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.

That's why each week we go on the record with the news makers 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.

Join us now as we go on the.

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week we're going to be talking about everything from the flu in San Antonio.

What may be covered to innovation in the city, as well as money and planning and money and planning in San Antonio.

And we start with a report that just came to city council, what that means and how the city will look at it.

Councilman John Courage, District nine, joins us for that.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you, Randi.

First of all, this report.

Even supporters of this report, as yourself have pointed out, some shortcomings in it, some reservations.

You had what was it designed to do and what came out of it?

This is an outside consultant's report about economic development here.

Right.

Yeah.

Tips, strategies.

Did the report for us.

And of course, economic development is critical to the continued growth and success of everybody who lives in San Antonio and what they were doing is trying to understand where we are today from the point of view of what are our characteristics in our community, what are the amenities that we offer, what are the benefits that we could provide for economic development, what are the conditions that exist and and what are people's expectations when it comes to economic development?

So they've laid that out for us.

They're trying to put a path forward.

And they also indicate what are some of the steps that they would recommend that we could take as a city that our economic development department could put in place that would help attract more economic development.

And what are the big ones to you?

The tax increment reinvestment zones that looks like the city is going to take on that whole issue and maybe change that structure What would you like to see done?

What do you think the city's going to do?

Well, I believe the city has some good points, but we're also lacking in some areas and I think that to overcome areas that we may not be as strong as other communities, I think it's important to provide incentives.

It could be through tours.

It could be through other city incentives to encourage people to come in and develop their businesses here.

I just think it's going to be another important tool in our box.

So when I first got on council, I was a lot of I was very leery about incentives, but I think if we target them in the right way, I don't think we need to incentivize building more big apartments along Broadway, for example.

But we may and I think we do need to incentivize bringing in more manufacturing and more jobs through manufacturing or more areas.

And health and biosciences income housing.

Is that one of the.

It was a priority, it seemed, last year in the bond issue as well.

Yeah.

And I believe that is a priority.

Housing in general is a priority in our community.

I think that there's always room for more housing, but we do have a significant number of people who live in our city who are struggling to afford the housing they live in now.

And and we have a lot of homeless people who struggle just to find something that they could afford to live in.

And so, yes, targeting building more affordable housing or rehabilitating existing structures.

So that we can provide more affordable housing.

And some, including yourself and Clayton Perry, pointed out that this is $325,000.

And it told us some of the things that we know without getting really into specifics, outside consulting firm, we have an economic development department.

People would think, why didn't we use some of them?

We have dozens of people in that apartment that could have conceivably done the same thing.

Sure.

And I understand that conceptually, but I think we need to have a look at the entire country.

We're not just trying to entice somebody from our local their city to move here or another part of Texas.

We're trying to reach out to the whole nation.

And I think having a broader perspective by a company that does that kind of research and development is important for us.

One of the articles written about this pointed out that there were some things that were very similar to that Fort Worth report prepared by the same group.

In fact, part of it or a small part anyway.

Was verbatim in the same wording that this company used to tell us what to do, they told Fort Worth.

What's your reaction to that?

Well, I would think there are some similarities in what we're looking for or how to attract certain businesses, but obviously there's differences between Fort Worth and San Antonio.

My biggest concern was that we didn't have specific targets that we were going to achieve in year three or five or ten through this plan.

And maybe because of the way the economy is right now here in Texas and nationally, that would be a challenge.

Trying to set a specific goal that you think you can hit over a period of time.

In fact, the mayor, I think, said that the goals that shouldn't have been in the reports, you know, roll to set the goals, that's what city council should do.

And where do you think it's steering, people say, away from things that you've done in the past, aside from the tax increment, right.

Well, you know, I don't know that I could I could kind of say where I'd like to go until I understand exactly where I am today.

And that's something I think is that we're missing.

I think we need to understand what are the businesses that we have today?

How many of them are there?

What category are they and are they in manufacturing?

Are they in health care?

Are they in housing?

How many people are employed in those areas?

What kind of income are they earning?

How many jobs are available right now?

If we understand where we are, then as we have economic development occur, we can identify are we making real progress and which areas are we not making progress?

Are we bringing in companies who are going to pay better?

Are we bringing in companies that have greater requirements that we need to scale up to be able to meet?

