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 Beemer 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 Beemer.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for on the record, I'm Randy Beemer, and this week we are starting with a couple of major developments for Villa, especially with their planned Silver Line that is an east west major route in the works, along with the Green Line and north south route.

Here to talk about that and more.

Is John Gary who is president and CEO of Villa.

Thank you for coming in.

Thanks for having me, Randy.

All right.

First of all.

The Silver Line, you have a new office opening up for that.

You have a Green Line office on San Pedro and you're getting more funding.

That's right, that's right.

That's that is that is a process that in the production of of activity that we have along the Silver Line, one of which is an important piece of that, and this connects to that office, is we want to have a location where the community come in and see plans about it, see what the latest plans are, see how this kind of lines up with where they live, where they work, where they play.

And so we have these offices, what we've done on the Silver Line, taking a great page out of our Green Line experience is we've split up the project offices on the Silver Line.

We do have one on the east side, and we do have one on the west side.

There smaller offices than we have on the Green Line, but they are community offices.

They're open right now.

Anybody can go in there and start seeing some plans.

And kind of back up.

I know there's been a lot of publicity about these, but people who don't know, it's not like the number nine route that I take up Broadway from downtown.

What are these advanced rapid transit systems?

You know, these are systems that would bring the highest quality of service into a transit system.

What I mean by highest quality service is, first, it's going to be a system that comes by every ten minutes.

There will be coming to stations that are designed in certain ways to keep that vehicle moving as efficiently as possible.

You won't be paying your fare on the bus.

You pay it at the station itself.

The vehicle pulls up, three doors open up.

You can enter any of those doors.

They close and you're off and running.

Pretty much at the same level.

And their level.

Boarding street car.

Subway car.

Absolutely.

And you also have that dedicated lane in the middle, and you have the lights.

And the lights that are, that are.

Yeah, that will be synchronized to our, to our vehicle as well.

So this then puts together this recipe of very efficient movement in this part of our system and in part of our town as well.

So that is something that this part of our community has never seen before.

That high level of quality of travel and the capability of mobility options that come along with.

And people have seen maybe some of the construction on San Pedro not realize that that is part of this.

Absolutely.

And the barricades are up, the detours are there.

And that is indeed our efforts of what we're going to be doing along the Green Line and the construction along that.

So a moment there, Randy, if I may, is a bunch of the construction is going to be around improving the path of the corridor or the capacity of the corridor, which means we're improving intersections.

So think of the intersection at Hildebrand and Sam.

Pedro.

Yes, it's a sticky one.

Typical cabana.

Right there.

It's it's a it's even by the rating of the city, San Antonio's own rating.

It's an F. It's a it's a failing intersection.

We're going to come in and improve that intersection.

We're going to get it into the passing level.

It's going to become a level.

We're not going to make it worse for cars with all the busses going.

Correct.

Because we make it worse for cars.

We get stuck in that traffic.

We don't want to get stuck in that traffic.

We want the traffic to flow.

And so the intersection is going to be widened.

It's going to be synchronized.

It's going to be a new way of going through that intersection, which is going to benefit vehicles, but we'll also benefit pedestrians.

They have to cross those ways as well.

And then of course, ultimately get our system through that intersection.

How is the construction going to work?

People might wonder, okay, is it going to be one of those long things that have dragged out maybe on South Alamo for 2 or 3 years?

Are you going to do a section at a time?

That's a fair question because we know there's a there is a bunch of construction fatigue out in the community today.

The good news here is we're not going to do a lot of work underground.

We're not going to be removing and replacing storm drains.

We're not going to be removing and replacing and rerouting, you know, saws, water lines, for example.

Most of our work is going to be above, above ground, vertical.

And that work when we have a conflict with the utility, we'll just move that utility line.

Which is what they've done on the Alamo.

Correct.

So we won't have the the scope and the size of what they were doing on Broadway in Alamo.

So that also saves on the on the time over all of this project.

We want to be operating this project by April 28th.

So that's how it's about 24 months, less than 24 months now for us.

And that is where we want to have that delivered.

