Speaker 1: K LRN presents the next hour of information concerning the San Antonio regional economy, which is important to all of us.

It's that economy that shapes our jobs, our incomes, our homes, our families, and the future of our children.

We've assembled the group of experts who work in this field every day, stay with us for the next hour.

I hope the information you will learn is useful to you in making your daily decisions.

Well, we're blessed to have in this segment, a couple of individuals who have their fingers on the pulse of the economy of San Antonio, and they do it with numbers and they do it with daily experiences, working with the businesses of our city.

They are Richard Pettis, the president of the San Antonio chamber of commerce and Tom Tunstall senior research director at economic development function.

Tom, let's start with you because you're into the numbers every day.

Give us a sense of where the San Antonio economy is in this period.

As the pandemic wears down where we were before the pandemic, how did those compare?

Where might we have been without the pandemic and how do we get back on that trajectory?

Give us some sense of that standing.

Sure.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

And, and w you know, initially, uh, on, or about April of last year, 2020, uh, you know, things took a huge nosedive because of the, the state home restrictions and all that.

And we've seen, uh, in the intervening months, some rebounds what's been, I guess, as interesting as anything while there's a lot of pent up demand, uh, the sort of the comeback, if you will, hasn't been steady.

It's, it's still fluctuated a lot.

I mean, we see numbers where, you know, GDP growth is, is five, six, 7%, and then the next month it falls, falls back because of either supply chain issues or, or what have you.

So it's been a fairly uneven road.

Is it been, Speaker 1: Uh, parallel with the trajectory of the pandemic itself?

Speaker 2: Uh, I wouldn't say so.

Sure.

Yeah.

Um, you know, the, uh, uh, with, with the Delta a variant, for example, uh, that, that was another surge.

It was a setback.

Absolutely.

Uh, and, and, uh, unfortunately we are still not on the trajectory that, you know, we haven't caught up with where we would have been had we not had the pandemic, we are not there yet.

Okay.

Speaker 1: Is that, is that job growth numbers or absolute size of workforce or, Speaker 2: Well, it's actually GDP GDP, so, yeah.

Which is, uh, correlates with, with workforce, but, you know, isn't, yeah, they, don't a hundred percent sync up, but as we get more productive, for example, we could do more with less with fewer people and things like that.

So Speaker 1: Do you see us on the path toward getting GDP to at least where it was before the pandemic and then a trajectory beyond that?

Do you see a path?

Hopefully, Speaker 2: Probably next year.

I, I don't think we'll see it before then.

Uh, but, uh, I think a lot of people, uh, including me are banking on next year, kind of getting us pretty close back to normal, but, uh, in terms of economic activity now, I'm not sure we'll catch up to again, the trajectory that would have been on had COVID not occurred, but that may be 2023.

Speaker 1: And the metrics you're using for these comments is, is GDP gross domestic product of the area, economic output.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Gross Metro product.

If you want to talk about San Antonio.

Sure.

All right.

Speaker 1: Uh, Richard, you see the same numbers, but you see them in the actual companies and the faces of executives that you work with in the several thousand members that the chamber has.

Give us a sense of where you think they are.

Well, I think there's still a lot of cautious in this, in what they're doing.

Um, as you've just heard from Tom, we're heading in the right direction, but the fear is another Delta virus or something like that that could really push us back.

But I'm seeing a lot of positive growth.

I'm seeing people downtown again, you know, during the Heights of the pandemic downtown was a ghost town, right.

And now we're getting back to what we are used to, and that is people going to places and buying things and businesses opening, you know, we've had a spade, probably Henry of maybe 50 ribbon cuttings for new businesses opening in San Antonio in the last three months.

That's impressive.

So we're headed in the right direction, but I still sense this kind of fear and Well, it's natural because this pandemic has been so unpredictable.

And as you said, it's had surges, uh, the Delta set us back and who knows what's ahead.

Hopefully, hopefully, uh, with people, uh, being remaining careful.

Yes.

Uh, we'll see the economic effects, which would be startups, as you say, new hires hires beyond the earlier numbers, consumers out in the marketplace, maybe Christmas season, we'll see some burst of economic activity.

If I were to ask you each to look ahead a year, two years, three years, uh, and let's assume for the moment that the pandemic is quote under control, not over, it may be endemic and be with us like the flu for the long haul.

Where do you see San Antonio?

What, what, w w w we'll start with you, Richard, what, what prospects do you see for the city?

What's the thing out there that excites you that it's possible?

Well, what excites me is the opportunities that San Antonio holds for anybody that wants to come and put their mark in the ground, those businesses that exist today, and those that want to come, you know, there's going to be a lot of money sloshing around in the economy from the federal government.

And then of course, we have our own bond in, in may that if, if it's successful, that is going to be opportunities for people to grow their businesses, to start businesses and to really plant that flag.

So I'm very optimistic and very bullish on the future.

We were, we were one of the faster growing cities in the country before the pandemic.

And we probably still are because others have been hurt worse by the pandemic.

