 We're going to go ahead and get started. I had a request for us to start because someone said that they didn't want to miss the season four opening of Duck Dynasty tonight. So we're going to get you all out before that. I want to thank everybody for being out here tonight to join and participate in the District 7 community budget input hearings. Your attendance tonight reflects that the budget process is very important and kind of just a quick snapshot of the budget. The budget is balanced. It was presented to us back on August 8th by the city manager and tonight we'll be an opportunity to look at the proposed budget to see how it aligns with our values here in District 7, what's important to us like streets and drainage and curbs and sidewalks, animal care, solid waste services, everything that impacts us on a daily basis from a city perspective. We have city staff on hand that's here tonight. I want to thank them for having all hands on deck tonight to answer questions and really to be here in support of y'all because y'all's input is extremely important so that I can take that back to the city manager and to staff so that again it's a budget that reflects our values here in District 7. I also want to thank the St. Paul community for hosting us tonight. I want to thank Father Charles and Mary Dabila. Thank you so much for hosting us tonight. And I also want to thank my wife and our two boys for being here tonight as well. My wife runs our checkbook at the house like a hawk so she is here tonight to help us as well and to help me so but I want to thank them so much for being here and they're in the back table. But we're going to kick it off. I want to turn it over to Assistant City Manager Carlos Contreras who's here tonight on behalf of Cheryl Scully City Manager but is prepared to answer questions and to kind of lead us into the next aspect of the of tonight's budget input here. So thank you with that Carlos. Thank you Councilman. Good evening everybody. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for coming out Cheryl. Apologize she can't be here. She's still the Councilman. Councilman left early. They're still busy working over there but she sends her requests. I'm Carlos Contreras. I'm the Assistant City Manager. I have a number of our staff members here with us. My colleague Gloria O'Fallow, another Assistant City Manager back in the back over there. Maria Diego-Mes, our budget director who is principally responsible for all of the hard work that's going into our budget preparation. We also have a number of city staff members that are here as Councilman indicated, directors of departments and assistant directors. They're here to assist with the discussion at the table and I'd like to have them introduce themselves, tell you what departments they're with. So if we can start at this table right over here, go ahead. My name is Natalie Balderoma. I'm an Assistant Director with the Human Resources Department of the City of San Antonio. Hi. I'm Kathy Donnellan. I'm the Assistant Library Director. Hi. I'm Richard Bartinas. I'm the Interim Assistant Director for Public Works. Hello. I'm Assistant Chief Rowe Brayden for the San Antonio Fire Department. Good evening everyone. My name is Geraldine Garcia. I'm the Assistant Chief for the San Antonio Police Department at the Operations Bureau. My name is Richard Keith. I'm Interim Assistant Director at the Department of Human Services. I'm Josephine Valencia, Assistant Director with the Solid Waste Department. I'm Nikki Ramos. I'm the Assistant Director of the Parks and Recreation. Is that everybody? Okay. We're going to need a staff member to sit over here, Maria. We'll shelf and get someone to sit up at this table here. We need someone at the front table. Okay. This process tonight is in preparation for the Council's adoption of the city budget. It was created on August 8th. The city manager did propose a budget to city council. And this process is very important, as the councilman said, to make sure that the budget reflects the values of the community. And that's what we're trying to do here tonight. In 2006, we began the process of holding budget hearings in each of the 10 council districts. And that was done after the budget had been proposed to kind of get feedback on the budget. And they're very popular and very informative. And a lot of the issues that were important to community members were then included into the finally adopted budget. In 2000, last year, we tried something a little bit different. We broke that up and we held five budget hearings throughout the community before we proposed the budget. So the budget that's being proposed in many of you. Did anybody attend any of those today? Thank you very much for doing that and coming back. A lot of the feedback that was provided to us has been included in the proposed, in the manager's proposed budget to council. I think you'll see that. This process is, again, to get some more feedback so that all of this information can be jotted down and provided to council when they make their final decisions. As the councilman indicated, the budget is balanced. We were required by state law to do so and it is balanced again this year without a property tax increase recommended. So for this evening, we will have a short video that talks about the proposed budget. So you'll be able to hear that. So that's a very short video. After that, we're going to ask you to write down five service areas that you would like to see either continued or enhanced in our budget. So five items that you think are important in their priority services for the