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Hi, everybody.

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

I'm Randy Beamer.

And before we begin with a number of timely, important topics here in San Antonio, we just wanted to take a moment to say that our thoughts and prayers are with everybody out in the Valley.

I've covered stories for decades out there, and it's such a tragedy and it's also such a shame that they have to be spotlighted for this right now.

But want to let you know that down the road we would be touching on different topics aspect of that story.

But as it's developing right now, we're going to move on with the show we had planned and some of those topics.

First of all, joining us is Mario Bravo, councilman, district one.

And just wanted to mention that San Antonio is sending has already sent, you know, police and fire and bomb squad and whatever out to help we have.

Randy, it's really tough to watch this.

These situations play out with no new policy reforms being proposed by our federal or state government.

I can say as a councilman, what we've done so far is we've we're flying our flag at half, half mast at the field office.

And we reached out to the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center to see how we can support their efforts.

But it's tough to watch without any new policy proposals on how we can fix this.

Yeah, it's tough for a watch for anyone.

I was at Santa Fe, the school shooting there in Sutherland Springs.

And, you know, it's sad deja vu, but our hearts, our prayers and thoughts are with you all.

Moving on now we're talking about redistricting that's going on right now in San Antonio.

We think of redistricting at the state level for congressional districts, state representative districts.

But here in San Antonio, we have to do it because of the different population movement through the city.

You're in district one we generally think of as downtown, but it's going to be growing and shrinking just because of the way it works this time.

Where are we in the process of redistricting?

Well, yeah, I think some districts are going to shift.

The city council district, one was found to be about 19,000 residents short of the average of where they need to be in the last census.

And so we have to grow there.

We city council has decided to try to stay out of the redistricting process.

So we've appointed citizens and there's a process that they are going through and they've had a series of meetings and they only have one meeting left before they will take a final proposal of a new map to go to city council for an up or down vote.

And that will be those will be the new districts for the 20, 23 race.

And now District one and District five especially didn't grow nearly as fast as the far northwest side districts, north side districts, which is why we have to have this redistricting.

Were you surprised by that?

We think of downtown as you know, growing there was the decade of downtown was talk about growth.

Did that surprise you in any way that it wasn't growing as fast as that other area?

It didn't surprise me in downtown is growing, but it's not growing at nearly the rate that the far north side is.

And so that's why district one is going to have to grow up further north.

We already went outside of Portland just a little bit over by the airport, over by Castle Hills, Balconies, Heights.

But we're going to grow a little bit further north now.

And that's according to the latest map.

But you're still getting input on that.

You will.

The citizens committee is getting input on that.

That's right.

And it's different than before.

I wanted to mention that is because it used to be, I don't say behind closed doors, but it used to be basically politicians.

Drawing their own districts, drawing.

Their own districts.

And you wanted to totally stay away from that.

I think that's a bit this is a better process that we have now.

And now there was talk about Brackenridge Park.

It has been between council districts one and two.

And so everything around it was basically split.

This time.

It looks like it's going to be different.

How is it going to be different?

It looks like all of district, all of Brackenridge Park is going to go to District one at this point.

I think one of the neighborhoods that's nearby and that's affected by a lot of issues, whether parking issues, traffic issues, noise issues there went and spoke up and asked for it to be in District one and you know, the committee voted for that and there's still one more meeting.

So the map is not final yet, but that's where we that's where we are right now.

And there was talk about this because most of the council members have stayed out of this.

Jalen and Keith Rodriguez, District two had been OK with at the beginning and then said, no, he was thinking that it shouldn't be because he wanted to have more input to make park and and some of the other resources government hill in that area.

But it was because they were resources in the area, not particularly voting blocks that he wanted to change.

Yeah.

And my understanding is there's about in that area that's that was proposed to be shifted there maybe around 400 residents.

So there are some residents but maybe the concern is some of the the assets that are in that area.

And you know, I think that's just a reflection of Councilman Winky Rodriguez listening to his constituents.

They maybe stepped in and said, no, no, we want to hold on to that.

