Speaker 1: On the record is presented by launch essay, San Antonio, small business owners.

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

And that's why each week we go on the record with the Newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters round table to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go, welcome to Speaker 2: You on the record.

I'm Michael Taylor.

Last month.

Winter storm may seem like an eternity ago, but questions about how much of the city ended up powerless and frozen continue.

Mayor Nuremberg assembled the winter storm preparedness and response committee to get answers to questions about how the city handled the storm.

Our first guest today is the chair of that committee, Reed Williams Reed.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Sure.

This committee that you are chairing.

Yes.

Is it a primarily, a backward looking, give us answers for what happened a month ago or is it a forward-looking prepare us for the next disaster?

How do you conceive of that?

Well, it's both.

Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to look back and see what happens to get any information about going forward.

And it was a unique event.

One that we hadn't experienced in a long time.

So it's going to take a lot of questions.

We've got a lot to learn.

Uh, the committee itself really doesn't have any authority other than we have the responsibility to ask the questions that frankly, the citizens are all asking.

And we've got a very good website set up to do.

A lot of them send those in.

We do all of our meetings live stream every Friday from 10 to 12.

So it's one of those things.

We, we owe it to the, to the citizens to get good answers, uh, where the other entities can actually answer the question.

Speaker 2: Okay.

You've been on city council and many of your fellow committee members or current members of city council and a few others, right.

Is this asking very hard questions of primarily CPS and saws?

Speaker 1: Well, it's CPS saws.

It's also the city through the emergency operation center, right?

Uh, so we've really focused in on three entities to ask our questions too.

And we just kind of split up our focus among the committee.

I had those three, uh, focal points.

Speaker 2: Let me ask you, so what would constitute success?

How will I know its success is that the storm doesn't kick me out of my house, but that's, but in terms of your committee, when you were done, how will you know that you've succeeded?

Speaker 1: Well, certainly we need to be able to answer the questions.

If, if the, if CPS saws in the city through the EOC are forthcoming and can be forthcoming, uh, with the questions we're asking, we compiled the questions that we've gotten, not only from the committee, but the citizens.

So if, if we get those, we'll post them as we get them, we're not going to wait and publish a big report.

People want answers now.

They don't want it to be an ongoing dialogue, ongoing deal.

And as you know, you ask a question sometimes that causes you to have to ask another question and sometimes post questions early, you mess up and you learn something.

So you have to correct them and we'll do that.

But our whole purpose is to answer the questions, the people, the citizens have as to why did this have men and potentially look at things that can be done in the future to not have that happen?

Do we have the authority to make those changes in the future?

No, but obviously if you asked enough questions, it kind of even comes obvious to the average citizen like myself, Speaker 2: The storm caused a lot of fear.

It caused a lot of hardship.

What do you think people are most concerned with that are going to be that your committee needs to be responsive to and that you and need to make the organization Speaker 1: Today?

It's their pocketbook?

Yep.

How are we going to get hit bottom line?

Me, the questions comes in and in and in, I mean, and, and really it's a, it's a very complicated economic problem.

Uh, it's one that I hopefully, um, uh, CPS will address either through their court cases or in working with the PUC and, uh, and Arcot, but frankly, uh, there's been a lot of attention on the fact that the 9,000 per megawatt hour stayed on too long.

I believe that maybe there needs to be some attention focused on wanting to get put there in the first place.

I mean, you've got a bunch of, uh, very conservative Republicans in Austin that actually interfered with a free market and pegged it under control and command and control system to 9,000.

And that had some repercussions.

Their idea was that if we raised the price, people would produce more, right?

The problem is it also sent a bad price signal to the gas market that we had to participate in.

And we couldn't get to the 9,000 market.

We had to serve our people here in San Antonio.

Speaker 2: I've noticed many of us have become amateur experts on energy markets and water markets.

By, by default, we all have opinions.

We all have fear of this happening.

Again.

Here's going to, I'm going to put forth my amateur view on energy markets.

We've had a re relatively unregulated market, and that's probably led to lower costs in the, in the medium term or maybe for the last decade.

And then the sudden spikes remind us that there's some dangers with an unregulated market.

And on the other hand, you've pointed out an interesting irony that the, the most free market folks have now said, we need to roll back these prices.

I wonder if you can just unpack that you think this is, uh, is the question we're all going to have to address.

