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

San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

We have a lot.

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

I'm Randy Beamer.

A lot to talk about this week, and we're starting with the introduction of yet another new San Antonio City council member, District seven, just since, I guess, the middle of June.

Marina, try to veto who is.

You might recognize the name of the city council and we'll get to that in just a minute.

But thank you very much for coming in.

First of all, what everybody wants to know your top priorities right off.

You're going to be my city council person or a city council member.

What are you going to do for me?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, first off, thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited to be here today.

There's three big priorities, one being public safety, the second being infrastructure and the third being accountability and transparent.

See, in District seven, we there is a growing concern on the increased homeless population.

You know, people are not feeling safe going down the streets.

They used to go down.

They're not feeling safe going to the parks that they used to go to.

All of us want to treat our homeless with care and compassion.

We want to connect them to resources that they need.

Another big safety and security concern is the amount of loose, vicious dogs we have in our community.

This morning I was on a run and saw two more loose dogs right around Woodlawn Lake Park.

On our last week of block walking, we were chased down by a vicious dog.

And so really partnering with us and seeing what we can do to control this, we do need to take preventative measures.

You know, we need to increase the number of low cost and free spay and neuter clinics that we have, because right now we're just reacting to a problem that's too big to fix.

The second biggest priority is infrastructure.

You know, there is a lot of aging infrastructure inside 410 that, you know, streets where there's no sidewalks, where kids still go to school, you know, and traveling up and down those streets.

Bandera Road is a big issue for a lot of residents in District seven.

And that project has been going on for a couple of years.

I really want to make sure that the community has input into that project.

And then accountability and transparency.

Well, we I hired two people for communication.

You know, we are going to be over communicating what's going on so people can know what's going on in their neighborhood.

So I really want to make sure residents know and feel empowered to know about what's going on in their community.

Before we get it up to date on some of the things, the changes with the dog ordinance and the homeowner tax exemption, things like that, and back up to your upbringing and whether you want it to be a city council person or not with your dad on the city council.

Yeah.

So, you know, I do think it's an honor to serve in the same seat he served in all that out there.

Yeah, he was the first council member when it when we became a single member district.

So yes, it's such an honor.

And, you know, but I will say growing up in our family, I didn't think I wanted to to be an elected official.

This is a hard life.

You know, you got $20 or something like that, right?

It is a lot of sacrifice, you know, And and it is it is definitely difficult.

What I moved to Chicago.

I received my my MBA from DePaul.

And when I came home, I you know, my parents raised us with with with the emphasis of serving our community.

So, you know, I served on different nonprofits and different boards and organized organizations.

And I always wanted to do more.

And so, you know, that led me to start researching different elected official positions and seeing where would I be the most effective.

I'm not a big title person.

So is that at the local levels, at the state level?

And so I really started researching that and well, here I am.

And was there a tipping point when you decided this is what I really need?

Actually, yeah, that's a great question.

You know, I had just started working at USAA, which is a wonderful organization, and I was also serving on the Ella Austin Community Center, the on the east side.

And it was it was interesting going from a place like USAA driving down, I tend to the lost in Community center and just seeing two different worlds, right?

We had to we were planning on carbo loading mills on Monday and Friday at Ella Austin because a lot of the community residents didn't eat, you know, And so seeing that take place in in our city, you know, was really kind of that that tipping point that made me want to do more.

So how do you address that?

In the past few years, we've talked about equity funding and trying to you know, target those parts of town that really need the basic help in District seven and others.

What do you foresee in terms of your city council tenure and how do you address that?

Yeah, well, I think that the mayor did a really great job in in focusing the budget with an equity lens.

Mayor Ron Nierenberg And so really continuing that work and making sure the money is allocated.

You know, we're just coming up on the budget session that the money is allocated in the districts appropriately and accordingly.

And so really pushing for that and continuing that work.

The dog ordinance, there was a state law that was passed and then the governor vetoed it.

What can be done?

You talked about the dog.

Yeah, it's it's an extremely it was frustrating to all of us that that dangerous dog ordinance got vetoed.

The one of the District seven constituents, Raymond NAJERA, he's a son of of the the gentleman that got mauled.

And you know, he's a district seven residents.

And so him and I are teaming up and I'm I'm committed to helping him push for us to make changes to the ordinance so that we can get those dangerous drugs off the street or about out of time.

But the tax exemption, we look forward to that kind of I mean, obviously passed.

But what else can we do with that?

Yeah, you know, there is actually so many residents who don't take advantage of the homestead exemption of the over 65 exemption and the disabled persons exemption.

And so we're actually going to be very proactive in looking at what District seven residents aren't taking advantage of this and reaching out to them to sign up for it.

All right.

Well, we're out of time.

