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, and thank you for joining us for On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer, and we are starting this week with the future of the Institute of Texan Cultures building downtown.

That whole site, which is owned by UTSA.

People have talked about demolishing the building and possibly putting different kind of development there.

Maybe a sports stadium.

But there's a development recently that may throw a wrench in that plan.

Joining us to talk about it is Betty Boucher, who is a board member of the San Antonio Conservation Society.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

Randy.

First of all, what is this new landmark designation and that you've fought for, pushed for for the building?

It's called State Antiquities Landmark, and it now enjoys that new designation in addition to the previous designation that we applied for.

And that's that.

It has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

So this building is very deserving of both of those designations.

The State Antiquities Landmark provides for the state agency, Texas Historical Commission, a greater enforcement power, including over public entities.

Now, the question here that exists is that the state law many years ago, was created to give some exemptions to public universities in Texas to.

What they can do with their property, their buildings, etc..

So, this technically, they can have proponents for the development would say that the building is old, building is outdated, it costs a lot of money to renovate.

And so it's good for the universe to be, to be able to use that property.

And despite those designations, that they could do that, can do that.

Well, that's the theory.

And I guess we're going to go into a test period and see what the extent of those exemptions are.

And I certainly hope that, UTSA is willing to work with us more closely and, examine possible alternative uses for the building, instead of going to those test cases.

We'd really like to always be friends with agencies like UTSA because we value them highly.

However, our purpose, of course, is to protect, historic and cultural entities and protect our heritage and to retain it and re utilize it wherever possible.

So UTSA owns not just the Institute of Texan Cultures, which is a statewide icon of a building.

From HemisFair, the original HemisFair.

Yes, it was the Texas Pavilion.

So it really belongs to all of the taxpayers of the state of Texas.

They also own, Ursuline Academy, the historic building downtown.

And they own the house and block, which is that main military plaza.

And, is an entire row of commercial buildings that contribute to the historicity of main and military.

Although nobody's talking about the Ursuline Academy going anywhere or those buildings.

Well, that remains to be seen, because if, in fact, UTSA and the UT system are exempt from these, these regulations actions, it sounds like they certainly have the authority and could.

Yes, they could.

Now, what is your response to critics who say, or the people who say that's an incredibly old, dilapidated building in terms of it would cost millions, tens of millions of dollars to bring up to there's asbestos, there's mold.

Very few people go to the Institute of Texan Cultures anymore compared to what they did, and that it's really not a practical building because they're going to move, you know, the innards of it, the exhibits to somewhere else.

Well, Randi, that's a lot of questions.

Let me start from the beginning.

All right.

It was.

So, first of all, their own report says that the building really is not in bad condition and that the minimum requirement to bring it back into a line with code is about $7 million, which is not a lot for 180,000 square foot building.

But when you look at adaptive reuse for other purposes, that's when you get into other expenses.

And they have not yet looked at all of the possible uses that that building could be made of.

So they really don't know what the costs would be and what would be the least cost to adaptively reuse it for another purpose.

That's one thing.

But the thing that concerns me the most is that I think we have possibly an accountability issue.

When the legislature created this building, they created it as a permanent building to house permanent exhibits.

And then they followed up with an annual budget allocation, a state budget line item that gave UTSA initially $2 million a year to maintain the building.

It eventually fell to $1 million a year.

So over time, UTSA has received more than $60 million to maintain this building.

And you have to ask yourself, well, did they really spend the money the way the legislature intended them?

And you said the Texas comptroller could look into that, or are you pushing?

Well, the comptroller, has the authority to do an audit and check on that.

And it would probably be a good idea for the comptroller to check and see if they really maintained the building properly, the way that the state intended and the way the state budgeted for them to do.

Because when you look at that and then you look at the fact that the UT system enjoys some exemptions from historic preservation regulations.

Those two things put together makes it look like they have the ability to skirt some accountable to the taxpayers.

And and and one other question, what do you, have you have suggested other uses for that, maybe additions to the building additions around it.

What would you tell people that might be better for that site with the building than a sports stadium?

Well, there is a professional group, the Preservation Texas Works With, that has identified 7 to 10 different possible uses and really for accountability to the taxpayers.

We ought to be looking at that.

And your next step is legal.

Well, it depends on what UTSA does.

We love UTSA, and we want to offer our assistance at any point in this process to help them investigate alternatives that are reasonable and cost effective.

We really want to be there for them.

Well, I appreciate you coming in.

And this obviously a story developing.

We would like to have you back on the road as well.

Board member of the San Antonio Conservation Society Betty Boucher.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Plans for a new arboretum on San Antonio's southeast side are moving along now, and we're going to find out the latest with a founding board member who also happens to be a former mayor and a former HUD secretary, Henry Cisneros, thank you very much for.

