On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving community with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with the news makers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the Reporters Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Randy Beamer.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

First of all, we're starting out this week with what the county commissioners did involving the Spurs.

And joining us to talk about that is county commissioner of Precinct four, Tommy Calvert.

Thank you very much for coming in.

It's great to be back.

Tell us what the Spurs ask for and what you gave them.

The contract the county had from the beginning had two away games that they could be the home team, which means they can make revenue from those games.

We added two additional games they wanted to do one for the 50th anniversary of the team at the Alamo Dome, one in Austin and another in Mexico City.

So there before total games, I did vote against it.

I felt it was a pro San Antonio vote because when people come from Austin, they spend their dollars at our hotels, restaurants and other things.

So but now the theory is that for the Spurs to be competitive, they're a smaller market team.

They need up and down the I-35 corridor.

There's a lot of money in Austin.

There's a they have their G League team in Austin.

We need to get Mexico City Monterrey.

What do you say to that?

I think a lot of my constituents are concerned that billionaire and Austin may be trying to poach our team and that they're testing the waters.

I've heard that from CEOs to the shoeshine man to the what is this, Michael Dell that owns part of it now?

You know, there's a lot of billionaires in Austin, but he certainly would be at the top of the list being in the minority ownership position.

Can you imagine Austin swiping a team this close and this Spurs fans from San Antonio just going ballistic?

Yes, we could imagine that.

And so now I think it's a time to show the Spurs some love.

I think that we need to reestablish the relationship and some very positive talks we're had for the first time in the eight years I've been on commissioners court with the owner, Peter John Holt, that I believe shared some facts that they weren't aware of about the strength of San Antonio, which means that we have 1.5 million people moving to Bear County in the next dozen years, and that means we're county of 3.4 million people as opposed to 2 million.

And the economy is much stronger here with that kind of population.

And a lot of the consultants they had from other places said it's not dense enough in population to do the master development.

That is the vision that I have for the county should have done a long time ago.

But I explained to them because I put in sewer just down Houston Street off the 410 and the East Central School District area.

Now, thousands of homes and developments are coming.

So the 1.5 million people are going to be just outside of Fort Tennent, Houston.

And you represent that area, which a lot of people around the Alamodome say was has not been developed enough or as they had promised or thought it was promised to be.

What would you like?

Would you like to see some leverage used with this vote?

Absolutely.

To increase that?

Absolutely.

Part of the reason things weren't developed is because a lot of leadership didn't understand that retail follows rooftops.

So when I campaign, people said I want to have what they have at Brooks or at 281 in La Kentaro, I said, Look, we've got to get the middle class back to the East Side.

So you start with housing.

So you have seen a lot of new housing that has come.

And so the middle class and the upper middle class is coming back.

The key in the new development is that we do not displace the existing residents who have endured crime and blight.

And so that comes in city zoning policy, that comes in the form of the housing bond that just passed, for example.

So we can partner where the county has incentives with the city to underwrite the cost of construction for housing so that you have housing commiserate with the incomes of the people who live around the area.

And that is, I think, the heart of San Antonio, the heart of the Spurs.

And they were very receptive to that.

But now a lot of people thought that, you know, you were going to have bars, restaurants, retail in that area, even if you widen AT&T Center Parkway, it doesn't seem especially if you widen it, it doesn't seem like you would be getting off that road all the way to or from the Spurs.

There's tremendous assets that can be redeveloped.

You can take the Willow Springs golf course across the way.

The county owns 170 acres on those grounds.

We spent over $300 million in the AT&T Center and Expo halls, but it doesn't look like it.

So what the vision would be is to build parking garages with housing on top restaurants, retail, take the park space at Willow Springs Golf Course, and an $80 million tunnel would take the water out.

So you do not have the golf course in the floodplain and you can develop housing, restaurants, retail all along there.

Just buy the red berry the car.

Is that out?

It's 100, hundred acres or more.

I mean, in terms of years, in terms of I mean, we, I mean, I'm ready to start now.

It all depends on us getting, I think, the ownership group of the Spurs to give, get first dibs on that housing restaurant and retail.

You know, the Spurs were once the number one in concessions, so there wasn't an incentive to have the area develop around it.