And if we don't, to.

These for talent.

Sure.

And development and retention of that talent, that's a big one.

Another thing this report mentioned is community land trusts.

That will hang on to some land, buy land and make that available, say, for low income housing.

What do you think of those prospects?

Well, I think that's important.

If the city acquires land and sometimes we do for example, we did a trade off with the federal government to build a new federal courthouse, and they traded with us some of the property that used to be part of Hemisfair.

So when the city can acquire property, if it has a specific value or use, it could be in a neighborhood where they need more housing or it could be in an area where they need more industry or economic development.

Then I think it's worth our effort to try and find somebody who can use that to the best use of of it.

Finally, we're running out of time, but the tech industry here has gotten a lot of publicity recently about, you know, should there be more housing downtown just for that.

But then there was a report saying that the tech industry really outside of downtown is bigger than that right now of downtown, you have Kelley growing tech force there.

What do you think of the prospects for tech in San Antonio realistically?

Yeah, you know, I've been very encouraged by the growth in technology out of Port San Antonio.

The old Kelly Air Force Base.

And they've got, I think, very far thinking leadership over there that's really offering more incentives to bring technology in.

And of course, right downtown UTSA is expanding to bring in more facilities for training and technology.

So how soon will we see any actual council action based on this report, do you think?

Well, I think that we'd be looking at things in the next six months and maybe a year down the line when it comes to, let's say, affordable housing, we might move a little bit further when it comes to inviting or entertaining businesses coming in It's going to really depend a lot on the economy nationally and locally, but I'm sure within time we'll be seeing the.

Last one quick question.

Kind of a yes or no.

Was it worth it for that?

$325,000 for this report?

I'd say yes.

All right.

Well, thanks very much and good luck with implementing some of those plans.

And the target's very interesting.

We'll watch that Councilman John Courage, District nine.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you, Randi.

Past few weeks.

And this week in particular, we're seeing a sharp uptick in San Antonio in flu cases.

Here to talk about that and RSV and COVID as well is Dr. Jason Bowling of University Health chief epidemiologist at the hospital.

Thank you very much for coming in.

How big an uptick in flu are we seeing right now?

And it's earlier than you usually see it, right?

That's right.

We're seeing it earlier than we normally see in a typical flu season, which runs around October through April And what's concerning is the numbers that we're seeing this early.

So the number we saw the past week at University Health was 328 cases, people in and outside of the hospital.

But that equals the peak of the flu season that we saw in January 20, 20, which is the last regular flu season we had before the pandemic.

And why do you think that is?

People that have been wearing masks didn't get the flu.

And now there are more susceptible to it or what.

We really saw how beneficial mask wearing.

And avoiding large crowds is and dampening down or decreasing respiratory virus infections because we really had low historically low flu seasons the last couple of years.

And so really people haven't seen the flu.

They haven't been getting the flu.

And so now that people are relaxing with a masking is getting back together, we're seeing that people are susceptible.

Many of them haven't had their flu vaccines.

And so we're seeing a lot more flu cases and.

They get their flu vaccines.

They wonder about the new buy they want booster for COVID can they get them that same time?

What do you tell people?

So I tell people they can get them at the same time.

It's really important.

It's a little confusing right now since there's two vaccines to get as opposed to just getting the flu vaccine like we used to in the past.

And now there's this by virulent booster.

But they're trying to make it simpler.

We may be getting to more of a cycle with the COVID booster, but people should get both the by valent booster for COVID and an influenza vaccine and yes, they can't get them at the same time, which is more convenient.

This arm right here has both yesterday.

No problem getting in and getting that.

Of course, a couple of years ago, when you could go to the mall, say university health had a huge thing to get the COVID vaccine.

It is free still, but you have to maybe go online to figure out where.

Right.

There's different places you can go so you can go to we can do it essay dot com and look at university health locations and pharmacies where they have it available.

Or you can go to community based pharmacies that might be more convenient to where you're at.

If you look on Metro Health has a Web page that also has the locations where you can get COVID vaccine.

So I definitely encourage everybody to look at where it's most convenient just so they can get it as soon as possible.

So one of the sites that just said what's near me and found it that way.

What are you telling people about RSV, the respiratory virus that's out there hitting kids especially?