Coming in, Randy.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us what the latest is now on the Arboretum.

You've you've narrowed down to, I guess three different kind of plans that people can look at.

Well, the main thing to say is the arboretum concept has really taken hold, and it's moving forward and people like it.

And we've had several public meetings, and the turnout is large and people are excited and waiting for it to all come to fruition.

In the time since we've talked about it, the land is acquired, so it's 170 acres that once was the Republic Golf course, then another 18 acres that's out of the floodplain.

So we can build structures on it, like research and educational.

From near this.

A lot of.

Creek.

This is off the Salado Creek just east of Brooke City base.

It's really easy to get to.

You go down age 37, get off at the military drive, exit and take a left and go literally about three quarters of a mile.

And there was the entrance to the golf course.

It's now the entrance to the arboretum.

Not yet open to the public.

Won't be for a little while.

Another year, year and a half or so.

Although we do intend to have a first phase that we can explain to the public what an arboretum is.

So we've acquired the land.

We've been able to raise capital to do this.

We've been able to begin a master plan with a firm called Sasaki, which is one of the best landscape architects in the country.

And they have done many arboretum, so they know what they're doing.

And we're now in the final stages of the selection of a permanent CEO, Tom courser, who has been our CEO since we were created.

But he never intended to be the permanent CEO.

We're very fortunate to have had him because he's a great organizer, a great leader.

But Sasaki has led us in the direction, as you say, of sort of three choices.

Will this be an arboretum about public activities, or will this be an arboretum about leaving it in the wild, basically for hiking, or will this be an arboretum?

Third choice, mainly for research activities.

So research buildings and growing trees that can be used in other parts of the city.

And the answer is probably a combination of all three because we do want public spaces.

This is not a normal park, but it is a place where people can go in large numbers and have.

Events people haven't heard of Arboretum in San Antonio, maybe outside San Antonio.

Their arboretum is cross country around the world.

How do you describe it?

Some people say it's a museum of trees.

Well, that's a very good one.

Phrase description.

It is a place where we recognize, celebrate the majesty of these trees that we have around us.

And San Antonio has about 25 different species of trees, some of which are already on the site, because the Salado Creek runs through there and they've been they've been watered.

So there's pecans and cypresses and oaks of all kinds and mulberries and hackberry and box elders.

And you could just go on and on.

And some of these are literally 2 to 300 years old.

They were there at the time the Alamo fell, you know, so they're just great stately, majestic trees that we want to save and add additional species.

The, director of the National Arboretum in Washington told us first of all, he was very complimentary of our size.

It's going to be about 200 acres, which will make us the largest arboretum in Texas.

But he said Texas, the San Antonio region, because we're multiple eco zones, the Edwards playing Plains, the plains down to the Gulf, to the west is the brush country, black land, dirt.

To the east, can sustain more species of trees than almost any other place in the United States.

So we'll plant trees, watch them grow.

Arboretum is tend to last a long time.

The one in Boston just celebrated its 150th anniversary.

But Randy, I visited some of those.

I was in one in Baltimore just last week.

They're just unbelievably wonderful places of respite, of peace.

Just spend a day walking amongst the trees.

Right now the leaves are changing color up north.

It's just some people call it a museum of trees.

I call it a cathedral of trees because it has a kind of spiritual, even transcendental quality.

And people can vote now on one of these three plans.

But it's a way to get people involved.

In the process.

So if they take things that they like out of each of us.

Yeah, and I think all three have merit.

One is community activities, children's activities from schools, volunteer programs for seniors, just all kinds of veterans memorial, etc.

the next the wild.

We can keep areas wild, which are basically hiking trails in the middle of the city.

Very nice idea.

And thirdly, there will be research buildings because frankly, this is not just a place to enjoy.

It's also a place to, to, to, to recognize in a time of climate change how trees can be a positive force in a city.

A tree canopy brings shade, right?

The more trees you have, the more oxygen they give up and carbon dioxide they inhale.

So in a time of climate change, trees are really a valuable asset.

And bringing people into San Antonio, it's a this.

Would be very much like it may well be the arboretum of Texas that defined our region of Texas, because I've been to Houston and it's more or less in a bayou.

It's that that defines it.

And Dallas is in the middle of the city.

It's not as large.

This is going to be 200 acres easily accessible with all these species of Texas trees and others.

From the beginning, we viewed it as having two characteristics.

One is celebrate the heritage of our city in line with its trees.

When the when the Native Americans lived here, they lived in the shadow of those trees and the whole the even the San Antonio River and all of our creeks were places where people lived when the Spaniards got here, and then later other colonists, they use them for timber, for building materials, for food.

