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.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we are starting with an issue you've been hearing more about in the news recently.

You're in San Antonio, as well as across the state and across the country.

That is the growth of data centers and what that means, what the city and the state should do about the growth.

And here to talk about that is district six Councilman Rick Galvan.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for having me.

Tell us about what you are doing with the city.

Now.

You want to put this on the council's agenda, on the radar, and to kind of figure out how we should plan for this.

Why?

Yeah.

No.

We started work on the CR, a few months ago thinking about what our vendors are talking to us about.

Right.

Some of the folks in my server hills have been asking us.

We've seen the news nationally.

What's in the news regionally to here in our state and even in our overall region.

Right.

Data centers are rapidly expanding, particularly here in San Antonio.

How do you make sure that the water use, is being protected as much as possible?

The energy use will impact our residents bills as well.

And how do we make sure that these, this growing industry is benefiting our larger.

Community data centers?

People may not realize, okay, what does that mean?

And how big are they?

What do they have inside?

Why did they need so much water and power?

Yeah.

I mean, typically data centers, in the most general way are the ways in which our data is stored, whether it's our phones or from our internet usage or whatever it is in general, digital avenues, streaming.

I'll go to these centers and.

It could be the cloud.

Or precisely.

Exactly.

And so all those kind of things happen and take place within data centers, particularly with Microsoft and other kind of, large, providers that do this kind of work every single day.

And so what goes on there is that then you make sure that these computers stay cool.

Computers can overheat very easily.

And so making sure that it's extremely cool in those centers requires a lot of energy and requires a lot of water as well to keep those places cool.

And so they don't every malfunction.

How much water and power does it use?

People might not realize.

What is it?

300,000 gallons of water?

Used by these data centers that could supply, you know, 100,000 homes, right?

Right.

It's a significant amount of water being used every single day on these, data centers and data centers themselves in the industry are working on ways to improve that, to reduce the kind of water usage and to focus primarily on some recycled water, not the regular drinking water that we use.

It still is a concern, right?

You know, the growth rate keeps expanding.

Will that then lead to getting into drinking water at some point or energy usage as well?

Right.

Getting into the day to day energy usage versus the kind of normal regular recurring energy that they require on their own.

They are, out in the far west side, at least a number of them, some of them outside your district, but there is one at the edge of your district is going up.

Is that already up?

Announced that the Microsoft expansion will be happening there.

It's a big campus looking at West Military.

And one of the reasons I understand is just so that they are closer to the grid than some of the places, like out in West Texas, where you have the power of, wind turbines and solar.

It's tough to get through the grid to the rest of the state.

Correct.

And that's been an impact on our entire state, too, right.

Where these data centers are building these campuses.

Which makes sense.

You want to make sure that all these kind of industries are put together, close together, so the energy can be shared pretty easily.

However, that means that energy is coming up from south Texas to north and to the rest of Texas, from wind energy or any other kind of plants further down.

They get stuck here in San Antonio.

And so that means it's up on us to improve the transmission lines and therefore, proactively plan as well.

Well, these data centers go in our city.

And how that our, our energy doesn't get stuck here for not only our place, but for the entire state, too.

We talk about sprawl and traffic in different areas and what that means to our infrastructure, but we haven't really talked about this and what it means.

What do you think Saws and CPS should do, to prepare for this?

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that we have to do is be very clear on what is being used here, right.

While Saws and CPS, will say that these are some of the highest users in our city, and we understand that that can impact, of course, their revenue.

Well, we want to make sure to is that we're not doing it in a way that is too impactful to where they don't.

We don't have enough energy or water or that we're having to raise rates significantly on our residents to then pay for the new generation, as well as when I talk about generation for energy impacting, new fossil fuel energy resources, because they need to get it quicker than any kind of renewable energy.

It could be a big impact.

And so all those things come together.

And that's what we need to work with CPS and Saws on this to make sure that we're doing it proactively.

We're being prepared for it.

And we're not waiting until the end and saying, okay, now that we've expanded too far, what do we do now?

Across the state, there are different numbers out, but 46 billion gallons we use right now for data centers expected to increase.