Yeah, Speaker 1: Well, certainly the legislature is going to have to address it, uh, in 99, when we actually allowed folks to opt into competition, uh, we created a market system that's in my way, you've got the, to put it in a sports situation.

You've got to feel like a football field, but one team is a soccer team.

The Owen's a football team.

So you've got free market folks in the same market with Viva like us that are regulated monopolies, right?

Because the CPS is a monopoly.

We have certificated area, the city councils, Speaker 2: The rights and controls, public obligations, municipal area.

Speaker 1: How many of these, uh, power producers do you think would sit there and, and accrue $90 million worth of, of uncollected bills during a pandemic for people to cook?

No.

No.

So we have people playing different games and ultimately that's got to get straightened out, right?

You've got to have the same kind of game being played by everybody Speaker 2: When a catastrophe happens and everybody is affected negatively.

Probably we're going to ask some fundamental questions around what is the right mixture of markets and regulation.

Exactly.

Your committee is backward looking for a month ago.

Right.

But you know, we're going to have to whiteboard this a little bit.

Uh, do you expect you and your committee will be involved in those conversations, in the what, what is the structure of the playing field?

The football versus soccer?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Uh, no, I, I don't think so.

I think that's something that's got to be solved long-term by people that actually have authority like elected officials, managements and boards, uh, in our case, we're going to focus on, uh, on these three entities.

And then of course with CPS, we're kind of looking at first of all, how did the production work?

How did our power producing plants work?

And second of all, how did that, uh, how did CPS respond when they had to manage demand?

CPS has a culture and they've been, we've been very fortunately done a very good job of having a lot of excess production capacity.

All of a sudden, if they didn't have that production capacity, maybe they hadn't had to manage demand as often.

And so there's a lot of questions that individuals have around.

Why did I get, you know, two minutes on and four hours.

Speaker 2: It was a very confusing and difficult time.

Speaker 1: And so we've got to ask only how the plants run.

We got to also think about when the plants didn't run or we had to, we were required to cut back.

Did we manage demand well?

Okay.

And no, it was, it's a very difficult problem.

It's not easy.

And I, and I know that that CVS is doing the best they can, but that's gotta be, that's gotta be a real question.

And that also gets to the point of how are, how are we being communicated with, during an event and you have to manage demand.

Did you let us know?

How do you let us know?

So this'll be an ongoing thing.

That's going to have to be managed inside the, uh, an organization like CPS, but people are asking the question, we're going to try to answer.

Speaker 2: Communications are key during a catastrophe in sounds like your committee is going to be deep into the communications, to what the public wants to know following up and get some answers.

Yeah.

Speaker 1: Particularly when you're managing the demand, think about it, see it's different, but SaaS has been, has been managing demand for years.

Okay.

So, but when you don't have that big excess capacity, you have to get better at managing demand and communicating that demand management.

And that's going to be a big part of the issue.

Speaker 2: Williams, thank you so much for having a conversation, but this is really important work.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much.

Nice to be with you.

Speaker 2: Joining me is Ketta Rodriguez regional director of four block, a veteran services organization catch, uh, thanks for joining me.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here.

I'm thinking about my experience in the winter storm, which was terrible, lost power, lost, uh, heat, uh, lost water.

And all I had to do is worry about keeping myself and my family safe.

You had a specific experience that I want you to maybe take us back to that day in mid February.

And I'll prompt you further by saying, um, the County commissioner, Tommy Calvert basically described you in very heroic terms, but can you take us to that day?

Sure.

Um, actually it was several days, but it began, uh, the evening of Monday the 15th.

There's actually probably early morning.

Um, you know, I discovered through social media, a friend of mine actually messaged me that there were some residents at Colonel George CSNET O's apartment complex, which is a software run facility that is designated specifically for senior citizens and disabled.

And they've been without electricity for 24 hours and so N water.

Um, and so that was probably what was the catalyst to everything.

So, you know, kind of sitting in my own place.

Okay.

I decided to go and check it out.

And then we found, you know, a series of events after that, where we discovered more residents in the same situation.

Right.

Can you get out?

W what did you see?

What did you do Well at that specific facility?

Um, of course we went at one 30 in the morning and, you know, there were just not a whole lot that we can do, but made calls to the emergency numbers that were on the door, um, found out that Soho was already aware.

Um, but you know, there was not a whole lot we could do in the middle of the night.

So we came back the next morning and really addressed, you know, trying to get blankets and food and water to the residents that were there.

Um, during the course of that, we realized that there was another facility and a couple of other facilities in the same situation.

