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 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 On the Record, and I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week we are starting with an issue, the Secretary of State's office and Bexar County and, the software of voting systems.

They're having some issues with again, here to tell us all about that is Tommy Calvert precinct for a county commissioner.

Thanks for coming in.

Great to be back.

First of all, there's now this conflict between the county and with the secretary of State's office specifically.

Explain that.

Well, many people were impacted by not getting their voter registration cards.

And that's because the secretary of state's office has a, teams software created by a company called civics that had many voter data inaccuracies, delays and what have you.

It caused as well, a 77,000 person backlog.

There was about 70,000 voter registrations that were delayed.

Back in the November state election and then another 7000 that we had to clean up.

We've spent $450,000 of the county to clean up.

And prior.

To now, on the state side, they said to even back up a little, further, the software that Bexar County was using for years, that company went out of business.

And so you had to find more or less at the last minute, a way to fix that before the fall.

And you had to go to the state system before you now have a new contract coming up.

Yeah.

There's only two private sector vendors who were certified to do election software.

As you mentioned, Vote Tech went out of business.

The only one left is VR systems.

Traditionally, the secretary of state system has been for small counties.

It just is not as robust in usability and also the quantity.

But even for small counties, the elections administrators and county clerks across the state of Texas have been screaming to change and go to the private sector, because they're having delays.

And those specific delays are, for example, with the private sector vendor VR systems, we can input 35 registrations per hour.

With the state system, we were only inputting about eight, in an hour.

And that is just not acceptable.

Where we're at right now is a CSV file.

Is not able to be exported so that we can get from the Secretary of state our most recent data voter lists and put it into the VR systems.

The.

Just to use a different kind of file, is that and again, that sounds complicated to a lot of people, a CSV versus what you.

Use, we'll see is no CSV is a is a pretty standard text file that most of us.

It's one of your most basic files, which makes it, mind boggling why it's taking so long to export a text file.

Yes, there are signature data and images that also need to be exported, but it seems to me that the Secretary of State should be taking to task the computer developer civics for not having a functional program that makes it, a export, ability.

But now, the problem right now is and that was in the past, I guess.

But after the, earlier the spring elections now and the registrations for that, the Secretary of State's office wasn't responding to the county after the county wanted to set up a timeline for getting the rest of it.

Yeah, they marry hand in hand with what I just said.

And that you have, Secretary of State's office who isn't holding their vendors accountable.

Our, analysis and our our research of how long this should have take taken is about two months, at the latest to get a computer programmer to get the program properly developed.

In fact, VR systems, who services states and counties all across the United States, said this is the longest export that they've seen anywhere in the United States.

They started trying to work with a small county, Kaufman County, in August.

Nine months later, they still don't have the records, and the secretary of State is using the excuse that all these other counties are ahead of you, and we put money in place to help you before.

Well, we put three times as much money, almost four times as much money into fixing this.

And they did, in.

Essence, the state Secretary of state's office, Jan Nelson, they sent you a letter saying, well, we spent 100,000 last year.

You didn't compensate for that.

Now you want us to change the timeline and put in extra work.

And they basically are blaming Bexar County and the elections office here.

What do you say to that?

Another load of crap.

And they need to have the same, constituent service attitude that I do.

And that is that when our constituents are not getting their voter registration cards, when our elections clerks are not able to input from the state's, system, new voter registrants, when we are having a backlog of thousands of people, all rights derived from voting rights and what the public needs to be concerned about right now is what a Harvard University political scientist recently called, the competitive authoritarianism where Viktor Orban in Hungary, he put his feet and his hands on the scales of the government in order to tilt as many things in their favor.

And the reason that that new registrants, for example, people registering because there's so many people who are concerned about what's going on with the country, they're no longer sitting on the sidelines and so, we are concerned that there is an intention to drag feet and not have the you.

Think it's the Republican administration, the secretary of state's office, intentionally slowing voting in a blue?

I've had an eye for the whole state, and I've lost, the benefit of the doubt.

We're living in a time where $1.8 billion funds are going towards the president.

The whole of government is being used to tilt, to hold on to money and power.

Is this putting into question?

I mean, we're talking again about a November election.

The registrations for this basically with voter registration cards.

I mean, they're out for most people.

It's just a question of new voter registration.

There's multiple questions.

Of course, voter registrations could be, an issue in terms of getting them in.

Put it in this slow team system.

We've already experienced that.

The other thing is the fact that there are glitches in the system where in the primary, two mail ballots were being sent.