And so that's him, you know, listening to his residents.

And now because you're next to District five, you're shrinking in a way that we wouldn't think because you think of downtown district one, but you're going to lose it, at least at the last map.

It looks like city hall in that area.

West.

Right?

Yeah.

So basically, I think from west of Solidot, under the I-10, I 35 split a lot of that area going down just a little bit past civil street is what under the current map is going to district five.

So you know the near west of downtown a lot of that area.

So H-E-B headquarters on Arsenal, like you said, city hall market at Square, a lot of those would be going over to District five.

So, you know, you win some, you lose some.

I think Councilman Mickey Rodriguez is not happy about what some of what he's losing on that on the on the current map.

I'm not happy about some of what I'm losing for district one on that.

District six and five.

There have been some on the other side of the far west side.

That's been an issue as well.

Sure.

And so but the bottom line is there's still one more meeting to have your voice heard.

So if you don't this this coming Tuesday at 2 p.m.

I think it's actually at City Hall.

And so if people do want to weigh in on that, they can submit their comments ahead of time.

They can call in or submit them online or they can show up for that meeting and and let the citizens committee that's going to be voting on the final map, let them know how you feel.

And speaking of Brackenridge Park as we were the plans for renovation there, where are we now?

And that part of it was put on hold for a time because of the tree issue.

So it hasn't been put on hold.

It's just been slowed down because we weren't following the standard process and it and we wanted to make sure that we had opportunity for more citizen input now that the final plan was put out and so people could weigh in on that.

And so at first, the city committed to three town hall meetings.

Then at the first meeting, they heard a lot of that that a lot of the community was unhappy with the process for the town hall meetings.

And they said, we're going to add one more meeting.

My understanding is that last night's town hall meeting, they decided to add two more.

So now we're going to six meetings for public input.

But there they have to go ahead basically where there's is from the 2017 bond issue.

And there are some other things that really don't affect or won't affect trees or nearly as many trees that have to be done pretty soon.

Yeah.

And I don't think adding these extra meetings is going to change the timeline.

You know, we were going to have to wait until probably November if you didn't get it done, if you didn't get the work done that they were hoping to get earlier on before these birds came in.

They're migratory birds they'll leave around October and November.

And so you can't no matter what we decide on, you can't start until then anyway.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Mario Bravo, councilman, district one.

Appreciate you coming in and explaining all this to us.

Thanks for having me.

With all the development going on in the Hill country right now, there's concern about the environmental impacts.

And we've heard about water being affected what that means.

But we haven't really talked much about light and how light pollution is affecting things in the hill country.

And also affecting basically threatening the economy in some ways here in San Antonio.

Joining us to talk about that is Don Davies, Night Sky program manager of the Hill Country Alliance.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

How bad is it?

And we'll say how bad, but what is the development doing in terms of light pollution in the San Antonio area?

In the Hill country, especially.

Right now, we're making advances to work on amending certain things like the military lighting overlay, district ordinance and improving the lighting that will better of the environment will better the use of the general area for the military purposes.

They are doing other various initiatives, improving lighting in parking areas, parking structures, and overall supporting the movement towards night sky preservation.

When we talk about light pollution, some people might say, what?

What is that.

Exactly.

Years ago, 2008, I think it was it was a big deal in San Antonio because the military was talking about with a Camp Bullis at Camp Stanley could stay because their night training was going to be affected.

When you talk about light pollution across the hill country, what does that mean and why should we be concerned about it?

So a light pollution is is it's they artificial light from exterior lighting fixtures that casts glow into the night sky into the surrounding areas and impacts every living creature, whether it's humans, wildlife, plant life across the whole country, regardless of whether it's in a metropolitan area or a rural community.

And it's not just, you know, affecting astronomers that they can't see certain stars of the Milky Way wherever you are.

But it affects us in a lot of different ways or we don't think.

About it affects human health.

It disrupts our circadian rhythm, our ability to create and maintain melatonin.

It interferes with the migration of birds especially in this region of a high migratory passage.

