 Good evening everyone, take your seats, thank you. President of the League of Women Voters of the San Antonio area, on behalf of the league I want to welcome each and every one of you for coming for this forum which is I think a very important forum on the proposed charter amendments. We all need to learn more so that we can vote intelligently and we make an informed choice. The League of Women Voters as you all must know is a non-partisan organization. We do not support or oppose any political party or any candidate. The mission of the League is to encourage active and informed participation of citizens in their government to educate people on major public policy issues and influence policy based on advocacy and education. The League is considered the most trusted resource for voting information and I just want to take this opportunity to share with you some of the resources that you have. First of all you know we have in the back if you haven't picked up a brochure called the Frequently Asked Questions about Voting and Elections. It's a brochure that is available both in English and in Spanish and it really answers any questions that you may have regarding voting or elections. So please pick one up and keep it in your you know wherever you keep the reference materials because it comes in handy. The brochure that we have done both in English and Spanish is what it's in your best interest because as you know in Texas and in San Antonio the voter turnout is very very low and there are all kinds of reasons people give my vote doesn't count and why should I vote and I hope that this brochure that the League of Women Voters has put together will inspire you and you will realize how so many elections had been won by very small margin. So your vote is important it does count and you must make the make a point to take the time and go out and vote. So this is another brochure. Also what we put together some of you are probably aware of it and the others might not be. We put together a voter's guide that is essentially a guide that gives you information on all the candidates that are running and this voters guide will also have information on the charter amendments. What we do is normally ask questions to the candidates and ask them to respond. So the responses that you see in the voters guide are not edited are not corrected or anything. They are directly from the candidates within the word limit that we had given them. So it is a very useful guide for you to compare the candidate and decide who you would like to vote for. The printed version of this voters guide will be available in all public libraries. I would think by next Monday. So it will be available before the early voting which is starting on October 22nd and it will go through November 2nd. So you know to get it out of the way you should read the voters guide make your choices and vote early because that way you know on November 6th for any reason you can't vote. You have done your job and you have done your civil duty and your obligation to the society. The other voters guide if you are computer savvy you can go to vote411.org or G and what you can do is if you input your address on that website it basically gives you your customized ballot. So you can compare just the candidates that will be on the ballot it will appear in the same order in which the ballot is and you can make your choices you can make it you know make your choices right there and at the end of it you can print it out and take it with you to the polling booth and it will be in and out within no time because you have already taken the trouble of figuring it out who you want to vote and how you want to vote. So these are important resources for the voters as you know the focus of the League of Women Voters is the voters you know. We want to be very sure we provide you with unbiased nonpartisan reliable accurate information so that you can make an informed choice and then go and vote. The National Forum on Proposed Charter Amendments is an important forum and the reason it is important is because both the foreside and the against sides are presenting two completely different visions for running the city and we all live in the city and we must have a say in how it should go. So it's very important for all of you to listen to the arguments carefully. If you have questions there are index cards available they were provided to you you know when you entered and if you don't have one and want to ask a question raise your hand the volunteer will come and give you the index card. Pens are available please write your questions and the questions will be sent to the moderator for asking. We had invited on both sides for and against two panelists. What we have today is one panelist on the foreside for the amendments and we have two panelist panelists on the against the amendment side. So we will divide the time fairly so that both both sides get the same amount of time when it comes to arguments presented to us. Trying to see if there's any other thing that I need to tell you. Oh there are sample ballots available at the back of the auditorium. It includes the propositions. It may be easier for you to follow you know if you don't know what the propositions are saying. So the ballots are available in the back of the auditorium and you can take that. The moderator for this evening I'm very delighted to present the moderator is Dr. Francine Romero. Dr. Francine Romero is the associate dean for the College of Public Policy and an associate professor in the Department of Public Administration at UCLA. She is the author of two books. She is very well known doesn't need any introduction and she will be moderating this evening's forum and please welcome Dr. Francine Romero. Can you hear me okay? Thank you for coming out. Thank you for coming out on this cold night. Got it? I'll try and be closer. Okay it is my pleasure to very briefly introduce our panelists. So first we have Richard Perez who is the president and CEO of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the former district for council member of the City of San Antonio. Good evening. We have council member John Courage who represents District 9 and councilman Greg Brockhouse who represents district 6. Can you hear me okay? I'm getting different signals back. Good thank you. Okay the leak had asked me to just do a little very short background on the charter because one of the things we're hearing that people don't necessarily understand everything about a charter election and that's completely understandable because that's not necessarily the first thing people think about in the morning. This is actually something I study and I still have to go back and read the Texas Codes and all the rules about this. So just wanted to go over this a little bit. So this is our charter okay. I'll just briefly read the entire thing to you. So but this is it. This is basically the Constitution of the City of San Antonio and of course that's why it is so important. We are a home rule city so the state basically grants us unlimited powers. All the state does is tell us certain things that we are not allowed to do but within our authority as a home rule city we are allowed to establish all sorts of things such as the system of governance we have. We have a council manager form of government but if we wanted to change that to strong mayor we could do that through the charter. In 2015 we decided to go from not paying well from paying our council members $20 a meeting to actually paying them a salary. Again the state gives us the power to do that but we have to do it within the charter itself. The charter can only be amended by citizen vote. Charter amendments can get on the ballot either by council approving them and then we all go out and vote for or against them or citizens themselves through a petition can get items on the ballot for a vote and that requires 20,000 citizens to sign the petition. That 20,000 number is dictated. No for a charter amendment it is 20,000 and that is dictated by the state. That is one of the restrictions the state puts on us. Referenda are a different issue but if you want to have if you want to amend your charter through a petition it is 20,000 that's not anything we can consider changing because that's a state rule. The charter can only be changed every two years. You can try to change it as much as you want but if you actually have a successful vote to change the charter then you can't change it again for two years. Charter amendments have to be divided into subject areas so you can't have one ballot measure that talks about all kinds of different changes to the charter and again that's per state rules. You have to divide things up by subject matter so that's why we have three propositions to vote on A, B and C and these came in through the petition process again through 20,000 signatures for each one. A and if you have these all in front of you that's it's helpful too. A has to do with referenda and referenda are when the citizens vote to undo something that council has already done and what this charter amendment if it passes would change are the sorts of things that can be covered by a referenda. Right now our charter eliminates certain topics from referenda such as utility rates. If Proposition A passes those things would now be subject to a referenda. It lowers the number of signatures for a referenda. Right now it is 10% of the eligible electors which is about 70,000 people. This would lower it to 20,000. It would expand the amount of time that organizers have from when council passes an ordinance to when you would turn in your petitions with your signatures so it would give you more time to do that. So fewer signatures, more time and more topics can be covered. Proposition B is all about the city manager. Now there are a lot of rules in here already about the city manager but Proposition B would change it so that the city manager can only be approved by a supermajority, not a simple majority of city council, but the salary of the city manager would be limited to 10 times the salary of the lowest paid city employee and that the city manager would have an eight year term limit. And finally Proposition C would allow for binding arbitration for the firefighters union. One thing I've been telling people is if you want to really get nerdy about this and if you can find the minutes from city council on August 18th when these were all approved, they actually show you the marked up version of the charter. Okay and there's more information there than there is in just the ballot measures and I think for Proposition C that is the most important one because Proposition C has a lot more information on what exactly will happen with this binding arbitration process. It gives you more information than is just in the ballot measure. So okay with all that fun stuff behind us, we will move to opening statements for our panelists and we'll start with Mr. Brockhouse on the end and you're each going to have three minutes and you will see the timer in the front. So on the time just to clarify, you said you're going to try to split it evenly between for and against. So with the exception of opening statements, we will each have three minutes. Well I'm thankful to be here this evening and considering the weather and the driving and San Antonio drivers whenever it sprinkles anywhere on the highways in town, it is very nice to see as many people here as we have this evening. So thank you for being here and thank you to the League of Women Voters for doing this. To my colleague John Courage next to me, thank you for showing up. I really appreciate it. John and I've been serving together for a year and a half and we've had a heck of a good time. It's been a lot of fun. And then and to Richard, thank you. Richard was kind enough to attend a town hall in my district and had a great conversation and the residents were very thankful for your input as well. So look, I'm just anxious to get into questions and talk about the things that matter with these items. And I'm hopeful that Dr. Romero and thank you for your time as well will kind of guide us to keep us based on fact and principle. When I come and look at these things, what I want you to think about is your house, your home. That's it. Your boat matters to you and your square footage at your house on whatever street