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 Beemer 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.

Thank you for joining us for on the record, I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are starting with district two, Councilman Jalen Rodriguez.

Talk about a number of things, including what you have made headlines for this week, asking for a study about the effects, economic effects, as well as other effects of legalizing cannabis.

What that would mean to San Antonio and Texas.

Why make that one of the first things that we hear about after the election?

Absolutely.

I think, you know, we're coming off the heels of a very rough budget season in which we were navigating a deficit of over $100 million and having to make the decision between cutting services that our constituents rely on, which we did, and then raising property taxes, which we did.

And if there's an opportunity out there for a huge economic boom, I think in Texas that would be cannabis.

A huge economic boom.

How much do you think the city could make?

I won't speculate, but I imagine that what we would benefit most from would be because I think in Texas, we have a lot of opportunities for rural communities in a city like San Antonio, where we're one of the largest in the country.

We would see largely the impacts of of retail.

But also you have if you're looking at this threefold, there's the medical side of this where individuals are really reliant and they're not able to participate in in the economy because they show up to job interview with a compassionate use card and they're told, you know, glad you have that.

But if you test positive, we won't be able to hire you.

On the other side, you have young people who maybe they made a mistake and they had an edible, or they had something made that had cannabis in it, and now they have a felony.

They're not able to get financial aid to go to school.

They're not able to get certain jobs, they're not able to vote.

And that becomes a problem for a generation.

And then on the other side, it's you know, what opportunities are there for an industry like this in San Antonio and tourism, how many people travel to Denver, to Los Angeles or to DC or to New Mexico and benefit from from legalization?

What have you heard since then?

I understand veterans are very happy with this.

In fact, that's why Governor Abbott vetoed the bill that would have banned all THC last year.

Yeah, I think I've heard largely I thought it would be.

And there's been a balance of of response.

Largely people are excited about the opportunity for recreational use, but I was surprised at how many people reached out, especially about the the medical side of it.

And it was largely first responders, including our firefighters.

It's veterans, it's people with chronic health concerns and issues.

So I feel like there's a compassionate element of this that we can't forget.

And what about what happens at the state level now that, you know, all the statewide races went Democratic, except for the state Senate still in control by Republicans.

Do you think that it can?

Cannabis can be legalized in Texas next year.

I mean, I think this is an issue that's bipartisan in nature, and it's study after study shows that this is popular with Texans, Republicans and Democrats alike.

I think, you know, the opportunity of a blue Texas definitely opened a door here.

I had planned on filing this CCR anyway, because I think we should be making the economic case.

And if it doesn't happen this legislative session, we need to be armed with as much information as possible in future legislative sessions.

But I don't think the Senate is necessarily the end all be all, because at the end of the day, they have to get their legislation passed through the House, which is a Democratic majority.

And so there's going to be give and take.

And different legalization schemes across the country, in different states, how much money they can get.

You said sales taxes here would be what mainly the city would get, but what other kinds of things could you get from the state if they regulate it?

And, and, you know, permitting and fees and things like that.

You know, there's an element that wasn't necessarily addressed as a part of the KR and hasn't been discussed very widely, but I think expungement of records also would unlock a huge workforce, potential people who would be able to access jobs that they otherwise wouldn't and would be able to contribute to our community in a very meaningful way.

And the the CCR, the Council consideration request isn't just about the economic benefits or effects.

What else would you like to study?

And there's a lot of studies recently on the effects of cannabis on young people, especially.

Is that one of the things you're looking at how to regulate?

Yeah.

So I think what we would look at is all kinds of regulations, whatever makes sense for a city like San Antonio, including land use and permitting.

How far away must you be from a school?

How far away must you be from certain types of institutions?

Marketing vapes, I think, are a huge example of this, where you see them market their vapes as these like highlighters, and that makes it really difficult when you're in school.

And when I was teaching the classroom, having to be vigilant to make sure that students didn't have vapes that were disguised as school supplies.

And so that's an element of this that I think we have an opportunity to really analyze and engage with.

And nobody wants to see young, young children engaging in any kind of substance use.