And having the confidence to do so is recognizing that the construction timeline is going to be relative to the the complexities of what we need to get done, which, again, is going to be mostly above.

A chunk at a time or all of it working.

It's going to be a chunk at a time.

We have we have about, I believe, 8 to 12 phases that we're moving.

I think we're moving from the outskirts into town.

And speaking of that route, it goes from the airport, down through downtown, down to the south side.

That's the green line.

That's green line through Steve's.

It'll continue on to Brooks there on the south.

Side and east west Silver Line.

That's a little bit shorter.

A little bit shorter, but it'll be going from the Frost Center over to Our Lady Lake University.

How about parking?

People always want to know, well that's great, I can get on that.

But if I where can I park?

So we're in discussions right now about that opportunity.

I'm so glad you brought that up, Randy, because the moment now of Project Marvel runs into what these facilities and systems can do.

These two systems now will be serving, and they'll be intersecting downtown so it can and will serve the ability for us to move people into downtown and move people out of downtown.

Like.

Very much like a parking.

Right.

So having discussions along the roots of San Pedro, I'll give you that example.

You know, having discussions with Park North, having discussions with San Antonio College, having discussions with those areas that have high capacity parking lots.

Those start becoming real options for individuals that want to do a park and ride scenario, where moving into downtown is a much easier way to do.

And then at the other end in downtown, you're going to have some.

I don't want to say bigger, but some of these stops at historic districts, Sunset Station.

Correct.

You know, and those those stations, as we're putting them into downtown, in downtown being an historic district, you know, those stations have to go through a process to do so.

There's a bit of news about that, Randy, just recently that our stations are in front of the Historic Design Review Committee, making sure that we're we're keeping them, you know, in their ideas of what they expect.

And it's not just the the big via transit.

I'm not sure what it's called.

Right across from the Alamo Dome, people might think, well, I'm going to.

Robert Thompson, center know this.

The the Silver Line will not be going through the Robert Thompson Center.

We reserve that one mainly for special event service, what we call park and ride service.

How do you get people to ride the bus?

You know, some people still have.

I mean, I do, but if some people have that stereotype or something they don't want to do, it's a pain.

But in terms of, say, the gas prices, that could be one thing that's pushing people to do it right now.

One thing that we want to do is, is lower that obstacle of their resistance to take our service.

You know, the data and the information that we have is, is showing that one of the biggest obstacles that folks decide not to take our service is their belief in the travel time it takes to go from A to B. We understand that they want to be very efficient about getting from A to B. That's our goal with this whole keeps Antonio moving plan is we want to lower the travel time for individuals that take our service.

Our green and silver line are going to be massively efficient, that are going to be able to compete with time that they're probably used to if they're traveling in a vehicle.

So now it becomes a real mobility option on the time piece of that.

We also have just recently been seeing some data that has come out, Randy, that we are also very safe system as well, because that's another component of all of this working together is we we have to have a safe system and we have we have the safest system in Texas for system our size.

And these big lines require a lot of funding.

But you're moving ahead with that.

I understand there's 150 million or so in front of Congress right now.

That's correct.

$150 million in front of Congress went through the appropriations moment.

The Appropriation Committee has voted out that the $150 million should be appropriated.

So it's moving down that process that we looked for that once Congress adopts a budget, it should be part of that budget.

And you do expect that part to be in it.

I mean, it's not one of those grants that is likely to be cut.

That is true because, you know, the the good news here, Randy, it's part of a grant program that has been in existence for 40 years.

And Congress and the president, you know, have have historically funded it to those levels.

I remind folks, and I remind my board, the Green Line was indeed started under the Trump administration.

Trump won.

So it's still that moment of in the Green Line.

We have $268 million from the federal government coming in as well.

So it's a stable grant program.

To your point.

And and we're at the top of that list for that grant program.

We're really excited.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, John Gary, president and CEO of Via.

Take the bus if you can.

It helps out with traffic.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thanks for having you.

Recently San Antonio hosted a convention of women veterans here.

It is the fastest growing population among veterans, but less than half of them are actually enrolled for their earned VA benefits.