It interrupts plant life cycles.

It interrupts the mating cycles of fireflies it affects every living species.

And right now in San Antonio, they're working on the unified development code.

They're updating that.

And you said also here that there is something called the Sentinel Landscape, which is the first in Texas.

What is that?

So the Campbell is set.

A landscape was designated earlier this year and sent landscapes are coalitions between the Department of Interior, Defense and Agriculture, along with non governmental agencies and also state and local agencies in an effort to utilize and preserve the land in military installations that are not being used for military buildings, structures, training.

And so forth.

So it's working with private landowners and with the military and with other various nonprofit organizations to improve the water flow, to improve the riparian corridors, to overall maintain and hopefully restore a lot of the natural environment, including night sky.

And the night sky.

The buffer zone in terms of what people can or should do around the military bases here, as you said, three miles, in some cases five and others.

There are two different zones.

The first is from the military installation three miles out and then five miles out.

And that's to ensure that their ability to conduct nighttime training is not hindered by some of the lighting coming from further in the city.

And you said there are four, five now communities in the Hill country that are designated as, I don't know, the official designation.

And what does it mean?

They're international dark sky communities.

So what that means is those communities have made a concerted effort to have a lighting ordinance that has night sky preservation take into consideration.

So proper temperature shielding and direction and just overall education and outreach their community to express the importance of night sky preservation and why it's necessary for us as a society moving forward.

What can the average person do?

We you're talking about the color temperature if you use warmer lights outside as well as aim them down, that does make a difference.

Absolutely.

Starting at home, take a look at the lighting you have on your exterior of your home or your place of business making improvements.

If it's swapping out light bulbs, if it's swapping out fixtures and then just communicating, spreading the word, talking to your neighbor.

A lot of this is a grassroots movement.

We can make changes at the city level in ordinances and improvements, but a lot of it is just getting the word out because light pollution is not as common knowledge as air pollution or land or water pollution is.

It's still fairly new in our general scheme of things.

With four or five now different communities in the Hill country, including Blanco is burning, is looking at it.

There's a lot of them that are looking at least trying to do something to.

Exactly, exactly.

They're looking at either updating their ordinances or the very least making resolutions to put an extra step forward in becoming more night sky compliant or at least aware.

Well, thank you very much.

It's something a lot of us don't think about.

We think about development but we should.

Don Davies, nice guy, program manager of Hill Country Alliance.

And I guess you can find more information on Hill Country Alliance Talk.

Correct.

Thanks very much.

Thanks so much for having me.

What would you like to see?

The city of San Antonio spend maybe more money on or less money on while the city is getting ready to prepare a budget right now.

And you can have your say.

Joining us now to tell you, how is Laura Maze, who is the assistant director for Communication and engagement of the city and city of San Antonio.

Thank you very much for talking with us.

Tell us, first of all, about where you are in the process and how easy it is for people to respond to, I guess, survey, but to make suggestions about the budget for next year.

Well, thank you so much for having us, Randi.

The city budget is one of the most important things that city council will consider each year.

It's the roadmap for city services over the next fiscal year.

We're early in this process.

We've gotten input from the city council on what their priorities are, including property tax relief, street, metro health, those kinds of city services.

But now we need input from our residents.

We have a very quick survey that takes less than 5 minutes and residents can speak up dot com or call 311 to share with us what their highest priority services are and what their lowest priority services might be as well.

And now we think of budget input because we see town hall meetings maybe on TV, and you're going to have those as well coming up.

But how many people now are getting involved online?

More and more every year.

More and more every year.

We've been really fortunate to see more residents involved in the policymaking process, especially as it relates to the city budget.

Each year we get more feedback from more than 10,000 residents, and we hope to make that even more so if you take the survey.

Be sure you share that with your friends and your family.

You're never too young or too old to take the survey.

And that's what we've made it really easy to participate, whether it's Speak Up dot com or 311.

Kids can even get involved too, if they'd like to.

And now also we're talking about those meetings that are coming up and you have them by district.