But when you offer first dibs at the restaurants and the office and the hotel and all those things, that changes the equation also for selling the team because then the team may have 250 to $500 million in assets in hotels and housing outside of the arena.

And then your price goes from 1.9 billion to 2.5 billion, and that is a harder sell for about out of time but do you think the Spurs will go for that after you voted against them, that they will be wanting to invest more in that area?

Understand where I'm coming from.

We've had a very we've telegraphed all these things and, you know, money talks.

And so what I'm talking about are things that will make all of us money.

Why can't the county and the city make a little revenue and be investors with this as well?

As this?

Very good question.

We'll ask that next time when we have more time.

Thank you very much for coming in, Tommy Calvert County Commissioner, Precinct four.

It's an honor.

Thank you.

You've probably seen the stories recently about a shortage of baby formula across the country right now.

And in San Antonio affecting people here.

That's all over social media.

Joining us to talk about it and what it means here is Rachel Jacob, dietitian and works for the Nick Q at the McHugh at the University Health thank you very much for coming in.

How big an issue is this here right now?

Thank you for having me.

It really is it is a critical shortage for infants that are requiring specialized formulas.

And now that shortage is being seen across all lines of infant formulas.

So it is important that we're talking about things that are currently surfacing in social media in reference to what is safe and what is not safe and ways to kind of alleviate some of this panic in reference to being able to find formulas.

The first of all, I guess I want to make clear in the neonatal intensive care units you have, you don't have to deal with this problem because those kids have very specific needs.

It's critical that they get that before getting out of the hospital.

Correct.

So you're not dealing with the same shortages.

Right.

Fortunately, in the hospital setting, we have not seen so much of the shortage just because our nutritional protocols are so important for our neonatal our infants.

In the nick you it's that discharge that we're wanting to provide appropriate education to the mom.

And that's really who the problem is for right now, those moms who are breastfeeding and I guess you encourage them to keep breastfeeding maybe longer than they might have.

Yes.

I mean, we would definitely want to make sure we're supporting our moms appropriately in reference to their breastfeeding journey based off of what they what their desires are.

They're most definitely some circumstances where moms are unable to provide breast milk or breastfeed.

And by all means, we want to make sure that we are also supporting their needs as well to ensure that those formulas that we're providing the appropriate formula selection along with ensuring that they will be able to find those formulas.

What do you tell moms right now?

In current times, there's minimal selection on the shelves.

And so we're reassuring moms that you can you can change your formula.

Your infant formula is what is available on the shelves for infant formulas are FDA approved with the appropriate nutrition and nutritional composition for infants for growth and neurocognitive development.

Part of the shortage was the chain that everybody's had trouble with, the supply chain.

But then it was a habit.

One of the few companies in the US had to shut down.

An entire plant still shut down, but just this week and made a deal with the government that's going to open up again.

We're not sure how long that will take for to get that supply chain.

And they're also going to allow FDA is going to allow in more, but imports.

But at the same time, we don't know how long that's going to take.

Yeah, most definitely.

When I've been to the grocery stores and I've looked at the shelves there is still some selection of infant formula.

So what I really encourage moms is to be that you can you can choose one of those infant formulas to most purchase kind of I guess purchase what you would have available for ten days supply and try not to stockpile your formula I am hopeful, as what you mentioned with the FDA and the plant opening up and then their request to import more infant formulas back here within the next two to three weeks, maybe three to six weeks, I would say we would start seeing more formula on this.

Do you think some of it is panic buying and hoarding like we had with toilet paper?

The beginning of the pandemic and that just makes it that much worse?

Yes, most definitely.

And I think it is very important, like I mentioned, just the message to try to purchase what you can have for that ten day supply and not over purchase to make sure that there's enough to go around and.

Never dilute formula.

Right.

It is tough to get people to do that when there's not enough for you.

There is a lot of things surfacing right now in social media.

One of that being, you know, never to dilute breast milk, you know, even with breast milk or infant formula as that is very harmful for the infants, diluting down any sort of infant formula or breast milk can really affect their electrolyte balance, causing low sodium, which then can lead to poor growth and weight gain along with seizures and then even a hospital admission.

And how about buying online and getting through friends and things like that?

There are some problems doing that because you don't know where it's from.

And there are also some scams.

Yes.