And the basic numbers are there for us and our location in Texas.

And part of Austin, San Antonio.

Uh, do you see that as the likeliest course for our economy, it's a growth economy.

I do, Speaker 2: You know, you'll, uh, have a discussion with Lloyd Potter, the state demographer later, but, uh, prior to the pandemic, uh, the population of Texas was growing by about a thousand people a day.

Half of them born here, half of them moving from somewhere else.

Uh, those numbers may be down somewhat, but there's still, we're still seeing a lot of people come to Texas.

My, my biggest concern, I think there's plenty of pent up demand.

Uh, I think supply chains are going to be struggling for, uh, uh, at least a year and probably longer to kind of catch up.

You see the port of LA backed up, uh, it's creating opportunities for Texas ports actually because of the upgrade and the Panama canal.

We may see some supply chain, uh, diversions, if you will, to, to Texas, uh, uh, companies, uh, Texas ports.

Um, I think we're also gonna see, uh, a, uh, uh, companies look at repatriating supply chains, uh, bringing it back either if not to the U S than to Mexico or Canada, closer to, yeah.

Speaker 1: Gentlemen, thank you very much.

I apologize that we're as tight as we are, but we're trying to get the community with an overarching view of the economy, and you've helped us by virtue of your familiarity with the facts on the ground.

Thank you very much.

Thanks Henry.

Thank Speaker 2: You.

Speaker 1: San Antonio is fortunate to have a diverse mix of existing industries, tourism, the military biomedical, uh, uh, level of manufacturing.

All of them have sustained us well over the years, but we're also fortunate to have some leading edge industries that will create the jobs of the future.

That'll create a sense of momentum about how we participate in the sunrise coming national industries.

We're fortunate today to have Charles wooden CEO of geekdom a legendary aggregation of technology in San Antonio and Jim perse Bach the president and CEO of port San Antonio.

Who's done a tremendous job of transforming a traditional industrial air force base into a platform for leading edge industries.

So gentlemen, I'm looking to you to share with our audience today, a sense of San Antonio's economic future.

Um, Charles, if you could just give us a sense of geekdom and, and it as a base, but what you see beyond that.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

So, I mean, with geekdom, our whole focus is to really help individuals who have ideas, launch those into businesses, right?

Most of those being involved in technology or in helping empower them through technology.

And so our goal is to build San Antonio one startup at a time and just give them the fuel that they need to grow Speaker 1: For that how many folks do you have to keep them?

Speaker 2: So right now we have about 75 companies at various stages, Speaker 1: One facility for Speaker 2: Four floors in the rain building, right?

Speaker 1: And what are the, what's the range of types of Speaker 2: Companies?

We have all sorts of types.

They're not all just technology, but we do have some, you know, fem tech technology companies.

We have some AI companies, some, um, you know, cybersecurity companies all within our space.

Speaker 1: What does it teach you about the future?

When you look at the pattern, are they going to stay in San Antonio?

Will they grow here?

As you say, growing one business at a time, what, what, what's your sense of the future?

Speaker 2: I think the future is pretty bright.

And I think coming out of the pandemic, we've seen a very diverse group of individuals that have come working on ed tech, you know, uh, futures and all sorts of different things.

And so I think that there's a bright future for technology here in San Antonio with a very diverse group of founders that are coming up out of our ecosystem.

And it's really exciting.

And I think you're going to start to see them grow out into the other areas that we find in San Antonio building up there.

Speaker 1: You already have a record of firms leaving geekdom and, and moving into space elsewhere in the area, Speaker 2: The economy.

Yes.

Yes, for sure.

I mean, we've got, uh, hundreds of startups that have left geekdom and the 10 years of startups in the last 10 years that we've been around.

Speaker 1: Great success.

Now, Jim, you have a huge industrial plant out there that you have little by little building by building transformed and now have a major cybersecurity complex, but other areas as well.

What are some of the areas that are Growing?

We've got people doing everything from robotics, cybersecurity, as you mentioned, artificial intelligence, supervised autonomy, space exploration, uh, advanced transportation and critical infrastructure protection.

Now in the big picture, when we compare San Antonio to other places, we know that some of them had immense headstarts and great educational bases like Stanford and single silicone valley.

But how would you grade our progress at this stage At this stage in the new economy?

I think we are absolutely one of the leaders AC San Antonio has a huge advantage.

The world never really changes.

There's transportation, there's food, there's energy, all those are constants.

We need to live, right?

It's how you acquire them.

And what we're seeing is more and more integration of new technologies.

And in San Antonio, we've got a unique blessing.

We've got people who truly understand the industries as they exist today.

And we've got people who understand the new technologies and you bring those together.

It's like the old chocolate and peanut butter commercials with races.

Now you've got the ability to make some amazing things happen.

And this isn't just pretty talk.

I mean, we're seeing it on our campus alone.

We've added over 5,000 jobs in four years.

We see that acceleration going on.

We see things being done out of San Antonio that are life-changing the medical pods over at night aerospace.

The space exploration with Astro port and people are looking to San Antonio is being the leaders.