You've had one out of a ten so far more next month.

Sometimes it seems as a reporter looking at it that it's the Squeakiest wheel, maybe the loudest voice that gets the attention.

But I would guess that the survey gives you such a broader spectrum that it I don't want to say dilutes that, but gives you a better picture.

Absolutely.

The survey is one of the easiest ways that you can share your input.

And we know not everybody has the time to come out to a town hall meeting.

So if you don't have time to go to the town hall and know that your feedback is still really valuable and as simple as logging into that survey on Speaker Dot com or calling 311 and your input makes a huge difference.

If you are able to share with us what your council district is as well, because each because each of your council offices will get a custom report to show exactly what their constituents are asking for.

And we know that the priorities might vary whether you live in District two or in District ten.

And so every bit of input that you share with us is really important to making a difference in the policymaking process.

Now, a survey is great when you list what you know out of a certain group the things you like and don't like.

How about if somebody wants to bring up something specific?

Is there a way they can do that on that survey as well?

Absolutely.

That's a great question.

The categories that you see when you can select your top five city services or your lowest priority city services, we also have a question that's open ended Is there anything we've missed?

Is there anything that we should include?

And that feedback is really critical to us because it gives us a lot more of a perspective in what our residents want in each of those council districts.

All right.

Well, you can find out more information.

Essays Speak Up dot com.

Right.

That's right.

Or call 311.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

I almost promoted you.

It's assistant director, not assistant city manager for communication and engagement, but maybe next year.

Thank you very much for coming in and talking with us.

Laura Maes, thanks Joining us on Reporters Roundtable this week, the perfect person to tell you about the next big thing in San Antonio, because he is a musician he is an editor in chief.

He is a reporter, knows everything there is to know about music and entertainment.

That is Sanford Nowlan of the San Antonio Current.

Thank you very much.

Chicky baby oversold that a little.

Well, I said it in the prompter, so I had to read it.

We're talking about the tech center, an arena that's right down at Port San Antonio.

And this is just I remember hearing about it when they were building.

It was just basically EA Sports.

And the old people were saying, well, it's EA Sports, but there's a bunch of concerts now coming to this you had Smashing Pumpkins.

You get Papa Roach this weekend.

You'll have a WBC championship fight next month.

How big is this?

Well, it's in terms of the arena itself, it's 3200 seats.

And it's an interesting facility in that, as you mentioned.

Yeah, EA Sports is one of the key things they do.

And the other key thing they do is, is have concerts and presumably they could, you know, have fights, they could have business, you know, business gatherings et cetera.

But that 3200 seats.

And I think one of the reasons you're seeing it hosting so many events and we can get to some of the others is that that 3200 seats puts it in kind of a sweet spot in terms of San Antonio concert venues right you've got downtown facilities like the Tobin Center, the Majestic Tobin has about 800 seats, Majestic has 2300, but they have to pass up on acts that are going to be bigger than that.

Right.

And then the next until Tech Sports Center opened, I mean the next step up was Freeman Coliseum with 12,000 in the AT&T center with 18,500 if I'm remembering correctly.

So they really are kind of located in a in a sweet spot and increasingly I think we're seeing a world where music is divided up into subgenres in a manner that there aren't a lot of acts that can fill the AT&T center and the Fremont you know there especially when it comes to I think a lot of rock acts we're not seeing, you know the big touring those just they're going to Houston and Dallas or but there's there's just not that many up right stones went to Austin that was last year and there's just a finite amount you're not seeing the people that are coming up to be the next Stones, the next Metallica, the next Eagles.

Elton John, et cetera.

They're not drawing at that scale.

So that's part of what we're seeing there.

The other thing that I think is interesting, I mean, is this this arena is being managed by ASEM Global, which is out of LA, one of the biggest concert venue management companies in the world.

So that's some prestige.

And it's also being booked by Tobin Entertainment, which is the Tobin Center's concert promotion arm.

Right.

And from talking to those folks, they said, look, we're constantly at the Tobin being presented with the opportunity to present this artist or that artist.