So this team system, normally you fill out two.

In my case, I would say I want a Democratic, ballot by mail.

It would send me a Democratic ballot by mail.

It was sending both the Republican and Democratic ballots to folks.

Now, it was captured by our election staff at Bexar County.

But what about counties that may not capture it?

Today, as we sit here, our elections administrator has indicated that it is now the glitch of teams, ordering 13 mail ballots.

That could call into question the entire election if these things are not captured by election, that's.

What you're worried about face in elections?

Yeah.

I mean, I didn't create these problems.

And the secretary of state, needs to be, staying on top of these things so that we don't have these things called into.

Question on their side.

They're saying, well, they should hold Bexar County responsible and accountable because you didn't have the foresight to to get a system that wasn't going to go out of business or you weren't using teams before.

I hadn't heard them say something about this business.

We can't control the poor economy with tariffs and all the kinds of constraints that are causing businesses to go out of business is, frankly, the Republican Party.

That's caused a lot of these businesses to go out of businesses.

But, there are the bottom line is they have entered into a contract with civics where they should have a functional election system that can export the data.

You've asked, Talarico, the Senate candidate, Gina Hinojosa, the, governor cannot on the Democratic side to possibly file suit over this.

I think it's time that a judge order that the time line that most, it experts agree a two month timeline to get this thing done.

We're looking at nine months in a small county.

Kaufman county's case, there seems to be a dragging the feet.

They need to either financially hold civics responsible and or the Secretary of state's software developer, or this team system.

And we need to get ahead of this.

We're already behind.

There appears to be, you know, a lot of smoke, and it's up to the secretary of state and perhaps a judge to put some of this out.

Some people are going to hear this and be confused.

Well, I already have my my voter registration card.

Is that not going to be able to work in the fall?

That's not the.

Issue.

That's not the issue.

We've gotten through that issue.

And you didn't necessarily need just a voter registration card to vote.

There are 13 other acceptable forms of ID to vote.

But, we're concerned about the amount of people who didn't get their mail ballots, whether or not there's shenanigans going on with the Trump administration and the Postal Service with mail ballots.

We are concerned about this team system, potentially not in Bexar County, but in other counties having this glitch where it's sending more than one mail, the potential to send more than one mail ballot.

That's a big problem.

And that's why elections administrators and county clerks are crying out to get these private sector vendors.

It's not our fault that the Secretary of State hasn't held their vendor accountable.

And this only affects them.

The people who would try to register between now in the fall.

This affects everybody.

Because if you have people who are registering in the will of the people is not counted.

This affects everybody in terms of results.

And if you have multiple mail ballots that go out, then you've got a huge scandal that could potentially erupt in Texas politics.

What do you think the timeline will be?

The Secretary of State's responded to your letter or and then you want you want them to agree to the timeline that you have?

I think I think the timelines at this point up to the courts, I think it's where in the courts we are winning against, that kind of obstruction and the kind of, skirting around the following of the law.

And I think the courts are going to have to end up settling this, because I think they're just going to drag their feet.

With Bexar County.

Not specifically.

He's going to sue the state.

It's a possibility.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

We'll see what happens here.

Tommy Calvert, precinct for county commissioner.

Thanks for coming in.

Good to be.

Here.

The San Antonio Police Officers Association and the police union has a new president, just as of last week.

And next week, we're going to sit down at the table again to work on a contract with the city.

And here to join us now is Johnny Perez, who is the new, president.

You were vice president of the Police Officers Association.

Thanks for coming in.

First of all, are you going to, I don't want to say.

Are you going to be a different president than Danny was?

Or how do you see yourself in the union and whether there will be any changes?

I don't see any major changes.

I am going to follow some of the things that Danny did.

I mean, he was a mentor to me.

I've known Danny many years.

But there was five presidents before me, including Danny.

So just kind of a culmination of learning everything that each president has done up to now.

I think I'm going to, you know, look at everything they've done, seen what's worked, what hasn't worked, and and put that together for myself.

I won't be 100%.

Just like Danny won't do everything like he did.

But, you know, he did a lot of good things for our union.

And so, you know, I want to take that with me.

As I. As I move forward with.

And you're coming in, exactly when we're in the middle or you're in the middle of negotiations with the city.

Now, in the past, people think, well, there were some pretty contentious, negotiations, the evergreen clause in the battle over that, that kept the old contract.

That was, what, five years ago?

Yes.