you live in, whatever neighborhood you live in, whatever council district that is within the city of San Antonio, you have an opportunity to make a choice that's right for you. I'm going to ask you to look past all the rhetoric to part of the reason why I ultimately came out in support of them and we can hopefully discuss that tonight was because I was very disappointed in the personal attacks and the rhetoric that didn't make sense that anything to do with the actual amendments themselves. I'll give you an example. This morning in the Revard report, they said that Christiel lacked intellect. It's unnecessary attack on a person, not the proposition. If you want to have a discussion, let's talk about the facts. But for the editor of the Revard report to attack a man's intellect, I think got way out of line. If you look at this over the last few weeks, it's gotten so personal that we really don't have a conversation about what these means, what these means with your vote on your house on your street. And that's why I'm here tonight. I have pros and cons myself with the amendments. But what I believe in and always will end up in is the citizen's right to choose at the end of the day. If we can have a fair and balanced discussion about the facts, then vote where you vote. And if these amendments pass on the six, I'm good. If they don't, I believe in your right to make the choice that matters most for you, whether it's a utility payment, whether it's the CPS energy bill, SAWS, whether it's the street side, whatever it is, I have no problem if the vote ultimately ends in rest with the citizen. And I've been a stalwart of that since I began getting into politics. I don't fear the public's right to make a choice. What I fear is when I worry about is making sure right that we keep out, right? All this rhetoric, all the dissension. And let's have an honest leadership discussion on the future of these amendments, what they look like going forward, what they actually mean. And let's leave the personal out of it. And I've really called on the mayor and the go vote no campaign to cease the personal attacks. Let's get to the facts and make decisions that are right for all of us. And I think we'll have that conversation here tonight. But I'm hopeful going forward in the campaign, we can keep it to the propositions and not the people. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Kerch. Thank you. I too welcome you all being here today. Make sure I've got this on. And I appreciate the league sponsoring this. I think it's great for the community to be able to come and hear from us. I agree with a lot of what my friend has said here about this being an important decision for you to make. It's a very personal decision based on what you learn. And from that, what you believe. I also think this isn't necessarily about today. This is about the future of San Antonio. It's not about people who may be angry about what the city manager gets for a salary. It's not about that we have a certain tax rate, or that we spend, we spent so much money in our budget, or that we're funding via or something like that. This is about the future. And what is that future going to be like? If these three proposals are all past. And I've had the opportunity to sit down and discuss this with my fellow Council members with my staff. I've done my own research. I've met with firefighters union several times. And the last time we talked, we talked about these and why I felt these were not the right decisions to be made for the city. And I hope that when you leave here this evening, you'll have a clear understanding in your own mind. And you can make that decision. This is about the future of the city. It's also about the future of your personal economy. Believe this very closely that it does all boil down to money. And what is going to be that cost to the future of San Antonio? Should these three charter amendments be passed? So I hope to help educate you. I'll tell you the truth from what I know. But there's always different opinions about this. And I guess that's it. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you to the League of Women Voters. Madhu, you and your team. I'm very excited and flattered to be here today to talk about why I firmly believe that we must all go and vote no. And I'll sum it up in three words. Taxes, talent and trouble. Proposition one changes the structure on how you can put an item on the ballot. And in my opinion, that is going to, if they go through that will raise taxes in a lower city services. And so I think taxes, the way they are, are sufficient. We do not need to raise taxes and I urge you to go vote no. Item number two, Proposition B, excuse me, is about talent. That is the talent that's running our city. And I say vote no. Because if we vote yes, we will limit our ability to hire the best and brightest to run the seventh largest city in the nation that serves all of us as citizens of this great city. So we will limit our talent. We must go vote no. And item number three is all about trouble. Trouble in that it would give the Fire Union, carte blanche, to choose when to go, when they're at impasse and go to binding arbitration. That hurts all of us. That is trouble, ladies and gentlemen, for all of us as citizens of this community. Why would we want to give one union, only one union in the entire city of San Antonio, the unilateral decision making to put us over a barrel? Decisions made by someone that has nothing to do with San Antonio has no idea what our taxes are, what challenges we must face and how expensive it is to have a police and fire department. And so there again, I urge you to go vote no. And I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to share my thoughts on these important, important propositions. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So now we're going to go to the format where each side will get two minutes. So gentlemen, you can take turns answering the question, you can split up your two minutes and Councilman Brockhouse will have two minutes on his question. This is also a good time. I think if you have a question and you want to raise the card if someone from the league can go around and collect those and bring them up here. The first question I wanted to ask was one I had gotten earlier from a citizen. And it was this before we even get into the specifics of this is how did we get to this point? Because it's not like this battle has been brewing for a long time. Or maybe it has. So Councilman courage, I'm going to ask you to respond to it to a citizen who is just saying, don't even talk about A, B and C right now. How do we even get to this point as a city? What happened? You know, I think that's a fair question. And I can only give you my perspective. I've been on the Council about 1617 months. And from where it started and where I am today, this is what I understand. You know, the the every five years, the police and the firefighters contracts come up for renewal. And the police contract comes up first, usually, and there's negotiations. And there's always problems in negotiations. There's always differences of opinion. There's always different points of view. And it took really over two years for the city to to come to a contract settlement with the police department. And in the past, my understanding has been when the police department in the city of reached the contract settlement, usually that's used as a model for negotiations for the firefighters to follow. But in this case, the firefighters refused to follow that same model in their negotiations. The real key was, well, there's probably two keys. One was the Evergreen Clause that allows a contract to continue as it is for 10 years beyond its expiration. Any other is health care and the cost of health care for the firefighters and their family. The city didn't believe that the Evergreen Clause should remain a future contracts and wanted to have the courts declare that it was illegal because what it was doing, it was binding future counsel to making payments beyond a contract date that they didn't think was legal by the state, you know, statutes. And so that's why the city started the suit and they lost that suit. But the firefighters still didn't come to the table. Instead, I think they wanted to create leverage so that they could get a better bargaining deal with the city. And I believe they created these three charter amendments to go ahead and create leverage for themselves in their negotiations with the city. And I have to say it's work. They've got a lot of leverage right now, depending on the outcomes of these three issues. Well, this is, you know, this has actually been used in the making. This wasn't an overnight situation. It comes from a lack, in my opinion, a city hall listening to its residents. And you could trace this back as far as when the street car petition was put together years ago. And over time, what you get is when the more politics, there's two types of politicians, let me just say this, there's two types of politicians. There's the politician that thinks, you elect me to go to city hall to make those decisions for you. And then there's the politician that says, I'm going to go take your voice to city hall. That's what's changed over the years. So you have a lot of people unhappy with the direction of city council, unhappy with the spending, the lack of listening, right, to the citizens. And then you have this rising battle with the health care costs and our firefighters and police officers and John hit a couple of those key points. And all of these are kind of brewing together at the same time. So over the last three to four or five years, what you've seen is a lack of trust at city hall. And it's turned into this, how do we get back, how we grab just a little more power back to the citizen in this process. And then frankly, we have a city manager who basically runs the San Antonio city council, in my opinion, and has for years overpaid and too much power. So there's a power imbalance at city hall too much in the staff and not enough in the elected official. And when we started paying council members a couple of years ago, in my opinion, we should have given them more responsibility and lowered the accountability of the city manager. But none of that happened. So what we got into was this fight. And two things have really occurred that caused problems in this contract fight. Number one is when police officers and firefighters were sued. John's exactly right, but they've lost five times in court and wasted $1.5 million of your tax money suing police officers and firefighters. It destroyed the trust and it's torn apart that relationship between police officers and firefighters to the point where yes, we have these petitions. So I think it's a lack of trust. I think it's a lack of listening. And I also believe that we as politicians aren't doing enough, the elected officials aren't doing enough to listen and represent the needs of our community. And the community is coming back and they're speaking loud and clear that they want a little bit more of that. And where the vote ends up, we'll see. But for right now I believe this is a years in the making process that has caused problems. Dig into proposition A a little bit. And so one of the things, and Richard, I'll start with you. We've been hearing that a proposition A passes our triple A bond rating will be endangered and we hear that taxes will go up our city property taxes, presumably. And I think people would like more answers on how you actually draw the line between proposition A passing and those things happening. Well, so I'll start with a quote from Standard and Poor's. Standard and Poor's is one of the three rated agencies that exist in the United States, that when a community goes and sells bonds or a public entity like a city or county, municipal utility district, they need to get those bonds rated. So this organization looks at them and sees what is the credit worthiness of that organization that wants to sell bonds. And so the city just went to New York to get this credit rating agency. And the report from Standard and Poor's said this and I quote, if voters approve the proposed changes to the city's charter in the upcoming November 2018 election, we believe the changes to the referendum process in particular could have a material