What is the what's needed to take this to the next level, from your perspective, the educational sector, more in migration of companies, capital availability space.

What do we, what are we looking at all of the above?

Speaker 2: I mean, I think education, the expansion of UTS and downtown is going to be a huge contributor to the future of what our economy is going to be.

The fact that they're focusing on data science and cybersecurity, kind of getting behind a couple of things at San Antonio is very special for.

And then I think collaboration between organizations like port geekdom velocity, all sorts of these kinds of, up and coming, um, you know, spaces working all together to build a better city, Speaker 1: Jim, your, your take on the single most important thing you would invest in these, The single most important thing that I would invest in is inspiring people.

You see, there's this concept out there.

That technology is hard.

That industry is hard.

It's only for the bright people.

It's only for people who know stem and re we've got a wonderful community full of wonderful people.

And some of the folks from the neighborhood are the people who've come up with these solutions that are making amazing things happen, but you have to inspire people and then provide that connectivity.

And what I am so excited about in San Antonio, we've brought 60,000 kids to our tiny little museum with that new center.

We're going to bring a couple hundred thousand people through And you were on the job.

And, uh, and I'm especially pleased today that you bring this optimistic view of what's possible in the future.

We look forward to your continued good work, and thank you for joining us today.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Perhaps the industry that's been hit hardest by the pandemic and that we worry about as a community is our hospitality and tourism industry.

It's been a backbone of our city and it's logical and obvious that it's been hurt badly by the pandemic.

Yet people are struggling and working to bring it back.

We're fortunate to have today with us.

Robert thrill kill chair of visit San Antonio, which is the organization that was created to replace the convention and visitors bureau.

And basically as the private sector leadership of our touristic industry, and also Michelle Madsen, who's president and CEO of the San Antonio hotel and lodging association, which makes her the representative of all of the hotels and motels in our community.

Robert, we'll start with you, give us a sense for the pandemic at its worst.

How serious was the blow and where are we now?

And then a sense also of your, your sense of the future.

Where are we headed?

Worse was probably in April and may of 2020.

When a number of our hotels Basically shut down.

We were completely shut down conventions.

Speaker 2: Uh, visitors stopped talking to me.

So that was, and for the first time, in, in my case at the Hilton Plaza area, uh, we shut down this hotel 52 year history, and we shut this hotel down for two months, and that was pretty much across the board downtown.

So that meant losses to vendors, losses, to employees, losses, to the industry itself.

That's why everything was.

And that was the case in many towns across the city, I'd say 95% of them right now as head of visit San Antonio.

Where do you see us today?

Well, the good news is our leisure customers are back.

Uh, they've came back with a vengeance, uh, especially over the summertime.

Our parks, uh, reported record numbers, uh, our occupancy in the month of July with 74% as described the, the logic of that, what was going on?

Is it families who were saying, we can't go abroad, but we can go to San Antonio.

And the good news is San Antonio has always been one of those destinations that families love to come to.

And we were a great drive market.

So a lot of our visitors come from 200, 250 mile radius, right.

Surrounding our community.

And so we saw really pent up demand, but the convention business is still off.

Convention business is still off and that's going to be for a while, cause they'd take a few years to plan ahead.

That's correct.

And, and I think they're still a little confused as to what jurisdictions are doing, what right?

Every community is a little different.

So they're struggling with that issue.

I'll come back to you in a second because I'd like to get your sense of where you see this a year from now or two years from now, Michelle, uh, the properties, did we lose some properties outright that just stopped being hotels.

Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of shut downs in terms of just properties closing and not opening back up.

They, they shut down for a time period.

As Robert mentioned, there were a lot of sales of hotels.

There was a lot of changing of ownership.

There's been a lot of changing of, of the flag if you will, of the, the brand, Speaker 2: Um, industry was disrupted Speaker 1: Badly, correct.

And because owners just couldn't continue in some cases, but for the most part, I would say that our hotels have, have remained in operation.

Speaker 2: And what's the spirit of the ownership.

Do people see these properties coming back?

Are they intending to stay in the business?

Speaker 1: We are cautiously optimistic, you know, summer was really, really great.

Again, as Robert mentioned, we had a wonderful leisure, leisure travel, travel season.

Speaker 2: What occupancy would you have had say this last year?

Speaker 1: 4% occupancy in July, which was only 3% down from that same time period in 2019.

Okay.

Speaker 2: And what was it at the worst of the pandemic occupancy?

Speaker 1: I mean, the worst of the pandemic was in the, in the single Speaker 2: Digits, single digits, single Speaker 1: Digits, things that I've never seen before, things that are hoteliers that have been in the business.

Speaker 2: Our strong period for family travel is summer.

And you had 74%.

What's the strongest period for convention activity?

Is it spring?

Speaker 1: I would say it's, uh, we rely on it in the fall and in the spring.

And w what percentage of our, of our usual number are we have that We are probably, I would say at occupancy, 50%, 50% off 2%.

Okay.

