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.

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 Roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalists behind those stories.

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

I'm Randy Beamer.

A lot to talk about this week.

We do have the elections coming up, but we're not going to talk about that specifically on this first segment because we have Councilman District One Mario Bravo here.

But we're going to talk about this unusual or I should say, first of a kind investment in terms of housing help for the chronically homeless and what that means for the tax dollars that are going into this.

Thank you for coming in.

First of all, tell us about this this package that the city council approved recently and what it's going to do.

It's kind of unusual.

Oh, I'm glad to be here.

First of all, it's a lot of good news.

And what this is, is it's a triple win for our community.

This is it's permanent supportive housing recognizes that there are a subset of people who are homeless.

They're chronically homeless.

They likely have mental health issues.

They're unlikely to be able to hold a job, to be able to feed themselves and house themselves.

And so we are going to build permanent housing for them, and we're going to have on their on site case managers who are going to make sure that anybody who needs mental health medication has access to it, and they're taking it on a regular basis.

We're going to have onsite mental health counselors, onsite drug counselors.

And so what this does, it's a triple win because it allows people who are struggling to be able to have a home, to have shelter, a life of dignity and safety.

But it also helps remove individuals who might be creating disturbances out on the street in public from there.

And it's also a win because it saves taxpayer dollars, because when you don't have these disturbances on the street or we don't have somebody who's living in a place that's a lifestyle that's dangerous, then you reduce the burden on our emergency services and that saves taxpayer dollars.

What is the timeline on this in terms of we have three different sites.

One of them the county is helping with, right in your district.

But it's the city that's helping with on the east side and the southwest side, District two and three.

People might wonder, okay, I've seen some ground breaking on some different projects for housing.

That was part of the Bond project last year.

Where are we on this and how many people will help in those specific areas?

Well, since I've gotten into office in 2021, we've secured $43 million to help pay for this.

25 million came from the voters when they approved the bond.

So we want to thank them for that.

So we've secured the funding.

We put out a request for proposals in November of last year.

We got proposals and we just a few weeks ago, city council approved contracts.

And so they're going to start to build on the south side, on the east side.

And so we should have it up and running within two years.

And this is for chronically homeless and people might have seen other projects that are for those who need housing assistance.

This is not the same thing, right?

This isn't affordable housing.

This isn't housing assistance.

This is for people who have been homeless for over a year and likely have mental health issues.

And during the pandemic, there was a lot of publicity about the homeless in San Antonio and different ways of helping them and also the city, I believe, was either buying a hotel or setting up a hotel to help people like this.

Is this part of that same outreach?

No.

So.

So that would be transitional housing, right?

That's temporary.

While while you're on a waiting list to get permanent housing.

This is permanent housing.

And this has wraparound services to make sure that you have what you need to be able to be stabilized and safe.

And I know there's a lot of outreach, including with central San Antonio and others that have, I guess, ambassadors, if you will, that go into areas like downtown and just keep trying to get people out of that.

Is this where the pipeline is coming?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So know, when people are living on the streets, the chronically homeless, they they probably have a lot of trauma in their life.

They've they've lived a hard life.

They've encountered the government in ways maybe that was traumatic to them, or they might have been in the foster care system, they might have been in prison.

And so they have some need.

They might have PTSD, they have some kind of trauma and they don't trust others.

And so these individuals who are working for all these different either for the city or nonprofits working, doing homeless outreach, what they're doing is they're going out there and they're building relationships.

They're building trust over time so that they can get these individuals to get off the street and go into whether it's that transitional housing or hopefully eventually this permanent supportive housing.

And right now in some and I've talked to the people who do the outreach on the streets, or at least in the past couple of years, they were going to Sam Shelter and others, and it was hard to convince some people to go there.

Is this going to have people directly from the streets into this chronic housing?

Yes, absolutely.

So is that, you think, going to be one of the attractions for people who are on the streets who are either afraid or don't want to go to some shelter in those kind of places for a different reason?

Sure.

Sure.

You know, if somebody had a bad experience at one shelter, they may not want to go back.

But this is a new place.

And, you know, and this isn't hey, we're going to let you stay here for a few weeks while, you know, while we try and figure out the next steps.

This is this is going to be your home.

And SAM shelter.

Some people don't want to go there because there are too many for them.

Rules like no drinking and things like that.

How do you enforce this kind of thing in that context?

So permanent supportive housing is low barrier and so, you know, they're not going to be drug testing to be able to get in.

This is a housing first model.

We get you some stable housing and then we provide support services.

They're on site, mental health counseling, drug counseling, whatever it is you need.