Right.

So across the United States and here in San Antonio, we're seeing increased numbers of cases of RSV as well.

And this can cause significant problems, especially for smaller children, can cause problems with their oxygen levels, lead to them being in the hospital sometimes for longer hospital stay so kids can get really sick with RSV.

Now, with.

All these three, what are the symptoms and are some of them mimicking the others?

How do you know if it's combat?

How do you know if it's flu?

Right.

It can be really challenging by symptoms alone because there's a lot of overlap in the clinical symptoms.

You can have some cough fatigue, fever with all three of these, you know, with COVID and influenza, people have muscle aches, they have headache, sore throat.

With RSV, there's a lot of mucus nasal congestion putting in children that might look like flu or COVID.

And so you might need some tests to sort that.

Covered why we're seeing a flu spike right now or at least on the way up COVID.

You expect to peak later in the year.

Right.

Right.

So right now, COVID levels are fairly low, which is good.

But we do anticipate that it's going to go up.

They're seeing increased cases in Europe.

They're seeing some more activity in Asia.

And we've tended to follow those those areas of the world.

And so we expect that we'll start seeing cases start to come up in November, early December.

All right.

Well, thanks very much, Dr. Jason Bowling and University Health.

It's worth it to get your flu shot and COVID.

I did that.

You don't have as much work there.

Thanks for coming in.

Thank you.

The city of San Antonio is asking for your input right now as to how to make San Antonio a smart city or at least a smarter city.

Joining us out of the Office of Innovation of the city of San Antonio is the Smart City Administrator, your official title, Emily Royle.

Thank you for joining us.

So much for having me.

Tell us about this survey you have going on right now.

Right now it's online, but you've had meetings as well.

So what are you looking for?

I don't want to say specifically because it's kind of open ended.

That's right.

So smart cities can mean a lot of things for a lot of different communities.

Broadly, what it means is leveraging data innovation and technology to improve public services and improve quality of life for residents.

Now, what we want to do is take a people centered approach to smart cities In the past, we've seen smart cities and other cities that have been driven primarily by vendors, primarily by tech companies that come and drop new technologies in public space.

And government slow to react.

We have to figure out how to respond to that.

We've seen smart cities that have been driven in exclusively by governments themselves.

We call this the smart city two point model, where there really isn't a lot of interaction or engagement with the public or with the private sector or startups.

So it's worse.

Maybe up to now it's been the needs of people who work with the city instead of the needs of the people.

That's exactly.

Right.

City.

So what are you seeing out there?

What have been some of the ideas that have come in.

We've seen some really interesting stuff.

I'll give you one example and kind of how a smart city solution could respond to that.

So, for example, we've heard from residents some simple things like it's really hard for me to safely cross the street, especially for the elderly, for the disabled.

Or and you might have this experience, too.

You stand at a crosswalk and there are no cars and you're waiting 5 minutes to cross the street.

Right.

One example of a solution to that would be to put a sensor at the crosswalk which prioritizes you as the pedestrian every time you cross So we're hearing things from residents about the conditions of living in the city.

And our job is to marry that or match that with solutions that we know are out there or in some cases, collaborate directly with local entrepreneurs.

Prioritizing, say, lights so you can move through, say, Broadway.

I think that was one of the things I talked about with the Broadway plan that would make it faster despite what the state was concerned about.

Where are we in those kinds of developments with sensors and plans for lights?

That's right.

So we have a smart streetlight pilot that has just finished with CPS Energy.

We piloted three innovation zones we piloted streetlights in each of those innovation zones, and we tested out different kinds of technology solutions, things like sensors that collect air quality or temperature data.

Parking solutions and attaching all of that onto the streetlight itself.

Now we're in the process of traffic flow.

Is traffic flow part of it?

Yeah, traffic flow is part of it as well.

And now we're in the process of evaluating how well those pilots went and identifying or selecting one vendor that we're going to go with to scale the solution citywide.

Smart cities, we think of, say, green development and architecture and A.I.

and things like that.

What else do you want from people about their issues?

I really want to hear from residents what their experiences are living in San Antonio, both positive and negative.

We want to hear things that they struggle with, like traffic, for example.

We want to hear their ideas as well for things that they wish they could have, but they don't.