negative impact on the city's finances. As such, initiatives as such initiatives could effectively limit San Antonio's ability to manage its budget. That means ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, very simply that this lowering of the threshold means that now groups, disgruntled groups, groups that have an axe to grind can gain 20,000 signatures and put any decision that the city council makes on an initiative so that we vote on it. That is very damaging and it puts the ability, the decision making process in the hands of a small group that can change things on a women can put city hall at gridlock. You know, we heard there's a lack of trust the city hall. I don't think there's a lack of trust the city hall. I think sometimes we have, we're not happy with all the decisions that city hall makes, but this is an imperfect process. This is not a perfect process and we elect people to represent us. And I believe in that process and I believe that we must vote no on proposition a disgruntled group of people. That's you, the citizen, anybody who has an opportunity to exercise within the Texas Constitution. This is allowed. Remember Dr. Marrow said at the beginning that red book is our Constitution. What do you think is more important? Our Constitution or a CPS energy rate increase? What's more important? The Constitution. The Constitution is the number one most important document. The state of Texas says 20,000 signatures in 180 days is good enough to change your Constitution. So why isn't it good enough to work in the city of San Antonio? That got to ask yourself a question immediately. Changing the Constitution is huge and you as citizens have the right to do that. Richard pointed out tax is talent and trouble. Let's talk about those taxes. Austin has a 20,000 signature limit. They're a triple A bond rated city. San Antonio likes to run around and say we're a triple A bond rated city. Yes we are, but Austin is also triple A bond rated. Now their signature timeline is lower. We can work on that in the future. We can get better at it, but they have a effectuating 20,000 signatures and they have not had these kinds of problems. Be clear on the rating agencies as well. Moody's said nothing about it. Moody's said nothing. Standard and pours which Richard mentioned right there did say, but what Richard glazed over real quick was the word could. If we don't effectually if we don't lead on the issues there could be problems in the future. And Fitch said if the city doesn't effectuate an actual positive response in other words if we don't handle it appropriately there could be issues. Folks that's leadership. I mean if I pass a law, here's how I look at it right if I pass an ordinance and I as a council do this. It doesn't mean that it gets overturned by 20,000 folks who are disgruntled. What it means is it gets to you. It gets to you the voter. You have the final call. So it's going to be hundreds of thousands of people that get the opportunity to choose. And if you tell me the law I passed is wrong, then it's my fault. How could you be afraid of you the citizen having the ultimate vote in May or November where there's 100,000 of you or 400,000 of you. It's not 20,000 that are making the decision. It's you. It's your opportunity and you're going to have it on November 6 as per the Texas Constitution. If it's good for Texas it's good for San Antonio. Okay, thank you. And I'm going to ask a follow-up question to that because I do think there's some more questions on this about raising taxes. And Councilman Courage, I saw you wanting to get in on that. Can you follow up on that on how passage of Prop A would lead to increased taxes? What exactly would the step speed that would lead to increased taxes? Yes, I think you just heard a pretty reasonable explanation of what we've heard from two of the three top-rating agencies. And these agencies evaluate the financial growth and stability behind every bond and debt financing instrument that goes through Wall Street. Their ratings dictate the security and financial returns to the banks and the investors who provide the financing to cities and public utilities require. Our AAA rating guarantees right now we pay the lowest interest rates on our borrowing, which means the lowest finance charges for the projects, thus saving millions of dollars in interest charges every year. A reduction in the AAA ratings would mean that we would have to pay higher interest rates on our future bonds and debt instruments costing us millions of extra dollars. Also, CPS and SAWS borrow billions of dollars every year. They too would have their rates affected by this because they're owned by the city, they're part of the city. And what this means is you are going to end up paying for, you're going to have to either pay more for the services we get today, or we're going to have to cut back on the services we provide, or we're going to have to raise taxes to get enough money to provide the services that we have today. And the same thing goes for SAWS and CPS. When they have to start spending millions of dollars in additional finance charges for the work they're doing with sewer and electric and gas and all of that, then that becomes a rate increase in your utility bills as well as the tax rate increase, or we can reduce services. We can cut the number of hours the library is open. We can go ahead and not hire enough police to fill the vacancies that come along. We can stop putting money into via the extra 10 million we put in this year. So yeah, if we pay an extra 10 or $15 million a year in interest, 17 and a half predicted right away the first year this happens, then, yeah, it's up to you. Councilman Brockhouse, did you want to weigh in? No, of course. I mean, I got to tell you, I don't know where you live, but taxes are always going up around here. Rate in utility rates always going up. CPS energy SAWS always going up. So this world that they're portraying as doom and gloom is already occurring with their taxes and rates. Now, the tax rate of the city has remained the same, but your property values are skyrocketing. You're paying more every day. We got another, by the way, 4.4% SAWS interest rate coming into effect here at the first of the year. Would you have liked the opportunity to weigh in and have a say on those rate increases? Would you have liked to have the opportunity to weigh in on the Vista Ridge water pipeline? These are decisions that I'm not afraid of you stepping in and making a call on or telling us how you feel about them. Look, the fact is about the bottom line for all of John and Richard are going to tell you this doom and gloom world that they're painting, it's still a could by one rating agency, a no answer from another, and on the third rating agency, who says you better answer it correctly and you know I can give you a great example of how citizens believe in their government. They believe in their government. Take, for instance, in Northside Independent School District bonds. They pass overwhelmingly. You know why? They come in and these are big time bonds. These are big time spending instruments. Citizens pass them because we, right? The Northside School District tells the story appropriately and earns the vote. Not everything gets overturned. If you listen to the community and you push the facts, they tell you the millions are going to this school. I'm going to do this swimming pool. I'm putting this security item here. And they pass overwhelmingly. The citizens will pass rate increases. The citizens will pass additional taxes if they're involved in a part of the public process to make those decisions. And we see it in action in a lot of other places. But you know what? I hear you, John. I hear you on $15 million of additional interest. OK, then get rid of the Phil Hardberg Park land bridge. Then let's make sure we're putting our money and our dollars into the projects that are basics and make sense. Instead of telling us we're going to cut police officers from the street, cut the critter bridge, don't put the money in places that don't make sense. Basics first and the citizens will support you. Again, I believe in you having the ultimate end opportunity to tell us what you think. If you have the guts that I tell you, go out and collect 20,000 signatures, that is not easy work. The bar is high. But the trust is high with you, the voter. Good waving at me right there, by the way. I'm getting varied in questions on Proposition B. So let's move to that one for a moment. We have a lot of somewhat similar questions, but let me try and get to a few of them. If a city manager can serve for an unlimited period of time, while council members are term limited, who really has the knowledge and power and will the citizens be well-served? Councilman Brockhouse, let's start with you on this one. Nope, you went out of order on me. Yeah, we're switching over. Can you repeat that middle part of that question real quick? So I'll just do the whole thing. If a city manager can serve for an unlimited period of time while council members are term limited, who really has the knowledge and power and will the citizens be well-served? Well, I think the citizens are well-served when more of the power is with the elected official, because you can unelect them. Cheryl Scully rules that council with an iron fist. You know what she told me in my first meeting? This is honest to truth. She's told me, I've been through 49 of you. And I looked at her and said, well, you haven't been through anybody like me. Because you work for me, who I work for the citizens. So you know what? I'm not afraid of limiting a term on a city manager. Do I think we need to figure out how to pay him and get him paid appropriately that's a market rate? Yes, I think the second highest paid city manager in the nation. Some little tiny city in California pays him a little bit. I don't know why, but some little tiny city does. But you know that she receives, and you get this one, she pays no taxes on her benefits. We pay for her insurance. You know, she sued police officers and firefighters for their evergreen contract. She has an evergreen contract herself, her contract never ends. The power is all in the city manager and the staff, because she controls the budget and the purse strings. And I'm telling you, we have to get that balance back. I'd rather, regardless right now the quality of the elected official, we can debate seat by seat, our elected officials for the last 20 years, too. But that's OK. I'd rather you be able to unelect us. You can't do anything about the city manager right now. You know the only person who takes care of her contract is the mayor. He won't ask for input on it either. She's due in December. Her contract amendment is up. We're not even discussing it, because we're worried what happens if we renew the contract, how you're going to feel about that vote when she makes over $600,000 a year. Right now she averages about $45,000 to $50,000 per month. She doesn't pay taxes on the $10,000 of insurance. She gets, it's out of control. It got to be too much. I'm an advocate for market rate payments that match where we're at in the nation based on the size of our city. Yes, she's done good for the community, but the power balance is wrong. We need the power in the elected officials. And when you started paying us, we no longer became a board of directors. We became the leaders of the community in action. And we should have more of the power. I'm for decreasing that and making sure it makes sense for our community. Power with the people is through your elected official. OK, and we do have a lot of questions about salary, too. But for this one, if you can get back to the mismatch between the elected officials who are term limited and the manager who is not. So thank you for the opportunity. So so we have a council manager form of government. We have an elected mayor and city council, and we have a manager that gets hired by the mayor and city council. The mayor and city council tell the city manager what to do. She works for them directly. It is her job or his job wherever, depending on a man or woman to do that. They fulfill the policy direction that the city council gives them. They can choose to hire. They can choose to fire. And there is nothing, ladies and gentlemen, not a single thing that the city manager has today or has ever had that prevents the city council from doing that. There's no fear. There's no because she controls the budget. Ladies and gentlemen, you elect your representatives to hire and fire the best people that they can find to run this city we live in so that our parks are functioning properly so that we have adequate police and fire so that we have folks picking up stray animals. So this idea of the city manager having too much power, it's false. It's a false narrative. If you're not happy with the city manager, then the mayor and council can get rid of her. So as far as her having a tenure, I want someone that's got a lot of tenure because it's hard to run a city specific, particularly the seventh largest city in the nation that has 1.4 million citizens that has 13,000 citizens, or excuse me, employees that work for it. This is a huge job. And so council members that get elected or reelected, that's the process. We've changed term limits. They used to be two, two years. Now they're two, four. So we are giving more power to the elected officials and we can do even more if we want to by changing the charter. Thank you. OK, and we had a brief question. I think it's important to clarify this. I'm not going to run it around the table, but just asking what would that salary be? So the salary of the lowest paid city employee, I believe, is around 29,000. Around 31,000. 