I understand you had some numbers nine fold to close to 400 billion just in the next five years.

Right.

And that would be 7% of all our water use in Texas.

Are we looking at that kind of thing here, or more so that we would need to increase so much?

Yeah, it's a statewide issue, right?

At the Texas Development Board, as well as the Public Utilities Commission at the state level, are looking at this and trying to get this better data handling, because what they've seen and only here in our state, but nationally, is that sometimes can be difficult to work with data centers on providing the actual amount of resources that they require.

And so that hope is that with our municipally owned utilities here, that we can do that work a bit more productively.

With the energy, with the data centers themselves.

And so we're working well, try as much as we can with Ercot and with the Water Development Board to understand what ways can we, work on that here locally, given the fact that we are in this kind of nexus of where the growth is happening, we're one of the largest markets for it, in the entire country.

And so of growth as well as, of course, understanding again, the water or the energy transmission over the south, side of our state.

At the same time, we, as a Texas, you know, state government especially and local want its businesses to move in.

They hear a local government concern about water and power and think, well, I'm not sure about the future.

How do you balance that?

You you still want businesses to move here to expand the tax base, right.

And that's exactly the conversation we're going to have, right.

Talking about that balance, we understand that data centers provide more resources to CPS to take care of the larger, utility.

It provides resources to us as well.

And there's the property taxes and the CPS revenue that we get from it.

So how do we make sure we're balancing not only the growth of these centers, making sure that they also provide good paying jobs locally here, too, is important.

At the same time that we're not, risking our residents, impact on their bills, I think that's only for the state government is really looking at, too, with some of the passing of bills that they recently went through in the last legislature.

How some of the other effects on your CCR, the Council consideration request you put before so the council could talk about it?

You mentioned not just the power in the water, but the effect on the neighborhoods.

Right?

What do you mean by that?

In some other cities, particularly, in Virginia, and even looking in places like Phoenix, when we see data centers expand, particularly around neighborhoods, some of the ones that, have been recently brought up, particularly when there's a large group of them, is the noise that they can create.

It's a it's a humming noise that doesn't seem like a whole lot at first, but when it's concentrated and it's heavily, impacting the area around it can be, a significant impact to residents for, circadian rhythms and their health.

So I want to make sure we're avoiding as much as possible, whatever ways we can do that by providing trees around or making sure that they're not too near neighborhoods.

That's part of the conversation.

That's not happening at this moment.

Zoning.

That's, one of the things that they are looking at.

Well, crypto mining, right, I guess is a little different than data centers in terms of the amount of cooling, the amount of noise up in North Texas.

There's a community wanting to incorporate as a city so they can deal with all that noise.

Have you been around some of these data centers and is it is it that bad?

Thankfully, it's not so far here in our city, so we want to make sure that it stays that way.

Right.

And I think that's going to be with some of that planning efforts.

And so working more closely with the companies themselves to ensure that, you know, that we're taking this to account and that if we need to ensure that there are zoning or land use regulations here to ensure that doesn't happen, that the we now have the conversation about it city council, and.

You've looked at other cities.

What are they doing maybe with some of the biggest data centers out there?

Yeah, some of them are working on updating the development codes to include some specific, designations for, for land use categories for data centers that when they're coming around, it's not just an office space, it's a specific use that they apply for.

Right.

So that way the city council can have a say and intervene on how do we make sure there's benefits to the community in some way.

Doesn't have the negative impacts, and it still can come into our city.

Of course that may slow things down a little bit, but even CPS Energy's board chair recently just wrote an op ed in the express and said, this is something that we desperately need here in our city.

And have you talked to other council members about what they would like to do?

Bits and pieces that we talked about when we're talking about the Ccra, what do we want to see with it?

And so I think some folks are wanting to make sure that that balance, to your point stays there, right, that we're still encouraging businesses to come.

I know some of my colleagues have said that they want to see that, and it's going to move throughout the city, and that can be a bit more helpful to reduce the energy, the energy getting stuck in certain areas, as well as making sure that's not too close to neighborhoods that are already developed.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

Fascinating.