group. Because the budget is balanced, we need to probably offset that with some either reduction in services, some cuts, or some additional revenues. So we're going to ask you to identify three cuts that you would make or three ways that you can raise revenue to pay for those priorities. So we'll do that at the end of the video. And then we're going to ask someone from each of the, a citizen from each of the tables to stand out and report back to us. Okay? So why don't we start with the videotape? Hello, I'm City Manager Cheryl Scully. The fiscal year 2014 proposed budget is balanced and allows the city to continue to provide quality services to the community while making the tough decisions to keep the city financially sound. The fiscal year 2014 proposed budget focuses on reducing administrative costs and prioritizes public safety, street maintenance, sidewalks, and drainage improvements. The proposed budget reflects policy direction from Mayor Castro, City Council members, and valuable input from the recent community budget hearings held in June of every quadrant of the city. This video was developed to provide a summary of the fiscal year 2014 proposed budget and to enhance understanding of city services and how they're financed. It also highlights areas where the city has been able to recommend budget cuts while maintaining quality service levels to meet community needs. Over the next few weeks, the City Council will carefully consider the proposals included in the proposed budget. Mayor Castro, City Council members, and I look forward to your input prior to the adoption of the city's budget. On September 12, 2013, we appreciate your interest in the City of San Antonio's proposed fiscal year 2014 budget. We are committed to keeping San Antonio financially strong and to making San Antonio a dynamic and healthy community for you and your family. The city is committed to continually improving services for residents of San Antonio and nurturing an environment for future growth and prosperity. Each day, the city's workforce is in the community, working to maintain city streets, protect you and your family, preserve the beauty and integrity of your neighborhoods, and offer services and programs that can enrich the quality of life for all residents. The fiscal year 2014 proposed budget is balanced as required by law and does not include a city property tax rate increase. The general fund, which is the city's largest operating fund, totals $989 million, less than 1% higher than last year. The budget is transparent and reflects City Council policy direction and valuable input from the community. In June of this year, five community budget hearings were held across the city to obtain service priorities from residents before the proposed budget was prepared. Following the community budget hearings, City Council annually establishes priorities and the proposed budget recommendations reflect that input. This year, the high priority services identified are public safety, streets, sidewalks and drainage as our city core services. Your city budget is more efficient and since 2007, the city has reduced the general fund budget by nearly $88 million and has eliminated 1,633 civilian positions with no layoffs. During the same period, the city added 307 police officers and 167 firefighters reflecting community and City Council priorities. The FY 2014 proposed budget reduces 13 million in the general fund and a total of 279 positions in all funds. In the general fund five-year financial forecast presented in May of 2013, revenues were projected to increase at a slower pace than expenditures, necessitating adjustments to be made to the budget. The proposed FY 2014 budget presented to the City Council on August 8th is balanced and reflects the City Council priorities of no city property tax rate increase, budget reductions and some fee increases. Included in the budget are five million in proposed revenue adjustments in the general fund, primarily in EMS transport fees, hazmat inspection fees and recreational fees. The proposed budget also maintains the city's financial reserves at 89 million or 9% of general fund appropriations. With the efficiencies added in this year's proposed budget, general fund expenses increased less than 1%. One of the top priorities recommended by the community and the City Council is public safety. The police department has applied for a Communities Organized for Public Service hiring grant that will allow for the hiring of additional police officers for three years. The budget includes 307,000 for a city match if the grant is awarded in October 2013 for 10 officers. 1.3 million is also included in the budget to add more police in-car video and other equipment. The fire department provides quality fire prevention and suppression, emergency medical service and rescue operations to city residents. The proposed budget enhances these efforts by adding three full-time hazmat inspectors to improve inspections as well as 3 million for the replacement of two hazmat trucks and other fire equipment. Improvement and maintenance of streets and sidewalks continues to be a high priority for residents. The proposed budget continues funding the infrastructure maintenance program at 54 million. This amount includes 35 million to improve streets and 8.5 million for sidewalks. This is 2.5 million more than in 2013 and 4.5 of the 8.5 million will go to improve sidewalks to schools. 