Here to talk about that and more is Deb Parsons, president of Women Veterans of San Antonio.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

This is some of the things I learned out of this summit are fascinating and kind of sad.

Why aren't women enrolled in their VA benefits?

So there's a lot of reasons that women have it enrolled for the benefits that, like you said, they have earned through their service to our country.

Some may not have known what was available to them.

You know, if you separate or retire these days, the transition assistance program really hammers that.

But I feel generations that served before my generation maybe didn't get that information.

And also, a lot of women don't see themselves as veterans.

And it's for a lot of reasons, maybe they had a bad experience in the military, and they're just trying to forget about that part of their life.

Or more commonly, they've been told for years that they are not veterans.

They did not serve in a combat zone.

They did not deploy.

They did not retire.

And when you get told something enough times, I think you start to believe it.

And so, you know, one of the big pushes is don't ask a woman if they're a veteran, ask, did you serve?

And you're more likely to get an answer that, yes, I did serve.

And once they realized that, well, then you're a veteran.

You raised your right hand in service to our country.

Their their eyes are opened.

And even though the military is also one of the most integrated institutions in the country, not just with different ethnic groups, but with women, and has been for years.

This is still the case.

It is part of it is, you know, I'm about 2,004% of veterans were women, and by 2040 the number is going to be percent.

So the number, like you said, we are the fastest growing demographic in the veteran community.

And so a lot of services are starting to be available because of the realization that there's so many of us that served, and we do have different needs than our male counterparts.

And what are some of those services of women don't realize that they could get that are so important, especially if they suffered trauma?

Absolutely.

Counseling services.

There's every VA hospital, including Audie Murphy has a woman veteran, program coordinator and program manager that they can talk to services such as maternity.

You know, people don't think about, hey, I'm a veteran.

I'm having a child.

I can do this through the VA, even home loans.

You'd be surprised how few veterans in general take advantage of the VA home loan, which is a great deal.

So there's so many services out there that if you don't know about them.

And you touched on it before, but maybe you didn't use the word culture of veterans.

And, you know, some people have the stereotype of grizzled old veteran from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, talking about their war stories.

Do women when they want a network.

And you said they do feel maybe a little unwelcome at these places or are afraid to go to those places?

Absolutely.

A lot of times their service will be diminished by some of the, as you said, old grizzly veterans.

Today's veterans are younger and especially for the women veteran population.

It's a younger generation.

So it is very discouraging to maybe be around your brothers in arms from various eras that downplay your service so it can be uncomfortable for some women to go to VF and legions.

I will say in San Antonio, I feel they do a good job of inclusivity, and they do events for women veterans specifically.

But that's not the case everywhere across the country.

And as is the culture in Washington at the DoD, with now literally testosterone testing for older active duty members, men in the military.

Is that also going to, you think, deter women from getting involved in the military, first of all, and then getting involved as a veteran?

I feel so, you know, the recent round of of military being promoted to admiral for the first time in many, many years did not include any woman or any minorities.

And if you're a woman looking to join or to keep serving and you see that the glass ceilings are coming back, it would be very discouraging.

Absolutely.

And for all veterans, it's one of those things that we don't talk about suicides.

And among women, it's higher for veterans than among men.

Correct.

So the suicide rate jumped 24.1% for women veterans in 2023, as opposed to about 6.3% for male veterans, 2.6% for non veteran women.

That's a very scary statistic.

Is there any any possible reason for that or just the growing number?

I guess not if it's a rate.

Sure.

I feel a lot of it.

It could be the trauma, whether it's MST, military, sexual trauma, trauma just faced at the, you know, serving downrange.

A lot of reasons women veterans are different than our male counterparts.

The homelessness rate is also higher.

You have women veterans that are single parents and that that affects everything.

And now you also had the mayor, a military veteran, speaking at the summit about initiatives here in San Antonio.

What are some of those?

So I really like her initiative to open up locations that homeless veterans can use the VA voucher.

I think that's critical.

I've been to some of the very few locations that do accept the voucher, and maybe they're not close to schools or jobs or a place that you want to raise a family, and that needs to be taken into consideration.