But, you know, if we have the symphony, you know, when they're playing in the Tobin that night, we can't do it.

Or if, you know, they want to sell more than 1800 tickets, we can't do it.

So they're, they're looking at this as an opportunity to push some stuff in there.

I mean, and I think that's where the Carla Morrison gig came from, where the Smashing Pumpkins gig came from.

And then they, you know, are willing to work with other promoters as well.

And how much of it is the technology, the local area network?

It's supposed to have the highest Internet.

I mean, and just it's been billed as that.

It is the thinking is or the young people are going to be there.

There's also VIP experiences.

There's retractable CNAME I think everybody knows those VIP experiences now.

But what I think makes Tech Port Center interesting is that it really is one of the few and one of the first EA sports facilities that was built from the ground up for EA Sports.

Right.

A lot of the others are basically retrofitting an existing arena or auditorium or whatever.

So yeah, the technology I think is pretty important for the for the folks who are going to go there to play EA Sports.

They've got a TV studio on site.

And as you know, these these things get streamed all over the world.

They've got very robust Internet, they've got very robust wireless because everybody wants to take a selfie at these things and.

Right.

You know, and it's going to got to be video, right?

So so you don't have to have it hire a separate company to come in to put cameras up.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

You know, and the other thing, too, I hear from from a concert promotion standpoint that's neat is they actually have bays where people can pull in multiple trucks to unload gear, which some of the older you know, if you've ever been down there at the Majestic or the acoustic where they're having a show and wedged into an alley and the roadies are trying to work stuff in and off of there.

Yeah.

So I think I think that's a selling point, too.

And they've got these cool Tesla coils that light up, you know, during events.

You know, it's the whole thing is really kind of interesting because it's been developed by the Port San Antonio people who are overseeing the transformation of the former Kelly Air Force base into a business park.

And the CEO, Jim, back you know, his vision for Tech Port Center is for it to be sort of the magnet that draws people from other parts of San Antonio, even other parts of the region, because some of these concerts and some of these EA Sports events are going to draw people from all over the state.

Right.

But the idea is to basically raise the profile of Port of of Port San Antonio, which is kind of off in the southwest quadrant of the city that a lot of people don't travel to.

It's a former Air Force base, which obviously you don't build right on the highway and put up gyms next to.

Right.

You know, but it's easy to get to.

You just go out Highway 90 and down General Hood now.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is funny because I've heard I've heard people and seen people online say, well, I'll never go to a concert there.

I'm not driving all the way to the South Side and it's like, it's not that far.

It's, you know, it's not really far off of the AT&T.

So yeah, it's a pretty good accident.

From what I've seen.

It's easier to access in the AT&T center during a Spurs game, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

So as a music guy, as a old, not old as a seasoned, the band member, sorry, we'll cut that out so you don't have the crowd.

You're going to leave it in.

I'll own it.

Tell me what it means for San Antonio in terms of getting some of those place bands that we used to have to go to Austin for or even Houston.

Dallas, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there are the interesting thing there is that, you know, if you if you look at why we get passed up sometimes, I mean, there are, you know, myriad reasons.

But one of them is, you know, if you've got an act that that's that's that size, it's looking to sell, you know, 2500 seats to, you know, 3200 seats, you know, if they didn't have an opportunity to do it downtown and you know, the Tobin or the Majestic or the Aztec, which you know, again, pretty limited seating, you know, chances are they're going to have to move on down the road, you know.

So this is kind of a nice spot for them to be in where I think there are a lot of touring acts, you know, Boys to Man is headed there smashing.

Probably knew you were going to mention Boys to men.

They might mention Papa Roach or Lex Diamond maybe.

Yeah, that's right.

Michael Schenker Group yeah.

OK, thanks very much.

The music guy, editor in chief of the San Antonio Currant rolled all into one.

Thank you very much for coming in.

So pleasure.

About that.

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

You can see this show again or any other shows we've had as well as a podcast.

Just go to klrn.org, and we'll see you next time.

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