3.5 million will be used for drainage improvements and the final 7 million is for pavement markings, alleyways, traffic signals and bike facility improvements. In 2012, voters approved a 596 million bond program that includes city-wide improvements for streets, bridges and sidewalks, drainage and flood control, parks, libraries and public safety facilities. During fiscal year 2014, many of these projects will be designed and approximately half will begin construction. The FY 2014 budget includes 1.25 million for initiatives to revitalize and improve neighborhoods throughout San Antonio. This amount includes the Renew SA program, C-Clovia and the FitPass program. Also included is funding for animal care services to continue to perform 26,500 spay-neuter surgeries and maintain a 75% live-release rate. Code continues to be a priority in 2014 and no service reductions for code enforcement are recommended in the budget to ensure a continued focus on improving neighborhoods. San Antonio senior centers provide daily health, fitness and nutrition support to residents 60 years and older. The FY 2014 budget continues to make these services a priority and includes 1.5 million in funding for the expansion of senior centers in districts 2, 6 and 7. The 2014 proposed budget includes 3.5 million dollars for economic development incentives. 1.75 million is dedicated for inner city incentives and 1.75 million is dedicated to city-wide initiatives. A key piece in developing the city's budget is making decisions to maintain a strong financial position while providing quality service delivery. The budget reduces 13 million by streamlining services focusing on community priorities and reducing administrative overhead. On average, non-public safety departments in the general fund reduced cost by 5%. This year's budget reductions include leveraging technology and process improvements in municipal court to reduce the time customers spend at court by 30% while reducing costs by 914,000. The budget also reduces 1.7 million in administrative overhead which includes a 50% reduction to travel in other line item budgets as well as 11 administrative positions. The city will also achieve savings by transitioning services provided at the link centers to existing facilities including development services one stop, select libraries and other city facilities. Service modifications totaling 1.3 million include realignment of parks landscape and sanitation maintenance schedules and consolidating 10 open play community centers with low attendance with other full service centers in close proximity. The budget includes a change in the outdoor swimming pool program that is anticipated to save 310,000. This proposal expands the existing 6 day per week operation of outdoor swimming pools to a 7 day per week operation by limiting the number of days each pool is open. Delegate agency funding is proposed to be reduced by 5% consistent with the average reduction of non-public safety city departments. Funding for Haven for Hope, however, remains at the FY 2013 budget levels. This proposal saves 630,000. Solid waste collection services are supported by a user fee collected monthly through your electric bill. The budget includes funding to support a subscription curbside recycling program for organic recycling and adding two additional neighborhood drop-off collection centers. An increase to the solid waste monthly rate of 50 cents is recommended in the 2014 proposed budget, raising the cost to $19.93 per month. Now that you've learned about the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget, we want to hear from you. We encourage you to attend any of the community budget hearings. There are five area-wide community meetings held across the city and two at the city council chambers. As required by law, the city budget is scheduled to be adopted by October 1st. The city's new fiscal year begins October 1st. Visit the city's website at www.sanantonio.gov to learn more about the proposed fiscal year 2014 budget and the public input process. You can watch this video again on TVSA, the city's government access channel. As you can see, the city's fiscal year 2014 proposed budget is balanced and continues to provide the community with services and a strong financial position. I saw chief Hood walk in, the fire chief walked in. He was on the phone, but he was here a few minutes ago. Also, for those people who just walked in late, what we're going to be doing next is identifying five areas that we would like to see improved or continued, five service areas, and then three areas. Chief Hood, thank you for coming. Just wanted to say hello. There he is, our fire chief. And then three service areas that you would like to cut or areas where you think additional revenue can be obtained. So let's start with the hard stuff. Let's talk about the cuts. So if you'll start with the three areas that you say would like you like to cut or areas where you'd like to raise revenue, and then we'll go to the five where you would like to see increased. Thank you very much. 25 minutes. Okay. All right. So let's go ahead and get started reporting out. That works every time. Okay, so we're going to ask you to do is to designate somebody at your table, preferably a resident, a non-city employee, and to stand up and talk about first the cut, actually what you would like to add and then what you would cut. Please identify the table that you're standing because we're taking down all this information and we're going to compile it and give it to city council. So we need to be sure and get this accurately. So where are we ready to begin? Who's going to begin first? Back in the back? Okay, we've got somebody back over there. Please identify the table that you're at and then please report out. Oh, they