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 the latest in the Alamo Colleges district.

A lot of news there in the last few months about projected budget shortfall, what should happen?

And this Tuesday, they will have the newest trustee sworn in, Robert Garcia, district nine.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Just want to run off.

Tell us about what you want to see in the district.

Now with some tough fiscal times.

Yeah, I mean, definitely tough conversations, right, that have taken place.

Wish I could have been on that board at those times.

A better understand.

I think the number one thing for me is to understand how we got here and where we're going.

We kind of talk about a $28 million fiscal deficit for 27.

I don't know what that looks like for 28 2930, right.

And those are the kinds of things that, as a CPA, want to bring to that conversation and ensure Alamo Colleges continues to do the things that it needs to do in terms of the district.

You know, we just want to get out there and make sure that we're meeting all of the folks, right?

Our community, the people that we voted for us, people that didn't vote for us and make sure that we're building strong collaborations and bridges.

Some people might look at your resume, you know, UT San Antonio, I believe business and a master's in taxation.

Is that right?

And might think, well, he's going to come in as a bean counter and he's not going to be friendly to faculty.

And that was has been an issue across the state with with direction of the state in terms of what you can and can't teach is.

Do you see it that way or what would you tell faculty?

I recognize it along the campaign trail, how important it is to touch point with faculty and communicate.

And we heard that right.

And it's very frustrating.

But I'm not the person that's going to come in and slash at the top.

I'm somebody that's going to make sure that we're looking at all aspects of that budget.

Yes.

My professional background was go out and get a job in corporate America, and I did that.

I started at one of the largest CPA firms in the world.

But I left corporate America to start my small business because I wanted to give back.

I wanted to be a professional at a level that says, hey, we're going to help build up our small mom and pops.

And my body of work is absolutely proven that.

So in terms of faculty, in terms of these deficits, again, I don't know what's on the budget right now, so I won't opine on that.

But for me, we need to make sure that we protect student programs and we protect faculty within those companies.

You touch on why you want to do this and giving back.

It's literally giving back because it's a six year unpaid term.

Y sun paid.

At least that's what I read here.

Why why do this?

Yeah.

I mean, look, you know, I'm the moonshot before the moonshot, right?

Has was was brought up by the by Alamo colleges.

I dropped out of high school.

I didn't have a path forward.

Alamo colleges was right down the street.

Northwest Vista.

Fast forward, I'm able to now give back to the very institution that helped me get here and become who I am today.

I think it's important that we have the right types of leaders, those that are very much connected and reflect the same population that we're seeing right now, and in particular from a CPA that should be financial fiscal watchdog, right?

We don't have and we don't see a lot of CPAs in these types of roles.

So it's an opportunity for me to elevate my voice and make sure that we're doing really, really good things for all the people in San Antonio.

They just had a meeting about a projected tax rate increase because the property values have gone down.

Everybody is facing this right now.

How do you see that?

I see it as a tough challenge.

I mean, I think to your point, you know, the city, the county, we're seeing that across the board, right.

We're seeing source right, with an increase as well too.

We saw CPS with the budget deficit.

For me, a lot of the work that I did getting up to this point was starting to look at the historical budgets and trying to get up to speed as quickly as I can.

What do you think, or where do you think ACD or ACD needs to expand and get more into, and where could they cut?

I can't say anything about the cut part.

I think Alamo Colleges is, you know, a shining institution across the nation.

Right.

And we need to recognize that.

But with any large institution, certainly there are changes that we need to kind of focus on and always have sort of that continuous improvement.

I think for me, what I would like to see is what is the identity of San Antonio and how does Alamo Colleges play a role in that?

We have great economic development institutions here, Port San Antonio, velocity, Brooks.

But what does San Antonio want to become, especially when we're looking at an entertainment district downtown.

So I think there's really great conversations as to what that looks like.

But I think that conversation doesn't just happen at the board level.

It happens at the community level, faculty level.

And I think those are the things that I'm super excited to get started.

What about degree programs?

Because a lot of people have changed.

Our lady of the Lake eliminated some things there.

Where do you see?

Especially in San Antonio, UT?

San Antonio has gone more tech and cyber.

What about a CD?

Yeah, I think with a CD, I think people have to understand the role that the Alamo Colleges plays.

We do have four year degrees.

I don't know if we're trying to become the four year institution.

We are the certificate institution, the apprentice institution.

There are a lot of students in our community who are trying to leave high school and need to get to work, and we have those programs.

We're very successful at those programs.