So we shifted over to, um, fair Avenue apartments.

And that's where I found out that is a story that the situation there was X was extremely grim.

I mean, we found residents got out huddled in the lobby.

They had been without electricity and running water for, you know, going on three days.

Um, and most of all of those residents are elderly and severely disabled.

So it was, um, it was a terrible situation to discover.

Um, I'm just fortunate that we were able to discover it at the time that we did.

This is a nightmare scenario.

I mean, we, we all suffered to some extent, but you witnessed and then helped, uh, with people who are in severe distress, the responses that you got from, from sort of raising the alarm bells.

Right.

So, um, of course we immediately went to social media, like everybody else, we were having trouble with, you know, communications, um, but, uh, went on social media and just started sounding the alarm.

I made a call of course, to commissioner Calvert.

I tagged multiple, uh, city and County officials, um, to make everyone aware that, you know, by this point it was late Tuesday evening.

And, um, you know, these residents are, are some of our most vulnerable and most at risk.

And, um, so we, you know, work to try to get buses out there to get them evacuated.

The warming centers were actually stood up that day.

That evening It would be brought to warming centers there, there was a, a place to go Well, yes, we discovered that.

Of course the unfortunate part of that is the residents who lived there were not aware that they could do that.

Um, because the news, you know, the news came out so late and a lot of them were not on TV because they had no electricity.

Right.

You know, many of them didn't have access to phones cause they couldn't charge them.

So it was just a yeah, exactly.

Uh, a lot of, a lot of really terrible problems for the, for the residents.

But most importantly, um, you know, when you talk about at risk, some of them were on oxygen.

Some of them had missed dialysis.

Um, some of them, a lot of them rely on the food commodities that are delivered.

And there were none that week.

So limited food.

We had a lady pass out on the floor from not eating.

I mean, it was just a terrible disaster.

This really needed a citizens' intervention if you hadn't been there.

And I just wonder if you could tell us in the last 30 seconds, what should have happened or what should happen in the future, because we can't always depend on get the showing up and causing a ruckus Because on social media.

Right.

Well, what we've learned obviously is that we were completely unprepared.

Yep.

Um, and then once we discovered how severe the weather was going to be, as we discovered actually the week prior that there were, that we were going to have, or would possibly have those power outages and, and freezing temperatures, we should have really prepared to have those warming centers up sooner to have, uh, plans to evac mass evacuate.

I mean, there are a host of things that really should have been done that weren't, that had not happened.

Thank you very much for this.

It's just a terrible experience, but, um, I'm glad you were there and I hope we do better the next time.

Okay.

Thanks for joining.

Thank you.

Now in the studio is Antonio from KWE X Antonio.

Thanks for joining us.

You're the political reporter and we are having possibly a crisis on the border.

And I'm wondering if you can contextualize us contextualize this for us.

I read the media reports, but it is hard to know how does this compare to just three months ago or six months ago or two years ago?

Speaker 1: Uh, thank you, Michael, for the invitation.

Uh, first of all, thank you.

Uh, well it has been a, a is not new.

The let's start saying that Speaker 2: Ongoing crisis over years and months, Speaker 1: It has been, it's been in an increasing situation in, uh, the past administration show was that, uh, actually there wasn't a rise in the amount of people crossing the border.

We can actually say that within the last weeks, this became, uh, coincidentally the, uh, first, uh, Biden administration crisis.

And for a good thing, Speaker 2: Is it right to say it's already interrupted, but is a right to say that the numbers have increased in the past couple of weeks of folks crossing the border, guess that does it, there is a real something that's different from Speaker 1: Michael, your journalism.

I'm also Uranus it.

We're going to rely on the official numbers that they're giving us.

And we shouldn't have a reason to not believe that because there are officials.

So, uh, according to the latest, uh, uh, numbers only from, uh, inferiority, uh, more than 9,000 people got, uh, uh, detained, uh, crossing the border.

So it is a huge increase in the amount of people crossing the border.

Now, are they getting the, the room message?

Michael, probably first we had an administration that completely stopped there was using title 42, uh, from the constitution to send people back because of the pandemic in, uh, mind you the title 42 still in, in, in, in effect, in effect right now.

But there are allowing all the minors or children, uh, that can find children to stay in the States.

And all of a sudden we have a message that probably the Biden administration is, uh, more humanitarian than Speaker 2: Probably belief that there'd be a gentle or approach once they get to the border or request asylum, even though the rules haven't yet changed.