And obviously something we're going to keep watching.

Rick Galvan, district six.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you so much.

Recently, you probably heard that there has been a shakeup at the top of the Alamo Trust, the group that runs the day to day operations of the Alamo.

The CEO, Kate Rogers, was ousted or resigned.

We're here to talk about that.

Is a man who he was on a couple of committees that advise the Alamo, about the Alamo, the city, committee, as well as the state committee.

And you are executive director of the American Indians and Texas at the Spanish colonial missions.

Ramon Vazquez, thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you for the invitation.

Tell us what you think about how this happened.

It followed, a post about indigenous peoples importance at the Alamo then.

And that was called woke.

There was, Dawn Buckingham and other people required a firing or talked about a firing.

What do you think of that?

Well, I think that's a very, Irresponsible, reactionary response, to a process that has been in place since 2014.

I think it's, you know, it's posturing to politics and, and it's unfortunate because we have we already have the Alamo is already filled with complex histories.

And so we understand that this process is not going to be simple.

So we've been engaged in the past four years in a process under Kate Rogers leadership, to tell all the narratives.

The full story of the site is to enhance the 13 days of the battle of the Alamo.

And it's there's been differences, and we've been able to have good discussions to have a response like that about a site that has over 10,000 years of archeological evidence of American Indian occupation that not only built this Alamo, but created the opportunity to have a city of San Antonio.

Without them, there wouldn't be a state to liberate called Texas.

To back up just a little.

This was on Columbus Day when the Alamo, posted on its official site something about Happy Columbus Day.

And then there was another post.

It didn't say Happy Indigenous Peoples Day.

It just acknowledge the the numbers of indigenous people that have been there and literally built the Alamo.

And that's when there was a reaction, first from right wing influencer Michael Quinn Sullivan.

Then Don Buckingham saw that.

Do you think it was because that word indigenous, especially on that day, is just, a third rail for some people that says woke.

We were like, I guess it's the, flavor of the of the month, right?

But the reality is just, you know, we're looking at 20, 26, you know, these things, there's there's this posturing to a base.

You know, it's unfortunate that the climate of the country that we're that we're experiencing right now is, is filtering it's filtering into a process that has been accepted by community San Antonio residents, state residents, all of us who have been participating as citizens, taxpaying citizens, you know, giving up our time.

I've been doing this since 2014, and there's been others along side of me that have put in just as much time in this process.

So it's, it's very, it's unsettling.

It's unsettling that, we're expected to just accept.

This from the beginning, there's been talk about how much emphasis should be on the battle time, how much on the indigenous people, some tension over how it's portrayed.

Has it been tough on those committees to to balance all that?

Well, yeah, it's been tough to balance it.

But we've been balancing it.

That's that's the, that's the that's the success of this project right now is that we've been able to bring voices to the table, balance all these and differences, and work together towards a, a mutual goal.

Both those Pro 13, you know, only the 13 battle celebrated 13 days or and those that have been talking about inclusive, narratives of the history of the site.

A lot of people say that the people are coming to the Alamo because they want to know about the battle.

The opposite to that is saying that if we provide more education, more of an experience for our visitors to come to the to the site and learn about the extensive history that got us to the 1836 battle as a community, the visitors would feel less of an experience.

Now there's the Education Center opening soon.

Then there's the, three big buildings that the state basically has gutted.

That's going to be the museum.

Are you still working on exactly what goes in there, and will we see more conflict?

But I can't answer that question because, well, the only thing I could say about that question is that prior to October 13th.

Everything was on target after October 13th.

I have no clue.

We have not heard nothing.

There's been no communication with no meetings.

There's no meetings, no clarification.

Which I think again, is is is, you know, a little disrespectful for community members who are official members appointed, and asked to serve in these committees, you know, with pay to, to shape this, these narratives, to not be able to give them an official response.

How much more of this conflict do you think will happen if it is the 26, political and posturing?

We're heading into that right now.

To not tell the full story or to try to erase a history of a people from a physical location.

Is cultural genocide.

Recognize the importance of the American Indian contributions not only historically to this site, to the city, to the state.