I appreciate it.

I hope you come back when we're we have a little more time to talk about all the different issues that I know you're going to be involved in.

Thank you very much, Marina Ultratech.

A veto District seven.

Thanks for having me.

We have some developments at Hemisphere to talk about.

Plans for a big building may not have been as big as originally planned, but here to explain all of that and the new place Jazz Alive is going to be this fall is Andres Andujar, who is the CEO of the Hemisphere Park Area Redevelopment Corporation.

Or we could just call it Hemisphere Hemisphere.

We thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

There's been a few headlines recently about the ten story building and that in the past it had been planned to be 29 storey mixed use, but a number of reasons, including financial, it's been scaled back.

What is it going to be in one?

What's the timeline on it?

The the development adjacent to the civic Park off Market Street has gone through a redesign.

They had received permission to proceed with a 29 storey building, but as they concluded their financial analysis to do that building was requiring rents that were in excess of what we would like to see at hemisphere.

And so because affordability is a concern for us in everything we do, not at the exclusion of higher end alternatives, but that we want to be able to to deliver to a mixture of incomes that is hemisphere and that sort of city.

And so hemisphere needs to reflect our city.

The building has been redesigned to a ten story.

It's it's similar in in in total number of units.

It's less number but it's still going to be a residential project, the 2 to 300 units of housing, that's the general range of that.

And then it has retail at ground floor and of course parking because without parking.

What we have learned is that park and parking go together and so we must solve for parking to be able to attract our locals who are coming to hemisphere.

86% of our visitors are from San Antonio.

So hemisphere, even though it's next to the river and the convention center and all the facilities that are visitors enjoys.

Exactly.

We we have mostly locals.

And so and you're going to have something new this fall in that big empty space.

That was the old part of the convention center.

Tell us about that.

Yes, well, long in coming, and particularly because of the funding requirements for a project that size, we have finalized all of the finance, all of the financing for that project, obviously, through the bond and through the city's efforts.

An amazing partner that we have in the city in this efforts.

We're truly here on their behalf.

And and so the big news is that come September 29 of this year, we will be cutting the ribbon for the Civic park phase one.

And we will celebrate with a weekend of jazz in partnership with the Parks Foundation.

Jazz Alive is coming to him.

That's right.

And so they are expanding.

They continue to be at Travis and they have other alternatives for various sites.

But the hemisphere is going to be one.

And the good news of many is that the the capacity of the civic park phase one will allow for ten, 15,000 people to enjoy that space.

A lot more people like REO Speedwagon was there back in the day on New Year's Eve.

Anyway, thank you very much.

I wish we had more time come back.

Thank you.

When we're even more, more developed that hemisphere.

Andrew is Andrew Ha, the CEO of Hemisphere Park Area Redevelopment Corporation.

Thanks.

Thank you, Randy.

Coming up this Friday night at 10:00 here on our end, we have a special look at a real San Antonio legend, the artist Jesse Trevino, who passed away in February.

I put together an hour long documentary on him.

And also on that documentary is the man who wrote literally the book, the one and only book on Jesse Trevino.

Anthony Head, thank you very much for coming in.

I get into this in this look at and Jesse how I. I knew him for 40 years but it was just within the past few years that I got a closer to him and I went down and interviewed him a lot.

You have an interesting story on how you met and then getting him to be okay with writing a book.

All right.

Well, first of all, Randy, thank you for having me on.

It's an honor to be here.

And it's another great day to be talking about and remembering Jesse Trevino.

I can say that because that was very important to him, his legacy, what happened after he passed was as important to him as his art was in the day.

I first met Jesse back in 2011.

I happened to be going to the Alameda Museum and saw his one man show I had never heard of Jesse before that day.

I was incredibly struck by his art, especially his bars.

He did.

Larry is lounge and Lydia's and these are old bars on the west side.

And they they touched me.

I felt like I knew those properties.

Even though I grew up in Indiana.

So after the show, I approached Jesse and said, I'd like to do a story on you.

And we did.

We did a very nice story for Texas Highways.

It was during that research that I fully understood that there is so much more to Jesse and his story than just his art.

And so I approached him about doing a book, and he was a big gun shy, to tell you the truth, because he had been told or offered or suggested to that there would be feature films about his life, more documentaries about his life.

And none of those came to be.

So he was a little bit hesitant about it.

I did finally convince him to to let me research his life and have him open his life up to me.

And he did it.

He kind of he kind of put me back on my heels at that meeting because we went to Meteora and we went to Meteora and he had assembled, I believe, a number of incredible San Antonio and his some of his biggest supporters, Jorge Cortez.

Among Jorge Cortez.

Cesar Martinez was there, a few others.