And so you're coming in at the end now of that five year period?

That was pretty contentious, I guess.

Said dates back to Cheryl Scully or in those days or one of those contracts.

Well, I think well, this the contract that we are in currently, it wasn't Cheryl Scully but before the contract.

Before.

Yes.

A very contentious, you know, the president at the time and and the city manager show Scully just didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things.

You know, he had to stand up for the membership at that time.

And, you know, that's how he felt.

Best to do it.

Our last contract Danny was a part of.

Now, Eric Walsh is a part of this one, Maria Gomes.

They did get a contract in record time.

It was a little bit contentious.

Just not as contentious as it has been in the past.

How are these talks going?

They started a few months ago and then paused for a while.

You know, they started a few months ago.

We, you know, it was everything was going great.

I think we've even had comments from media like, you know, why there's no fireworks, why aren't there any fireworks?

But that's not how we want to operate.

We want to be able to work with the city, let them know that, hey, we want to be fair to the community, but also fair to our members and to the officers out there and work towards getting a good contract for the both of us.

What are the big issues this time and the sticking points?

Because I understand out of 16 points you've resolved seven or something.

Like that, I think.

Well, the major sticking point and what made us pause for a second is just, the offer that they put on the table as far as monetary wise went.

It was it was something far away from what we, first presented.

We understand that they were going to counter to our offer.

We just weren't, expecting them to counter so low compared.

To what is it, a percentage wise or what are they looking at, 3% a year or five.

Yeah.

And we try to do it a little differently this year.

So, our original proposal was 3%, each year, in October and in April, it would be a dollar raise, $1.

The first year of the contract, $1 the second, and then $2 the third year of the contract.

Plus the 3%.

Yes.

So for, you know, for it it was more to help bring our, our officers or our younger officers, the newer officers kind of, you know, bring them a little bit more up to par to how how they're getting started across the state and other departments.

The city came back with their counter and it was two and a half, three, three.

And then I think it was a quarter $0.25 the first year, $0.25 the second year, and then a dollar the third year.

And that was something that was just too low for us.

We weren't going to fight about it.

We weren't going to get up and pound the table and say, you know, we're out of here.

We're not talking anymore.

We we explained to them that that was something that we could not bring to our membership.

And, you know, we decided to pause.

In the past the contentious and the big maybe in the Cheryl Scully days was insurance and whether the city would pay for all the insurance and for all the dependents.

That is an issue.

Now.

We're not it's not it's not a huge issue.

But there is some insurance, there's, you know, there's rising costs with insurance for everyone.

Right?

And, I think the city, they have they they haven't put out a whole proposal on how much they want to raise insurance rates for us.

I think our membership, what we've done, we've done a good job, with with the insurance that we have from our previous contracts, doing a good job of being, you know, better about spending on our insurance, with the HSA plan and things like that.

A lot of our a lot of our members are on those plans.

And, you know, there's not a premium with that, but they, you know, they have to make sure that they're doing their, their best to, you know, save money.

How about losing officers to other departments where they're paying more?

Danny Diaz was in a while back and he talked about that as a problem for San Antonio police, as well as trying to get young people to him.

Yeah, that's I think that's the competitiveness.

You know, we're all everyone in the States kind of fighting for the same pool of people to become police officers.

When you have Houston and Dallas getting these huge raises, it attracts young people.

I mean, anyone that's just maybe just starting a family, just out of college, you know, early 20s, you're looking for that money to get started with your life.

And we want to just be competitive with that and that.

And we have lost candidates to that.

People are going to apply there.

I mean, when, you know, even with federal agencies coming in and offering huge signing bonuses, you know, that's taken from some officers that they see that big, huge signing bonus that they'll be able to get and they'll apply there before they come here.

Is that still an issue with Ice?

I know they've lost a number of officers here.

I'm not sure.

Is it?

Are you still losing officers or potential officers to that?

I'd have to.

I don't know exact numbers.

We have lost some officers that they are leaving.

A lot of it is.

Some of it is not to other agencies.

Some of them, they're just leaving because, you know, it's a different time now than than when I came on.

People have degrees now.

They have.

They're coming.

They're coming to apply to the police department with a bachelor's, even some with a master's degree.

Back when I started, a lot of us, we had high school diplomas, and we wanted to be police officers.

We wanted to get into this work and make it a career.

You know, no fall to the younger people or anyone coming in now, but sometimes I look at it as a stepping stone to move on somewhere else.