You can't talk about American Indians in terms of errors.

Errors start and stop.

Our history started over 10,000 years ago and it continues to this day.

Right now.

You and I are making history today.

Right now.

How about in terms of those building the Alamo, people might not realize, well, there were Spanish soldiers that came in establish the missions, but it was natives who literally built use the stone, brought the stone and built.

It.

You know, 30 families that came in with the Spanish.

They were mostly mestizos.

They were not full blooded.

Spanish Canary Islanders.

They came in later.

Right.

Okay.

So this is 30 families at the beginning.

At the beginning.

17, 18.

Okay.

And then the soldiers didn't build the missions.

They were providing security.

They were setting up the Presidio.

So it was the American Indians that.

Who do you think fostered the conversations, the troops and the the treaties that had to be established so that the families could live here peacefully.

Do you think that they brought a year's worth of food with them?

And finally, you know, what can you do?

You want to stay on the inside and get that input with.

Some people might wonder, well, why don't you resign?

Or as a protest or what?

You know, what's that balance for you?

But look in in my tenure with this process, I have served four mayors.

I have worked with three land commissioners and have worked with three different executive directors of Alamo Trust.

I'm in for the long haul.

This is about, this is about making something, right?

This is about taking an opportunity that San Antonians can see their history.

Finally, in this in on this site.

This is a half $1 billion project.

We should and it was it's like a once in a lifetime opportunity to get the narrative right.

Stop living under the shadows of John Wayne's myths, and be inclusive of all the history that took place on this site that shaped that 1836 battle.

So if you know if as intelligent as we are and as many educated people that we have today, more than any time in the history of the world, we should be able to do this.

And it's not taking away from, as Dan Patrick said, all I can think of how he put it from the importance of the battle.

Now, and really it's about the visitors experience.

Do we really think that our visitors are that naive?

Is that what we think about the people that come to the Alamo right now, that they cook, that they would not get it, that there's so naive that they would not appreciate that understanding of the site?

Is that what we think about our visitors?

Well, on that question, on that note, thanks for coming in.

I hope as we go on that we'll have more people from the various committees and find out more.

Hope on Friday named interim director, at least of the Alamo Trust.

Thanks.

Ramon Vasquez, executive director of the American Indians of Texas, of the Spanish Colonial missions and more.

Thanks.

Thank you.

On reporters roundtable this week, Bexar County voters passed both proposition A and B, about what to do with the venue tax money to support the Spurs arena downtown and also to support renovation of the area around the Frost Bank center.

Freeman Coliseum is a stock show and rodeo district, if you will.

Here to, join us, talk about all of that and more.

What we voted for and against.

Andrea San Antonio Report, thank you very much for coming in.

Props be first of all, the Spurs arena vote 52% roughly to 48.

What does that mean?

Now, everybody wants to know, okay, how fast is it going to happen and what does it mean?

What is the mayor reacting?

Well, so this is coming at a time when other cities across the country have had other teams across the country, have had a harder time in recent years passing these types of public funding for arenas.

And last night was such a big deal for the Spurs.

You heard the owners say the community has spoken.

They want this project.

It's been talked about so long at City Hall, there were some, you know, yard signs that popped up before this thing had even been presented saying No Project Marvel.

But in the end, 52% supported it.

And the significance of that?

This is the venue tax portion that we're talking about.

It's a $1.3 billion arena that's going to cover a quarter of it.

But the city also has already agreed to it's $489 million contribution that hinged on the prop vote.

So you have voted for prop B who have also then supported the city's contribution to this arena, which is leaves about 500 million for the Spurs, so about two thirds public funding.

The mayor and others had talked about, well, okay, even if the vote passes, the city should still vote on it.

But her reaction was the people of San Antonio have voted to approve the county's contribution, and I will work to ensure this generational investment.

It sounds like that she is going to go ahead and negotiate with the Spurs on that term sheet, and the opposition is on the back burner at least.

Yeah.

She had initially, called to slow this down at the city.

Their council members disagreed, said they wanted voters to have all the information before they went to the polls for the county money.