And that includes alcohol.

It includes weed and includes other drugs.

And so we all have that same interest.

And anything that we can gain out of this study and what other cities are doing or even other other countries are doing, I think we should learn from.

Now this brings up another issue I haven't thought about, but state regulation, state oversight, state allowing a city to do not much, which has been the case with the Republicans letting the cities do less and less.

Do you think that will change with the Democratic House and governor and lieutenant governor?

I certainly hope so.

I think the governor, Abbott, and many of the Republicans were all Republicans who really wanted to stifle big cities where, you know, the big blue spots in a in a very red state at the time.

I think you'll see something.

I think we'll certainly see something different from a Democratic led state.

What else would you like to see the city lobby legislators for in the upcoming session that you might not have even thought about before Tuesday?

Yeah.

So, I mean, as chair of the Intergovernmental Intergovernmental Relations Committee, which oversees the creation of our legislative agenda as both state and federal, we're going to be having a meeting this upcoming Monday to to discuss what changes to our legislative agendas we'd like to see.

I think there's a few things, including the the Death Star bill.

We'd love to see that repeal.

We'd love to see the reproductive justice restored.

We'd love to see repeal of SB four, SB eight, which would be the bathroom, the bathroom bills.

It's the immigration, the attacks on our undocumented community, all of that.

What about remind people of the Death Star bill?

That was one of those things that limited local governments.

Yeah, that was essentially a bill that said, if you're not already already able to regulate this thing, then than cities, you will not have the ability to create policy around it.

And so that limits us in a number.

It makes it to where everything is preempted.

What about the Ice facility?

The latest on that.

There's been talk of whether the environmental testing will now go forward because Ice is going to that or reportedly agreed to that.

Are you more confident after the election that the Ice plans for that warehouse will be slowed down at least?

Well, to me, the lawsuit was always about it was a means to an end, and I believe that it does.

In effect, if an economic assessment ends up happening, it's going to take weeks to months to up to a year.

And so there's an opportunity there for a change in the paradigm at at the federal level.

And so what we've seen now as a result of this election is that we're going to control the House and the Senate.

And so that's what that's ultimately what I've been up to, what I've been hoping for all along.

Because they control the money, they control the purse strings, and they can ultimately stop this facility from going live.

I know you're also talking these days about the bond issue, what that will include, what it won't include, Project Marvel, the infrastructure there, which have been talked about before, is up to $200 million for roads and things like that.

That's been whittled down to like 35 and wanted less than that.

What do you as part of that general area, what do you want to see actually happen from whatever money should come from a bond issue?

I think the bond committee is now that they're being established and they'll begin meeting next week, I think they'll ultimately have the decision between, you know, what?

What do they want to send back to council for approval and send to voters?

And whether or not that includes the infrastructure around the arena is to be determined and to be seen.

What I would like is, you know, we have so many needs in the rest of our community, and it's been well over a decade of downtown.

We've invested a vast majority of our resources to downtown, and we say that downtown is for all.

But when people can't afford to park, they can't afford to get there.

They're driving on really poor roads to get downtown.

You know, it's no longer citywide, it's no longer accessible.

And so we need to be dedicating our resources to the neighborhoods, into the communities that have been without for, for decades and for generations now.

And so I wish we would I wish we would have seen that reflected in the recommended list of projects that we sent to the committee.

More for district.

Two, more for all of the all of the districts that have been without district two does have the worst conditioned roads in the entire city.

We have the highest number of failing streets.

And if we continue to prioritize downtown, district two continues to be deprived.

And that's the case with districts five, districts one, districts three, district four.

Well, thank you very much for coming in and explaining all that.

Come back when we know a little bit more about what's going to happen with cannabis and the state rules and everything.

Councilman district two Jaylen McKee.

Rodriguez, thanks for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

Next week, the Central Library downtown will celebrate the reopening of a really cool resource that I used to go to for years.

It is the officially now Texana Resource Center.

Here to tell us about it is Dale McNeill, who is the assistant director of Public services for the library.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Good to be here.