You know, when a veteran uses their VA voucher, they still go through a background check, just like someone who would be paying out of pocket for the housing.

So I really like the initiative to make it open and more locations that are more beneficial to help veterans rebuild their lives.

And now you're a part of the Women Veterans of San Antonio.

But you talk to people across the country because we are military city.

Is it a little better here or not?

For women.

It can be.

But I will say personally, when I was retiring, I was still technically in the military.

I'm on my permissive leave, and I was driving through the gate of a base with my husband, who's also a veteran but grizzly veteran, and we handed our ID cards and they leaned over to him and said, thank you for your service, chief.

Now, he did serve honorably.

He's he is my hero.

But he was not a chief.

And we drove away going, wait, what just happened?

I also happened what do you think happened?

I don't know, and this was someone in the same branch of service as me.

So Air Force.

Air force.

So we were just flabbergasted.

We didn't say anything at the time.

We just drove through the gate and looked at each other and said, wait, I think that just happened.

And so that opened his eyes big time.

And in San Antonio, it's common to hear people say, thank you for your service.

And across the country.

Now, do you hear that?

Not as often as my husband does now.

He's very quick to go.

She served longer and she outranked me.

But absolutely.

You know, I have a good friend who is a disabled veteran, and she parked in the veterans spot at either Home Depot or Lowe's, one of the big box stores.

And she had a woman almost drag her out of the vehicle chastising her, saying, this is a veterans parking spot.

So she very easily showed her her disabilities and the lady stepped back.

That shouldn't happen.

And especially in Military City, USA, where we should all be accustomed, especially for women serving well.

And it's also a big push for you now to get the word out that there are these benefits.

How are you doing that?

So last recently.

The summit.

Yeah.

Recently, the VA center for Women Veterans held a summit.

They called it boots on the ground for boots on the ground.

And they brought all the services in one location.

We had 3000 women veterans or so actually sign up.

Hundreds applied for benefits that they didn't think they deserved.

They didn't know how to apply.

Multitude of reasons and brought all these services in one location.

And a lot of women that I talked to were so appreciative.

They were able to sit down with claims, they were able to get a medical evaluation.

They were able to see all the different ways, such as employment and housing, that the VA can help with, that they may not have known.

I learned stuff I thought I knew a lot about what happens when a veteran passes away.

I learned so, so much and they tailored it for women veterans.

They even presented these pins and we got to pin each other with a Woman of Valor pin.

And it was just a great vibe, a great atmosphere.

And for a lot of women veterans, especially those that aren't in Military City, USA, they don't have groups like we do in our city specifically for women veterans, and they loved it.

And they want to start these groups in their cities or find ways to become more involved.

And they can find out more through the San Antonio connection.

Women veterans here.

Sure.

Absolutely.

So phone number and and website.

Absolutely.

Women veterans of San Antonio.

We have a website, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

And we share veteran information for all veterans, not just women.

A lot of good information is out there.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

Appreciate it.

A lot of good information there for a lot of people, including some in my family.

Thank you.

Deb Parsons, president of Women Veterans of San Antonio.

Thanks.

Thank you.

On reporter's roundtable this week, you might have seen a story that the homicide rate in San Antonio has dropped this year again, but they're not sure exactly why.

Here to tell us about that is a reporter who wrote that story, Diego Nadel, who is the public safety reporter for the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

First of all.

How much has the homicide rate declined recently?

Right.

So I think we're down another 12% this year.

And last year we were down a total of 20%.

At the same time, we're looking at a time frame that's in between the first six months of the year and the first six months of last year.

We were down 20%.

In this year we were down 12%.

And so we're back to lower than the pre-pandemic level.

So this year, we're actually 8% down from the same period last year.

And last year that number was reading 20% for the first six months of the year.

And we are down from pre-pandemic levels at 12%.

And the pandemic.

People might not remember, but people were home stressed domestic violence.

And so that was kind of a boom overall in violence.

Yeah, definitely.

Crime surged across the country, especially in violent crime.

And I thought the interesting part of this story is they're not sure exactly why local leaders about why this is happening.

Yeah.

So there was a lot of stuff that unfolded after the pandemic.