These were the titans of San Antonio, Art and and and so they were all telling me that, Oh, don't worry about Jesse.

Write a book about me.

And each of them could have had a book written about them and deserved it.

But after that meeting, Jesse and I clicked, and that's really kind of when it started was around 2012.

Will When you liked his art, did you know anything about his story?

I mean, for the basics of people who don't know, you know, he grew up a child prodigy, basically in art, went to the York Art Students League, Vietnam.

He lost his right hand, is drawing and painting in combat or lost it.

A few years after he came back.

It took close to two years to recover, but made himself then into San Antonio's maybe best known artist.

Did you know any of that?

I knew none of that until I started speaking with him for the Texas Highway Days article.

That's when I realized this is a much bigger story.

It's it's about Jesse's family, his his 11 siblings, his mother and father.

His father, who died early, his mother, who was his number one fan, his older sister, his oldest sister, Eva, who died when he was young.

But she was a very important role model for him.

None of that was clear to me until I started getting into these conversations and realizing that there are so many layers to Jesse's life on a cultural, historical and artistic levels.

Just just so much to dig into.

My book ended up being about 80,000 words.

I cut about 80,000.

I know how it is.

This is a script that's much shorter now.

I knew him for 40 years, but I got him closer to him in the last couple of years before he passed away because I had wanted to be an artist.

I interviewed him about art, these long interviews because I wanted to be an artist.

He liked to talk, you know.

And then on the last night I was on the air, I said I wanted to get into art.

I always wanted to be, you know, Norman Rockwell growing up, which was I love Jesse, know, I always wanted to be Norman Rockwell until I moved to San Antonio and I wanted to be Jesse Trevino.

He saw that and laughed and called me up.

And so then we started talking and I would then take a camera down and talk to him, talking about his legacy.

And when I mentioned, hey, you know, can I do some interviews, he was more than amenable to that because he did want somebody to document him.

And these films that could now be told probably will because he's passed away and artists are more likely to be remembered after their past.

Sadly, it's an unfortunate truth.

But he this, as you would say, was very important to him, his legacy.

And he was more than happy with the book.

When I remember it, it came out.

What do you think will happen now in terms of the legacy here in San Antonio?

What will happen now?

Well, there are still Jesse Trevino paintings that the public has never seen.

There are a number of canvases that were in his studio that the public probably hadn't seen in 30 years.

So I believe moving forward as more people in San Antonio kind of coalesce around this idea of of Jesse being the San Antonio artist, I think we're going to see possibly a gallery, possibly a museum.

I don't think we've seen the last of Jesse's paintings being presented in San Antonio and elsewhere.

So I think there's going to be more attention.

And the great thing I think is that there's more attention to more of these West Side artists that were Jesse's contemporaries.

Right?

The con safo artists.

I get into some of that.

I'm sorry, we're out of time, but check out the book The Bible on Jesse Trevino Thank you by Anthony Head and then check out Friday night at ten will be the, I guess, premiere, the first showing of this documentary that I did, Jesse Trevino, the artist in The Man, but it will run on k l r n throughout July.

And then after that.

I hope you like it on the record.

This week we're talking about a couple of things with the editor in chief of the San Antonio Current, Stanford.

Now, one, thank you very much for coming in.

Great to be here.

Now you had one of the articles that you've been working on was Roberto Trevino.

The former councilman is now with the San Antonio Philharmonic.

But you say you have an update since then.

Just talk to him.

What's what's going on?

Oh, here.

See, they they tapped him as executive director.

He was a board member.

And I don't think it's necessarily a surprising pick.

Right.

Because Trevino was the chair of the Arts and Culture Committee on Council, the three terms, he was there and he also served on the 2018 task force, the city and county put together to help the symphony ride out a financial crisis, one of many.

And so, yeah, I think he's basically going to be in there sort of directing where the Philharmonic harmonic goes from here.

You know, they basically arose from the ashes of the San Antonio Symphony, which was a, you know, almost 90 year old organization.

The board, the management basically reached a nine month impasse on a labor dispute with with the musicians and said, this is it, you know, we're folding this thing up.

And the musicians started the Philharmonic out of its ashes.

And I think the challenge right now, before Trevino is to figure out how to sort of take this this fledgling orchestra to the next level, you know, they've been or is it to bring it back up to that level?

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, because of the funding was the issue when they went on strike and the symphony said, we just don't have the money.

We need six, 7 million.

Right.

And they're not getting that.

So can they bring it back up even from those ashes to work?

Well, I think it's going to be a challenge, you know, But I do think one of the things that's interesting is, you know, in talking to the musicians and talking to Drew Trevino with the San Antonio Symphony, there were essentially two revenue streams, right?

There was the money they got from the city and county, and then there was money from ticket sales.

Right.