were raising their hands. They were raising their hands. Just pick somebody. How about the table right here in the middle? Here we go. Let's go with them. All right. So if we could just thank you very much. Okay, this table right here. Just let's just go with what you got. How about that? Okay. All right, here we go. Table number one and she nicely brought the book over and we went through every department in the budget trying to understand where we could cut. And let me tell you, we had a devil of a time trying to find where to cut. Even though there are things we would like to increase, we looked at it. Parks and rec, we think there could be some more economies and parks and rec. We think that some of the agencies that support it possibly could be cut. We're not going to single out anyone, but we think kind of take a look at those. We did not list where to cut. Because we were still talking about it and wanting to listen to what other people were cutting, but that's where we stand. And we also find out that there's an awful lot of overlapping from one department to another one. Okay, so if you can talk about what services you would add. Yes, go ahead and report out to both, please. Okay. Because we went through it carefully, we kind of decided as a table, we would actually be willing to have small, emphasize small raise in taxes or fees if we could accomplish more in the city towards the things we would like to add. Our second one was our libraries. We feel like we don't really want to cut them a day a week or get rid of the bookmobile and the other things we have to do. And even though you said you weren't cutting Fire and Police, if that grant comes through, if the grant doesn't come through, you're not adding. So we put Fire and Police in as something that we want to support. Great. Thank you. Okay. How about this table right here? We've got a volunteer right over here. Good evening, everybody. We were really busy and we had kind of a diverse table, so we discussed a lot. Table number two. We're going in order, I guess. We would like to see them revisit the health benefits for all the city employees because some pay a lot, some pay a little, and some don't pay at all into this project. So we'd like that revisited. And definitely, we're still fighting this streetcar thing. I don't know if we can still do anything about it. But we, everyone at this table seems to feel like that is not anything that they are concerned about. They would like to see it cut. We also want to have no tax abatement for developers and developing projects. And we had a fourth one and it was the, we don't want to see Fiesta expanded. A lot of extra money will have to go into this project including we have to pay police time and a half for more days. And yes, and although we all like to party, we think 18 days is a little too long a party. We did come up with a couple of things that we thought might raise revenue. We would like to see them try and collect delinquent taxes. We would like to see them raise the liquor by the drink tax. A one-eighth of a cent someone figured out at this table would raise how much? Anyway, I think, pardon me, it would double it. So, you know, liquor by the drink, you're happy, you're drinking an eighth of a drink, an eighth of a cent is not going to make that much difference. Okay. And the third thing that we came up with to raise revenue was we considered adding more restaurants at the airport. We're making it nicer. We're trying to expand. We want to look better if you go to any other major city like Dallas, they have a Chili's and they have all sorts of restaurants. They all bring in revenue, including liquor by the drink. So, I don't want to keep up on this on this subject, but it does bring a revenue and it's people don't seem to mind paying an eighth of a cent more. Anyway, those are extras and are things that we want to keep. Keep our library budget and if you look at my table, we have happy seniors. So, we said anything that pertains with senior services, we want to maintain whether it's senior centers or whether it's the Y senior projects or any project that includes things where seniors can go. We comment that the library has had such a tremendous increase during the summer because everybody's so hot and that's a place to go where it is cool and you can find something to do and you can find new friends there. It's a playoff. Drive Kathy, we find friends there. Okay, that's all we wanted to do but we did want to raise extra revenue. Well, certainly great feedback thus far. I really believe tonight we found the solution to the balanced budget here in District 7, so we'll tell her jobs done. The next group that we're going to ask to present this group here. Good evening and thank you for coming out and being among us. At this table, table number six, we came up with three proposed reductions for the budget. Human services we need to shift that to community resources. We have too many departments that we need to combine. Eliminate some of those positions and I'm sorry, if you got to go you got to go. We the people, the senior citizens, the veterans, the children and the animals need the money the funding. We also talked about parks and recreation, how that department is one of the biggest consumers of our budget as well as, you know, the police and EMS and fire. Of course we can't touch those, but we can't touch parks and recreations. We need to combine some of those positions and eliminate the ones that we deemed unnecessary or redundancy. We also talked about public works, so we're updating them and reducing the overhead with community