This has been closed since Covid.

That's right.

And what what is it up there?

I know what it used to be, but what is it and what is it going to be?

Sure.

So everything that was there before will still be there.

So that is a lot of print resources, both printed books, monographs and unpublished material about especially San Antonio, Bexar County, South Texas.

Also, our family history and genealogy collection is there, so all that material will still be there.

There's a reading room.

It'll be more spread out, more easily accessible.

There's a reading room, there's a listening center.

There will be a classroom now so that there can be programs on the sixth floor, you know, really on these topics.

So people don't have to go find the auditorium or whatever.

And we have not available to the public, but our vault storage has been increased.

So that's the the specific storage for fragile and rare items.

And there also will be a new gallery that there wasn't on the sixth floor before that.

When we open on Monday, we'll have a ranching exhibit, an exhibit about ranching in South Texas.

I used to go up there for stories in the newspapers.

If I knew there was a story that I was researching.

The old papers from the 1800s.

Are those still there?

They're on microfilm.

Yes.

Some of them are on either microfilm or microfiche.

Those are still available.

Of course, historic newspapers is a great primary source for both local history and family history, because there's so much, you know, in newspapers about family events as well.

And then there are other things that kind of overlap with those two things, especially about social history.

For example, in this texana resource center, there's a very large collection of African American funeral programs, mostly from here in San Antonio.

But of course, one funeral program tells you about one person, but a large collection of them is that excellent source for our social history, for what's happening in the community.

And and of course, here in Texas and in many parts of the country, these funeral programs for African Americans are not a single page, or they're not the little funeral home, you know, open it.

And there's their name.

It's a long it's a booklet with many pages.

So that's really a really interesting collection.

That's maybe you need to our collection here it is being digitized and made available to the whole state.

That was one of my next question is how much is digitized now say the newspapers and some of those books.

More and more.

But but there's still an awful lot that just has to be read in person.

You know, it's a physical material.

It isn't available digitally yet.

And I remember one of the best things about going there was the experts.

If they if you had a question, you go to the desk.

Or is that still the case?

Absolutely.

Still the case.

It's it's the same staff plus more.

Right.

So there are more staff members.

And if people have been going to their interim site on the first floor, it's the same, same staff.

People have been interacting with their they are really expert.

Kind of the ethics of librarians is we we like to know a lot.

And then we want to show you how we know it, not just tell you what we know.

So again, but of course, it's a lot easier to find something if you already actually know.

So yes, that expert staff really expert in different areas including military history, South Texas history and and family history and genealogy.

And also there are some things that aren't accessible when you just walk in, you have to ask someone about, say, photographs or clippings.

Yes, absolutely.

Clippings.

Very fragile material.

A rare and especially rare material.

Yes.

The staff would.

You could either know what you want, ask for it, and they can retrieve it, and then you can read it in the reading room.

Or and I think this is more likely as the researcher.

And I don't mean that that person has to be a serious researcher.

This could be very casual or.

Just your own curiosity.

But the researcher, as they're talking with the staff, the staff member very likely will say, oh, you know, the right way to answer that is from this material that's in the vault or, you know, not available to the public.

How about digitizing in the future?

That I know is expensive.

Is that part?

There was a $4.5 million project.

Is that part of it or.

That project was bond and private donation funded?

I really want to give a shout out to the San Antonio Public Library Foundation and their very generous donors.

The city bond money kind of made the basic part possible, and then the private donations really, like, lifted it up and made it what people are going to experience starting next week.

But but that project was a construction project.

So anything that would be more of digitizing would, will be coming later.

We do the city clerk's office, which, you know, kind of maintaining the archives of the city of San Antonio.

The clerk's office does some digitizing, so we will collaborate with them to to continue and move forward on digitizing.

Some of those records.

And we have great records dating back to the early San Antonio days.

But those are is it at the courthouse and in that area from like church records as well.

So some are at the county courthouse, the county records, and then the city clerk's office, which is near downtown but not at the courthouse.

And then they also have a little museum that's in the new City Tower building, but that's by appointment, but very easy to make an appointment and go see that.

