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.

And that's why each week we go on the record with the newsmakers 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 right.

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

I'm Randy Beamer.

And this week, for the first time in a couple, three years, the city of San Antonio is going to have an official count of the homeless.

We just went through the count in time or a point in time count of the homeless across San Antonio.

It'll be out officially in May.

But it's an issue that you may have seen in different places around San Antonio.

And whether it's up or not, it seems to be more visible.

A problem of homelessness.

Joining us to talk about that is the executive director of Sarah, the San Antonio Regional Alliance for the Homeless, Katie Vella.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thank you.

This point in time count is something it's done every year except because of COVID.

So we really don't know how big the homeless problem is in San Antonio.

What was it like in the last few years before this official point in time?

Kind of.

Where do you think it is now?

So looking back over the last ten years since Haven for Hope opened, our homelessness numbers have remained fairly flat.

We've done a great job of continuing to house people, move them through the system, get them connected to resources.

The environment really started to change in 2020 with the pandemic.

We had to cancel our point in time count.

But what we saw in our numbers was that homelessness was kind of temporarily down because there was a moratorium on evictions.

Last year, we conducted a full count.

We had to modify a bit to be safe because it was the homegrown variant at that time.

We saw a 2% increase last year, but when looking at our population growth, it really remained fairly flat.

We're interested to see what the numbers will look like this year.

Over the last year, family homelessness has been on the rise and really those eviction filings are starting to happen again.

And so that's why the family homelessness especially is up with the evictions.

Right, exactly.

And then, I mean, providing services to people who are unsheltered was more complicated because we were trying to prevent the spread of COVID.

Older adults weren't volunteering in the same way, so different services were changing.

So the longer people are on the street, the more the conditions are exacerbated like severe mental health, substance use.

If it wasn't an issue before, it might become one while living on the street.

And so it becomes more challenging.

And in some places it is more visible in the homeless camps underneath the freeways downtown.

There's been more coverage of that, maybe because of less coverage of COVID and other things.

There's more of a chance to focus on that.

And people see it in different areas around town.

So some people get the sense that it is going up.

Is it going up within a certain population maybe of of the homeless?

I will say, although the numbers were fairly stagnant last year, in total, chronic homelessness was on the rise.

And so that means people who have been out there for more than a year and have some sort of disabled condition.

And the reason for that is it's very difficult to find housing that's affordable and the resources to provide all the supports needed, like medical care, clinical support, mental health and counseling services.

So we're really looking to develop more housing with on site services to address that.

Now there's a lot of outreach and it's gone up over the past few years.

The city has teams that go out and try to recruit people to come into shelters that we see every day and camping out and also Centro, downtown, Centro, San Antonio.

They have their own counselors that go out, especially in the city center, the core area.

Why do you think it is so tough?

So many people resistant to get that help.

Is it mental health?

Is it alcoholism is in drug use?

I would say it's all of the above, but at the core, it's trauma.

And so it takes a long time to build the trust for somebody to go with you and trust that you're going to be able to help them because of all of the challenges they've already experienced.

And just as an example, you know, getting somebody into detox services, anybody who's known someone with substance use knows that's a personal decision.

They have to be ready to some extent.

But what happens sometimes is someone says, I'm ready, I want to go in and there's not space available, and then the trust is broken and it's really hard to reengage at that point.

So we have to have a system that's ready to respond at every level.

And again, just housing options.

We have wonderful shelters in San Antonio.

They are getting pushed to their maximum.

We opened a emergency shelter at San Ministries during the pandemic.

It has a waitlist, but then it's also difficult to get people into housing when there aren't affordable.

We had our hotel for a time, and that's still up and running.

So the hotel that was open for the pandemic has closed, but San Ministries has continued to operate a 40 bed emergency shelter that always has a waiting list.

And there's always somewhat of a controversy.

I've gone out with the outreach people and they don't want if you drive by and somebody is holding up a sign, I need some money and, you know, it tugs at your heartstrings.

But if you do that, it encourages people to do to stay there and do that.

So your advice is don't.