And because recognizing that if you don't have a place to live, then it's hard to get you to focus on taking those next steps.

When is this going to be up and running in these three different projects, too, for the city?

So the one that the county is going to do will probably be ready to go in a year because that one that one will be done faster because they already own the apartment complex and they're just going to remodel it for the ones that the cities are doing.

Those are new construction.

And so those could be about two years.

All right.

But, you know, they're contracted out.

And so as soon as these are up and running, that's when people are going to start to see real progress in their neighborhoods and downtown.

And getting people off the streets or a better.

Place.

Absolutely.

Well, thanks very much, Councilman Mario Bravo.

District one.

Thanks.

Glad to be here.

Next week, the new schedule for the San Antonio Philharmonic is going to be announced.

I guess you could call that a replacement for the San Antonio Symphony.

Been in the works for a while.

They've been planning for a year and to a lot more people than you would expect or may have heard of one of the board members, Roberto Trevino is joining us now, who is an architect, a pilot, all those things.

But I didn't realize that you were the board member.

And in this is one of those things that as a former council member, a big supporter of the arts you have been working on for a while.

You know, the the frustrations of of funding this symphony.

Where are we in that now and that schedule?

Well, thank you for having me on.

And any attention we can bring to the now the Philharmonic, as you as you mentioned, this used to be the San Antonio Symphony.

It has now received a new name.

We had to reorganize under a new name because the San Antonio Symphony went bankrupt.

And this is the same musicians.

And so we've had an incredible inaugural season, a successful inaugural season, many, many packed houses and incredible concerts.

Great, great planning, great work from from this board.

And the musicians themselves.

So we're looking forward to another season, which will be announced next week.

And we're very happy to say that the investment that people have put into this Philharmonic has really has shown to really shine through.

There was a lot of publicity during all the controversy about what the musicians wanted in the strike and the way it ended in the bankruptcy.

They wanted more musicians and more pay.

And so where since that's kind of dropped off the radar, some of the media where is it right now in terms of the number of the players?

Well, I'm happy to report that we have what's called a collective bargaining agreement.

So we've come to an agreement with the union about how this Philharmonic will be structured.

It's not about having more musicians.

It's about having the right number of musicians different symphonies require different numbers of musicians.

So if you artificially say, we're only going to have 48 musicians, period.

There's some symphonies that require much more than that.

So you will you will cheat the audience out of playing certain symphonies.

And so what we've done is we've said, look, we are going to organize so that we can play the the world class music that this city deserves.

And so by creating that structure within that collective bargaining agreement, I think we've we've really achieved something that hasn't been achieved in many, many years.

We talked about during the strike, I believe it was in the seventies in terms of numbers of musicians, and they wanted to cut that down to full time in the forties.

What are you looking at in terms of that collective bargaining agreement?

Well, what we're looking at is, is a right sized orchestra, so well, sometimes it's going to be as high as 72, sometimes it goes down to about 60.

It really depends on what the repertoire is.

What the music is, is, is going to be performed.

And so this is really an incredible opportunity for this organization, but also this community to get to benefit from world class music.

The support of the community has always been I mean, for 30 years, 40 years of a covered up and downs bankruptcy in the past, the strikes.

Where are you now on that?

And didn't all this publicity scare off some of the major people that you need to have fun This.

Actually the data doesn't show that the data shows that we've actually received more support from the community.

Again, as I mentioned, our inaugural season has been a hit.

We have gone out to the community.

What we've done is we've also listen to some of the concerns about, well, you know, this doesn't connect to my part of the city.

This is connect to my community.

We're in every corner.

And, you know, we provided a map to show that we have gone out and and provided free concerts for school age kids.

28,000 kids have received free concerts because of this philharmonic.

And so understanding that we have to also go out there into the community and provide that music and connect with people to to show them that they have a world class orchestra.

We have to sell it.

And where are you now in terms of getting the public support city, County and as well as the private, big, private?

Well, we have county support, so we received $325,000 from the county.

We're still waiting for the city.

The city there was a at least the way it was spelled out for us was that it was going to be a $650,000 contribution from the county and the city.

So we're waiting for the city to vote on on the $325,000 that they had committed along with the county to the Philharmonic.

We're waiting for those.

As far as corporate sponsorships, yeah, we we hope that, you know, they can see that we're very successful this season, that that this is a good investment in their community and hope to help drive some of those.

Funders because the public funding even if it is 625, you know you're still under a million total from city and county and and the budget was what, five or 6 million for the San Antonio Symphony in the past or needed to be for what they wanted to.