31,000. OK, so if this passes 10 times, that would be about $310,000 salary. But I believe everything would be capped at that. I think there's some confusion with the public on that. But let's let's turn to a question about the actual amount of the salary and the question is what statistics and facts can you provide that tie salary to talent and performance? Is it always true that money attracts the actual best candidate? Councilman Courage. Thank you. I'll say this. This has been made an issue about Cheryl Scully. But this is not about Cheryl Scully. This will not affect Cheryl Scully whether she remains or does not remain the city manager. This affects the next city manager, the future of our government. And right now, you just heard that the next city manager would get $310,000 salary if we hired one, let's say next March or something. And also, they'd be told if this passes that, by the way, you can only work for us for eight years. So after that, you just got to go find a different job. Now, the city of Dallas pays its current city manager $375,000. They have about 200,000 people less than us. The city of Fort Worth pays $327,000 right now. And they're half the size of San Antonio. The city of Bryan has a city manager pays $300,000 to, and they have 86,000 residents. The city of Arlington pays $298,000 for its city manager. They have a population of 400,000 people. This city has a budget annually of $2.8 billion plus billions of dollars of additional equipment and products and things that are owned by the city, plus 12,000 employees. Why do we believe, by lowering that salary and capping the period of time that we can employ a city manager, how do we believe we're going to get a good quality city manager to come work for San Antonio somewhere down the line? Do you think the Fort Worth city manager is going to come for a $17,000 cut in pay or the Dallas Fort manager? Or do you think the Bryan College station manager is going to come for an extra $10,000 and have to manage million and a half people? I don't think so. That's the salary issue. It's not about Sheryl Scull. Councilman Brockham? Well, I 100% agree. It's not about Sheryl Scully in the sense that the amendment will affect the next one. And frankly, we don't want another person with that type of power, and that's why I'm supportive of it. Do I think we can figure it out and do a little bit better with the pay and structure in the future? You better believe I do. And I was on the record early that I had concerns about just the pay in general. How are we going to pay this position? And back at the beginning of my tenure on the council when I started, I called for performance appraisals of the city manager. Do you know we've never had one performance appraisal effort done in 12 years? Not a one. So Richard's dead wrong. The power is entirely with the city manager to the point where we never even evaluated her performance in writing not one time. So we don't want that to happen again. So I'm looking to the future with that amendment. What does it mean to cap the pay and salary? Well, John mentioned Brian Texas. That staff has like three people on it. Do you know the Sheryl Scully staff, the top 20, make over $2 million a year? A lot of money floating around that city council. There's a lot of talent. Sheryl Scully came to San Antonio at a base pay $250,000. And now she's going to roll up on $475,000 in base pay in a span of a little over 12 years and five contract amendments. We got to look at that contract again. It doesn't affect her. And I understand that. What I'm thinking about is the future, though. And I started really thinking about this when we started paying council members. It matters now that council members are paid. They're full-time jobs. Sheryl often refers to the city council members as board of directors. No longer are we board of directors. When you started paying us living wage salaries, we became leaders in a different sense at that point. More of the power needs to come back to the council. So I think this is the first step towards moving us towards a mayor council former government, which is to begin to limit the power of the city manager so that the power reverts back to the mayor and council, which gives you greater accountability. So think more about this than just a paycheck. Just dig a little bit deeper into the power and where that should lie with your vote and your leadership. I think it lies with the council. Pay does equal power. An absolute power corrupts absolutely. So you've got to be very careful and think more, think deeper than just the paycheck. Think the power and where and where that belongs. Where and why that belongs. Interesting question here. If Proposition B is defeated, what steps can the city and city council take to address the issues that inspired Prop B initiative in the first place? Richard, I'll start with you on this. We'll get to you. Well, I think that what initiated Proposition B was the ability of the fire department or the fire union not to get together for a contract. So I don't think it has anything to do with the position itself. It has something to do with that person. And that is Cheryl Scully. Cheryl Scully is a tough negotiator. And Cheryl Scully knows that it's time to change the fire union contract. Because right now, fire officials, fire union members, fire fighters, pay zero in health care. There is no other organization, person that I know, that pays zero dollars for health care for themselves and their families. The police department doesn't have that. They used to, but they changed it because they saw that it's going to break our city. It costs too much for us to have that kind of benefit. And so she, because the council and mayor have told her, we need to change this, has said we need to change this at the negotiating table. But they don't want to change it. And that's what the challenge is. It is directly related to the unions angst with Cheryl Scully. And that's a problem. It's a sham for all of us in this room and in this city. It doesn't affect her, but it's a way to punish us going forward in our inability to hire someone of the caliber of Cheryl Scully going forward. I was a lot to talk about that in that comment right there. First of all, it's not a sham. I think if you talk to people across this community, overwhelmingly in large numbers, they'll tell you it's too much money and she does run the city council. That's a well-known, you go any district in the city and overwhelmingly they believe that. And I've seen it. I've walked the streets. I've knocked the doors. I understand where the difficulties are, but I'll tell you one or the organization, by the way, Richardson knows of an organization where health care is paid. Yeah, I do the United States military and I equate police officers and firefighters and that level of service to the United States military. They paid no health insurance costs and I equate that to that. That's the level of work they do. That's the lives they put on the line. So yeah, I'm the biggest champion for them at City Hall because I believe they do that, right? They do a life-changing community protecting job. And what happened a long time ago with the contract really turned into a battle of hypocrisy, too. Don't forget those lawsuits. I keep going back to that. That was, John used the word leverage, right? That this is leverage. Well, guess what the lawsuits were for the city? Go back and remember their language when they were suing the police officers and firefighters. What did they say they were doing it for? Leverage. And they lost five straight times, $1.5 million. The Texas Supreme Court wouldn't even hear their case on the Evergreen Clause. They were so out of whack with law that the law told them, no. Cheryl Scully to this date has still not dropped the lawsuit against police officers and firefighters. Why? It didn't work. So you gotta think about these decisions and where this really come from. You know, this piece, right, on the health insurance started way back when health insurance costs were rising and police officer and firefighter pay, right, is also negotiated in that contract. And there's this total compensation package. There's a lot that goes into the discussion. But don't forget that in this whole thing, right, the deal was done at the table, but it's hard to be at the table when you're being sued. The lawsuit's what broke the trust between our police officers and firefighters in city hall. And from that stemmed all of this. It could have been avoided with leadership and a contract and getting at the table and doing the deal and having the hard discussions, not in the legal system, which clearly told the city of San Antonio, five times, you're wrong. Proposition B, could Proposition B itself endanger our AAA bond rating? So, forgetting about Proposition A for a minute, could B on its own affect that? Is there evidence of that? Well, a lot for an opinion. And it's just based on the financial stability of a city. And if, because B passes, this city is no longer able to hire the best talent out there. And I'm not saying we should pay anybody a million dollars can be our city manager. But we can see that there's better talent at other cities that are making a lot more money than we are. If we can't bring the best talent to continue managing our administration for our city, I think it's very likely that that will have an impact in the minds of the people in New York who look at these numbers, who look at the stability of a city's income and economy and say, you know what, that looks shaky. So what do they tell the investor who wants to buy our bonds? Well, I don't know if they're worth AAA, but maybe AA plus, because they still get some pretty good things in there. And so we pay more because of that. And one other thing that Greg just said, he said, none of this would be here if it wasn't because of the breakdown in negotiations. That should tell you exactly what these three things are all about. They're not about giving the public more votes. They're not about giving them more rights. They're not about trying to have a better city manager in the future. They are about attacking the city government because they're trying to put leverage on the city to get the best negotiating position they can for themselves. And we shouldn't be threatened or penalized because they don't want to come to the table and negotiate. You know, in part C, it says that they get the right to determine if we go to binding arbitration, whatever happened to collective bargaining that they're supposed to have. That's out the window with what's in there. Okay, Councilman, and the question is, would be alone impact our AAA bond rating? Okay, because we're gonna talk about C too, right? Because you got chunked in there for a second there. So what did it, I mean, look, it's hard to tell, right? A lot of this is could or would it should. We don't know who we're gonna hire. We could literally make the wrong