Well, I think I mean, to the degree it's a personal decision, what I would recommend is if you feel comfortable, engage, be kind.

If you have a Clif Bar or something like that in your car, that's great to hand out because it helps people survive the day.

Because we have heard for people experiencing homelessness, it's very dehumanizing experience.

You no longer feel like a human, you feel like a homeless person.

And so taking that time to engage human to human and show that you care is sometimes the dignity they need to take that next step.

So I'd recommend that if people are comfortable and.

Here's another odd question.

When I was working in Denver, on the streets of Boulder especially, there were a lot of homeless people and they were trying to deal with that issue.

But it was seasonal, strangely enough, and that they had more people there in the summertime because it was warmer.

We have a warmer climate here.

Is that an issue in terms of people coming to a warmer climate in the winter?

It's a good question.

When we we do ask that question when people are receiving services, whether or not they're a Bear County resident to get into Haven for hope, you do have to be a Bear County resident for nine months for their campus side.

So all of that programing is for people who are local to San Antonio.

So I'd say it's a minor factor, but it's not a driving force in the homelessness that we're seeing.

And I know the county, especially in the state or working toward getting the hospital on the southwest side to deal with mental health issues and alcoholism and things like this.

How much more in terms of resources are we going to have?

Do we have now where to put people while they get the help that they need?

Right.

So it's complicated because all of the interventions we're talking about, housing that's long term with services, you need something in the interim.

So we're trying to focus on the endgame that we need that housing and so temporary things like the SAM emergency shelter, you know, which may continue, but we might need some more temporary options like that.

But the state hospital redesign is really exciting because it could provide that long term housing support.

And the housing bond that voters just approved also included 25 million for permanent supportive housing.

So working towards that.

But you're right, we have to look at the long term, what's actually going to move the needle and make a difference.

But what do we do in the meantime?

That's compassion in it, but also right for the community.

How long is it going to be before the city bond issue really shows?

I know they have some areas open, but it's going to take some time to build.

Literally, they're looking at projects now.

It'll probably be a combination of things that are already in development and new developments so that hopefully by next year we could start to see some more permanent housing.

And thank you very much and good luck with this issue.

It is so complex.

In San Antonio, Katie Avila, executive director of the San Antonio Regional Alliance for the Homeless.

Thanks.

Thank you.

The city of San Antonio has some good news and some bad news for us right now about emissions that are released into the air here in San Antonio right now and where we need to go to cut those emissions, a goal that we have by 2030.

And joining us to talk about that is Doug Melnick, the chief sustainability officer of the city of San Antonio.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me back.

I guess the good news is that the emissions are going down, but the bad news is not as fast as we had hoped.

Right.

And I would and I would frame it not necessarily as bad news as the need to increase awareness of where we need to go.

And then how do we accelerate that media.

It always calls it bad news week, but tell us about how it's gone down and now these.

First of all, this data isn't coming from measurements in the air.

This is coming from how we know transportation emissions are going up by the number of cars and trips, as well as businesses.

Residential, right?

Yes.

How do you know this for just.

A little context, This was a key metric with the council's approval of the climate ready plan back in 2019.

And we want to understand our communities overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Every time we turn on the lights, every time we turn on a car, every day that CPS is providing power to our community, it's based upon the majority of fossil fuels.

And those release carbon dioxide and other emissions.

We want to understand those.

And so we get data from CPS has a platform that allows us to track overall transportation emissions.

We break it down by sector so we understand where gross emissions are coming from of our buildings.

In terms of residential commercial, we know where our emissions are coming from, our overall transportation, and that's occurring within our municipal boundaries.

And we quantify them using a international protocol.

And the key is we need to track them.

And so basically we are committed to updating that inventory every two years.

And you can tell then which sector is going up and which sector is going down.

And I thought it's interesting, which are actually dropping more in Iran.

Antonio, we've seen a 3.4% reduction between 2019 and 2021.

When we go back to 2014, it's a 13% reduction, about 47% of our emissions are being produced by the energy coming from our residential and commercial sector, which also experienced about a 6% increase between 2019 and 2021.