And both of those things can fluctuate greatly, you know, depending on the economy, other factors.

And the thing that Trevino said is they need to develop a third revenue stream.

It's there's just no ifs, ands or buts about it in many symphonies, basically that their revenue stream is an endowment.

Right.

Which is a set amount of money that you can draw from year after year after year.

It's very stable.

I think that's something they'd ultimately like to work toward.

But in the meantime, I think they're going to have to get creative and figure out other ways to bring in money, you know, whether it's, you know, are their assets they can monetize.

Are there skills that the people, the musicians can can sort of use in order to raise money?

They have $1,000,000 sheet music library that's well-regarded.

Some of the musicians had complained that there wasn't enough aggressive fundraising, say, with corporations.

Is that one of the focus that Trevino said that he really wants to make sure that that there is, you know, more corporate money coming in?

Another thing that I think will be interesting to see is how he gets that money from the city.

There's basically a rule that the city has right now that says that, you know, an arts organization has to be in existence for three years before it can get city funding.

Trevino's argument is, look, that's something that we can change, right?

That's a rule that can be changed.

He's talking to council people.

I think he's going to do some outreach probably with city staffers.

The city manager and that sort of thing.

You know, the argument there for that, for that that that rule to exist is you don't want some fly by night organization to say, hey, we're going to do this great artsy stuff, take their money and then leave town.

But his argument is, look, the Philharmonic is composed of people who were in the symphony.

Some of these people have been here for decades as musicians.

There was one person he mentioned it was his has been in San Antonio playing music for 40 years.

These are people that do not want to leave town.

You know, his argument is that the Philharmonic is here to stay.

And part of the you know, part of getting it to stay and move forward is to get some city funding.

Well, how about right now with those?

Because they wanted to keep the musicians, this 70 something musicians, instead of cutting back to 40 with the whole change.

Are they getting paid much?

Are they having what's the Yeah, I mean this this is the current model where you've got musicians working for less.

You've got musicians.

You know, if you if you get symphony tickets, you're basically dealing with musicians working as volunteers.

You know, the board members are working as ushers.

You've got all this kind of stuff.

They're performing it out at First Baptist Church because they can save money that way.

But according to Trevino, this is just not a sustainable model that they need to have that that additional money rolling in.

And, you know, orchestras across the country are dealing with with similar situations.

Right.

And they have to be creative.

They have to find new ways to get people interested in what they're doing.

They have to find new ways to raise money.

They have to find new ways to do outreach to the community.

And you know what?

I sort of pressed Trevino on?

How creative are you going to get?

His answer was that he wanted it to be the most creative orchestra in the United States or about running time for this.

But the venue.

Tobin Center, you know, that was much better than the Majestic when they were moving there.

That was great.

And now at First Baptist Church, obviously not Tobin kind of quality.

I mean, obviously they want the I think they want to be back in the Tobin, but that's not a financial reality for them right now, just because of how much more expensive it is, you know, to to play in rehearsal lot.

That'll be fun to watch.

Another story that you did this week was some corporate donations to the inauguration of a governor that might have surprised people.

I don't know if you got reaction to this is Yeah, yeah.

This was an interesting one.

There were 136 businesses that ponied up 4.7 million bucks to pay for the inauguration.

Just the inauguration was close to 5 million and the ball and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

And even that was not as much as the 2019 inauguration, which was the most expensive ever, which came in at 5.3 million.

They had 1.7 of that, I believe, for George Strait and semi San Antonio corporations.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, the two, the two ones that were really interesting to me this go round were that H-E-B contributed $150,000 to the inauguration.

And Tilman Fertitta, restaurateur, who owns a lot of stuff down on the Riverwalk, kicked in 250,000.

This can happen because corporations aren't limited like they are in campaigns and things like that.

And so it's a way to express their support.

Absolutely.

You know, and look, I think from from from a certain standpoint, right, H-E-B does business across the state.

It employs a lot of people in Texas.

And, you know, obviously, they want to to be able to give money to sort of, you know, push their political agenda.

Interestingly, I was I was going through some of their campaign contributions at the national level, and it seems like they tend to split it pretty evenly between between Republicans and Democrats as a lot of businesses do.

Right.

You know, but in this case, look, the Republicans control all the levers of power in Texas, and the governor certainly wields a lot of that power, hurt them while he's there.

Well, thank you very much, Sanford now, and editor in chief of the San Antonio Current.

I wish we had more time because your band, Cyr is going to play its first gig coming up.

Very excited about that.

Yeah.

Okay.

You have to check the current for that heavy metal Sanford Thanks.

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

And remember, you can see this show again or download the podcast of the show at Cal dot org.

I'm Randi Beemer and we'll see you next time on the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele.

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