hire and the wrong leader in that role could cause problems with or without a term limit or cap or a power cap or whatever you wanna call it. So you really have to think about who you hire and who you bring into the organization in that decision. And so no, I mean, we really have no idea in that particular case. I think we have great talent in the city right now. I think we have a deputy city managers that could step in and run this community immediately. I think we have hidden talent throughout the organization that can lead it. I think we could get on a national search and make this happen. So no, I don't believe we're gonna make that wrong decision when the time comes. What happens is over time, if you allow, right, if you abdicate your responsibility as leaders of the community, then that person, that leader, that person who's running the city can take a lot of that power. And that's what we've seen. Think about your council members over the years. Think about how Cheryl's amassed a lot of that power. Do we really want that again to happen in the future? So I sit there and I think about performance appraisals. I think about, which we don't have for the city manager. I think about market rate studies on her pay, which we've never done, but we're currently doing right now, by the way. We use a council based on the feedback from last year when she had no performance appraisal. When, by the way, we gave her a $75,000 bonus for what, I don't know. You and I didn't. John and I didn't, we voted against it. Funny that John voted against it, right? So I would tell you, I mean, good point, John. John voted against that as well. So I think we can get market rate studies. I think we do performance appraisal. I think we get job descriptions in there. We really manage this position so that it reports to the true leaders of the community. And if we do that, and we write that power and balance, and Richard, all due respect, I've been a council for well over eight years, I think. Almost 10 years. And I think that in this case, it's a different council than it was now when Cheryl first came on board. So I think we gotta get the power back in the hands of the right people who are gonna make those decisions. And at the end of the day, that's you. Because you can unalluck me if you want to if I make the wrong decision. But we gotta get back to basic human resource guidelines and make these things happen with the city manager. Okay, I wanna start tackling Proposition C. And there's a lot of questions, and I'd like to focus on having you help people understand it in this first question rather than affect us so much. But I think people are trying to understand what is particularly unusual or out of step about Proposition C. So I'm gonna read you a bunch of questions that people have had here. Okay, so one is, is an arbitration a common way to resolve labor disputes? And we know that in here, it's in Proposition C, it says that the fire union determines that there is an impasse. So the question is, isn't the fact that there is an impasse obvious? What's wrong with the firefighters declaring an impasse? Someone else and the same person else, aren't there three arbitrators? So if you could address the structure of this a little bit, and whether that is truly unilateral or if it's something that's more common with arbitration, and then also does Proposition C mean that the union can flat out refuse to negotiate with their employer directly? So Richard, if you can just help us understand a little bit about that process and how unusual you see it. Sure, so let me say, so a couple of things that you said, arbitration is indeed very common. And there is gonna be three arbitrators, the city picks one, the union picks one, and then together they pick a third. So that is correct. What is not common, which is completely uncommon, is the unilateral ability of a union to say when they're at impasse. That is completely, I'm not aware that that happens anywhere else in the United States, where the union can say, we are at impasse. That doesn't happen with the police union. That's not the way it works. What we do is we get to the negotiating table, we try to work it out, and if it doesn't work out, we go to non-binding arbitration, try to have an arbiter help, and if that doesn't work, then we go to the courts. Just like any of us in this room can go to the courts for relief, the city can do that on our behalf too. That goes away. And it gives unilateral decision making when there's impasse and when we go to binding arbitration. That is what's wrong with this, and that's why I urge you to vote no. It hurts the citizenry long run. It will cost us, and it gives them soul power. And you heard that that power corrupts. That is what will happen, ladies and gentlemen. I urge you to vote no on item C, Prop C. Council member Ocasio? Yeah, well, there was a lot in that. This is what I'll tell you. Arbitration is a shared sacrifice. You don't immediately go to arbitration. So let's think for a second here. And Richard keeps mentioning the police department. The police department, and just so Richard, I can help him understand this one a little bit better, the police department has an impasse procedure in place. There are two fundamentally different contracts, police and fire. Fire doesn't have that impasse procedure. PD does. So why don't they apply to vote? Because the police contract is different. They're negotiated separately. Fire doesn't negotiate for PD. PD doesn't negotiate for fire. Police department can call an impasse and go to arbitration. And by the way, I said at the end of that, we can go in the courts, really, like that's been successful for the city as it is already. We don't wanna go to the courts and waste millions trying to get a contract. Don't wanna do that. What we want is that binding arbitration. Binding arbitration is a shared sacrifice. But the only reason we would get there is take a look at this particular situation. First of all, if I'm the fire union, I wouldn't want to immediately go to binding arbitration. I want the deal at the table. My better shot is at the table. But check out what has happened here. I keep hitting this one, but it's so important. The city sued the police officers and firefighters five straight times. Would you continue negotiating with the family member who had you in a lawsuit? Would you do that? Would you come back in and have a good conversation with them while they're actively suing you in court over the basic tenant of your contract, trying to break it in its entirety, over the evergreen clause, which by the way, the city manager has herself. So it's okay. I'm okay with the firefighters saying, we need to go to binding arbitration in this point. If it reaches that point and think about it, we're already at that point. We continually suing them because we can't win on the merits at the table. So we went after breaking the contract through an evergreen clause. Got told no by the courts. So the fact that they can call for binding arbitration isn't a bad thing. In fact, they both go to the table and it's an independent third party. We choose the third person and that choice is then made. Shared sacrifice, which you always hear when it comes to binding arbitration. Third party makes the call. I'm gonna ask you to continue Councilman Brockhouse with the next question, which is a little bit different take on this. Aside from internally how it makes sense, we're getting questions on how unusual is it? How does it make sense for voters to be asked to vote on a proposition like this that only affects one particular union? Well, I think it was pretty clear now and it affects the one union because it's its own contract. They don't have the procedure to get that done. The police department does have an impasse procedure. So they have a means and a mechanism with the city that they could come in and say, enough's enough. Let's go to arbitration. Let's finish this somewhere else because we can't get it done at the table. So they're fundamentally different contracts. And to go into that fundamentally, there are huge differences between both contracts. This fallacy that once police does, it fire just rolls over and takes the exact same thing. It doesn't work that way. They're separately negotiated contracts for a reason. And they're a hallmark of labor, right? When you get in, you negotiated the table. You have that conversation. That's a labor hallmark. Now in this case though, what is odd is the amount of lawsuits litigated against the union in opposition of their position, right? They tried to break them on the evergreen and they lost. So just think about as a citizen, do I want them to have the ability to say, enough's enough? Well, think about the procedure too. Like if I'm the fire union, I want to go to the table. I've seen collective bargaining negotiations. I've seen them at the table between police and the city. I've been a part of that. I've seen it. You get the better deal when you negotiate and you're at the table, but you have to have a willing and able partner on the other side of that to make it happen. The police department was in a battle for two years and it took them forever to get there. The fire union doesn't believe they have a willing and able partner. So that, and it's really because of the lawsuits. That's really what broke the trust. So I'm okay with letting them say, hey, let's call binding arbitration. You know why I'm all right with it? One side picks one, the other side picks another. And then together they pick the third party. And I think at that point, they will see shared sacrifice out. But I'm here to tell you, it won't be an immediate piece. And I'm immediately gonna call binding arbitration and roll over as the minute the contract ends. No, no, no, no. You try to negotiate. You try to get there and make it happen with the city leadership. And I think when good sides, good willing parties work together, there's trust there. It always happens. It takes time. It's tough and difficult. But I think with both sides negotiating, it happens. But at the end of the road, they're trying to find themselves an impasse or a procedure that allows for them to get a fair and neutral party into it and to get out of the court system too. Don't wanna deal with this in the course. The cost of that is amazing. Okay, Councilman, encourage. And also someone has asked me to press you on this a little bit. Does Proposition C, does it mean that the firefighters can simply not negotiate at all? Well, I tend to think that's exactly what it means because they've refused to negotiate for years. I've sat and talked with the firefighters. I said, why don't we sit down and try and come to the table? And they said, this lawsuit. Okay, the lawsuit was to remove one clause in their contract that said, we don't wanna see a contract continue for 10 years after the contract is done. To me, that makes a lot of sense. As a matter of fact, right now, the firefighters have lost four years of pay increases because of this 10-year evergreen clause. And they have just refused to come to the table. My friend said, well, if you are in court and you are fighting with your relatives, would you wanna go ahead and sit down and negotiate with them? Well, yeah, it's called an out-of-court settlement. So by all means, you wanna negotiate and not fight it out in court. But the firefighters had not been willing to negotiate. And I have to say, I hold the city accountable for pursuing this as well. I have to say, I was on the council when it was brought to my attention. And they asked us if we thought we should continue this, or I guess it was more like, do you think we should stop this? I said no, because I don't believe that evergreen clause is good for the firefighters, or the city, or the police department. So we continued the court action and we got our answer. But you know what we were hearing during the time? Well, if we just finished with this lawsuit, we'd be back at the table in a week to work this out. Well, that decision was made by the Texas Supreme Court about six months ago, that they weren't gonna have anything to do with this. And so we didn't drop our lawsuit because they have a counter suit against us. It's children arguing about silly things. There's no reason why we can't be back at the bargaining table right now, except the