initiatives and I'll tell you why. Too many things are being, too much money is being spent out there for doing the same thing, redundancy. If you didn't learn anything tonight think about this, too many times we're doing things twice, three times, we have to eliminate that. Public works and Sims need to be combined. One builds them and the other guy and deal with them and they don't know how. So that's important and that's what we had for R3. Of course we also mentioned street cars. 40 million a mile is unacceptable. Okay. We want to talk about our improvements in the budget. For sure we want to enhance the senior citizen services, job training, same thing with the youth job training. We need to have happy people working. We just can't be having a good time all the time or not getting any services either or poor services. We talked about animal care services. Brook City base needs to be rebamped and somehow their management system needs to be reviewed. There's a lot of animals that are being abused out there and no one is doing anything about it. Everything to them is going as planned. But we need to have better insight more reporting so that people that are in animal care services do their job and not just hang out and have a great time. We talked about apprenticeship programs for the high school kids that think it was cool to drop out now they realize here in life they probably got a family or two and they don't have a job, no education. We need apprenticeship programs not only to prepare the high school dropouts but those that don't seek a higher degree but want a skill. This will provide skilled workers skilled educated workers and dedicated workers we need to have that done. Understand that to me the most important thing in family is family although right now it's been proposed that out of the 10 family crisis response teams they're going to reduce it down to five. We don't need to reduce that to 20. There's people out there that are being abused and they need help if you reduce that the counselors to to five from ten you're hurting the city of San Antonio so please think about that and of course we want to keep the library services and cultural art support and also solid ways. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Zavala. You have this table here? Okay. Hi my name is Manuela Salais and I live in District 7. I'm a retired school teacher so that's why I was selected for this job. Reductions. Reduce total amount used for abatement, incentives and additional scrutiny of management. We have a lot of companies that I agree come into San Antonio to build San Antonio but in this building of San Antonio they get a lot of free rides and a lot of us thought that that was one of the places that we should reduce the abatements. The next one is explore other options for the streetcar installation that won't require street reconstruction. One of the gentlemen at our table said that it seemed like they were going to dig up the street in order to do the rails and his suggestion was that since they were going to do that that they should try another alternative to see how they could still have the streetcar but in a different manner that they would use them to where they didn't require to reconstruct the streets. The other one was to explore options for reduction in public benefits. Actually, we just said that some of the benefits for the policemen and the firemen are to be reviewed to see if maybe they could come out with a better reduction in the benefits they get. There was an argument about the fact that it is a job that requires a lot of safety and that they bring a lot of there's a lot of things that happen within their jobs that can cause them problems physically and possibly mentally. I taught school. I could have brought home the same disease and I know I brought the mental part home. With that we want that reviewed and also for the city employees. Improvements workforce development with Project Quest we have one of the ladies that was sitting here and she was telling us about how they train, work with people educate them in order that they can find jobs with good salaries. And that's one thing San Antonio needs jobs with good salaries. The parks we talked about the community centers that were being closed and we talked about the new ones that are being built. In our case in District 7 for the senior citizens I gladly approve of that. The pools somewhere along the line we read that some of the pool hours were going to be combined. I for one think that a lot of kids like I was telling them when I taught I was amazed that the kids that had never been to McDonald's amazed at a kid that hadn't been to a movie but what during summer they talked about all they did with the swimming pools. So I think swimming pools should be open as much hours as possible. Increased parking meters revenue. I don't know if I'm for that but that's one of the things we've added. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Elias. Thank you so much. Thank you. This group here Mr. Rodriguez. Thank you. My name is Charlie and this is my friend Hugo and we're from Table 4 and we had a highly spirited discussion about all of these things at our table and we were unable to come to a complete consensus. This is what we're going to report on our cuts we felt that bicycle programs get a disproportionate benefit for what they contribute as far as taxes and fees is concerned. They need to be cut. On increases sidewalk expansion is one of the main things that it really covers a lot of the safety of our children in this city and along with street maintenance it's a very important part of what we need to concentrate on is making sure that our sidewalks are adequate and safe and well maintained. We want to increase the library budget. The library budget is one that is historically and traditionally neglected and it shows and if anybody uses the library you go down there over a period of time you'll see the deterioration it's not really anything that jumps out at you but over a period of time you'll see that it is a bit neglected and there was one more in which we talked about three different programs which come under one department I'm going to go ahead and report on that one because we felt like that was pretty important and I think we did reach sort of a consensus on it police protection the first program under police protection that we talked about is a CRT program which is a domestic violence program that one needs to be really looked at very carefully we also felt like we needed to increase police funding for better patrol and response times especially in some of the outlying areas of the city continues to grow and we didn't feel that our police department is growing with it and finally to increase the technology that is available to the police department such as traffic cameras and things of that nature that's it, thank you very much thank you Mr. Rodriguez, thank you excellent, thank you so much thank you for being here table 7 good afternoon everyone I'm with table 7 my name is Miguel these are some of the topics that we discussed we had a very somewhat debate scrutinized the budget by some of the people here in our tables how we could eliminate positions to somehow be able to balance the budget and some of the things that came up in terms of them contributing more to their health plan as well as their retirement also looking at fees to cover some of the costs for some of the programs that exist out there in other areas we had priority areas streets of course are very important public safety is a concern someone voiced the fact that they never see the police department in their neighborhood so faith safety becomes a big issue then of course we decided that human services in terms of delegate agencies were very important senior services after school programs of course training for people to go into the workforce such as project quest to make sure that people are able to go into and find a job where they're able to make a living where they're able to provide for their family am I missing anything did I cover everything okay we had a limited presentation here but our point came across what our group was hoping to voice next we're going to go to table table 11 hello everyone thank you for being here my name is Frank I live down the street here by Maverick elementary we had our heated discussions within ourselves but it's all fine because we're able to air out where we all come from we're all diverse we have different interests we have different values for our city so we approach our cuts kind of in that manner individually and then we kind of voted on it pretty much as it probably you all did too on cuts streetcars came up first you know whether we can do anything about it now or not but that was the first thing that came up second one was city employees or elected officials travel expenses they seem to be spending a lot of money on travel and we feel that that's one of the angles that can be cut amongst the city government within itself as far as employees or how they operate probably on a daily basis or their annual conventions in that type of stuff but that was the second one that came up third is fire and police pensions it wasn't so much cutting it but putting a stop to keeping it from increasing any more than what it is we feel that there's other cities in the United States that kind of got in a big bind in keeping pumping money into pensions whether it's for the government employees whether it's for fire safety employees that seems to be a big weight on the city expense and the taxpayer expense which tend to in the long run reduce our I guess benefits that we get from our taxes otherwise like streets and sidewalks and that type of stuff so but on our added the table voted that adding more to the spay and neuter side of the ACS rather than to rather than to build more buildings and hire more people we feel that that's one of the angles that we can that can be attacked at this issue that we have citywide because there's a lot of catch and release programs out there and that's I'm assuming that that's helping the city so that's one angle that we thought and me personally I thought that up front in this issue is to educate people more on the ownership of pets before you before you acquire a pet make sure you're going to it's going to be an expense on the family an expense on your budget so if that's put up front to a young family because the little one wants a little puppy and the little puppy becomes an issue a year later two years later now they don't need it they don't want it not a puppy anymore and it becomes all our burden so that's educating up front I think it's where the concentration should be and this bait and neuter would hopefully stop that issue that we have in reducing it and then third youth services through delegate agencies youth services very important by myself like I was telling you on the table that I grew up with a boys club here in San Antonio and they were very beneficial to us but they operated in a different manner but still in all it kept us off the streets on Saturday mornings rather playing football baseball whatever sports they were available to us but I'm a person