So both of you, and I'll start with Robert and come back to you going forward, give us your best shot at where we're headed.

Speaker 2: Well, I think 22 will be better than 21.

Right now.

We're looking at about a 15% improvement over 21 numbers.

However, our convention business won't be back in, in a pre pandemic numbers probably until 24.

Speaker 1: So we've got some more San Antonio really can't be back until our convention business is back.

It's that important?

I agree to our economic base.

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: It's the third largest industry here in San Antonio Speaker 1: And employees see any permanent damage and offense.

Since that convention say, we found a different way to meet and communicate with our people.

Yeah.

Speaker 2: Maybe some of that, but the large portion, it's important that these, uh, associations and and groups meet, they like to do PR people to people interactions.

And so I think that they'll be back in full force when the Speaker 1: Show what's your take, looking ahead Again, it's, it's a completely new ball game.

People have figured out that that virtual is an option, but I do think that people also want to meet, again, people like interacting with each other.

They like coming to conventions.

They like experiencing the city that they're going to.

And so I think it will come back.

It will take, It's clear that we will come back earlier than most touristic places because San Antonio has those advantages.

You mentioned the travel distance, the family attractions, the diverse reasons why people come and use our hotels.

Good luck to both of you.

Your work is critical to our entire city.

We depend on you.

Thank you.

Has done the community of service and pulling together the leaders of the major universities in San Antonio, for the purpose of talking about how those institutions contribute to the future San Antonio economy.

We have with us today, Dr. Taylor, Amy, the president of UTS, a former council woman, Rebecca, uh, who is in charged with community partnerships and workforce development at a and M San Antonio and Dr. Mike Flores the chancellor of the very extensive Alamo community college district, which is what, 60,000 plus 65,000 students students.

Now we'll start with Dr. Amy, uh, who heads a university of 36,000 students.

Very impressive.

The growth there, uh, Dr. Amy, you've got a good sense from your previous positions, but also now these years, as president of UCSA of San Antonio's economy and the role of UTS within it, if you could focus on some of these leads, sectors like cybersecurity and, uh, what you're doing in the computer and data sciences, uh, to, to prepare this economy for the Speaker 2: Future.

Sure.

Uh, and what's, what's great about being here.

It's good to see you Henry, and it's good to seem like colleagues.

We all work very closely together.

We all have this same common mission.

We're all interested in educating young people.

Education is the great equalizer, but we're also all collectively interested in our young people.

Uh, coming out of our programs, prepared to work in the economies here in San Antonio.

And we want them to join our workforce.

Stay here, have appropriate, wonderful compensation along the way, and we want to grow our, our community in this fashion.

So we're all in the business of this.

We were, I think all four of us were on the, the, the regional economic development plan that was brought forward by now greater sat X.

And there was a lot of focus on, on economic sectors.

We want it to go after, as a community.

And we have intentionally at UTFC really focused on growing data science and cyber security.

These are great strengths for us.

And these kind of cross cut all five of the targeted economic sectors that were brought forward in this plan.

Yes.

Speaker 1: Say a word about, um, the cybersecurity, because the words roll off the tongue, and a lot of people hear it in San Antonio, but explain what it is exactly to the laborer, Speaker 2: Uh, the, the, the idea or the concepts behind cyber security involve the protection of information from external attacks to, to, to, to get access to that information.

So it typically involves defensive measures about protecting information and having robust Speaker 1: Security, especially important in the economy to Speaker 2: Every, every Speaker 1: San Antonio has emerged as a center.

Well, and I've heard it said UTS is arguably the best cyber program educationally in the county.

Speaker 2: That is true.

And we are situated in probably the largest cyber ecosystem, cyber national security ecosystem outside of Washington DC here in San Antonio by virtue of the presence of the 16th air force and of NSA, Texas.

So we're, we're right in the middle of this wonderful hub and who wouldn't want to take advantage of that ecosystem about our supply side, producing young people from our, our programs who are trained in cyber and data science and information technology, having them prepared to enter the workforce.

But at the same time, all of us collectively working to grow our economies about this and bring, bring here, grow here, attract here companies that focus on cyber and national security and data science, Speaker 1: Hold that thought, because I want to come back to you in a bit with other areas that you see going forward, we'll have that kind of prominence, uh, former council, woman, Rebecca VO, who did a great service for our community on the council.

Now advising Dr. Cynthia Mattson at a and M on matters related to community partnerships.

Rebecca, I know that there've been some recently at a and M for example, the decision to purchase land for a regional hospital from the county hospital system, very important to the south side, but also important with a and M because it will be a teaching facility and add to the, to the, to the quality of clinical and academic medicine on the south side.

What other things are at work at a and M that, that focus on the workforce opportunities.

Thank you very much for having having me, and I'm proud to work with a wonderful president, Dr. Cynthia tinea at the Mattson, and to be here with our colleagues at, uh, around the city.

Um, but yes, the hospital is extremely important.

And as we continue to plan for the future, we are already growing our life sciences department and our laboratory research.