So I think it's making sure that we're leaning into those programs and supporting those students.

At the same time, I think seeing things like Saint Mary's, you know, the the evolution within education and how a four year degree maybe no longer needs to be a four year degree.

I'm excited about thinking about how that looks like for the future.

I don't know what that looks like right now for Alamo colleges.

Do you see adding more for your degrees?

And now there are some that are adding or switching for your degrees to three year degree programs.

Do you see that?

Maybe in the future.

That's, you know, right now, that's not a place that I have as much intimate knowledge in terms of where they're trying to go with the overall degree programs.

I think it's important that we do think about the types of degree programs that we have that absolutely benefit our students and our families, as well as our community as well.

What about expanding geographically in terms of campuses?

You have northeast, you have northwest, you have South Side, Center City.

Where else would you like to see maybe satellite campus?

Yeah, I know that in part of the bond that was passed.

Right.

So we have a wet see, I think we have a sexy I think that which is the West Side education centers.

And so I understand that there's on the on the bond was a north side one and an east side one right.

And I think starting there is really important because we do need to have that connectivity as we've had sort of that urban sprawl within.

I do understand that we also have some international sites and we have some collaborations, I believe, with Schreiner and a couple other colleges as well.

I enjoy, and I'm excited to see the types of expansions they have.

But I think also I'll share with you that faculty are also concerned on a larger operating budget, right?

As that happens when we're considering shortfalls.

So I'd be very interested to see how some of those things pan out.

All right.

Well, all of us are.

And we wish you all good luck.

Alamo colleges District trustee, district nine.

Robert Garcia, thanks for coming in.

Thank you so much for having me.

With a recent huge growth in the population in New Braunfels, and county commissioners just made a change to their building regulations are also looking at how to protect the environment there amid all this growth.

Here to talk about that is Ryan Spencer who is the executive director of Comal Conservation.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

You were at this meeting recently where the commissioners passed this these new regulations.

What what do these do and why do they pass these?

Well, subdivision guidelines are really interesting.

And, you know, I think the first thing to talk about is the difference between city government and county government.

Cities have far more authority to regulate development, to kind of control the way things go in or go out.

They have levers that they can use to encourage developers to do certain things in the unincorporated areas of Texas.

That is not the case.

County governments get almost all of their authority from the state of Texas, and they have to do exactly what the state of Texas tells them to do.

One of the few ways that counties can guide growth in the unincorporated areas of Texas is through these subdivision guidelines, and what they do is basically set the rules of the road, what developers can do, what they can't do.

They govern things like frontages, like minimum lot sizes, setbacks.

They talk about how roads should be built, those kind of things.

What kind of changes did they want?

And because there are a huge amount, what do you say 450 to 800 people are moving in every month, right.

Do they not like the way that developers have have just come in there and put these things out no matter what?

I don't know if I would say they don't like the way that they've done them.

They want to just clarify some things and make sure that the residents who already live in County are protected from developers who are going to be building, and that they don't have to pay for the cost of some of that infrastructure.

So some good examples of things that happen with these new subdivision guidelines.

They increased the minimum lot size.

The frontage went from 40 to 60ft.

So that doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it is.

They also increase setbacks.

So that way folks aren't necessarily parking over sidewalks.

They increased the depth of road base on the roads that are going to be developed.

And they also require that developers ensure the maintenance of those roads well into the development phase of the building.

I was kind of surprised that they expanded the lot size, because a lot of developers and a lot of urban planners talk about density, that it's better if you haven't.

All these people come in to live in a more dense area.

Sure.

And that would lessen the impact on the environment.

Well, I think that makes a lot of sense in urban areas, in rural areas.

You know, when we talk about density, there are a lot of different types of ways to develop a piece of property.

We've got low impact development methods and conservation development methods, and that often encourages saving some space for the nature for a green space.

And so that's a critical part of this.

I also think generally when you ask most Texans if they want to be sardine into a subdivision, or would they like to have a little bit of space, they probably tell you they like a little more room.

Although we see in San Antonio a lot of the older neighborhoods, you know, being split up and you have condos and four units where there was one house that's not going on in New Braunfels or Cromwell County yet.

Not really.

You know, Como County, like many counties in the Texas Hill Country, is experiencing massive growth, 450 to 800 people every single month.

You know, for folks who lived here in the 90s, you remember a New Braunfels that had about 25,000 people.

Now there are 120,000 people in that area.

And so, you know, we're we're seeing curb and gutter subdivisions and parts of the county that we never would before.