People with bachelor's degrees that can't get another job.

So they look at this as a second option instead of a career.

I believe.

So, I mean, I can't I can't put any words in anybody's mouth about that.

But I think that's, you know, as hard as competitive is to get any job in any career with a bachelor's degree alone.

Police, police departments are hiring all the time.

And, and when a young person sees that, hey, maybe I can be a policeman.

I can do this job even with my bachelor's degree.

Maybe I can do this.

And until I find something better.

You know, I think we are seeing some of that.

What about the timeline of the contract in the talks?

You have to have a contract by.

So we have.

It's 60 days.

You have to do it within 60 days.

From the day you start negotiating.

But we were able to file extensions.

And as long as the two parties agree to file an extension, that's what we do.

And so that's what we did after, our last time when we paused, we filed extensions, two extensions, which are 15 day extensions, which puts us to this the end of the month here.

And that's why we're getting back.

But that's the contract or a contract negotiation deadline.

Right.

When does the contract come before our contract?

In September 30th of this year.

Do you think it will be done by then?

I believe so, I think I'm pretty confident that it will be.

I think, both sides are motivated to get it done, before this contract expires.

And you still have, I guess I don't know, more than a dozen issues to deal with.

The biggest one is just pay.

Yeah, I think that's the biggest one right now.

That's the one we're going into next week with, that's the biggest one.

There will be some talks about health insurance and whether premiums need to be raised, or anything like that, but that's going to get tied into to the pay.

All right.

And it's also a three year contract this year instead of, the five year contract.

Why is that?

Well, we on our end, we, we came with the three year contract knowing that you know, we know there's talks of deficits with the city.

Right.

You know, we we want to be cognizant of that.

We want we're not here to be shown to be that we're greedy and that we just want money.

But we do deserve to have raises.

We feel like a three year contract just helps us get that done early, and then we can go back and renegotiate for the next contract.

It doesn't lock the city in, doesn't lock us in for a long number of years, like a five year contract where the city has to worry about paying us after those, you know, you know, the whole five years.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

No fireworks yet, but that's okay.

Johnny Perez, president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

On our reporters roundtable this week, you may have seen the story in the San Antonio Express-News about billions of dollars flowing into downtown San Antonio.

The question is, do San Antonians want to live there?

And the reporter who wrote that story, Madison Esler of the San Antonio Express-News.

Thank you very much for coming in.

This is a fascinating story because you delve deeply into how much is coming in, what people are hoping for.

And then also, what people think who do live downtown and love it and what the rest of San Antonio respond to this.

So what, what are some of the key points of this that that you found?

First of all, I was surprised.

And literally the amount of money coming in.

Yes, it's a lot of investment that the city and the county are pouring into downtown and also of course, private developers.

You've got everything from Project Marvel, which includes the Spurs arena, the Convention Center expansion, redoing the Alamodome, a whole bunch of projects to the ballpark and the private development that's supposed to go around that to other improvements that they've periodically been making, such as remaking San Pedro Creek, into a linear park.

That was a big project.

So it's a lot of money, a lot of concentration, a lot of investment, both now and in the future.

I think the big question is, are they going to be able to bring more residents downtown?

A lot of apartments in the works, lot of apartments have been built the past couple of years as well as condos.

But a lot of San Antonians don't go downtown.

And so I think making downtown an appealing place for them is really the challenge.

And you talked about, some of the vacancy rates.

It goes back to Mayor Castro and the decade of downtown.

What kind of numbers?

The increase in numbers and apartments and condos for people that actually live.

About a quarter of the apartments are vacant.

That's in part because of something something that's happening across San Antonio right now, which is there were a lot of apartments built everywhere in the city in the wake of the pandemic.

Demand was very high.

Demand has since kind of fallen.

And so you've got an influx of new supply and demand is just not keeping pace.

And so it takes time to lease those buildings up.

But with downtown specifically, you're also talking about a higher price point.

If you're somebody who's price conscious or you want a bigger apartment for more money, you can get that in the suburbs.

A lot of landlords are offering concessions right now because it's a slower market.

So a month of free rent, waived fees, other things like that.

If you're downtown, you're going to pay what a lot of San Antonio is considered a premium because of where you're living, you're getting amenities, you're paying for the location.

But that's a hard sell for some.

And developers can't afford to drop the rents downtown so much that they're even without, you know, with areas that are outside downtown just because of the economics.

Yes.

Building downtown is expensive.

You're dealing with oddly shaped pieces of land.