So we can have that trajectory for, um, preparing to have this regional, this regional hospital, the first of its kind in bear county, the only one is south of highway 90 from the county.

So it's extremely important.

And as we know that where we are situated the university, we are in an equity index, seven, eight, and nine.

And we are trying to also address health inequities that Exist equity index seven, eight, and nine.

So the City of San Antonio has an equity index that looks at where the lost opportunities, um, race, um, income, and where there hasn't been that opportunity for educational attainment in, in the past.

So we all know that talent is universal, universal opportunity is not.

And we are trying to ha make this, um, a part of the opportunity to have this regional.

I know that I know that, uh, Dr. Mattson initiated something extraordinary, which is the aspire network of south side schools that a and M is taking an interest in that is clearly a linkage between higher education, uh, public schools and, and the economic prospects for the, for the, for the area.

Can you say a word about that?

Absolutely.

This is another first of its kind a partnership with the seven south bear county independent school districts.

So Texas a and M San Antonio.

We are now having schools within all of these Southern sector school districts and allowing the community share with us the university, what are the need and what is the collective impact, The adoption of those schools?

Absolutely.

But it's more that we can have a collective voice together and speak together to make that impact.

What are the needs of Edgewood ISD and what are the needs of Harlandale ISD and how can we unify the voice to make a larger impact?

There's, there's no better example of, of, of linking up with community needs in that although the community college, uh, has really turned the corner and, uh, Mike, under your leadership and, and Dr. Leslie, before you, uh, has gone to the front ranks of community colleges in the, the Aspen prize that you got a few years ago.

Uh, and now traditionally, I've heard of Maricopa in Dallas and Dade county as the leading community colleges.

And there's now the Alamo colleges right on the front rank.

Uh, you're also deeply involved in the, uh, uh, ready to work initiative, $154 million, which is unlike anything this community has ever had before for workforce training.

Tell us something of your philosophy and direction for the commission.

Speaker 2: I think, um, Henry one of the wonderful things is that the community leadership has articulated key sectors that we should invest in.

So, um, as you've heard, uh, it with an emphasis in cybersecurity healthcare, um, bio-science aviation aeronautics, so are what, uh, we need to do then is be able to connect that.

So how do we connect opportunity to those key sectors?

Uh, all of us at the Alamo colleges are seeking to do that, to ensure that our 65,000 students have a path to the middle class, to high wage, high demand jobs, being able to do that at scale at any one of our five colleges, uh, which are nationally ranked and represented as well as our regional centers throughout pear county and the surrounding area.

Um, so, so that is the key for us.

If we were to look at healthcare in particular frontline workers, right, coming out of the most recent 20 months, we have a need for 4,000 just nurses, particularly in that field.

Um, and we train just at the Alamo colleges, um, about, uh, close to 2000.

So how can we close that gap to provide opportunity in one sector in one position, and then expand that to the other key cell Speaker 1: Michael, and your watch you've initiated some high profile things like the Alamo promise.

Can you define that quickly for the, uh, Speaker 2: Audience, the Alamo promise provides opportunity to all graduating high school seniors within bear county.

It ensures that you have scholarship, a scholarship paid for, uh, one of the things is we've already enrolled about 5,000 students.

Um, and this is our third year of implementation.

I mentioned healthcare earlier, 44% of Alamo promise scholars are actually in stem.

So if we look at the ways we can effectuate change in particular, I think that's a wonderful proof point Speaker 1: As we wind down here, uh, ask each of you, if I were to ask you, what is the next big thing you have on your agenda related to the economy?

I'll just ask each of you in, in sequence to say 15 seconds on what that is, Mike, what's the next big priority.

Speaker 2: I think that it is, uh, being able to connect our students to opportunities.

So our largest natural and untapped resource are 65,000 students.

So how can we link theory to practice and provide each of them with a Significant experience before they get their Speaker 1: Credential?

Got it very important.

Speaker 2: We have launched, uh, something tied to our accreditation as a four-year doctor, doctoral granting institution.

It's our classroom to career initiative.

And we have the, a plan to bring forward where 75% of our undergrads will have some form of experiential learning, including fade internships, because we're sitting here in the seventh biggest city in the United States.

Why wouldn't we want to work on having our young people intern with companies that they can go and work for after they graduate?

Speaker 1: So our next big step is to continue to build on our advanced manufacturing hub, global supply chain logistics, and getting our students connected to their employers sooner in their college career.

Wonderful, wonderful stories.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you.

More importantly for the work that each of you does, uh, and your institutions in preparing our region for the future Speaker 2: Pleasure to be here with you can catch up with colleagues.

Speaker 1: Judge, thank you for coming to KLR Ren for this special that Kayla Wren is putting on with respect to the San Antonio and regional economy, economic development, job creation, future prospects, and you have an unusually good perspective on this because you've been the county judge for 20 years.

And as the newspaper recently said, when you announced your retirement, the most effective, impactful public official in modern San Antonio.

And I know that to be true.

So your, your, uh, opinions are exceedingly valuable.