It's important to make sure that it's a reputable source I mean, sources that we're telling moms, you know, Amazon, bye bye, baby Target, Costco, Sam's Club, a lot of your grocery line stores for online purchasing to look at those sources first and then to just be mindful of where that is coming from.

And how about milk banks?

There are sources here that people might not think of for them.

Are they making things more available to other people than they might have before?

The Habana Milk Banks, the Human Milk Banking Association, in North America?

I think we have two of them in the state of Texas.

They are they prioritize a lot of their donor breast milk to neonatal intensive care units, nick use, but they often are sometimes have additional supply that they can offer out into the community.

Right now, one of the formulas that affect is affected by the recall.

Those Habana milk banks are offering donor milk for those patients or infants that have required to be on this renal formula.

So that is one thing that's being provided.

The supply, though, might be minimal for that.

Well, but definitely something that you can look into.

Well, I.

Wish we had more time on this.

And I hope next time we talk to you it's not about this and it's about it's over.

Thank you for coming in, Rachel Jacob, dietician with the works of the Niki at University Health.

Thanks you might have seen some articles recently talking about the Texas power grid and crypto mining across Texas.

Which is just booming and expected to boom even more over the next couple of years.

Joining us now to talk about that is Alex Eaton, who is a founder of the San Antonio Crypto Network.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Yes, sir.

First of all, before we get to the how much power is used and how that works?

People who hear the words Bitcoin and mining kind of some of us just glaze over, but you don't understand what it is.

So you have a crypto or bitcoins or this kind of currency and the mining of that.

If you explain that real quickly, it's creating it through a computer network.

You have your own computer and it has to get bigger and bigger and bigger as it gets harder and harder or harder to solve these.

Correct.

There are a couple little things when it comes to mining I like to think of.

We talk about mining gold, like going back to what everybody understands as to going into a cave and getting hit, you know, hitting the stones and and finding the rewards after all that hard work.

And so with Bitcoin mining, we have something called proof of work or P.O.W.

is you'll see P.O.W.

all the time.

And so I like to say that mining gold is the same as mining Bitcoin because the algorithms that your computers are running to actually create that digital currency all day, every day is actually the computers trying to solve a logical problem.

And that problem gets harder and harder and harder.

Every two weeks.

It's what we call the difficulty curve in Bitcoin.

And if the difficulty curve goes up 100%, your profitability goes down 100%.

But it was so much less complex that you got into it with your home computer years ago.

A lot of people did.

You didn't need these massive computers that need massive power.

How much more power is being used these they.

Well, let's.

Keep it simple.

In 2008, Bitcoin was mined by one thing and one thing only CPU's on any computer.

So I mean, you could take a computer.

This is 2008.

You could take a computer from 1997 and you could mind Bitcoin on it because the difficulty on the very first block or in 2008 was one and two weeks later it went to two.

So basically what you could create got hacked and so as time went on, computer engineers figured out how to take the CPU of a computer.

You know, the CPU is the tiny little chip, the graphics processing unit and the better the GPU the more Bitcoin you could mine it.

Is China banning it last year?

Is that one of the reasons that Texas is booming and Texas leaders have really embraced this encouraging more people to come here?

In my humble opinion, I believe that the reason that all the most of the mining has come to Texas, definitely not all of it, but a lot of it is because of Texas.

Willingness to create these Pipas, which is basically like an energy contract for an extended amount of time.

So the the big main Bitcoin facilities here in Texas, they're paying a very low price, probably less than we're paying at our house.

Yes.

But it's a very long contract.

Ten, 15 years at that price.

But we've had this, you know, last year we had the problem with the cold snap and the power grid failure.

Is that a real threat with these?

I mean, there was talk about the way it's growing up.

It's going to use the power that's equivalent to the power in Houston for Bitcoin mining.

Can we sustain that kind of growth do we have the power?

Yes and no.

Yes, it is worrisome.

Yes, it could be a problem.

I like to think there's two ways that we could do it.

The Texas government is currently working and looking at the best way to regulate these companies.

However, at the same time, the companies at least I like to call em the gold standard companies, the big ones, the ones that you can look up that are on the news that are willing to show you their facilities, all these things, gold standard people, gold standard companies, because they really want Texas to have a lot of Bitcoin.