And so I think the county commissioners are trying to provide some guidance to developers that are building in that area.

And so one of the good things about this set of regulations is that it'll eliminate unlimited or needless variances.

It'll kind of just set the rules for everybody, allow them to come into the county, build what they need to build, but do it in a way that's responsible.

How about when you talked about curb and gutters?

It makes me think about drainage and rivers and the impact of.

We talk about over the aquifer recharge zone in in Bexar County and other counties.

What kind of impact will these subdivisions that are inevitably going to be built have?

Sure.

Well, we do have stormwater and runoff retention and detention regulations in Como County, and so that helps slow down some of that water.

You want to make sure that we don't increase flooding risk as a result of development.

But we also want to have time.

We want to slow that water down so it can soak into the aquifer.

So it can create the base flow, the environmental flow of our rivers, which are crucial to our economy and our quality of life.

If you live here in Bexar County, you may know where the recharge zone is, where the other zone is that leads into it.

We don't know, maybe Comal County and what that what you're under.

You have the Trinity as well as.

Yeah, we have two aquifers in Como County.

We have the Edwards Aquifer, which most folks in San Antonio are very aware of.

We also have the Trinity Aquifer, which is a little bit larger.

It covers about 61 counties in Texas, and it's the western half of Comal County.

So if you look at Canyon Lake and you just go towards the west, most of that is the Trinity Aquifer.

In San Antonio.

We had a tax for a time that helped us by land over the recharge zone in county.

Are you worried about all these subdivisions being absolutely instead of being bought for conservation?

Yeah, I think all of us have concerns about not having enough parks, open space and natural areas.

And I got a salute.

The commissioners Court in Como County, they just recently made an application to the Texas Water Development Board for their Clean Water State Revolving Fund.

So this is $30 million of state funds that's going to go to put conservation easements on working lands over the Trinity and Edwards aquifer.

So this is a first for Comal County.

It's a it's a historic step.

And it's an opportunity for us to protect very vital, important working lands to sustain the natural systems we all depend on.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Fascinating.

Ryan Spencer, executive director of Comal Conservation, come back and tell us how things are growing up there massively in New Braunfels.

Happy to.

Thanks very much.

Thank you for having me.

After the Spurs trip to the finals against New York and all the national international attention, well, here in San Antonio, our attention is now turning to the Spurs and the arena project and the economic impact of what happened with New York here.

To talk about that is Hector Ledesma, who is a sports journalist, works for several national feeds now from San Antonio, as well as a Clarin news anchor.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Pleasure, Randy.

You've covered a couple of NBA finals here in San Antonio, and and this one seemed different in terms of the media focus.

Do you think we got more exposure?

Do you think we got more money impact out of that?

No doubt.

Well, I think Visit San Antonio put out a study that had the finals gone to game seven, it would have generated more than $36 million.

And that's just in visitor money, of course, infamously, a lot of fans attended this game.

Surrounded me, surrounded the fans up at the Frost Bank center.

But beyond that, you look at what happens on a national scale and is the attention that this is getting not only nationally, but internationally.

First of all, you've got the Victor Wind effect.

So that brings in not only all of France, but Europe and the global game as well.

NBA China was here to cover the NBA finals and throughout the season to cover Victor.

You go outside of that and the marketing that was done within the US as well.

Remember when the Spurs were the old boring team?

No one wants to talk about the Spurs.

Can they have a little bit more flash?

Big fundamental.

Tim a big fundamental Tim.

Boring.

Well now everyone's talking about him.

And so now from an economic standpoint you can't help but think Spurs.

Oh yeah San Antonio again now that they're back in the limelight.

And so whether it's directly into what happened with San Antonio and that money that came in through hotel, through tourism, through the restaurants and the whole deal, through the games that were here, through the exposure that San Antonio once again was able to receive because of this run, I think we're going to be feeling the effects for a while.

And now they're even talking about this San Antonio Business Journal front page city invest in Wembanyama.

I mean, they talked about him as the face of the league during the playoff run, although they also talked about his move from face of the league to villain, which is kind of funny.

But if he is the face of the league, the Spurs valuation here in San Antonio and the leverage that they may have now in the talks with the city there, you know that.

Remember Adam, of understanding it's supposed to be done by the fall.

So they're they're negotiating right now.

Do you think they have a better hand now.

Well, remember when the vote passed?

That was the infancy of this past season.

So voters, although it was tight, said yes to a team that hadn't proven itself yet.