Give us a sense, given that you were a business person before, and you've been very close as mayor and county judge to the local economy.

What's the most important dynamics we've seen in the 20 years that you were a county judge, an assessment of where San Antonio was and where it is today in that period of time, Go back a little bit further.

When you were mayor in the eighties, you began to take an interest in creating jobs.

That was really the beginning of city government getting involved in the economy.

And it's exploded since then, uh, with a strong economic development programs with incentives with, um, all the inner city work.

That's been done technology city, the county also since I became county, judge created an economic development department.

We've been very active in an economic development focusing on manufacturing.

Uh, so the two are governmental entities in San Antonio transformed in the last 20 years supporting economic development foundation and really became aggressive in creating jobs.

And I think that was a big turning point for our communities.

What would you say have been the impact for the people of the region in those 20 years that you've been watching this Well across the spectrum of what makes up an economy.

We've got a very diverse economy, or we put a tremendous amount of money into our health care industry.

Particularly bear county has over a billion dollars into new facilities for our hospital district.

And that's just exploded when you look at the fact that tourism was hurt by the pandemic, but again was a major impact.

And now we're doing a major renovation of the Alamo and a new museum, which would really began to prop up that industry technology.

We've got a much stronger technology industry than most people think I was at tower chip company.

The other day, they got 660 people out there making chips, which everybody needs automobiles and other appliances.

And they're looking at a major expansion and, and again, manufacturing is so important.

So we really diversified over these last 20 or 30 years and much stronger, uh, diversity.

And that translates into jobs, incomes movement to the middle-class movement into better neighborhoods.

That's the dynamic of This period.

We've seen our personal income grow over those years, family income grow more prosperity.

Obviously we still have a problem with a certain segment of our population that we've never been able to get educated properly, but we've come a long, long way from where we were particularly going back to the time when we were just strictly living off of the military, right?

What are you proudest of in terms of your economic development accomplishments?

There've been many, and as you said, you almost single-handedly willed the county into an economic development role that it never ever had before.

It was jails and the indigent hospital and, uh, corrections facilities, et cetera, Sheriff's office, but nobody ever thought of the county as an economic development player.

What have you accomplished personally?

Number one, I think the biggest turn in our economy toward better paying jobs was Toyota.

You may remember you laid some groundwork back in the eighties when you opened up the gates to Japan and took a trip there, we worked hard on it, and I led that effort to bring Toyota here.

Uh, and here we are now with 7,000 people working out there, 400 and some odd, more million dollars invested that led us to bringing Navistar here, a truck manufacturing plant, and it will start up in January.

So I believe that was one of the turning points for our economy, getting back to manufacturing with this country lost.

And now we see that as a thriving part of our, You've also invested in the infrastructure of our area, including some of the infrastructure that has made growth in new neighborhoods and, and recreation.

The Riverwalk improvements all the way to the mission reach.

For example, the improvements at the hospital district, those would fall among your economic development achievements.

Take the inner city.

We were pretty much a holler holler hole, except for tourism.

Wasn't people living downtown.

When a lot of people working downtown, I think it all began with the river going north.

Then we took it south.

It really was a transforming project.

I think one of the greatest in the nation was the Pearl, uh, that was unbelievable our urban environment.

And now we say, I, I believe we're close to something like 10,000 housing units in the center city now that we never had before we invested in the San Pedro Creek, which is now booming along.

Uh, so yes, the public investments led to the private investments in the center city, as well as the incentives that we gave to developers to, to do it in the centers.

They change changed, completely changed the center city.

We know from history that sometimes the public officials accomplishments are based on circumstances, they didn't plan.

And in recent years, the pandemic has dominated all of the thinking about our government locally.

And you of course, had those nightly broadcasts that were very confidence, inspiring and guided people in serious ways.

What'd you learn from the pandemic?

What did it Well, I hope the overarching thing we learned and it will carry forward.

I hope that this pandemic was about us and not me that we had to work together to get through it, to manage our way through that pandemic.

We had to be respectful each other in terms of using safety protocols, not only to help yourself and your family, but others from getting COVID.

So I think that was one of the lessons that came out of it and hopefully will carry over.

I think there's good indications.

It would during the pandemic, the mayor Nierenberg went to the voters, 70 some odd percent supported raising taxes to be able to do better job training.

So I think we are coming together as a community.

And I think that's probably the greatest lesson we learned from COVID that it takes us working together to get through any major crisis are to take our economy, our city to another level, Uh, as you approach the last year of your service, because you will serve for another year until January of 23, uh, when your successor is sworn in, what would you say to the community that they can use in making judgements about the kind of person that ought to succeed you?

What, what advice along the lines of work yet undone in the economic sphere that needs to be done?

First of all, I think we've got four good commissioners there that are going to add a great deal of stability to, regardless of who gets selected for a county judge.

But I would hope that that county judge keeps up the progressive nature of bear county, what we've done in managing our government more streamlined, managing a public information, officer economic development, community development, all of the things that we did that were never done Before, even the county manager was a new Kind of county manager.