Do.

Yeah.

And in fact it was 8 million.

It was closer to 8 million.

And the and what we can say is that as I was part of the the county city task force to help us kind of structure this along with Mr. Kaiser in terms of what needs to happen to help support a symphony like this.

And we're following all those all those steps to to help sort of guide us into into that level of funding.

But we also need we, as you said, we need a lot of people to come in to to be a part of this, to help help with this.

We're currently playing at the First Baptist Church.

We really need to be in and a world class concert.

HALL Yeah, the Tobin, we're out of time, but where are we in terms of getting a different venue.

For the balls, the balls in the turbans court As far as we're concerned, we're we're we're going to keep looking for a place that that's going to help bring music to San Antonio.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Roberto Trevino, board member or San Antonio Philharmonic architect, pilot, where we're now we're really out of time.

Thanks very much for coming in and good luck with it.

Thanks.

Coming up in about a week, there's going to be a seminar about the future of one of San Antonio's, I guess you could say coolest areas, I would call it that.

It is a close to five acre part of Brackenridge Park, technically called Mira Flores.

And here to tell us about where we are in the the long checkered history of this and in the push to really keep it alive renovated is and Elise Urrutia who is the great granddaughter of Dr. Urrutia who created this awesome space.

And it's just across from incarnate word if those people who don't know about it, first of all, where is it and how would you describe it?

It's located on Hildebrand behind what used to be the USAA building, and then was the Southwestern Bell Telephone building, and now is the Incarnate Word building.

And if you drive by on Hildebrand, you've known about or you're seeing it for decades, it was here since, what, the twenties and later.

Yes, he started building the garden in 1921.

And what is the latest on the push to keep it alive, to renovate it, as we've talked about for decades.

But it's been it's been tough for you.

Yes.

Well, I want to say that I think the biggest thing that's going on with Miraflores today is that it has really begun to capture the imagination of the San Antonio public.

This little five acre garden is no longer just this strange place that you drive by on Hildebrand and wonder, what the heck is that?

We've learned that it is a multifaceted work of art that has been sitting in our backyard here in San Antonio for a hundred years.

It was populated with art architecture, plants, landscaping, talavera benches and water features, nestled right up against the San Antonio River, very near to the headwaters there.

It was built by Mexican hands in mind and metaphorically, it reflects the vast history of Mexico, all the way from geologic time through Mesoamerican times up to the Spanish conquest and up to the Mexican Revolution, which, as you know, in 1914, my great grandfather came here from Mexico and in 1921 started this amazing garden and that's.

Why he was able to do this.

He wasn't just a prominent surgeon doctor in Mexico.

He was part of the government, really forced to leave a refugee, but a thought leader there as well.

And he had developed a garden in Mexico.

And this is an incredible place.

Or was how much of it is still there?

There's not a lot of it left.

And so one of the things that we are figuring out is that we really need a new plan for Mira Flores.

The city has owned it since 2006, and in 2007 there was a master plan.

But it's been 17 years and we are I am feeling like there needs to be some some changes in our approach to the restoration because at this point the garden is really disappearing and decaying faster than it can be restored.

And technically because the city owns it, it is a part of Brackenridge Park, but not open.

And you're hoping to get on to the Brackenridge Park Conservancy, their board or whatever their governing thing is.

What would you like next to happen for the city, for private patrons out there to help?

How can they help?

Yeah, well, there's a few things going on.

We're going to be having a panel discussion sponsored by the San Antonio Conservation Society coming up.

As you mentioned, we're going to talk there about the cultural and historical significance of Miraflores, but we're also going to do some outside of the box thinking, hopefully, about what restoration means for me to Flores and what are the obstacles and challenges for that place.

We're hoping this is going to be a first step in a new discussion about Mr. Flores.

And it's it's eventually going to take a lot of different kinds of people with a variety of skills and passions to breathe new life into this garden.

And in that vein, I did want to say that I'm forming a new group called Miraflores Amigos.

De Miraflores, which will be a citizen group that is going to advocate and work towards the restoration of Flores.

And I have done a story on this about a little over a year ago with you, and they had done some work the city had done or had some work done by experts.

Has there been much more done since then?

There's not been much more done since then.

The city has put up two commemorative columns that originally existed in the garden.

So that is something that has occurred.

But like I said, it's it's it's it's not moving fast enough to actually address the needs of the property.

Well, we're hopefully we'll put the story on that I did as well on the Keller and dot org website as my Facebook and it's still part of a longer thing on Brackenridge Park that I haven't forgotten about.

But good luck with that.