And then the library.

So we really work.

And then of course the arch diocesan records.

So between the archdiocese, Bexar County, the city of San Antonio and the library, you know, it's really takes all of those.

And I guess I'd be wrong if I didn't mention UTSA, UT San Antonio's incredible collection as well.

If so, your average person out there is wanting to just do a little research.

They know they have a San Antonio family history.

What do they do if they go to the tech center resource center?

So I would say go to the sixth floor, talk to the staff there, let them know kind of where you are.

So that could be you're just starting.

That could be you have, you know, family oral history.

It could be you've done a lot of research already, but definitely let the staff know where you are already kind of what your main question is.

If you've gone to other sources, let them know that and then they'll sort of take you from there.

What kind of family records do you have?

There are a lot of different family records.

A lot of them would be the published family history books.

You know, where someone in a family has collected their history and published it.

So there's a lot of that.

There are cemetery records.

There are.

Church records, like you mentioned, that maybe aren't archdiocesan records.

So depending on the family, depending on how long they've been here in the San Antonio area, there would be different records in different ways of telling your family story.

And then of course, the US census, which now largely is available online, but the value of of accessing it at the library is, as you mentioned earlier, the expert staff who can help you decipher what your what that means when you're looking at that census.

And if you have something you would want to donate to this collection or add to this collection, you could talk to somebody whether it's something you'd want.

Yes, absolutely.

Just talk to any of the staff there.

Video we talked about that before.

I'm a video advocate.

More needs to be archived.

But it's difficult.

It is difficult.

I think it is an area that all there are of course specialized archives for video.

But I think the more general archival type of collections or local history like ours certainly will be adding more and more video in the future.

Maybe some of the TV stations out there could.

Yeah, that'd.

Be great where I worked.

All right.

Thanks very much.

Dale McNeill, assistant director of public services at the library.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thank you.

On reporter's roundtable this week, the Alamo and the renovation there.

Will that be affected by the change in leadership and state government?

Here to talk about that.

Madison Esler, a reporter with the San Antonio Express-News, who is all things Alamo now and knows everything there is to know about it because Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor who is a big supporter of the Alamo renovation project, was not reelected.

Do we know what that means yet?

You did a big article on what it could mean.

I think that's one of the biggest questions about the project going forward.

A lot of the redevelopment has happened already.

Different pieces of it have finished, like the Texas Cavaliers Education Center, the passageway between the Riverwalk and the Plaza, but some big pieces are still remaining.

The museum and visitor center, which is kind of the crown jewel of the whole thing, hasn't opened yet.

And repairing the Alamo roof is another big piece that hasn't begun yet.

And so one of Dan Patrick's biggest aspects of involvement in the Alamo was helping get money for the project.

It's an expensive project, more than 700 million.

And he helped push for funding at the state level, was also very involved and interpretive materials and many other aspects.

And so I think one of the biggest questions going forward is with these two big pieces remaining, how will him being out of the picture affect what happens next?

And also the politics of the Alamo and the way it's presented in the museum and elsewhere on the grounds?

Is that something that could be affected, because we saw with Kate Rogers ouster at the Alamo Trust, that they really didn't want any woke references, they didn't want to emphasize, or even, I don't say acknowledge.

But slavery as an issue in the Texas Revolution.

So could we see changes even before the museum opens?

I'm also curious about that.

Dan Patrick stands for a while had been that the museum and the interpretive materials, the historical aspects should really focused mainly on the battle.

The Alamo has a very complex, long, complicated history, and so other folks thought a more complete history needs to be told.

That gets at some of the nitty gritty of what happened before the battle, what happened after the battle, and his stance was always let's humanely to the battle.

Maybe we can talk some about those other things, but let's focus mainly on that.

And so that's one of the things that I'll be watching with the museum is how does the story of the Alamo get told?

Does that change between now and when it is supposed to open, which is early 2028, as.

We haven't heard really much about what's going to happen in the museum since there were the controversies over the statue of Joe the Slave, the depiction of him was questioned.

