their challengers.

So all interesting to watch.

And then we have two open races on the state House side, Ray Lopez retiring on, on the West side and a blue district.

And then John Lujan is running for Congress and that's the 1/18 on the south side.

That is one of the most competitive.

That's yeah, the competitive race.

And what is happening in that race.

The Democrat who ran last time around, Christian Carranza, is running again unopposed in her primary, raised a ton of money last time.

And then this time, the Republicans have a primary between three candidates, two of whom are raising real money.

One of them is a friend of Lujan, so he encouraged to run, who actually ran as a Democrat in the past as Martinez, who's a trial attorney.

And then there's, Jorge Bravo, who is a he worked for the Texas Public Policy Foundation on the school voucher program.

He just got a big endorsement from Greg Abbott.

So an interesting primary playing out there.

Remember, Greg, I'm Greg Abbott has spent so much money trying to flip that district for Lujan.

Lujan and and Desi Martinez are sharing a campaign office.

And someone just pointed out yesterday what's been on my mind is that that district fits entirely within the 35th Congressional District, which are both big targets.

So yes, RNC had at one point opened an office on San Antonio's south side and then closed it back up.

And now it is once again sort of the center of the political universe because of those two opportunities on top.

Of each other.

And before we move on to the congressional races, back to San Antonio and say, the Sakai and Nuremberg race, there's some big money being spent there.

And as you said, it was first Nuremberg raising a lot of money.

But Sakai, is that more competitive?

I mean, it's I don't know, is it a toss up or what?

What is that race?

Well, important to note on this one that there's only two candidates in there.

So we will know the results on election night on March 3rd.

Some of these other big ones are bound to go to a runoff with the top two finishers.

You can raise however much you want, and there's no contribution limits for these county candidates.

So Sakai had a long runway to raise money before this.

And, Justin Rodriguez, who was not even he has a reelection race, but, you know, past on the judge's race, he's a county commissioner sitting on $1 million right now.

So easier to raise money on the county side.

But you saw some really big donors come in for Nuremberg and he, you know, raised a lot of money right at the beginning of this.

And then Sky outraised in 3 to 1 in the first month of January.

How about the DA's race?

That's another one where you have, the incumbent leaving.

Yeah.

Joe Gonzalez not seeking another term.

And then it's a tough job.

There's all kinds of issues over there.

The backlog, the lack of pay for prosecutors and and big name candidates like that, that race and ended up taking a pass on it.

So you have a lot of criticism.

Yeah.

No matter who's in there.

Yeah.

And the state's made it easier to throw out DA's than it disagrees with.

So now you have a field of eight candidates of whom none of them are particularly well known.

And there is no, you know, million dollar Soros check that disappeared at this point for any of them.

We've got three people who are in the DA's office, three people who have been at the DA's office, one person who has never tried a case, one person coming from the outside, another another person coming from the outside who works on the managed design Council program, and not a lot of money being raised by any of these guys.

So not a lot of TV ad kind of thing, but a lot of signs.

I mean, you're going to see signs for all those people, but maybe not the impact in the media that, we usually see in some of those races.

No, but we're going to have a whole video of that debate online if you want to watch it and you make your choice.

There's a lot of interesting backgrounds and perspectives on on how they would approach that office.

All right.

Congressional races especially okay.

Now 21 Chip Roy leaving to run for attorney general.

What are we seeing there.

Yeah.

So you know San Antonio went from five congressional seats, five districts that touch San Antonio in redistricting.

Now it's down to four.

They cut Henry quires Bexar County portion out.

But this this Chip Roy district I think is among the most interesting because it's it's right.

Bright red is the hill and it's a big swath of the hill country all the way into northern San Antonio.

But it also used to go up to Austin, a little portion of it, and that part was cut out.

And redistricting chip Roy lived on the northern edge up in Dripping Springs.

And as you remember, the those maps were not confirmed until filing had already started in some of the there's 12 Republicans running to replace Chip Roy, but some of them are no longer in that district after that awesome question cut out and.

Maybe the the big fundraiser and that mark this era.

He doesn't live in the district.

And never was in the district.

Actually, he's up in BC and he's saying that he's building a house, but he is.

He raised more money than any of our congressional incumbents or candidates in any of these other races.

And it's because he put $2.5 million of it into it himself.

Is he has that kind of money to put into this race.

But there's 11 other candidates in there, including some who you really would have thought would have had deep ties to donors, people who've been leaders in the part in the state party, people who've had white House appointments.

But that that race is also interesting because now it is stretching further into Bexar County, and even the reddest parts of Bexar County are pretty 50, 50 Democrat Republicans.

So there's three Democrats running for their party's nomination there.

And, I think a lot of interest among they had a big debate in the Republicans.

And it was how, okay, if you can talk to Hill Country Republicans, how how do you interact with San Antonio urban Republicans versus.

That's interesting.

And also, you mentioned, just briefly here that, of those four districts, congressional districts now that are in Bexar County, they're red, or they wind up red because they touched so many other red parties.

We wound up with one big blue district in the middle, and that's what King Castro's.

And it used to be a sort of a West Side district that becomes most of the urban center, picks up a lot of the parts that were represented by Greg Casar, who had the Austin all the way down to San Antonio district that was chopped up and reshaped.

And he's running for a different district up north, and Claire is cut out.

So we wind up with, Joaquin Castro, who's running for reelection and has, some primary challengers and a Republican challenger, but still a pretty blue district.

And then there's Chip Roy, district that takes on more of San Antonio, and then the 23rd, which is that one that stretches all the way to El Paso.

Tony Gonzales is a district where he has a rematch with Brandon Herrera and also, the former Congressman Hickok, and say, ho got into that race at the very end.

Democrats were just on a call after that big upset in Fort Worth saying that they thought this one is maybe one that they should be looking at.

Again, they have some candidate, the four candidates in their primary, but then the big one is 35, the new reshaped one on the southeast side that Republicans drew as a pickup opportunity for themselves.

So you're keeping track of a whole lot, and I'm going to test you on all those names and numbers and just, try me.

I I'm encyclopedic.

Obviously, Andrea Drudge knows everything there is to know about politics.

You can read her in the San Antonio report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

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

You can see this show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can download them as a podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

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