firefighters union has provided this leverage that they don't wanna give up on that'll guarantee they can go to arbitration. What happened to collective bargaining? Back to Proposition A again for a couple of minutes here. People are really interested in the 20,000 signature change because for good or bad rules matter. And so I think people are starting with our current charter. And I'd like you to address some questions about what was the logic in our current charter of the 10% of eligible electors. And how that compares, if you know, with what other cities do, I have some of those figures, if you want me to throw them out there, does that make sense to you? Without even talking about Proposition A right now, what is the logic of a referenda being allowed by signature signed by 10% of eligible electors? Richard, do you wanna start on that one? Well, I think it's very subjective, right? I mean, I think the answer to that question is very subjective. You know, the charter was created by citizens and voted upon to adopt those rules that we now live under. It talks about our city manager, it talks about term limits, it talks about a whole bunch of stuff. And I think 10% sounds to me like a very reasonable number. It's fair, it's, I mean, I think it's reasonable. I think where we get into trouble is, you know, the volatility of our nation is different. And so we have folks that are upset and that are, in my humble opinion, this will empower to hamstring city hall. And we will be stuck because these volatile groups, these upset groups will want to come because of the decision that the council has made. And I can certainly understand it. And there's a mechanism that exists right now today to petition and put something on the ballot. But lowering that threshold, I believe puts us at a disadvantage in that groups will be against groups, north side against south side, west side against east side. We had that, ladies and gentlemen, 60 years ago. And it wasn't good for our city. We've moved to a place where we're civil, where we work together, where we have districts. We have someone that represents districts of the city, not at large. The only person at large is our mayor. So we now have a voice, each of us, in the area that we live in, and it takes care of us. And they're responsive. And if they're not responsive, guess what, you can get rid of them in two years. In fact, this coming May is you're gonna be your opportunity to either re-elect them or get rid of them. And there's gonna be at least one of them that's not gonna be able to run for re-election because he's trimming them in and out. You can get a new fresh voice. So in my humble opinion, I think Proposition A is terrible and I urge everyone to vote no. Oh, well the current language now, you know, we look back, my team and I, we've been looking into where and how. We went back to 1951, the Charter's amendments, it's as far back as we could find. And the only times we've seen it be successful is remember, old Applewhite, remember that one, those signature collections and that back in the day, 70,000 signatures in 40 days is next to impossible. It's difficult. We've only seen it a couple of times be successful, just a couple. So I think it's onerous, I think it's too much. I think it's over the top. And you're probably saying, hey, Greg, how do you know that? Well, guess who ran the streetcar collection, the streetcar petition? I didn't. I'm the one that went and hit the streets with a team of people. It took us almost six months to get the signatures. You know why? Because they're voter signatures. You gotta go to their doors. It takes manpower, it takes time, it takes resources, and it takes a smart person, right? Sit there and sit there. Hey, I gotta talk to you about this. This is the future of our city on the streetcar. What are we gonna do? So I've been a part of it. I've collected a petition. It's difficult. Now imagine if you're trying to overturn a bad lord in 70,040 days, it is next to impossible and the history has shown that. And the reason it was enacted, frankly, was to make sure that a lot of that control stayed at City Hall. Richard's talking about 40, 50, 60 years ago. He's talking about the good government league days. He's talking about years and decades ago when power resided in the business community and City Hall wasn't really with the people. So it was funny that Richard said folks across our nation are upset. He's exactly right. He speaks the truth right there, right? He's talking about what's going on in our community, why people just want a little bit more power. I do not believe, and I think it's a total scare tactic. We sit there and say North against South, East against West. That's not gonna happen, folks. And I take offense to that personally because I know San Antonio and I don't mind people having a vote, but we're not gonna have Northside fighting Southside over a street. We're not gonna cut police officers because you have an opportunity to make a vote, really? If it's good enough for the state of Texas and our constitution, as Dr. Romero said, why is it not good enough for San Antonio? If we could change a constitution, I think it works. And it makes sense that people have to work for it because at the end of the day, the 20 doesn't make the change. What makes the change? The vote in November or May. Hundreds of thousands of people will make the choice. That's representative democracy. That's the option and opportunity we're giving with Proposition 8. Among those lines, and we'll start with Councilman Courage on this one, would passage of Proposition 8 give wealthier neighborhoods or neighborhoods with more registered voters an unfair advantage in collecting signatures and promoting their propositions or their referenda? And just, I think generally, does it advantage special interest groups? Well, I think absolutely. You know, when these charter amendments were brought forward to us, they weren't brought forward by a lot of people like you who live in the community. They were brought forward by the Fire Union that paid a half a million dollars to a private company in another city to bring people here to stand in front of our public buildings and ask people to sign three charter amendments, half of which they didn't even know what they were signing. It was just, well, this is for the firefighters. This is gonna get them a raise. That's what people heard. That's why they signed. Hardly any of them ever read any of that and it wasn't explained to them. So, yes, could this allow a special interest to get even a lower number of signatures like 20,000 for just using their financial wherewithal to do it? Absolutely. But, you know, there's also people who just don't like what happens at City Hall and there's plenty of those every single issue we vote on. You know, if people don't like the budget or the tax rate, then are they gonna say to the City Council, we're gonna start a petition drive. We're gonna get those 20,000 signatures if it's that low and we're gonna call an election. So what do we do? Do we not have a budget? Do we not stay with the tax rate we've set? Or somebody comes and says, we don't like you wanna pay $10 million to Via. They get their own money through their sales tax. So what are we gonna do? Are we gonna not gonna give Via, not give Via the money? Are we gonna delay those decisions? Somebody says, we don't like the CPS energy rate increase or we don't like the SAWS energy rate increase. We're gonna take the next six months to get 20,000 signatures and force an election that can change that. Can we afford as a city to wait six months or until the next municipal election to try and undo something? Maybe we can, but how is the city going to function? And what will that mean to the New York companies that are looking at our economic stability and say, you know what, I don't wanna invest in San Antonio. They're crazy. Okay, Councilman Brockhouse. And reminder on the question is, could a wealthy neighborhood on their own, a wealthy area, would they have an advantage in getting a referendum on the ballot? Well, first I do wanna stand up for the duped voter, I guess who is a total knucklehead that didn't know what they were signing. I'm sorry, I don't believe that. I don't believe for a second that people are sitting there signing stuff, just totally clueless, I mean, it makes no sense to me. I mean, people are gonna make an investment in time, they're gonna put their name on something and they're gonna figure out what it is and they ultimately, at the end of the day, they still get a vote. Like the citizen still gets to vote this. I don't, it doesn't make a difference to me. By the way, the fact that they were out of town, people collecting the signatures, well, I mean, come on, think about Mayor Ron Nuremberg's political campaign, he hired people as well to go out and knock doors, some of them were out of town, he hired out of town political consultants, this happens all the time, give me a break. There's nothing nefarious about it. At the end of the day, the voter signed the line, they're a registered voter and they have an opportunity in the future to make a vote. But, you know, wealthy neighborhoods, look, think about it right now, just look at today's world. Who's the only one right now that could afford to do it? The wealthy neighborhood. So by lowering it, who else has this shot now to get it done? Any neighborhood? So, no, I'm sorry, the only people right now that can get it done are the special interests, I get it. I get to understand, it's a huge bar. I've done it myself, it's very difficult. Think about some of the recalls, you've seen some of the times that they've tried to recall council members. Has anybody ever been successful at that? Nope, because they couldn't even get 5,000 signatures of registered voters in a district. It's very difficult and it's difficult for a reason to get somebody to sign and say, yes, I'm going to do that. That's why it's only happened once or twice. So be thinking about when you've seen this in other parts of the state, where you've seen in San Antonio historically, Austin has the same signature requirements shorter amount of days, but they have the same 20,000. They've got the same AAA bond rating. And I think it's not going to be north versus south of our city. I don't think that's San Antonio. I have bigger belief in San Antonio than obviously certain people in this community that they think we're going to turn on each other and turn us into the hunger games out of nowhere, just because we have an opportunity to make a vote. Really, the vote is not that bad and it's not going to be north versus south. It's going to be right versus wrong is what it's going to be if it ends up anything at all. I'll skew this question. And I think you've actually been doing a really good job on this, but I do want to read this because this is a citizen land forum, which is a little hard. Okay, would it be possible for any of you to answer the actual questions being asked instead of it using each question simply to state your rhetoric? I do think you have been answering the questions, but I did want to pass that along from whoever wrote that. Councilor McBrack, can you guide us through an example of maybe a vote that council took, a decision council made that you think people were unhappy with and that Proposition A, and that Proposition A would help in the future. What would be an example of something that you would think would be appropriate for a referendum that justifies people voting for Proposition A? Well, I'll give you two or three examples, actually, and I'll give you one on the other side where I think they would want to, but they probably couldn't get it done. One would be the SAWS double two-year rate increase. So we voted on SAWS rate increases for two consecutive years. So we didn't do it year to year. Myself and other members said no, we should vote it one year. My colleague right here voted with me on that. We should have done one year at a time, but no, we voted two years. The 4.4% increase is coming up here in January one. I think that would have been something that would have had a successful petition. You know why? They gave Robert Puente $100,000 bonus. All right, I mean, are they really cutting their time, are they really going to the budget and trimming it and making sure everything's