They want to grow the, you know, the cities around them.

And if you start to look at how many times those companies have turned off the power, just in 20, 21 alone, the largest one which is owned by riot, they turned it off 72 times last year.

Basically they work in tandem with ERCOT.

So it's high when there is a.

During the cold.

Wave or.

Even just two days ago, I believe it was Friday.

We even got a text message this morning that said Hey keep your thermostat at 78 just this morning.

And so these are times when these companies can actually make it really because.

Some of them are using solar to generating or wanting to generate their own power.

In rural areas, correct?

Correct.

Is that the next stage of Bitcoin mining?

And I like to think so.

The more miners come to Texas, the more that ERCOT and the Mining Association and you have the, the Texas Blockchain Association, which is growing substantially over the last two years.

And that is actually one of the things I would really like you guys to reach out to take a look at at that it's not a company, but they are a group that works with our government, the Bitcoin miners and the power companies to make sure that it all works together.

And Bitcoin mining has changed a lot of lives, including yours.

You were a medic in the military, came back, now you're a miner, but also I guess kind of an evangelist.

You had.

A coin.

The San Antonio Crypto Network is where you explain all this to people who need more time like than 5 minutes to explain it.

How did how long does that take?

I I've gotten it under an hour.

So again, to me, the best thing to do is teach the basics.

You have to walk into a bank and somebody teaches you you're checking and a saving and what a bond is.

Same thing here.

What is a private key?

What is it publicly?

How do you send, how do you receive and how do you store your money safely?

Those five tenants, it's really all you need to get started to keep yourself safe.

Well, next time, if we had more time, I'd ask you about proof of stake.

See, I know that proof and how that could cut the power.

If I may, for 2 seconds.

Sure.

Proof of work versus proof of stake.

We talked about mining those computers, actually requiring energy to formulate and find that problem to be rewarded.

Proof a stake.

It's the exact same validator tool.

It's the same mechanism.

It's just instead of having to use the computer powered on the way that it mines the cryptocurrency is you the individual.

Let's say you have five a theory or a proof of state coin.

Any proof a state coin.

You put it in your wallet and you're done.

And basically, depending on the aprt of that coin, let's say a theory is 4%, you'll earn 4% on your money over the course of a year.

Just like interest.

I like to say stake is just another fancy way of saying interest.

But the big thing, a proof of stake is by putting into your wallet and allowing the mechanisms to run that way.

You're not having a computer running so if you think about a hundred thousand miners in Texas right now, all running, creating Bitcoin, I'm not saying I haven't heard anything about Bitcoin going proof of stake, but it is possible and if we could take, you know, in the next couple of years, 500,000 miners off the grid and have the exact same security and potential and growth in Bitcoin without having to use all the power I think that would work forever.

But some of these cryptocurrencies like a theory of are going to that.

So Etherium is a really good one to look at because it's one of the first that was proof of work that is currently in the process of going to prove a stake.

Most are either built one way or built the other way, already prove a stake, already proof of work.

So a theory is one to look at over the next year to see how it really goes.

I mean, we could see it crash we could see it rise with anything, but it's a really good test.

Well, thanks very much for explaining all this, Alex Eaton.

You can find out more.

He's the founder of San Antonio Crypto Network.

Thanks for coming.

In.

Thanks so much.

For having me.

On Our Reporters Roundtable this week.

If you haven't been out to the far west side of San Antonio in a while, you are in for a surprise because it is a whole different world out there.

The growth is just tremendous.

Joining us is the editor in chief of the San Antonio Business Journal who wrote this cover story, Infrastructure Overload about the boom on the far west side.

Sam Boykin, editor in chief, thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I found this fascinating because it really details the growth not just there, but how much bigger it is there right now than what we thought were the booming parts of San Antonio.

How big is it right that?

Absolutely.

So.

Over the past year, over the past 12 months, there's been about 5600 new home starts in West San Antonio.

So the area with the second highest number of new home starts is the New Braunfels.

And that had about 1500 fewer homes than West San Antonio.

So comparatively speaking to the rest of the city where San was San Antonio was by far the the the the most booming area there is.

And New Braunfels had been such a huge, huge part of the growth and north and northwest side not there really comparatively.

Right, right.

Right.