She had said, well, then we need to have a separate vote on the city money when we hammer out the final details there.

I don't hear that any more from that statement that, you know, remains to be seen, whether that's still something she's pushing for.

But, the city manager has also talked about this is not a this is a nonbinding term sheet that we have with the team.

There is still stuff that needs to be decided.

There's a parking piece that needs to be figured out.

There's a piece of this project, the land bridge that's no longer on the table because it was a Biden era grant that was going to fund it.

So it's not happening any time soon.

There's parts that need to be revisited.

And sort of I don't know if anyone is still talking about the mayor's idea of a profit sharing agreement, but money made off of naming rights and concessions, those are things that I think she wants to come back and look at.

And as you see from her statement, she wants to talk about affordable housing, which has never been a piece of this, because the ters around the arena helps fund the arena's construction.

That made the case for this needs to be market rate housing, similar with the baseball stadium.

So that looks like another piece.

But they'll out.

In the spring though we could vote on it.

We're going to vote on bond issues and the parking part of it.

200 some million could be part of that parking in traffic.

So that could be our next public input on this whole thing.

The bond election is an interesting piece of it.

That is where the the city has said, you know, in the past, we had a $1.2 billion bond in May of 2022, and they're now projecting something more like a $500 billion bond or $500 million bond capacity for this next year.

And how much of that is allocated to the Spurs is a little letter to the project Marvel surrounding development or surrounding infrastructure.

It looks like maybe half to start.

And so the mayor was out there saying this is the whole city's infrastructure bond.

This is our flood and drainage for the whole city.

How is this going to work?

So I think that's another piece that the city council is going to have to come back and talk about sort of the final details here.

Proposition B, regarding all the stock show and rodeo improvements on the grounds, making sure that Frost Bank center isn't the Astrodome, more support for that than the Spurs arena.

What's next there?

Yeah, I think this is one of the most interesting storylines.

Whereas with Project Marvel in downtown, you had this whole vision laid out for you with a, you know, amazing, rendering.

This is a piece of a much bigger plan that doesn't have that same sort of rendering to see where what it would all look like.

It's still sort of in the process, but the proposition eight wound up being more popular than proposition B, and it provides this, close to $200 million to turn the Prospect Center and the Freeman Coliseum into a year round rodeo district.

But some new expo halls create this sort of fairgrounds there.

And then there's also a request for qualifications out from the Freeman Coliseum Advisory Board for a master developer who or a master designer who will try to incorporate other parts of the land around there and make a like a vision, is like a hotel that would facilitate these overnight rodeo guests, and the hope is that it would bring in bars and restaurants and mixed use development.

That would be accommodating these overnight visitors that never arrived with the Spurs.

So you'll be reporting on fleshing out the details of all that stuff as they do that, transparent or not.

We'll see.

Some of the other things like this week, bond issues for school districts.

Yes.

So voters greenlit this NBA arena downtown in this Spurs rodeo are this year round rodeo district.

But, you had three school, tax.

Yeah, yeah.

You had several local school districts going for tax increases.

Those were voted down in East, Central and Judson.

Northeast ISD came for its first bond election in ten years.

Voters approved most of it, but not the natatorium in the stadium.

So professional sports?

Yes.

Youth sports?

No.

And all the Texas constitutional amendments, proposals passed and there were.

17 of.

Them.

And there were some, themes there that pass tax increases and such.

Yeah, I put these in sort of the buckets of you had two major investments in water infrastructure and dementia research, and then you had some sort of like value statements about citizenship and voting and parental control and then exemptions.

You had some, exemptions related to school taxes and then also like a criminal justice bucket with, the changing the oversight of judges and sort of a local control issue of changing the oversight of locally elected judges, and bail reform.

And all of that you're going to report on in the next week.

Wow.

Well, the you know, filing opens for the primary and just days.

Oh, well, I guess well, good luck with all that.

Thanks very much.

Andrea Rusch, San Antonio Report.

You can read all of her stuff at the website San Antonio Report.

Thanks.

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

You can watch the show again.

Any previous shows, you can download them as podcasts.

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

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