myself I coach here for 16 years youth baseball here in St. Paul's and Roseville Park so I know what youth programs are they're very good very beneficial a lot of the kids benefit and you don't see the results of it until they're like 25 30 years old because I run into some of the boys and they're doing well and hopefully it had to do with being a team in along with other people and learning life lessons of that sort so that was it thank you oh I'm sorry number two library hours I got carried over library hours that was an issue that we feel that it's also beneficial to youth I understand that there's new libraries coming up that are going to the computer automated type of system so hopefully that will help but again I can only speak for myself and growing up in the west side every Saturday morning one of the library trucks used to go and they used to park there in the old Empire Plaza parking lot I don't know if anybody even knows what that area is corner of ratings or Zamora Street I grew up in that area and Saturday mornings I was there and for that truck being there my reading would have been failing at school because I think that helped me personally and a lot of other kids used to go there on Saturday mornings so library hours are important libraries are important overall so that's our three issues that we figure that we can either add or increase in funding or maybe just focusing more on our services with that thank you thank you Mr. Fonseca thank you next we'll have table eight for here this one some of our funding priorities are adult literacy programs keep funding for them also the fire department don't make any cuts in that department including benefits keep low fees low fees for dance music class community centers a lot of these people would not be able to afford a race which is what the parks and recreation department wants to raise the fees for everyone and a lot of these people would not be able to afford these races and as it is these kids and adults bring free entertainment services and their music to the community such as at the Arneson theater the market square also support the expanded senior centers keep crisis response team at a current level we feel that a lot of people suffer domestic abuse and gentlemen was talking that a lot of these people feel that talking to a counselor has been a life changer for them cuts, tax abatements and economic incentives to companies that do not yield the benefit to our city bonus pay for executives is a cut that we could have and reduce city manager staff and gentlemen was talking that a few years ago the city manager has six people under her and now she has eight additional revenue source require developers to build new parks and sidewalks open county school libraries and playgrounds to public more city county partnership higher outside agency to study the city to get rid of any excess staff in our city okay thank you very much I think we have three more tables to go right here in the back over here and I can't see the table number so identify your table where is councilman councilman where is councilman by my mind hey councilman I work with a wonderful group of men who are very vocal about their frustrations with the city but before we go into that they want to say thank you for your service with the military reserve and thank you for being our councilman because you do it for free so thank you for minimal pay so thank you councilman thank you councilman thank you councilman okay our three lesser priorities maybe reducing the number of trips on the recycling maybe cutting it down to every two weeks as a way of saving there and then basically our alleys that was kind of a debate but if it's there's already a city ordinance out there that's basically with the residents if you know the residents takes care of their half and we're thinking of maybe enforcing that ordinance and if the alleys not really being used why resurface it maybe cut down there and also no need for paving let the maintenance hold the residents responsible for the maintenance of the alleyways unless it's an elderly couple then maybe make the exception there maybe get the associations involved to see if they can help out with the elderly the senior citizens in their in their neighborhood the third lesser priority was libraries basically this is stemming from the cost of bringing in new libraries the cost that's going into building them the purchasing of the property so one of the things that our table came up with was library consolidation partnering with school districts and schools in the neighborhood to maybe combine the libraries there to kind of kind of get a dual use with the schools and the neighborhood yeah so basically reducing the need for new libraries and especially since we're going into higher technology maybe looking into more of a technological way to kind of get out the reading with the computers and iPads and laptops going that route and the ebooks promoting more ebooks so that was one area now our five top priorities are police and fire drainage and infrastructure senior services park maintenance and code enforcement those were our five top priorities that we thought that maybe they should be considered to be maintained and funded at least for this next fiscal year thank you thank you very much do this table report yet? this table are here table five hello my name is Sandra Claymoren and we were table five I really enjoy our discussion because I believe we had a really good representative sample according to age we had youth in our table we had middle age and we had seniors and everybody had ideas but at