In San Antonio, for example, maybe better access to open data.

Maybe they want to see a new ways to get information from the city beyond a straight up community, meeting those innovative ideas as well as those challenges across the board, whether it's transportation or anything else, is what we want.

Because your Innovation Office of Innovation, people think tech, but we've changed you just this week.

Garbage pickup because there were problems with that.

So are you getting ideas that aren't necessarily computer tech related?

Absolutely.

And I think that's really what kind of smart city we want to be.

We don't want to just look for problems that only technology can solve.

So we're really open to hearing from residents.

Any ideas beyond just what tech can do.

And that's one of the goals of being a smart city for San Antonio.

I know you keep up with what's out there across the country and the vendors come in with products.

What are what are you looking at that's out there?

On the horizon we don't know about yet?

Yeah, I think what's really out there is artificial intelligence.

We're seeing this really get baked into a lot of systems, like a case management system, for example, where we're able to really identify and predict what kind of services people are going to need.

In a certain area or because of economic trends or because of what?

Well, because of what kind of services they already qualify for and the types of services that are related to that.

So, for example, if I'm coming in and I need access to housing, you might also need access to other types of care and services based on large behavioral patterns of what people like you need in that kind of situation.

People like me, that makes the none smart city person.

That's interesting.

That's your official title Smart City Administrator, and you can go to essays, speak up to have your input right now, and it goes through November seven.

That's correct.

All right.

Well, thanks very much, Emily.

Royal, appreciate you coming in.

Thank you, sir.

Reporters Roundtable This week.

We're following up on that report we talked about with John Courage at the beginning of this show, a planning document for San Antonio.

And in writing, one of the stories about that kind of a deep dove on it was Diego Mendoza Moyers, who is a business reporter with the San Antonio Express-News, thanks for coming in.

Now, in the end, you know, he had some reservations about this $325,000 report.

The city ultimately accepted as a framework of economic development going forward.

What struck you about it, and was it, in your opinion, worth it?

Yeah.

So the city's idea here is, hey, let's take a new approach to economic development.

That's not so focused on unemployment rates and things like that.

And so that was the driving force behind wanting to do this document.

But then you take a look at it, and it really includes a lot of recycled documents that these consultants the city hired to put the report together.

They recycle a lot of the sort of policy recommendations that make for other cities.

You know, they charge other cities a lot less for this document.

And then, of course, you know, coming on to work on this document with some sort of city hall insiders.

Right.

So I think there's, you know, these documents of questionable value.

And in the work that was done to put it together, you know, I think there's a it just seems a little, you know, questionable.

Right about now in the time line in terms of you talk about city hall insiders, the there was an Austin firm tips that they initially hired and then they brought on some San Antonio people.

What was the timeline on this and what's before those city hall insiders or even working in that consulting, right?

Yeah.

So the timing is a little interesting because the city put out this RFP late last year to kind of, you know, solicit.

Requests for proposal.

Exactly.

To solicit, you know, offers on this.

And so then they signed this contract with Tip Strategies based in Austin in February.

And it brought on these subcontractors, a firm led by some kind of political heavyweights, hoping, rather.

And let's expand it.

Exactly.

And so when the city voted on that, that was in February.

And then a couple of months later, if at least, Mr. Gonzalez, the mayor and his former chief of staff who ran for in the Democratic primary for Bear County judge after she lost in that primary, she went to work for, on the other hand, associates and is one of the main consultants to work on this document and so on.

City Council voted on this.

I don't think there was ever an expectation that the mayor's former chief of staff would be doing some of the work.

And do you think that influenced the document?

I, I don't know that it influenced I mean, clearly, I think the mayor's chief of staff would have some kind of expertize in the city's economy and, you know, a whole bunch, rather, and lots of family feud as well would have some kind of insight.

So you can see the argument that that maybe it would be valuable to bring her on.

But I still think it's questionable that, you know, a recent city hall insider that had just been gone for a few months would kind of join this project.

And as you pointed out in the article, an economic development division or department, the department of the San Antonio government might have done this.

But the point is, I guess and from John Courage and others, they wanted an outside look, a bigger picture how they attract people and companies from across the country.

And did they do some of that?

Do they like the tax increment and reinvestment changes?