So from a PR perspective, if you're the Spurs, you now have a finals run to kind of show.

You kind of put that in your belt and you say, hey, look, if we're going to go on these kinds of runs and there's every reason to believe that they're going to.

Victor Wembanyama is 22 years old, their second and third best players, if you don't take into account Deer and Fox are Stephon Castle, who's 21, and Dillon Harper, who's 20.

These guys are kids ready, their kids, and they're going to be around for a while.

So the point is, the Spurs have every reason from a PR standpoint, from a media relations standpoint, from a community aspect, to say we're going to be doing this for a while.

Knock on fake wood here, you know, glass, knock on glass.

We're going to be doing this for a while and look at what this can do for the community.

That's going to be their angle because they have a credible stance when they say what just happened.

There's no reason to think it was a one and done.

We're going to be doing this annually.

Although the mayor who voted against that memorandum of understanding wanted more studies, wanted to know more about the Spurs economic situation.

She was at the game or one of the games.

And maybe you saw firsthand not only the fan support how important was to the city, but also how much the Spurs were making off of this.

They are valued Forbes at 4.4 billion last year.

That was up 1,415%.

Expected to go up more this year.

Is she going to ask and other council members and maybe asking for more money?

She already sent a letter to Michael Dell, one of the co-owners, asking, hey, could you maybe invest in the city or philanthropically?

There's no reason to think that the mayor is going to stop the belief system in which he's carried since she came into office, right.

There's no reason.

And you talked about the letter to to Michael Dell, and that resonates on a certain level with just I hate using this term, but by the common person to the common person that resonates with.

The taxpayer taxpayer.

Why am I putting money into this when there's billionaires, literal billionaires who own the team and could putting that is where the mayor is coming from.

Now, as we mentioned, the votes already passed.

We're now negotiating.

What's it going to mean for the timeline and how exactly this gets done?

But there's no reason to think back to answer your question here.

There's no reason to think that the mayor isn't going to stop looking at avenues in which the Spurs themselves, this wealthy, wealthy organization, can't put more.

She's looking at it from a political but also a community standpoint of, yes, if this is a group project, shouldn't the folks who make more money put in a little bit more?

Now the Spurs will tell you we're already putting in a decent number and a great percentage.

And so where that it's going to be interesting to see how that battle kind of ends up settling as we move forward in these negotiations.

I thought the finals run also highlighted, you know, all the Knicks fans.

And there were a whole bunch of them.

They stayed in downtown hotels.

They said hotels loved it, but it didn't get the locals downtown.

It got the locals to and from the Frost Bank center and that was it.

And so if there is that development, a larger project Marvel, that the Spurs are going to be part of on hemisphere, that would change the next kind of final or the next one with an arena.

And that's why the entire complex with the entertainment district and the restaurants being attached to the arena, is such a big part of it, because we've had an arena downtown HemisFair now, different times, different economic model.

But we've seen we've known what it is to have the Spurs downtown already.

And so and I think and remember when when the then SBC center was being built, it was supposed to revitalize the east side of San Antonio.

Well, we all know how that turned out or didn't turn out.

The push now is, hey, look, downtown is different and it's a different time than it was throughout the 80s and the early 90s when it was first played, were playing at hemisphere.

We can capitalize on this.

And then you look at they look at other models.

Philadelphia's famously is one that they've looked at and said, we can make this work.

And not only having the Spurs downtown, but also revitalizing the downtown area so that, as you mentioned, locals can come in and joy it.

And to a certain extent, I think that's appealing.

Randy.

Right.

If you're if you're going to a big playoff game or a finals and it nice is a local to say, hey, we can go have dinner here and then walk over to the arena and then maybe afterwards celebrate a big win by going to this little establishment around the corner that's right there within walking distance to the arena that holds appeal.

And I think the Spurs are hoping in the city is hoping that that well, certain members of the city are hoping that that is what comes to fruition with this, not only the arena but the entire project coming.

And as negotiations are going on right now, we are hoping that you'll come back in the fall and tell us all the latest about the Spurs and the city negotiations.

Hector Ledesma, sports journalist in San Antonio.

You can read them nationally as well online.

All of the clutch talks.

Clutch points, clutch points.

Yeah.

Sorry.

That's okay.

And Kayla and news anchor.

You can see him as well.

Thanks very much for coming in.

Oh, it's a pleasure.

Thank you.

Ready?

On reporter's roundtable.

This week marks the one year anniversary of Gina Ortiz Jones and San Antonio's mayor office.