There's been there's been a shift starting in the mid 2000s with Alamo Ranch that sort of turned people on to there was this new side of town.

There's all this available land.

They're building good, good schools out there.

So the focus kind of shifted from the north to the west.

And over the past decade or so, it's just continue to sort of build and.

And in fact, my family where some of the new folks moving here who are filling up the homes on the west side.

So that's kind of what put this story on my on my on my radar.

And because I kind of have I kind of live it every day.

So I have know firsthand knowledge of what's what's happening in that part of the city and some of the opportunities and challenges that come with all that growth.

And for those of us who live in our own bubble in this part of town.

What's it like to live out there?

And all the construction and all the roads are still two lane roads, right?

Should be four, six lane roads by now.

Right.

Right.

Well, over the past I'd say five or ten years, developers have been making these giant masterplan communities.

We live in one of those communities.

So, you know, they have their plus plus and minuses, lots of single families, lots of kids.

There's community perks like swimming pools and tennis courts and things like that.

But the communities are kind of inward facing.

They're not connected to the other communities.

If you want to get a gallon of milk, you got to hop in your car, drive 15 minutes.

So that puts more cars on the road, which becomes a quality of life issue.

So again, developers are definitely feeling a need because, I mean, obviously there's folks moving here in record numbers but there are some drawbacks to these sort of massive sprawl, sprawling communities.

I like to pick out a word or two, and one of them in this article that caught my eye was homogenous.

Yes.

Now, all the many of the homes are homogenous and it's also single family.

You're not seeing a lot of townhomes or duplexes where you might expect you would.

Exactly.

I mean, it's these communities are almost exclusively single family homes.

There's no apartments, there's no townhomes.

So they're sort of leaving out single people, elderly people, couples with no kids.

So it sort of is leaving out a really fast growing demographic of home buyers.

And there's a lot of businesses out there, some Microsoft is that are just booming.

You've got NASA.

They're going to be drawing more young, single people.

And I guess there's one of Cynthia Yeah.

Complex by Ed Cross.

Yeah.

Which is one of the first if not the first New Urbanist Project, which I'm not sure what that means, but could that change things a little on the West Side?

Well, that's true of being held up as an example of smart growth.

So as opposed to just sort of, you know, leveling land and slapping up a bunch of houses, this community has a town center.

There are sort of more of a of a work of play element to it.

So folks don't have to get in their car to you know, go to work or go buy a loaf of bread.

So it's just a more walkable community.

So, again, that's sort of being held up as a direction that San Antonio should go for in terms of future future development.

Now, recently, I think some of the city people started talking about how there should be a comprehensive new highway master plan for San Antonio for the first time in decades.

Yes, I see you nodding as one who lives there and would like some highway structure as well.

Should be just the roads out there with the stop signs and the stoplights.

Do you see that happening in the not too distant future on the far west side?

Well, there are multiple state and county road improvement, road widening projects that are in the works.

The problem is, is that, you know, as everyone who lives here knows, these things take years and years and years.

And some of these projects haven't even started yet.

So we're talking like five years, ten years from now when these projects will be completed.

But of course, during that time, folks are still moving here.

The infrastructure sure is still over, overburdened.

And, you know, those problems will will persist.

It's not you know, it's nothing unique to two cent to San Antonio every sort of big, fast growing city has these sort of growing pains.

But it's it's really acute in West San Antonio.

We're seeing like a perfect storm of, like you said, new industrial properties, businesses, schools is just sort of, you know, it's just it's just creating, you know, sort of a gridlock situation sometimes.

The prices are about median with the rest of the area.

I would say so.

I mean, they're relatively affordable I mean, that's why there are so many young families moving to this area in our particular situation.

You know, we we looked all over the city and we had a hard time getting a house.

And we just are realtor actually just sort of suggested you should take a look at this out of town.

And again, we're we're happy there.

The homes are affordable.

And and now you're just starting back in person working, which is driving.

Right.

Well, good luck with that.

Thank you very much.

And welcome to San Antonio.

Less than a year.

Sam Boykin, editor in chief of the San Antonio Business Journal.

Again, that is infrastructure overload.

Check it out right now.

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

You can see the show, our previous shows, as well as the podcast at Calorie Board.

We'll see you next time.

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