And the transportation sector actually saw a decrease, which is interesting.

So but the think the thing is that the take away at the end of the day is our two largest sectors that we really need to concentrate are on our buildings and how we move around the city.

And how we move around the city in terms of, say, electric vehicles, reduced trips, the sense that you get from that if we try to because you now need to hit 5% reduction a year as opposed to 3% if we're going to get to that goal by 2030.

Correct.

On the building energy side, I think the trajectory is good, particularly with CPS Board of Trustees.

Recent action to reduce and remove coal from the generation portfolio is going to go a long way to to helping us meet our emissions targets.

In terms of our building energy use, I think the challenge we have is transportation.

We are a large city separated uses, so we don't necessarily have all of the resources and services and and the singular location.

So I think that's really where we're going to have to look at this, how how we grow and how we redevelop, redevelop going forward to reduce the need for people to have to jump in a path to get.

Somewhere do that.

What are the incentives as sustainability officer that you can do as a city or get the word out about, say, federal help?

Yeah.

So I think there's there's a lot going on already.

I think if folks remember the essay tomorrow planning process that our planning department has led identified several regional centers that are targeted for redevelopment, increasing density, their time together with mobility options, using those sites to basically sort of be the economic engine of our community.

If they're designed well, people will not need a car to live there if they are connected with high capacity transit, such as advance rapid transit, people wouldn't necessarily need a car to get to or from there.

So I think it's just what smart planning in terms of what people can do right now.

I think walking more, writing more, making sure your your homes and businesses are efficient.

The really exciting thing I wanted to mention right now and make sure your viewers are aware of is some of the really tremendous federal tax rebates from the federal government as a as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

And for all kinds of things, for all.

Kinds of things, rooftop solar, new and used electric vehicles, new windows, new doors, insulation, electric heat pumps, it is a real once in a lifetime opportunity.

If people are interested in learning more, they should visit clean energy dot gov.

That's the landing page that the Biden administration set up and that's a great starting point.

So they might not know at the store that they will get a rebate for this.

But if they go to this website, they can find out a lot about it.

It tells you what those rebates are, what's eligible and then how do you go about applying for.

That, figuring out the cost?

How about solar cars?

You know, we're not adopting solar cars to the extent, say California is and that kind of thing.

Where are we in that?

And also because the assistance, if you don't have a charger, if you don't have a charger system.

Yeah.

Is the city working on that?

Yep.

And so in terms of what's really interesting is just how quickly the electric.

Cars I'm sorry I said so.

Yeah.

No, I think the thing that's really I thought we were really advanced was that that the projections for electric vehicle ownership in Bear County are exploding.

We are seeing a really rapid increase.

We are seeing what manufacturers are committing to CPS is currently working on what the plan is.

And so it's definitely a collaboration between the city and CPS.

We continue to explore opportunities to provide electric vehicle charging infrastructure to the public on city owned lots.

We also are working to partner with the private sector to really understand how do we take advantage of the federal incentives and opportunities to help us subsidize a broader charging network.

The other thing I'd mention is as a part of federal incentives, the state is working on a program to ensure that there is high capacity, high speed charging infrastructure along major a major interstate system so that you could go from one side of Texas to the other and not have to worry about not having a place to charge some of that.

I'm sorry, Go ahead.

No.

And so it's a I think I think people are going to see that landscape transform very quickly.

In other ways.

We're about out of time, but ways the city is doing this in terms of more eco friendly vehicles.

Yes, we are working on your buildings.

Yep.

So we have new policies in place that really require and prioritize departments to focus on electric vehicles first.

If they are cost effective and can do the job.

So we're very much committed to that.

We continue to invest in improving the efficiency of our buildings to make sure that we're not wasting tax dollars.

And the really exciting thing that we are doing right now is we're reviewing a few proposals for solar at city facilities that would help offset some of the costs that we usually need to expend to purchase power from from CPS.

So we're very much committed to leading by example before we expect the community to do anything.

All right.

Well, thanks very much.

Great information.

Come back as we work toward that 5% goal per year, and at least that's the goal.