Land costs are higher, construction costs are high.

Labor costs, construction labor, of course, true for the market.

But downtown is unique in terms of the size that you're typically working with and also just the demand.

There aren't as many buildings that you can point to when you're talking to investors.

As a developer and say, look, this building is doing well.

And now the pearl in that area into downtown and South Town, do they compete with what we literally think of as downtown's, because the Pearl area is still, you know, there's a lot of growth.

There are two are they experiencing the same kinds of, vacancies?

No.

Demand for living at Pearl is very high.

And you've seen both the development that the owner of Pearl has done there, but also just a ripple effect outward of a lot of other developers building apartments.

Those apartments seem to fill up very fast.

Oxbow development Group, which owns the Pearl, is working on more apartments because of that demand.

Those are some of the most expensive apartments in the city, and they fill up fast.

So I think in a case like that, really part of the appeal is the amenities that you have.

You've got restaurants, you've got bars.

You can walk along a nice stretch of the Riverwalk.

It's a different feel compared to downtown proper.

And same with Southtown developers downtown.

They want to see more of that, although we have more the bars and restaurants in the central city, but not places to work, right?

Not as many as they want.

Yes, there's not a concentration of companies downtown that are bringing a lot of employees into the center of the city who might want to live near work.

There's just not a lot of that.

And a lot of the businesses that are downtown are catering more to tourists.

You're probably not going to go to Ripley's Believe It or Not or a business like that.

If you're a resident coming in.

There are also quite a few vacant storefronts.

And the H-e-b, Southtown Market or whatever they call that they're South.

Flores is not what a lot of us are spoiled with in the rest of the city.

And that kind of amenity, the some and the traffic problems.

Are they trying to deal with those kinds of things?

I think the lack of a bigger grocery store is definitely a deterrent for some people who might want to live downtown.

And then there's parking.

There's a lot of parking.

Centro in the city recently did a study just looking at parking options.

And if there's enough, essentially when there are large events downtown and that indicated there is, but people don't know about it.

And so you have a perception problem of there's parking at a bunch of different price points, but if people can't find it and they don't know how to get there, and they're dealing with other construction downtown, that doesn't really matter.

Other construction, that's a big issue right now, even for people who live and work downtown.

Now, how much of that as a deterrent, you think?

And will that, ease as more construction is going on?

I mean, is planned?

A couple of the people I talked to who live downtown now said construction is a headache.

There's always been some construction of various kinds, but the projects downtown recently, like South Alamo Street and HemisFair and other other areas, has really dragged on.

And it's made it harder to navigate both in terms of a car if you're driving, but also if you're walking your dog or trying to get downtown other ways through scooters and like that will probably get worse if Project Marvel, all the pieces of Project Marvel happen.

But you also talked with, it was fascinating.

Some people who are living advertisements for living downtown, and they talked about how great it is.

Yes.

I think the urban lifestyle has a really a real appeal for a certain subset of San Antonians who really like aspects of living in a city.

They like that they don't have to take their car out of the driveway or out of a garage.

They can walk to meet their friends.

They can walk to restaurants and the like.

They go to HemisFair a lot.

There's some green spaces downtown that they enjoy.

And they also walk on the Riverwalk quite a bit.

We think of the Riverwalk.

I think it's pretty touristy.

The folks I talked to go to the Riverwalk all the time, and.

There's a lot of things in the works.

UTSA is going to bring 10,000 more students into the downtown core.

And with the ballpark, there's some massive developments there, or what I think of a massive 27 story building, apartments.

Yes.

I think developers and local officials are hoping that that UTSA expansion will bring a flood of students, faculty, staff into downtown who will want to live close to where they work and play.

The ballpark is pretty close to UTSA.

It's a little bit north, but that'll be surrounded by, at this point, more than 600 apartments in the first phase, as well as a hotel, and I'm sure that Western Urban is hoping that perhaps students will eat some of.

Those, but there's also parking just for them.

So people wonder, where are you Park?

Well, they're six eight story parking, in that building.

Yes, they've got parking built in and a lot of options within walking distance to.

But do people want to walk to parking?

That's another question.

Well, thanks for coming in and talking about this.

There's so much more I'd like to get to, Madison Esler knows everything there is to know about business and downtown San Antonio.

Thank you very much.

You can read her on the Express-News.

That's a paper as well as online.

Thanks you.

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

You can watch the show again.

You can watch any previous shows, download the podcast as well at KLRN.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

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