Here to talk about that.

What changes she has made, what she's gone through.

Is Molly Smith, politics reporter for the San Antonio Express-News.

Covers City Hall and more.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Of course, you had a recent story or news story in the San Antonio Express-News on some of the turnover, which has caused some headlines and eyebrow raising.

What kind of turnover did you find there over the year?

We made an interactive timeline of all the people who have come and gone since she took office last June, and it's been really striking just how many folks have kind of come in at the start and who are no longer there to date.

Eight people she has hired have left two chiefs of staff.

She's now on her on an acting chief of staff.

That person was brought in a couple months ago as a communications and policy director.

Mayor Jones had also cycled through many communications directors.

The two first ones were both out and under a week.

I know you talked to the mayor about this.

Why this happened?

What?

What is it about working in the mayor's office or with the mayor?

She won't comment on the departures.

She has said, though, that her expectation is that her staff will work hard, and she understands that that tempo might be not something people aren't.

Tempo something.

And her military background plays into a part of that.

Did you get a sense of that from people around?

Well, we do know that she works really long hours, starts early, works late.

Her staff as well, work quite long hours in the office.

Most of the people who have left have not spoken publicly.

But we did get many of their resignations letters, and there are a handful of people who really just resigned on the spot.

I think one of my favorite letters is this handwritten letter that said, effective immediately at 1026, I'm gone.

So I think that does kind of point to some turmoil in the office in which people are leaving a bit more suddenly than we would expect.

The main thing is, I guess, how does this affect city business and what the mayor can do and has done?

She has been, I think, short staffed.

She has been without policy aides for some of the tenure.

The one policy analyst she had just left last month.

So I think it has been harder for her to get some of her initiatives done.

She, though, would say that it really hasn't hampered her, and she'll point to a number of wins that she's had.

She talks a lot about the successful vote to change the municipal election date from May to November, how she created a voting task group to research ways to boost turnout.

She talks about how she's put pressure on Peter Holt, who is the managing partner of Spurs Sports and Entertainment, to repay the city $5 million from a failed soccer team deal.

She talks about a veterans kind of housing proposal, in which she kind of compromise with council to stop landlords from discriminating against veterans.

But really, all of these things are very narrow wins, or they're not even really related to her main agenda items.

Voting is not something that she campaigned on.

It's not an agenda item.

She says her agenda is expanding affordable housing, bringing good jobs to the city through economic development and getting infrastructure, which is mainly she's talking about flood mitigation and prevention projects.

And now one of the big things that really consumed the publicity about the mayor's office was the Spurs, the arena vote.

She lost 7 to 4 and the memorandum of understanding, but is still you know, she was a Spurs fan at one of the games but skeptical of what the Spurs are are giving to the arena project.

Yeah, I think that vote and that issue kind of has really defined her first term.

She surprised a lot of folks, I think, in how how aggressive she was in asking questions about the deal.

She questioned the economic analysis that had been done about the stadium.

She infamously argued with Spurs Jesus outside City Hall.

She really grilled Peter Holt when he came to council.

And I think a lot of business leaders are just more used to mayors being less confrontational and more kind of go with the flow.

But a lot of voters really respect that about her, that she really fights for people, and she's still pushing for what she would say is a better deal.

Most recently, she wrote a letter to Michael Dell.

He owns a 10% stake in the Spurs.

He's the world's six richest person.

And she essentially asked, when you consider paying all or some of the portion of what the city has said it will contribute.

And no response yet.

No response yet.

And also a letter to Peter Holt asking him respectfully, congratulations on the Spurs.

But they still haven't resolved this kind of outstanding penalty payment that was tied to this agreement from a couple of years ago, because the Spurs sports and entertainment didn't secure an MLS team.

What do you think she might have gotten out of seeing the excitement around the NBA finals?

Both the impact on the city positively, but also the impact of the Spurs financially.

Yeah, I mean, I think it did give her a sense of just how ingrained the Spurs are to San Antonio culture, how much folks do love them.

But I think she would also say by attending that game, and she also watches a lot of games in like bars and other kind of viewing parties, that these games are not attended by the masses, that most San Antonio are watching a Spurs game from home or from a bar.

And she would say, because only some people are going to access this arena, I'm going to continue to fight for the best deal for all of San Antonio.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Molly Smith, politics reporter and more for the San Antonio Express-News.

Thanks for coming in.

Of course.

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

You can watch this show again.

Any previous shows you can download them as 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.