Thank you very much, Doug Melnick, chief sustainability officer of the city of San Antonio.

Appreciate you coming in.

Thanks again.

On Reporters roundtable this week, a look at a lot of news coming out of city hall these days, especially about council people and council people running for reelection and facing more opposition, some of them, than they have in the past.

Andrea THRUSH is the politics reporter of the San Antonio Report covering all of this.

Been very busy recently.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

First of all, I guess the highest profile council people that are going to be facing some opposition.

Clayton Perry and I guess Mario Bravo in District one.

But Clayton Perry, of course, facing a DWI charge.

Where are we in terms of that race and the number of people running against him?

So no one has filed yet in District ten, including Councilman Perry.

He had his first court hearing yesterday.

He has now a March 8th court date.

But I was out at the tool yard in northeast San Antonio earlier this week where he was out there with some of his fans from North Beach Neighborhood Association, which is that is like conservative Mecca out there.

He was out there facing constituents for the first time since this has happened.

And like really mixed reviews, there were lots of people who wanted to wish him well and talk to him.

He alluded to maybe running for reelection.

And we know that he's been texting allies, talking about maybe running, but has not made a it doesn't seem like he's made a decision yet.

He didn't announce anything on Monday.

But there could be other people in the same mold as right.

From the conservative wing.

There is somebody on the Northeast Neighborhood Alliance board who wants to run again, who says he might run against him now even if Perry does run for reelection.

So it's not likely that there would be a switch in terms of the political representation on the council moving toward a more moderate or liberal.

He has been the conservative on the council.

That is probably still going to be the same case.

Whoever runs well, similar nonpartisan races, you could you know, it's a numbers game.

You could have any number of candidates pulling from different directions.

True.

So it's sort of an interesting twist to these.

There's no primaries.

There's no party's nominee.

No one's in charge of these guys.

As candidates, you can have as many people from the same mindset running as one.

And Mario Bravo.

District one, he had some controversy last fall with the incident with the other councilperson in terms of his race.

Where do you see that?

That was the first race to draw announced candidates back in October when this was all unfolding.

He raised a ton of money in December.

He's at now, I think, $63,000.

He's got a campaign manager.

He is definitely running for reelection.

But that one has drawn probably the most significant interest of announced candidates raising money, filing for or filing to run.

District seven on a Sandoval or getting out of council early.

Where where is that race?

So that first they've got to choose somebody to fill that seat for the next four months.

The early draft of the resolution that council is going to look at on Thursday would say that they're not going to choose somebody in the interim who would run for the seat in May.

There's already two announced candidates for me with good credentials and reading a veto.

And also Dan Rosseter.

So I'm sure that that's probably not the last two that we'll see in District seven, but that's our only open race.

All of these races have incumbents with time left that they can run.

That's up for that one.

No, like leading candidates in any of these.

Clayton Perry, Mario Bravo, do you think they are the favorites at this point?

They're all sitting on a decent amount of money right now.

How about the mayor's race?

Now?

The mayor has been in office.

Three sitting on some money.

Yes, three.

He's been in office three terms.

He can run this time for one more.

He is, I believe.

And in terms of opposition to him, really no major opposition.

You see no high profile candidates yet.

He's sitting on about $300,000.

He's got a campaign team in Austin lined up that the bond election here definitely running.

I have talked to Republicans about this.

They don't I don't think there's anybody that they're waiting on to jump in the race.

But you said with the what is it, February 18th deadline.

There's some time to file.

There's some time in that.

But also especially in those District ten and two races.

Right.

You expect more people you think, to get in?

I mean, I hope so.

This is shaping up to be we've got two, maybe three races to keep an eye on right now.

And you're also keeping an eye on Tex Don.

You were saying that just this week text that made an announcement, but the city said, hey, we don't know anything about it, about Broadway.

Texas Regional Office in San Antonio says that they are ready to start work on their parts of Broadway, maybe as early as this year.

The city's early response to that is this is the first we've heard of it.

We're requesting a meeting.

So it's business as usual on Broadway.

Now, you talk about business as usual on Broadway.

In some places it's really no business.