We were in the first counties to have a county manager, streamline government.

I hope they will stay with those principles.

And then I continue to be progressive and be out front as a effective county governor In terms of specific initiatives that, you know, if you were around another four or eight years, you would, you would have prioritized, is it the hospital district and the regional hospitals that they want to build?

What, what, what is it Well, we're, we've got on the books to more community hospitals.

I would love to see what we can do with Texas a and M uh, we're.

We bought several acres of land out there and IAM is looking at and creating their medical training programs, and we could be a good partner with them.

I think that offers up a great, a great, great opportunity.

I believe that completion of working on the completion of San Pedro Creek, we see economic development happening all the way along that Creek.

And I hope the county will focus.

And that's what we're doing now.

Focus on manufacturing jobs, we're building a large training center and a partnership with the private sector.

To me, we focus on manufacturing that really be the groundwork for tremendous, uh, good paying jobs, as well as taking our economy to another level.

I think I'm being honest and accurate when I say the many, many projects that have advanced San Antonio and this region have your hallmark, your signature on them.

Uh, and you have had an extraordinary run.

I hope you have an extraordinary retirement as well.

And I know you will, because between your writing and your, uh, advising and, and activism in the community, you and Tracy, both, uh, you can, you're going to continue to do a lot of good.

We'll keep active.

Thank you very much for coming over to Kayla.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In this discussion of the economy of San Antonio, it is clear that the economics of the region are shaped by our demographics.

That is to say economics is based on people, their economic standing, their jobs, their incomes, family size, all of those dynamics.

We're fortunate today to have Dr. Lloyd Potter who heads the Institute for demographic and social economic research at UTS, but perhaps more importantly for the purposes of our state, he is the Texas state demographer, which means he's the person who experts look to for demographic analysis of Texas.

And that's particularly important in a year when we're getting the census results.

Dr. Potter, thank you for joining us and give us a sense for the key demographic indicators that tell us the sort of status of San Antonio today that a demographer would acknowledge and a, and some sense of what the pandemic meant for that.

Speaker 2: Okay.

I'm sure.

Well, San Antonio is the seventh largest city in the country, and that's one thing that most people, when you hear San Antonio, you're not thinking, oh, the seventh largest city in the country.

Um, it's the third largest, uh, in the state.

So we have Houston and Dallas, certainly as more long, um, larger states and larger cities in terms of the state.

Uh, but, but San Antonio is a very substantial city in terms of population.

It's also extremely diverse.

Um, you know, we're have a majority Latino population in, in San Antonio and in bear county.

Um, and we've been growing a lot as well.

I mean, we're one of the most significant growing cities and one of the most significant growing counties, Speaker 1: You know, whether the pandemic flattened, that growth trajectory that we were on before, Speaker 2: Um, we don't really have that because there's a lag behind the, some of the demographic data.

We do know that probably there has been some impact on fertility as a result of the pandemic Speaker 1: In migration.

Speaker 2: And probably some certainly on immigration, we've seen some significant declines or stand still in terms of immigration, meaning people moving from other countries, domestic migration we've seen, I think has probably slowed, but it's not coming to a standstill.

Speaker 1: Is it possible that it will accelerate because of a pandemic people living, leading places that they just didn't enjoy their way of life during the pandemic and want to try a newer, faster growing place?

Speaker 2: Well, that's probably not, wouldn't be the driver, but it would probably be economy.

I mean, basically people that are domestic migrants are moving for employment, a lot of the jobs, and that's what Texas and San Antonio and the bear county region kind of really have going in our favor.

No Speaker 1: Is the San Antonio place in central Texas tied to Austin as some have projected, uh, a giant sort of central Texas megalopolis of Austin, San Antonio, to get you see that as a, as a likely Speaker 2: Gotcha.

Kind of moving we're moving in that direction.

Um, um, in terms of the census bureau, they look at migrate, um, commuting patterns, um, and the commuting patterns earlier this decade, weren't there to where they would consolidate Austin and San Antonio in a consolidated, uh, Metro area.

Yeah.

But certainly if you look at Hayes county, um, which is new Braunfels and Comal county, which is San Marcus, those were the fastest growing counties in the country last decade.

Right?

So that whole area, the whole corridor, it's just filling in very, very quickly, largely with domestic migrants and there's employment opportunities there that are drawing them.

Speaker 1: And do you, uh, make, uh, anything of the Texas triangle Dallas Fort worth in the north Houston in the Southeast Austin, San Antonio together in the Southwest corner of the triangle as a realistic indication of urbanizing, Texas?

Speaker 2: Yeah, without question, um, you know, probably over 70% of our population is within that re that triangle.

Um, and that's where all the economic activity is Texas added almost 4 million people over the decade.

And the bulk of those were going to be are we're in the test.

Speaker 1: And as we said before, where the people are, is where the economics are correct.

And latest numbers, I've seen show about 77% of the GDP of Texas is produced in that triangle alone.

Yeah.

So there's no question, Texas is becoming more urban and, uh, we're going to need the services of the Texas demographer more and more.

Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence today.

Okay.

Thanks for Speaker 2: Having me, Speaker 1: Man.

Thank you for joining us.

And, uh, congratulations on your excellent work over the last years, uh, especially the leadership you provided during the pandemic.

Um, now that the pandemic is one would say in controllable range, and we never know what is ahead, but it does at least give us the opportunity to think in terms of something other than the crisis, something other than the emergency and focus on the long haul.

Tell us about your kind of views of where San Antonio is economically at the end of the pandemic and what are the highlights of what you see ahead?

Sure.

Well like so many other communities across the country, I think the pandemic was a moment of clarity on the things that, uh, underpinned our economy before the pandemic.

And so what I see for the next several years moving forward is that San Antonio is going to be very intentional about an economic recovery.

Our focus is rebuilding just like so many other cities in the nation as a whole.

Uh, and what that means for San Antonio is addressing, uh, the severe shortages in skilled workforce.

Uh, we know that San Antonio has struggled over the years with poverty, with generational poverty, and that has grown exponentially, uh, ties to so many other social issues, such as health outcomes, socioeconomic, um, segregation, things like that, but it also underpins, uh, the challenges we've had in growing wages and ultimately growing the number of businesses and the businesses that are already here.

So what we're focused on now is, uh, retraining and skilling a workforce for us to be competitive in the future.

Sure.

One of your great accomplishments of the last few years has been the passage of that $154 million training initiative.

We never had resources like that to apply to training.

How has that coming?

Is it, is it what you expected?

Yeah, absolutely.

It is going very well.

Uh, obviously any new program, uh, scale that this size, particularly during the middle of the pandemic takes a little bit of time to get off the ground.

We've had now almost 9,000 people start the intake process, several thousand rolled in and the job training program short and long-term training and, uh, thousands of folks now entering new careers in San Antonio.

It's, it's an extraordinary program.

And what's interesting to me, I just came from St. Louis, where we were, uh, doing some economic development work and every community that is interested in rebuilding and restoring and ultimately lifting up their economy, post pandemic is arriving at the same conclusion.

And that is we have to focus on making sure our workforce is prepared for the jobs of The future.

You're absolutely right.

And yet the other side of the equation is continue to get new industry and new jobs created here for that workforce.

That's right.

What have been some of the breakthroughs of recent years and what are you most optimistic about going forward?

Well, starting in near time and certainly has accelerated in the last 30 years, San Antonio's economy has, has diversified.

And one of our leading man, one of our leading, uh, employers now is in the advanced manufacturing space, but we have advanced manufacturing And we have the Toyota Toyota, our aerospace, uh, companies, even biotech, biotech, uh bio-science is one of the leading employers in San Antonio is cyber security in it.

Some of the emerging industries here in San Antonio that are employing the most, uh, San Antonians are also high wage, high demand careers, but also leading the, Yeah.

Are we going to have a place in, uh, artificial intelligence view?

You see any efforts educationally or otherwise to pick up some jobs in that arena?

I do.

There's, uh, quite a bit of stem education going on right now.

There's a lot of robotics programs and computer programming that intersects in AI.

And also that is underpinning the growth of our advanced manufacturing communities, where, um, it's less about the, um, uh, traditional manufacturing job and more about the, the scientists and technicians that can control and, and develop those AI programs.

Sure.

Role for local government is to build the infrastructure that makes that kind of both a human resources and economic development possible.

Uh, what are some of the highest priorities you see on the horizon for infrastructure?

I know you have major initiatives in the airport, right?

Well, transportation is a huge space.

And as you know, we, uh, are growing our, our alternative modes of transportation, but one in particular is air service in San Antonio.

It's been an Achilles heel for generation here in San Antonio, and we are unveiling in fact, discussing right now, uh, and implementing a airport redevelopment plan.

It's a, roughly $2 billion complete over the San Antonio international airport that will add airfield capacity, new gates and terminals, and ultimately may allow us to be competitive in international air travel, especially where we're a leader.

And that is to Latin and south America.

Do you See our location in Texas and particularly our relationship with Austin as part of the way you think about central Texas and San Antonio is place in it?

I do.

And I think it's, uh, it's a, uh, economic truth that, uh, San Antonio Austin corridor is, uh, the fastest growing metropolis and probably the next megalopolis in the country and embracing that and benefiting that prospering from that as a community means working in conjunction with all the other municipalities in the region, particularly the other node.

And that is Austin attracting jobs and growth by the work that we're doing with Austin in conjunction with them and viewing this entire corridor as one economic organism, rather than two separate cities, always competing.

May I thank you very much for giving us a sense of the economic future and the way you see, uh, the city of San Antonio and your role personally in developing that future.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you.

Thank you for having joined us for this last hour of discussion of the San Antonio regional economy.

Very important to all of us.

We've been joined by experts who work in this field every day and hopefully their insights will prove useful to you.

You can watch this program anytime on KLR n.org.

Again, thank you for joining us and join us again for special RN programs.