Is that right?

Speaker 1: We're seeing that more gentler approach already.

already said that we're going to treat this, uh, minors with dignity and we're not going to send them back as the past administration was, was doing it.

So if you are a father trying to send your children across the border for a better life, because they already have relatives here in the States, what probably you're going to say as the last resort, the last hope you're going to say, Michael, okay.

If it is not me, you you're the one that is going to be probably having a better life.

You know, Speaker 2: Parents are sending their underage children or teenage children without, you know, unaccompanied by their parents, extra complicated scenario.

Speaker 1: The last information that, that, that, that we're, uh, seeing is the fact that if parents get to the border, the U S Mexico border in, because they already realizing that as an adults, they're going to be sent back, but the miners are staying they're deciding it probably has to be a really hard decision for a father to say, here you go.

Speaker 2: But it appears, they're making that choice with a, with a minute left.

I want to ask you about the politics of this.

Certainly Democrats attack the previous administration for inhumane in their, in their views practices at the border.

Uh, now on the Republican side, um, house, uh, GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy visited the border, um, Tony Gonzalez district 23, he visited border.

And certainly this is an issue that Republicans seem to leaves a as a top one, two or three issue at this moment.

Can you talk about the politics and what's different, and they're going to use this now as a cudgel against the Biden administration.

Speaker 1: There is no doubt in my mind that this, this is an issue that, uh, it will be, it will be our first center issue for Republicans, because they're going to say, aye, we told you that this was going to happen.

And even then you, you kind of soften the message.

Yeah.

Speaker 2: The hard line is law and order approach was their approach.

That's now being softened.

And it's going to be, uh, on the other hand, they're going to argue Speaker 1: Exactly, uh, somehow, and, and, and, and let, let, let, let, let's be for real, uh, extremes do not belong on, uh, at least that's what I think do not belong among human beings.

If you can go too, too liberal or things aren't going to happen, or you can go to the other, uh, you know, side and things are going to happen.

Eh, I think this country as a whole, uh, Michael needs to have, uh, uh, middle grounds when it comes to the, uh, immigration, uh, issue.

And in this case, just to, to, to answer your question, yes, Republicans will make use, uh, to the extent possible of this, of what is going on right now.

Speaker 2: Again, thank you so much for joining us.

We'll be following this closely.

Thank you now for reporters round table, joining us here in the studio is Joey Palacios.

Joey, thanks for joining us, Joey from Texas public radio, you recently filed a story about candidates running for city council and the mayors.

There were 81 candidates.

And I wonder if you could help us break it down these different races.

I think of them in different categories, the first category being open seats, where the incumbents have now term limited out surely Gonzalez district five, and Rebecca would be a good one.

And district three, do you see any front runners or what's the flavor of those races?

What would you w when we talk about 81 candidate, it's, it's a very, it's a very crowded race, probably one of them, the most crowded that we've seen in recent years, and there's 14 people that are running for mayor.

And that's typically something that you will see when it's an open seat, um, you know, with, with the different city council races, you know, there's, there's 10 members of the city council and then the mayor's office, every one of them is up for election.

Um, we have a lot of fresh faces from the last mayoral election, um, but we have to where they're termed out and that's district three and district five.

And so, you know, there's, there's probably, you know, maybe eight or nine candidates in each of those races.

And that's typical when you have an open seat.

So you have district five on the West side council manager, you mentioned Shirley Gonzalez.

She is termed out.

And then on the South side is council woman Rebecca via Kanaan where she is termed out as well.

So you're seeing a lot of, uh, of, of, of political hopefuls trying to get their first shot at one of the, um, you know, that the government that is closest to the people, uh, and most, uh, and, and, and probably one of the most recognizable to the people as well.

It feels like with open races, we could see surprising shifts in the tenor on council and including these other races, where there are incumbents running, but it's two to six.

W what you pointed out in your story, um, any of those that you're particularly watching where the incumbent might be vulnerable to a challenger Districts one and district two.

Um, you know, we saw a, some pretty tight races a couple of years ago within, uh, within district one, uh, Roberto Trevino, running as incumbent.

Exactly.

And then, and in district two, uh, we have about a dozen candidates that are running for against the first term incumbent that's Councilman Jayda, Andrew Sullivan.

And that's the district that is on the East side.