They wanted not to use the word indigenous, and they wanted to use native and things like that that historians questioned.

So there's still that to learn because we haven't heard of that in a while.

The Alamo said that they do want to tell the full story aspects of the full story, and crews have been working on the museum for a while.

It's definitely underway.

They're renovating a couple of historic buildings to try to to build this one aspect of the museum, aside from the historical pieces that Dan Patrick was involved in, was a film that's supposed to tell the history of the Alamo.

That's another question.

He said.

He personally called Taylor Sheridan, a well-known producer, and asked him to direct and produce a movie that could be shown at the museum.

Taylor Sheridan agreed.

And so that's another piece.

How will the history be told in that film that Dan Patrick helped secure for.

The Alamo is a lightning rod anyway?

I mean, getting this started took since 2015 getting the city to give up their rights, for it was a 5100 year, something like that.

And also the city had pushed for that more inclusive story.

And there was a question of who was on the board and the Alamo Trust.

And again, though, Don Buckingham and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the Land Office had been running it, but it's the Alamo Trust now, in case people don't know who runs it and the day to day running of it.

Yes, the Alamo Trust is in charge.

Today, the land office still very much involved and the state still very much involved, which I think has made this such a long running and complicated process, is you don't have one party that's involved.

You have different owners, you have different funding sources, you have different people in charge of different things.

And that has created controversy over time.

And if people haven't been down there, there are changes that they will notice even within, you know, month to month, that kind of thing.

State troopers are now in charge instead of the Alamo Rangers, the private group that was there.

What else do you think they'll notice if they haven't been there in a while?

Yes, it looks very different than it did 5 or 10 years ago.

There's the Cavaliers Education Center, which is where students can come and learn about the Alamo, there space for classrooms in there and learning.

A lot of the plazas in the area have been redone.

There's more landscaping.

There's outdoor exhibits where people can learn about the history of the Alamo.

And then there's the connection between the Riverwalk and the Alamo that was missing for a while.

We have a ton of tourists that come here, of course, and getting easily between the two attractions had been difficult.

And there's also the promenade now South Alamo, south of the plaza that has statues in it.

And are they still working on the Houston Street Connection as well?

Yes, as far as I know, it's a lot easier to get around now, and it's a lot prettier than it had been.

And that was a question also.

But there are still, you know, right across the street there were the different museums and things that people didn't like because they were not as reverent as people wanted on Alamo Plaza.

But just south of there and whatever the other plaza is technically called, there are still Mirror Maze and Ripley's Believe It or Not or something like that.

Yes, some of those businesses wax museum.

Yes, some of those businesses are gone now, but that was another piece that added to the complications of some folks wanted those businesses moved because they thought they're not in keeping with telling the history of the Alamo.

They're kind of garish.

And so Dan Patrick was also instrumental in that, in negotiating different deals to try to move those businesses elsewhere.

And what's the timeline for opening this?

The whole thing.

I mean, different things at different times.

Yes.

So the centerpiece is the museum and visitor center that should open in early 2028.

Originally it was 2027, but that's been pushed back.

And the work on the church replacing the roof, the Alamo has said that that should start next summer.

We will see what the timeline is there.

That's a very complicated and delicate project because of the work that you're doing.

And so there's a lot that's going into that.

And in the meantime, we destroyed some stories about what they found.

Archeologists have been working right behind the Alamo church.

Yes.

I've been fascinated by the different things that they found while excavating around the church.

They found four cannonballs that they say were from the battle, made of different materials, a little bit different in size.

And the archeologists working on it said that was a really exciting and rarified for them, especially for it's one thing to find one.

It's another thing to find.

For they said they were texting each other bomb emojis.

And bomb emojis.

It sounds like archeologists now.

And some of those you can see in the building, one of the buildings behind.

I can't think of the name of it that does cost to get in, unlike in the Alamo, which is free to get in.

Yes.

That's right.

Yes.

All right.

Well, thank you very much, Madison.

Esler.

Everything you need to know about the Alamo, she knows San Antonio Express news.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

For having me.

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 and you can download them as podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org I’m Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

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