vis-à-ridge? You know, the multi-billion dollar pipeline project. I think there was enough angst with SAWS that you would have seen some pushback. I think you would have seen a lot of pushback on a dual year rate increase like that. I think that hurts people on the bottom line, the tiny neighborhood, right? The grandmother living on South San Joaquin that can't afford the $10 increase in her water bill. Your water bills are going up 50% over the next three years, really? I think we would have seen a pushback on that one. But I tell you what, if CPS Energy came for a rate increase, they haven't raised rates in five years. They've been very, very stingy with the money. I think they could get a rate increase pass. I think people may be a little concerned about it, but I don't think we would referendize that one because I think people are gonna say, you know what, that's been a fair use of taxpayer money in a well-run organization. Some concerns about the pay, sure. But I'll tell you what, they haven't had a rate increase in five years. They could get it done. And then I'll make a controversial one here, the Travis Park Monument thing. A lot of people are upset about that. A lot of people. But you know what? I don't think it would have gotten a referendum. I don't think it would have got the signatures done because at the end of the day, I don't think it really would have happened. I voted to take it down. I'll totally admit that I did. I was on board with it, as was my colleague. And people were really ticked off, but I'm not sure that could have got the signatures to get it done. So you could see different types of issues are gonna come through. And the work it takes to get the referendum is a lot more than just somebody ticked off for a day or a week. It takes energy, time, and resources to get it done. And it takes a lot of hard work and convincing. I just don't see it being as scary as anybody is because I'm not afraid of you having to vote at the end of the day. And the work it takes to get you there, tough, tough. Richard, same question. Can you give us an example of something that you think could have succeeded as a referendum with the lower signature count and how that could be problematic? I think that, I mean, my friend's example of a rate increase. Saus doesn't take the money and throw it away. They put it in infrastructure. They put it in pipes that go to your house to provide you with water. Or to take away the bad water, that is the sewage water, to go and get it cleaned. Saus is not buying cars and luxury things. I mean, they have a board of citizens just like you that provide guidance to Robert Puente and his team. So it's not a willy-nilly, they're gonna get a rate increase, they're gonna go on a vacation to Las Vegas. That's not what happens, ladies and gentlemen. They use the dollars for real projects that affect your life in a positive way. That VISTA-rich pipeline project, guess what, you know what our Achilles heel for economic development is? Is that we don't have, or we have only the Edwards Aquifer where we get the majority of our drinking water. That's a problem in times of drought. Now we've been having a lot of rain lately, but before that started raining, we were in drought, ladies and gentlemen, and it happens all the time. So in order for us to have a long-term vision for not only ourselves, but for our children. I have three kids. Two of them don't live here, but I want them to come back. And for them to come back, we need to have a stable environment, a stable economy that has a long-term water source. So that VISTA-rich pipeline project is gonna bring 50,000 new acre feet of water for us. It's not gonna be so that Robert Puente can go have a shower every five seconds. It's for us, it's for our children. It's for our economic development. That's why these things are important and lowering threshold, I believe, puts us in a tough spot and makes arguments that in my opinion are not that strong, but fires people up and puts us at a disadvantage and I believe that we need to vote no. District 8 Representative on the Zoning Commission, I wanna ask about the provision and Proposition A that would add zoning decisions to one of the topics that can be put on a referenda. And yet, state law seems to preclude that. It is one of the restrictions that you can find in the local government code that cities are not allowed to put to a referenda is an individual zoning decision as opposed to the overall zoning rules for the city. So do you believe that Proposition A passes that zoning cases would in fact be subject to referenda? Councilman Brock-Elis? Well, that's something that's gonna get litigated because in 1997, the city formed a charter commission, came back in and cleaned that up to be in accordance with state law. So we're gonna have to dig into the zoning piece of things. And you know what, it's interesting because most people don't even understand the zoning that occurs on our Thursday meetings. After about two o'clock we meet, we have these zoning discussions and the amount of people there, I mean, it's all lobbyist and representatives and property owners that are sitting there attempting to do a zoning change. So it's one of the most important things we do, but it's also one of the least noticed or followed things we do as city council members. It's one of our biggest powers, I'll be honest with you, is to create zoning opportunities to control our district and our community. So we have to be very careful about that. I think that was gonna require a lot of legal research on it. I'll be honest with you, it's part of it. And when I was researching it myself and looking back into it when they came with the amendment on it, I thought about it too. I said, well, you know, how is that gonna work with personal property rights, which I'm huge on, right? I've got a personal property rights background as a Texan, I just frankly believe in personal property rights. And I'm very leery of a lot of things around him in a domain and zoning changes and what you can do with the land you own that you own in Texas, that's very important. So I think what's gonna happen is that one, that subject, that piece of it could get cleaned up in the future if the amendment passes. And maybe it needs to be. I mean, we have to really dig in a couple of these. And I've been on the record of saying this, let's be honest here, I've sat and said, I'm not happy with everything in every one of these. I think some of them are imperfect, right? I was quoted as saying there were imperfect propositions at the perfect time. So I think we can do and make changes. Mayor Ron Nuremberg passed the paid sick leave initiative. And when he passed it, he said, this is not perfect, we have to work on this. We can fix it later in the future. We can do the same thing with the charter amendments. We can see them in action and where they don't work, we can make the appropriate changes because the council can call the charter amendment and they can get it done. The 10% that we have right now didn't come from a citizen-driven piece that came from the city council doing it. We can do the same. We can fix these things if we see problems with them going forward in the future. And the zoning is a perfect example where we may. Councilman Kerch on the zoning piece. Sure, I think that as the fire union developed their strategy with Proposition A, they just threw in everything, including the kitchen sink. Anything that would rile people up and make them feel like, yeah, I don't like that. And that's why it's in there. And I think that that's the whole existence for A, they want to pass C. But if they throw in A and B and make the city manager the issue and make being able to overturn all of these city decisions the issue, then they figure they'll get more people out to vote for all three of them. That's why you have to vote no on all three of them. Proposition A is defeated. How would the city address the concerns of citizens who believe their voice is ignored in city decisions affecting them? Councilman Bracas? Well, I think of anything, this is a lesson learned, right? What happens when we lack leadership and we're not listening to the community? It'll be interesting to see what the percentages actually end up. I mean, you're right, this is a very important vote. All three of them are, as are everything we're facing in the November ballot. I just don't believe it's a doom and gloom scenario where the world's going to fall apart. My grandmother's not going to have a house and the senior center's going to get shut down. The police officer going to disappear. That's ridiculous. I told you at the beginning about attacks of politics, personal politics and the personal attacks. It's also the attack of fear. I don't believe in, I just believe in leadership, followership, servant leadership, listening to the community is going to have to rise now. Now you're going to have the count, the elected official will be that much more important that they're listening and paying attention. And I believe the council members and my colleagues do that in their own way. I do it in my way as the leader of district six. I feel like I have the pulse of the community I represent because I go and knock the doors and I do the things that get me there. I can't judge another colleague for what they're doing on it but I can get the overall feeling that there needs to be some greater control for the citizen or resident. So if it fails, I'm like, if I'm going to live by the community vote, right? If I'm going to sit up here and tell you, I honor the public vote and I prefer that. If it goes down, it goes down. I'm worried with it either way because I've got a job to do as your leader, right? As the leader of my district, I got to go out there and knock those doors and take the message. Remember I said about the two types of politicians? I'm the one that carries their voice. They don't elect me to make the decisions for them. And I think this is keeping council members on their toes now, right? Now they're probably paying a little more attention. They're asking a few more questions. So at the end of all this, it's a good thing. I mean, the vote makes the final decision. And if we can't live with that, right? There's no better tally. There's no better scorecard than November 6th at 7-0-1 when the numbers come in. Then we'll know where we're at as a community. If it's good, it's good. If it passes, it passes, it fails or fails. Say Antonio's not going to crumble because of it. We're doing well and we've got some good things in some areas we can improve on. This is one of them. Listening, servant leadership, right? Following the will of the community. And I think it already has had an impact. I think it has a positive one. So there's not much more we're going to be able to do from a petition perspective. But what we can do is, as council members, I think we're a little more attuned to it than we ever have been. I think that's a good thing. Excuse me, can I take this question on as a council member as opposed to Richard answering this one? You can have the next one, Richard. Because I have to concur with a lot of what my friend has said here. I, and I think all of the council members that I know and that I work with are very dedicated to understanding what are the concerns in their neighborhoods, in their communities. And I think that that's the key. When we talk about a leadership, I think that we need to remember that the role of city council is not to necessarily lead. Our role is to go ahead and help for the planning, the growth, the priorities. We set priorities. It's the city manager and their staff that carry out the priorities that we set. I can't direct any city employee to do anything, but I can ask questions like why, or why not, or when, or how come. And that helps me get the answer from them on making sure things are getting done to meet the needs of my community. And I think that that's what we need to remember. This is, you know, we say this is, the city charter is our constitution. It is. And the United States Constitution and our own constitution, our own city charter, call for a representative form of government. Not a democracy by everybody. We couldn't possibly all meet and make a decision where, you know, 700,000 voters in San Antonio are gonna get together and make a decision. Not