Um, and we see some familiar faces that have run previously, uh, before, uh, we also have a, one of a council, a one of a Councilman, Andrew Sullivan's, uh, previous staff members, uh, Jalen Mickey Rodriguez, he's running up against her.

Um, so a staff member against the incumbent, that's kind of an intramural fight, maybe A staff member.

He's not, he's not a current staff member.

Um, so I, I typically, when you have a lot of candidates within a race, it's a lot to keep track of.

It's a lot to keep track of, and then it has a high chance of going to a runoff.

So where we have these high numbers, I mean, I highly anticipate that districts three, five, and potentially two, and maybe one will go into a runoff.

Um, and then we maybe could see the Bayer's race going into a runoff, but, you know, that's, that one is kind of a toss up in mind.

It's about that, that went into a runoff last time.

And, uh, mayor Ron Nuremberg, just by a couple of percentage points, beat, um, Greg Brock house, what's different two years later, there's a, rematches lots of candidates in the race, but this is the real rematch we think is between those two.

Can you tell me what's different from two years ago?

What we've seen A lot of the mayor's race over the past three elections has been very competitive.

In 2015.

We saw Ivy Taylor trying to go for her first seat, which she won, but she had three candidates against her, uh, prominent candidates, I should say.

And then, uh, mayor Nierenberg, uh, unseated Taylor in 2017, which is a very rare thing that happened over the past, over 25 years.

And a mayor has only been unseated twice.

There were also three candidate, three prominent candidates in that race as well.

Right?

Well, this year in the mayor's race, uh, we have, uh, the, the two most prominent candidates are the incumbent mayor Nierenberg and then also Councilman Greg Brock house, uh, and, uh, uh, well, former Councilman, I should say he was the district six councilmen and challenged Nierenberg in 2019.

Um, and it was a very, very, very close race.

Um, I remember just, just watching the polls come in on election night in 2018 and, and it was within only just a couple of percentage points.

Um, Can you talk to me about Greg?

Uh, Greg Brock house had particular strengths last time, and we were talking before this, that he doesn't have that this time.

Can you, can you highlight that?

Right.

So one of the, one of the biggest pieces of news that's come out of the mayor's race, um, uh, from, from my observation is the fire union, uh, is not going to be supporting, uh, Greg Brock house this time, because it's staying out of the mayor's race.

Now, the they're not backing Ron, They're just, they've announced that they're Right.

And the most, most likely the police and the fire unions would not probably would not back mayor Nierenberg.

Um, but what, what w so, so ironically Brock house seems to have lost a lot of fire power that, uh, will comes from the ground game that the fire union would offer.

You know, the, the, the fire unit has been a very big political powerhouse.

They've had their own issues on the ballot and several elections before, like we saw in 2018 with the propositions, uh, ABC, and, um, you know, they had a ground game for Brock house in their members being at the different polling sites on election day and during early voting.

And that may have convinced a lot of undecided voters to side with Brock house, um, that may have maybe had not made up their mind.

Um, and so we're not seeing that we, well, we, we could potentially, but we're not seeing that, that organized campaign of supporting Councilman Brock house.

Just a final question.

It seems to me this past year has been, COVID all COVID all the time.

And Ron now has a track record for, for good, or if you're rock house for bad.

Um, do you have any sense of how the COVID response to the pandemic at the city level will play in the mayor's race?

Presumably that is an issue that both of them are gonna run on run in favor and Greg Brock hosts.

Well, what we've seen from the Brock house campaign, there's been a lot of, there's been a lot of, uh, of, uh, uh, press releases and plans that Brock houses has put out that kind of, that, that, that not necessarily run counter to what the mayor is doing, but just, you know, for instance, the councilman's, uh, own ideas.

Um, but every member on the city council is going to have to stand with the decisions that they've made.

Um, and even from the winter storm and the energy crisis, you know, they're still top of mind for all of us.

Oh yeah.

And so you're, you have a lot of voters that would be potentially very there that are very angry about the things that happened that are putting blame on Putin, on CPS energy and saws and this state.

And so, you know, it's for, for the council members, uh, the incumbents they're really going to have to defend everything that happened or speak out vehemently against the things that they didn't like that happened, especially in the energy.

There's going to be a lot to run on.

There's going to be a lot to be angry about potentially or proud of, um, joy philosophies.

I really appreciate you coming on local government reporter for Texas public radio.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And that's it for this week on the record, check out our podcast of this week's show, as well as previous shows, I pay lrn.org.

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