There was public health initiatives to treat violence at the source.

There was hotspot policing, a lot of different responses that all took place at the same time.

But the data wasn't really collected in a way that we could say.

This one thing stood out more than anything else, but they were all working at the same time and everything decreased.

And they're all reporting positive numbers, but you can't isolate anything.

And the violent crime protection or reduction plan that the city has.

There's a number of different parts to that.

The hotspot policing they used to call that is that still.

Hotspot policing is ongoing through the UTSA and SaPD collaboration violent prevention program, and that's where they'll have police officers visible in these locations that have historically had high rates of crimes.

And they are seeing a lot of reduction in that crime.

But researchers from UTSA have called that like a Band-Aid solution.

The minute you take away a police officer from that location, crime can rebound.

And this could play into the budget, or it is playing into the budget because many council members want more police officers, but they're not sure where to put them in what parts of the programs.

Right.

So the biggest discussion on that end is there's a violent reduction strategy that's unfolded at the same time through MetroHealth.

And they have programs like Stand Up SA, which is an early intervention program for people who may be victims or perpetrators of gun violence.

They get someone with a mentor, they get in early before the crime commits.

And you can't really quantify how many shootings that prevent it or how many homicide that prevents.

And earlier this spring, at a community health meeting, council member Mark white questioned MetroHealth on which of these programs would be the best investment if there had to be a cut to the budget.

They basically said they can't quantify that.

So now we know these programs are working.

We know hotspot policing is working.

We need to move money around because they're facing over $150 million budget deficit over the next two years, but they can't really say which program is doing the best and which ones worth keeping.

Some people, maybe the old term would be hard on crime as opposed to soft on crime.

They want more police officers on the street, but that's not necessarily correlating to the drop in numbers, not just in murders, but in street crime.

Violent street crime.

Yeah, you can't really one for one because crime is such a complex issue.

There's a lot of social causes.

So really you have to address that social root cause at the same time that you do enforcement and just upping enforcement isn't going to do anything to help people who are experiencing extreme poverty, who grow up in cycles of domestic abuse, who just perpetuate crime through their lived experience.

And I saw a story recently about a town in the northeast that says they're the first one in the country to you call 911 and you don't necessarily get a police officer.

But that's also the case here.

Yeah.

The county sheriff's office has been using the Smart program with collaboration with Strack, which is like the Southwest Regional Mental Health Authority, to have responders at the 911 call centers, have a mental health option, and then a sheriff's deputy would show up with a team of mental health response unit putting like a paramedic and a license like mental health specialist.

And the police officer is really just there to secure the scene.

You can't quantify how much of that would prevent a future incident of violence.

Yeah, you would have to do really specialized data collection ahead of time and have that planned in.

There used to be federal funding for it for a specialist in violent prevention.

That program and the CDC kind of got stripped away with the second Trump administration's budget cuts.

And that's kind of a problem that MetroHealth was experiencing with their own situation.

They had wanted to get somebody through grant funding from the federal government to quantify this data, to be able to present that.

And that just went away during the second Trump term.

But UTSA is also helping out in this, maybe providing some of that expertise.

People don't realize that violent crime reduction plan you mentioned UTSA is involved in that.

Yeah, but UTSA is more focused on the policing front and the hotspot policing, hotspot policing with SaPD and targeting those target neighborhoods and collecting their data there.

And another problem you wrote about recently, human trafficking and a campaign to stop that.

First of all, people don't realize that is a problem in San Antonio.

Yes.

So so far this year, San Antonio has seen 47 human trafficking cases.

45 of those have involved sex trafficking.

And last year they saw about 80 cases as well.

And so tell us about the campaign.

So the campaign is right now is just a billboard over by highway two, 81 by the Pearl.

It'll have a digital billboard that displays different Can You See Me campaigns.

It's meant to raise awareness on human trafficking, sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and to encourage victims to seek help, but also to encourage the public to speak out.

All right.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

Diego Mandel, public safety reporter you can read all of his stuff, all kinds of public safety issues, anything that touches on that in the San Antonio report.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

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 also download it as a podcast.

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

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