The earliest journals of the Spaniards, when they arrived here, talked about arriving at an oasis of water and trees.

So there's the heritage aspect.

The other piece that I think is important is don't think of the arboretum as a physical place, although it's 200 very attractive acres, but think of it as the place where we teach and inform and involve San Antonians in preserving the tree canopy for the entire so much.

So much more than a park.

And people were asking, okay, there is these three visions that you can vote on.

What's yours?

You're the founding board member.

You're it's this is your baby.

When when did you get the idea for this?

And what would you like to see emphasized?

Obviously there are all those things.

But let me answer the second part first.

And that is, I'd like to see a combination, because I think we have 200 acres that's large enough that we could do a little bit of each, and we need to do a little bit of each.

Where did I get the idea?

I got the idea of, frankly, in the shadow of big trees.

People think of me as an urban guy, a mayor, economic development guy.

But I find just such peace at a place like Mayor Woods north of San Francisco, which is literally pine trees.

You know, that creates huge, right?

My daughter lives in a place outside of San Francisco called Laguna Oaks.

It's a subdivision, but they saved the trees.

And you go to one under one of those trees at 300 years old, where Native Americans, you can see where they used to mill the acorns to make food.

And you, you get transported back to a time this a living thing.

That was 300 years ago.

And it's going to last into the future when we're gone.

It's to me, it's a a very special relationship.

And San Antonio especially, I once had a visit from the governor of New Mexico when I was mayor.

And when he landed his plane, I went to his pick him up at his plane.

You said, Henry, I just came across New Mexico and the dry desert of West Texas and the and the plains.

And then all of a sudden we start to land, and I look out and it's green.

Yeah.

It's green because we have these water sources and these trees.

That is San Antonio, that is.

And where can people vote on this?

On the for how long?

Arboretum San Antonio website and any time.

All right.

Well, thanks very muc And I seen you elsewhere on color and now you're on TV.

Henry Cisneros, former everything and, founding board member of the San Antonio Arboretum.

Thanks for.

Coming out.

Thank you.

On reporters roundtable this week, with the election coming up, you might wonder just how much money is going to be spent or has been spent and who is donating that money, especially here in Texas.

And joining us now, man, who wrote a great article on this, Michael Taylor, columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, the smart money essay.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us about this, this website and database, which really breaks down some information that's kind of hard to find.

You could find it on line if you did it yourself.

But this this makes it easy, right?

Texas Ethics Commission mandates that both candidates and donors, big donors, disclose how much and when they're giving it.

But it's hard to find.

You have to hunt and peck.

So citizen journalist by the name of Chris Tackett out of, Fort Worth, has built a searchable database.

He basically dumps the info from Texas Ethics Commission and then makes it so that you could name the candidate or name the PAC who they gave it to, who they got it from, how much it was, in what time period, and then visually create a pie graph.

So it's interesting if two thirds of a candidate's money comes from a single source, then you go, you know, follow the money.

Logically, I could see what's motivating that candidate.

It's a very powerful tool.

Also, when we talk about dark money, the PACs, political action committees, people don't think they can find out.

But you can.

You can.

If you put in the name of the PAC, it will tell you who gave to the PAC.

It also tells you who the PAC gave to.

So it's it is a connect the dots type of database in a way that.

Well, technically that is disclosed on the Texas Ethics Commission website.

It's not really searchable.

So you've that is possible now as a journalist, but also as a citizen to with a little bit of, you know, hit a few keyboards, you can figure out, visually who's giving and then you can sort of follow the money and this kind of thing.

You say, the searchable database, especially like this has fueled stories that we have seen recently about, say, PACs in Texas, right?

Where the money comes from, whether it's in Texas or not.

Right.

Texas Monthly has done some cover stories on this.

CNN has done some stories.

I mean, it's a it's a huge tool for journalists who, would like to have a fast way of figuring out who are the top ten donors.

Where's the money coming from?

Why are certain people being pushed in certain directions?

And where have we seen some of those stories, like Greg Abbott's?

Yes.

24.

Greg, I was very interested in school vouchers and you can see who is giving to that cause.

And there was a lot of intra Republican Party primary going on this spring.

So who are the big donors to that?

What are their PACs?

Who are the individuals?

And this is a way to figure it out.

Yeah.

And then also I guess from there and it takes a journalist to do this, what are the effects on the elections?

And in Abbott's case, people did the postmortem and they were fairly effective.

The people who were primaried, right, including, say, Steve Allison here, who was beaten by somebody who was who was supported heavily by a PAC.

Right.