And again, I want to emphasize, the seminar is Saturday, May 13th.

That's right.

And there's more information about that on the conservation website S.A. Conservation dot org And for the Amigos de Miraflores Group, there's more information about that on my website.

Keen to all dotcom.

All right according to the dot com just from Quito not.

Keen to.

Quinta.

Quintero to.

Account off in my old age thank you very much And Elisa Urrutia amigos the amount of Flores and good luck with.

That thank you.

On Reporters roundtable this week we are talking schools and security as well as possibly some pay raises in the area and what's happening in the legislature in terms of funding to talk about all that is the fairly new education reporter of the San Antonio Report, Isaac Wines.

Thank you very much for coming in.

You wrote a story recently about something I think is it seems groundbreaking, at least for this area that the Northeast School district has approved funding for, I guess, security.

But in kind of a mystery way, even the trustees didn't know exactly what they were voting on.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, sure thing.

Definitely.

So.

Generally speaking, for any purchase, $50,000 or more school boards have to go through a bidding process where they put out a bid and different companies can compete for that product.

And that's meant to kind of make sure that taxpayers are getting the best deal.

And I think it was last week, the board of any east Northeast independent school district suspended that process in order to basically make a purchase for some sort of security product.

And they did not disclose to the trustees what the product would be during that special meeting, even.

To the trustees.

Even to the trustees.

Although you said they will be getting that information at a later date.

Yes.

I was told by a spokesman, a spokeswoman for the district, that they would be told in executive session at one of the upcoming meetings, but at that point they did already vote for suspending this procurement.

Process and obviously, school security getting a lot of attention right now from the legislature as well.

After you've Aldi, what are some of the things that are in the guidelines now from the state that schools try to implement?

Yeah, definitely.

And that's what really this came down to is the Texas Education Agency recently proposed new rules for school districts, and that has things like more secure doors, door locks, automatic door locks, higher fencing and fencing that can't be scaled and bulletproof glass or film on bottom floor windows.

And so they did put out a grant since obviously that's a very expensive thing to upgrade, especially for large campuses.

And so that is what the district will be using.

And that procurement process was the language they use was that there was the possibility of a violent incident on one of their campuses.

And so that's why they needed to, you know, suspend the process, get this product in order to get up to it.

And I know there's a new security director, I guess, in northeast that come from them.

And so they already had in the works this product that they were working on for sure, and bulletproof windows and things like that.

That's one of those things that I know they had been working on a did so in Northeastern Independent School District ten, 15 years ago after an incident.

They wanted bulletproof doors.

They wanted that kind of thing more, you know, workers, armed guards and things like that at schools.

Where are they in the process in this area?

You compared what's going on in northeast to some of the other school districts for sure.

So I think what I was mostly comparing was kind of the process through the procurement.

And, you know, other districts are also got this grant and, you know, we're going through the normal procurement process.

And so Northside, for example, so that they will be using this grant specifically on door alarms for their exterior doors.

But yeah, going back to the security director, a former Secret Service agent is who they hired, I believe, last year at some point.

And they really brought him after the Uvalde shooting to kind of specifically look at stopping, you know, incidents like that from occurring.

And so the superintendent did kind of assure trustees saying that this director had identified the product and said that it was the best product for for the district.

He'd done some other stories.

Obviously, education reporter Staff pay raises in, say, ESD, but tied to staff cuts so that they could pay for the pay raises.

Whether this is an unprecedented or I guess higher than ever pay raise, that's for sure.

At least in the last 25 years, the highest single pay raise.

And it's a pay raise that, you know, that gives a base 3% and then up to 9%, depending on how many years of service you had.

But they said starting as soon as the new superintendent, you know, started last year, they started looking at ways to kind of cut down the central office in order to pay teachers more, but also just to kind of stay financially solvent.

Esser funds the federal COVID relief dollars are going to be ending next year, and those have really kept school districts afloat for the last three years.

And so when those are ending, you know, districts are preparing for a fiscal cliff.

And so that was another reason most of the positions they got rid of were vacant positions that, you know, for one reason or another have been sitting vacant for some time.

And then they they made it clear it was not layoffs.

It wasn't a reduction in force because, you know, the positions were offered, other positions within the same department or else in some cases that were consolidated.

And I know you're also watching what's going on in the legislature, since it's not finalized or wait until after that is.

And hopefully you come back and explain all about that as well.

Thank you very much.

And I hope you like it here in San Antonio, Isaac Wines, education reporter of the San Antonio Report.

Thanks.

Thanks.

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

You can always watch any of our on the record shows.

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We'll see you next time.

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