on every issue. So we elect representatives that we believe are representing our interests and our community's interests and our neighborhood's interests. And if they're not, you get rid of them. And that happened. We have seven people in different council seats right now as opposed to two years ago because people speak up and say they want some kind of a difference. We don't have to go ahead and lower the threshold for people to change what we do. Just change who we are if you don't think we're doing it. To finish up with two questions about the election itself. And I'm gonna ask two separate questions. So I'm gonna ask you to just focus on the one topic at a time. So the first thing I wanted to ask about was turnout. And Richard, we'll start with you. So midterm election, a lot of interesting races going on and the charter amendments. How do you see turnout? In this election compared to other midterm elections, do you think it might be lower or higher? Could that possibly be because of the charter amendments or for other things? Well, I think there's gonna be high turnout because we have a lot of very interesting races and very interesting personalities that are running for a variety of different positions. I do think that the charter propositions are indeed starting to pick up a little more steam because we're starting to educate individuals about how damaging these things will be to the citizenry. And so they're starting to take notice and they're starting to realize that I need to get educated and I need to go out and vote. I need to go vote no because of the damage that these things will cause long term to our municipal government. The government that serves each and every one of us every single day. Municipal government is the closest form of government to us. I can talk to my council member any day, any time I want. I can go up to city hall and knock on his door. I know where they live and go knock on their door. I can see him at church. I can see him at HEB. And we all use that as an opportunity to impress upon our elected officials things that we need or that we're not happy with, that sort of thing. So people are starting to learn about these propositions, these three devastatingly bad propositions to us. And I think indeed it will drive turnout. Council member Ockhouse. I mean, I think we're gonna see a happy turnout. The question is with the size of the ballot when you get down to the bottom three, what are you gonna do? I mean, who's gonna get there? Who's gonna under vote? Who's gonna walk out of the booth when they're there for what they consider to be most important? We got a stunning Senate race brewing right now. We've got an angry electorate across the nation. So I would hope we would see a sizable group of folks coming out, but it's so unpredictable. Look what happened down in Senate district 19, right? I mean, nobody was expecting Pete Flores to walk out of that thing. Better works up two points. Now he's down nine. There's $100 million most expensive Senate race in history. We got information flying everywhere. I mean, people need to get engaged. And that's why I'm here tonight, right? I mean, like I said, I would do things differently if I was leading this, right? If I'm running the petition drive, I probably would have done some stuff a little bit differently. But I think the timing, right, is good, but the problem is the ballot. So we gotta encourage people to vote. At the end of the day, I continue to hammer that home. I want a yes vote because I think we can do good work. And I don't believe that in the fear factor of our community, I mean, devastatingly this and sham and no intellect and all these personal attacks ought to tell you that if you can't win on the merits, you go personal. That's classic politics. That's Washington style. We're seeing it here from the Go Vote No campaign every time they can. Every article you see is secret leaked audio tapes that are totally obvious with the fact there's nothing new in anything that's coming out. All it is is personal attacks to tear down people. They're not trying to tear down the proposition. They're trying to tear down people. What do you see in the paper every time you open it up? Come on, it's personal attacks, right? So I think people need to get educated. All I ask is get past the personal. I've challenged Ron Nuremberg to debate four times. He don't want to do it. He doesn't want to do it. None answering me. Why? Because Christiel won't be for them, him there, for him to demonize him and say he lacks the intellect to do the job. The gentleman has led the organization for 14 years. He's the longest tenured union leader in the nation. I believe your time is up. So she hadn't put the stop up yet. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, you cut me off from my flow for Dr. Merrill. Man, I was on it right there. Go ahead, go ahead. The fix is on. No, I'm just kidding. No, at the end of it, I don't get too concerned or riled up about the turnout. What I get concerned or riled up about is get to the whole ballot and just have the facts. Remember I said at the beginning, I said about your house, your home? That's your vote. That's what your vote. Don't vote because somebody from the GoVoteNo campaign said the earth's gonna fall apart tomorrow because it's petition. Get the facts. And I trust you, if you have the facts, that you're gonna make the decision and you live with the vote. That's the life of the elected official. The scoreboard is the vote. I'm okay with whatever the citizens decide. Okay, before I do the last question, somebody asked for clarification on this, which was, and I guess anybody can answer this because I'm not sure of the answer to this. The question is, if Proposition A passes, can a decision by council that is reversed by voters on a referendum face a challenge by a later referendum? Now I know that if a referendum passes, the council can later overturn that by a council vote, but they have to wait six months until the referendum. I don't know if you can have a referendum to overturn a referendum. I think the answer is no, but it is important to know that council can later address that and pass that same ordinance over again, but they do have to wait, I believe, six months after that. I'm sorry. To make amendments. Yeah, to change it, right, yeah. And they could essentially reverse it by just passing the ordinance over again, hopefully. But again, read the city charter, read the marked up version of the city charter that was in those August 18th council minutes because it really puts it in context. So from my last question, there's gonna be a little bit of a reverse here. So councilman courage, I'm going to ask you whether for all three or just one or more of these propositions, if they in fact pass, what does that mean? Well, if we're talking collectively, it'll have a negative impact on the city. If all three passes, all three pass, if two of the three pass, I think it would have a negative impact. Let's say for example, the C passes, but the others fail. I think it's going to have a slightly negative impact because the city will not be in a good position to negotiate with firefighters, but we can live through that. And we'll live if A and B pass, but we all will be losing. We'll lose financially, we'll lose monetarily, we'll lose in the future growth of the city, we'll lose in the future of bringing in a good leader somewhere in the future, and for what? I don't understand the reason why these are brought up. We didn't have thousands of people in the street saying we want change. We had a union saying we need leverage. This is a good way to create that leverage. And people can look at what's written in there, A, B and C and say, well, it sounds reasonable until you really start realizing about all the unreasonable-ness out there that can create so much disruption and turmoil in the way city government works for you. And so I hope that all of them will go down to defeat, but definitely A and B, and I understand where the firefighters are coming from on C, they wanna have the best position they can be in there for negotiation. But I just say, whatever happened to collective bargaining. Okay, Councilman Brown, if one or more of these fail, what is, what? I'm going on the other side. Yes. What if they fail? If they fail, what message will the voters be sending and what are the implications of that? You know, I think the voters, I think you honor that. Like I think it's a lesson learned no matter what. I see it as, and it depends on the percentages too, right? This thing's 80-20 and something fails 80-20. Well, that's an overwhelming that. If it's 51-49, or if it's super close, what does that tell you? I've got some work to do, right? We've got to fix a few things at city hall. So I think the percentages also matter in this conversation, how overwhelmingly something wins or something loses, and if they lose, they lose. I think either way, when you wake up on November 7th, your police officer's still going to be there. Your senior center's still going to be there. The Council is the ones going to be a little bit worried. Why are they going to be worried? Because they got to answer a little bit further. What in this law, or what am I, my action right now, what is, how's the public going to feel about this? Someone to come over the top on this, there'd be more questions about in the back rooms. I'll give you an example. You know, we did that Republican National Committee thing in executive session, made some crazy decisions there, right? We denied a convention behind closed doors. We gave Cheryl Scully her $75,000 pay raise behind closed doors out of the public eye. Things like that, decisions that are made outside of the public eye, I think if they pass, we're going to see a lot less of that, right? Because I can tell you right now, people are going to be upset about decision making because this Council's not listening. If they fail, then people are going to look at it and say, okay, hey, wrong answer then. It didn't work out. And that's okay too, like I don't, the beauty of this whole thing is, and I think, well, let's be frank, what's lost in this whole conversation is our ability to have a debate and agree to disagree and let the vote stand where it can. We rail against the status of politics, right? We're sick and tired of the way things work in Washington, DC. We're sick and tired of the way things work in Austin. And then the mayor and Christian archer go run a campaign that does nothing but demonize people. But that's what the GoVoteNo campaign has been doing predominantly, right? It's tearing down a person. The mayor's called him a sham. The Rivard report said he lacks intellect. This is not about the actual issues. This is about a person. So it's invaded our politics in San Antonio too. We can't help but try to destroy somebody when we can't do it. So I think we have to write that, and I hope that gets fixed. Either way, win or loss. Either way that that gets fixed. And we can better disagree and agree when needed. That's what I'm hopeful is gonna change out of this. Okay, thank you. Well, I wanna thank Nalcast because we didn't get a chance to mention them. And thank Councilman Brock, Councilman Courage and Councilman Perez. And thank you all of you for joining us. I hope you, this session was informative. I want to thank the moderator, Professor Francine Romero for doing such a fantastic job. And thank you Councilman Brock House, Councilman Courage and Richard for coming and joining us. You can, if you want your friends or your neighbors to watch this program, they can go to the League website probably tomorrow or on the Nalcast website. Charlotte, thank you very much for live streaming the show and you can watch the entire program. I also want to mention on this Thursday on KPBS, the League is hosting. We are organizing the candidates forum. It will be live televised on KPBS. It is for District 21 race. So please, you know, if you are in District 21 and if you want to watch the debate, please do that. I want to thank the Program Planning Committee of the League of Men Voters for putting together this program. I tell you, it was not an easy one, you know. But we are glad we did it and we are happy that it has given enough information to people to make informed choices. Thank you all and good night.