That wasn't a specific goal.

Nothing was really specific, but that may have them take another look.

So here's one of the things.

The work, the granular work is to be done.

And that's what the mayor said is that, you know, the granular policies related to incentives, you know, how much money we give to businesses that come here and the like.

You're talking about the tax increment reinvestment zones, kind of a wonky property tax policy all this work has to be done.

So I think that raises questions of what did these consultants give you?

Right.

They gave you this document that had kind of generic recommendations that have already been made.

And you say 20, 20 plan, you know, greater say Texas has produces you know, kind of economic plans the Alamo Area Council government has and they all relate to bolster workforce support local businesses you know facilitate real estate development and they all make the same recommendations as these consultants made this consultant just came in afterward the after these other you know economic plans had already been produced.

So some of the same recommendations say community land banks and benefit agreements which is something different that I hadn't heard that phrase before these or out there before.

Yeah.

I mean, these are these are some kind of innovative recommendations, right.

You know, it was sort of recommendations to, you know, developers should work with the community to sort of, you know, get their support for real estate developers, things like that.

So it's a it's an innovative policy, I guess.

But but the thing is, this consultant to the city paid $300,000 for this report for 25,000.

They use these same policy recommendations verbatim for cities like Arlington and Fort Worth.

They've made similar economic plans for earlier this year.

So they just kind of recycle some of these recommendations as they do these reports for different cities.

You know.

Arguably San Antonio, especially decades ago, thirties, forties, fifties, when the city, some people would call it stagnant and didn't really change much.

They could have used a document like this because even some of the ideas that they had were ignored or voted down say more interstates and things like that, more state highways and area road was going to be a highway.

They don't want to spend the money, other things like that.

So is it at least a good idea to look at that, say, when it came up, it wasn't as controversial yeah.

I think philosophically, you know, the mayor's talked about when you saw the photo in the pandemic of the food bank lines and a lot of people going there, the mayor made the comment that a lot of those people are employed.

And so when we talk think about, you know, the generic sort of indicators like the unemployment rate or wages, I think the thinking behind this document was the way that we think about economic development misses a lot of the poor outcomes that people have.

You know, even if you have a job, you might have poor health or, you know, an ability to put food on the table, things like that.

So the idea behind this philosophically was, hey, let's let's let's take a different look at how we do economic development to improve the outcome for citizens.

So you can understand that argument.

I think the question then becomes, does paying $325,000 for this document get you there where you're creating better outcomes?

Did it get into sectors of the economy where, say, there are opportunities and challenges, places we should go, like we talked about biotech or tech.

So here's the thing.

So so San Antonio in recent years has been focused on industry clustering, right.

And health care and manufacturing and cybersecurity, biotech as well.

But but in some of the other plans I mentioned, you know, greater, say, Texas and Alamo Area Council governments, these other economic plans that have been put together in recent years, say tomorrow, they already identified these industry clusters.

Right.

These industry clusters are already developing.

We've already got a vibrant automotive manufacturing sector here.

We've already got a growing cybersecurity sector.

So I think these consultants, we're not identifying anything new when they're talking about these industry clusters.

He brings up.

Are some of these groups really doing things that are redundant?

There are so many economic development.

There's one city, there's a foundation which is great RSA now or the chamber.

They do kind of the same things are they're stepping on each other's toes and really putting out the same kind of information.

The people of the city would say is that they're breaking down silos between these organizations and they're all bringing them together and to work together.

I think that's what they say.

I think it's very political.

Sounds good.

It's questionable whether this document will actually, you know, break down silos and make all this work come together.

Maybe it will.

But that's the thinking from the city.

I know you're going to report on that in the future.

Do you think it will get I think.

You know, maybe philosophically there will be a better approach to economic government that, like I said, maybe focuses more on residents health outcomes or things like that, as opposed to just, you know, rogue kind of economic indicators.

I don't know that spending those $325,000 really get you anywhere.

Thanks very much.

For sharing your gut, even though it's a deep dove in the paper.

And you can check that out.

Diego Mendoza MOYERS In more stories in the San Antonio Express-News, the website is.

Express-News dot com.

That was that was a test.

All right.

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

You can see the show again.

A preview shows as well as our podcast at klrn dot org.

And we'll see you next time.

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