Businesses complaining they've been the city has been working close to the downtown for years.

But now what Texto is looking at is that controversial area from North of the freeway, 35 up to Hildebrand beyond.

Well, when I say business as usual, I mean between the city and Tex Dot, right.

This is to go back and the city had laid some plans approved in a bond that they wanted to add bike lanes, make it a multimodal corridor there.

Years ago, voters approved that it was going to happen.

And text auto sent said that this does not fit into their plans.

They they don't want to see any lanes closed.

They've got an idea for how they want to do it.

And they took back the road from the city and it.

Was kind of out of the blue and they.

Said that it was always theirs.

And and so it's been it's been a source of tension between the city and state since then.

A couple months ago, the city came out and said that they had their proposal for how they thought they could meet text out in the middle on this.

They had done a survey for the study of the traffic capacity on that road and text Dot said, no, we still don't want to close lanes.

So what is Texto proposing now?

What's the latest with text that.

They want to do?

Some improvements, but no lane closures and that's everywhere.

There's projects like this all across the state.

They've said on any state highway they're not allowing lane closures.

So this is not unique to San Antonio.

It's technically because Bug's backyard.

Yes.

Bruce Bugg, who is the his title is.

Commissioner.

For.

Transportation.

Transportation Services.

There are some state office where it's basically under the governor and people are kind of blaming him for being a San Antonio guy who was taking Broadway back from the city for the state.

Because this was a big economic development project as well, and all the way up into Alamo Heights, which has agreed to a somewhat different version that won't close any lanes.

They're doing what the what text I would hope that the city would do all the way down Broadway.

Do you get a sense and again, this is asking someone with a crystal ball as to where we're going on this.

It's been so all over the place.

What we used to hear is that after the election, this would be resolved and it is now after the election.

And I don't see that this has been resolved.

Because we're heading into the session.

Is there likely to be a push?

I know you've covered a lot of what the city wants this session and and how big a push that's going to be.

I don't know if this was something that would come up during the session.

The city has its list of goals for the session, which is a lot of playing defense.

It's sort of monitoring things as they come up right now.

Last time I was on the show, we talked about the city wanting to do away with the carriage horses and among the bills that they're looking at is one that's probably too broad to maybe go anywhere this session, but it's from somebody in North Texas who wants to outlaw cities ability to regulate commerce in any way.

So they're watching things that are being filed right now and sort of making their list of what they want to fight on.

And that's one of the things we've seen in the past number of sessions of the legislature, different groups wanting to just really lock down on cities and cut down on their ability to make decisions in cities.

You see that as another trend this session.

I don't know whether there'll be an appetite for that again this session.

Our Mayor, Ron Nurnberg, is now the chair of a big city mayors coalition that's bipartisan, that's going to try to work on these issues and work on local control issues up there.

And how about the carriage horse issue?

Is there been any change in that in the past?

I haven't heard any advice on this.

Okay.

What you would know, you are the reporter who would know and what else you've been reporting on in the downtown area, especially in City Hall and politics here.

Gosh, the traffic, the construction projects today, they were talking about maybe creating a dashboard of projects, too, so that people can see how far along they are.

When did they start?

Where are they in this process?

As you know, the businesses on Saint Mary's, this has been the probably the most dramatic political issue happening headed into the May election.

And that's district one.

Yeah.

So that's Mario Bravo.

But all over the city as well, these construction projects that have strung on longer than they were supposed to that have hurt business along there.

And you saw a big backlash against the city probably right before Christmas, business owners.

Coming.

So now, at least for the dashboard, instead of going, what are they going to get this done, you can go to the dashboard and say, oh, why are they getting it done this late?

Yes.

And, you know, the city decided they were going to put out a tool kit for these businesses.

They were going to do some advertising and stuff that also did not go over well with businesses.

They were like, give us some money to help us get through this.

Well, for the latest on all this, and especially recently, the text on it, you've got a story just today on that on the Broadway issue.

Check out Andrea THRUSH in the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

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

You can see this show again or any previous shows, or you can also download the podcast at KLRN.org.

And we'll see you next time.

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