So Mark LaHood and you can see more than half of his money directly comes from a Governor Abbott supported PAC.

It's extremely clear to connect the dots in a way that is usually not easy to do that.

But now it is easier.

And some of that money.

Also, you can find out whether it comes from in Texas, a donor or out of state.

Right?

Right.

So Elon Musk shows up very, you know, prominently George Soros, not surprisingly, shows a very prominently.

Most of the donors are or Texas based, but not all.

And and one of the things to know about tax policy, there's no limit on how much money could be given in the state different from federal and different from local races.

But in Texas, at the Texas election level, there's no limit.

So, yeah, big money can can be dumped into these races and it has and we've seen that from, say, the West Texas millionaires that have been in the news about that.

Right.

That's very prominently.

Yes.

And you can.

And the supporters of this database have connected some of the political dots about that.

And that's not something I get into in my column.

Right.

I think everybody, every citizen should be worried about and concerned with and try to inform themselves about how much money is being dumped into Texas politics.

And how about your average donor?

I mean, does it go down that far if you want to, you know, get into the weeds like, hey, does my neighbor spend how much or does this elected official here in my precinct?

Yes, because every every campaign has a treasurer and they have to report it to the Texas Ethics Commission.

So the $500 donation does show up now.

It's I think it's visually more interesting to say, show me the pie graph.

And the pie graph will say, okay, 60% came from Governor Abbott's war chest, and then they'll just be an other category because people aren't tremendously influenced by my $100 donation, but it is technically in the database.

And that is a fascinating story.

And you wrote another one recently upcoming.

Yeah, upcoming.

About something else going on in Austin, which to a lot of us is a little scary.

Yeah, but tell us about driverless cars in Austin right now.

Right.

So I got an early code last week to go to Austin.

Austin in 2025 we'll have driverless cars.

And now it's had them before.

I remember last year there were some Waymo cars up there, just regular cars.

And they've had some issues with those.

But what you drove in is a Jaguar tricked out with a lot of cameras on top and all around motion sensors and all this kind of stuff.

This is Waymo as a permanent rollout to both Austin and then Atlanta is also getting this in early 2025.

But they had a you know, if you if you ask the right question and say the right incantations, I got an early code for it, which was exciting.

I approached it with, hey, I should talk to my wife about life insurance because this is seems really scary.

Yes.

And in fact, the morning of she's like, you know, you don't have to do this just for journalistic purposes, but I was dedicated to doing it.

And then 30s into the ride.

I thought, this is the most boring thing in the world.

This is incredible.

And so I'm confident that everybody has that experience of going from I'm extremely frightened to, oh, this is like riding Skytrain into the DFW airport now, this iteration of it anyway, and Waymo.

And they had some problems before, I know with traffic jams.

And there were some cars that stalled and things like that.

Yeah.

Certain big events.

Yeah.

But this iteration.

So how's this supposed to work.

You call and how how much later will you get that right.

Yeah.

There they are working with Uber.

So this is going to be on your Uber app.

You just say I would like a driver or I don't want a driver.

I want Waymo in the car shows up in my case it was seven minutes.

I took two rides in Austin last week, seven minutes in each case.

So it's very fast.

It's just like Uber.

So the interaction for the passenger would just be through Uber from downtown in that area.

Yeah.

It is all of these driverless experiments.

They've done it in Phoenix Los Angeles and San Francisco.

And now Austin have a ring fenced portion of the city.

You can't go between cities.

You have to stay within Austin.

Is it going to be just Jaguars in Austin, or are we going to see fleets of Jags and Jaguars?

They don't look like the sporty Jaguars that I think of in the 1980s.

They're kind of boxy.

And they have these funny cameras on top.

Does it make you a little more nervous that somebody is going to hit you.

And then oh my gosh it's a Jaguar.

And they're going to not my car.

Not my problem.

No it's not a problem.

Yeah.

It's they're super comfortable.

You get in and there's a spa music playing.

And then I figure it out on the app.

I can change it to hip hop or whatever.

I want to hear you get a little weirded out with all the cameras.

I understand there are cameras all over the place aimed at you.

Yes, they tell you when you get in for the first time, we can see you.

We are watching you.

On the other hand, we're not recording your audio, so you may sing if you want to.

We can't hear you, but we can see you.

So that's a good warning.

Don't do whatever.

Don't do anything that you wouldn't want seen.

But you can't speak without somebody listening in.

That's what they tell you at least.

Okay.

Yeah, well, we'll come back when it's, like, all over the place.

Michael Taylor and before then, Michael Taylor, your comments, express news, smart money.

Yes.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Good to be here.

Thank you.

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

You can see this show again or previous shows.

You can also download the whole podcast at 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