the end we all kind of summarized it into this the big thing that we all agreed on around the table was that we needed to add to economic development and bottom line it's basically investing in human capital and the way we define investing in human capital would be to first you start at a small age like Girl Scouts so you build future leaders through investing in programs like Girl Scouts and other youth programs then you advance to a more advanced stage you need to educate and find people skill training and that's where we're talking about project quest coming in here and developing people from leaders to skill labor we went to college and arts again investing in education and furthering people along and then finally we ended up in the senior services and that's investing in basically our seniors in the community and at the end helping them with services a lot of seniors that were saying that there's a lot of problems with the facilities and healthcare caretakers so that's how we define investment in human capital throughout the ages to define basically investing in economic development once you go through that process really you develop people that will have jobs and will bring you know taxes they will get taxes and that gets back to the community so it comes full circle that's how we saw it other areas that we thought we would like improvement of course would be infrastructure we're referring to drainage we're referring to streets sidewalks traffic and then we ended up also going further into libraries parks pools again for the enjoyment of children and recreation you know the kids enjoying the parks and libraries to further again education so this is what we were thinking of enhancements or investments and then I'll pass it along for her to define I believe the cuts and increases good evening I'm Serena Medina and I represent the Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas and Table 5 so we had trouble talking about reductions on what to cut and what not to cut so our reduction was no tax abatements for low-wage jobs which basically means when a company comes into the city normally the city gives them a tax abatement and sometimes those companies do not pay the people who work for them very good money they'll pay a minimum wage and they end up just staying in that one job and not really going anywhere also reductions for self-funded organizations or projects so saying like some museums are funded by outside organizations like HEB or Walmart or things like that and but they're also getting city money to fund them also so maybe they can have their own self-funds and see how far they get that gets them and maybe the city can contribute a little still but not as much as they are we also talked about other ways we can invest in revenues which we said an increase in solid waste fees would be fine we also did talk about increasing our property taxes but for the benefit of the community so basically if we want to fund these programs we want to fund the libraries we want to fund all this stuff we should be willing to pay a little more to get that funding done and we also talked about increases in the environmental fee thank you very much I sure wish I was that courageous when I was your age to be able to get up in front of people and talk we have two more tables actually this one right here they did they don't want it right they want it table nine we had a very good discussion on the cuts are first reduce expansion of roads to outlying areas because it is cost effective number two, reduce expansion of sewer and water lines to outlying areas and number three reduce development incentives outside of 410 enhancements number one, don't cut library hours number two, network of safe protected full size bike lanes connected to multimodal transportation stations number three, childcare facilities after school programs and at risk youth services number four increase resources for complete streets including sidewalks and the number constructed within the city number five, increase resources for physical fitness and health programs for families related to the SA 2020 great, thank you very much one more table right here table 13 we're subscribing to the three B's of public speaking be brief be accurate and be seated for our reductions we had libraries we think with the technology out there today that maybe libraries could be further reduced we also suggested for reductions the trolleys and street cars to maintain or to increase we felt public safety should stay on that list as a priority we think they're doing a great job we looked for more bulky and brush pickups to help obviously keep our neighborhoods in great working order sidewalk program is also a big plus we've maintained and we have one person at our table that would like to say thank you for her new sidewalk and our final one, lighting for downtown around the majestic theater it's a little dark at night and some additional increased lighting would help more people take advantage of the majestic theater and we'll be seated thank you very much okay, I think we got everybody I'm pretty sure we did thank you very, very much on behalf of the city manager mayor and council, thank you for coming out this information as I indicated earlier will be provided to city council and they'll have that, the benefit of that information as they consider the budget walking in a few minutes late, we'll still the city council deputy city manager Eric Walsh back there in the back, he's still working but thank you Eric for joining us and councilman if you want to just close it out before I do that I just want to tell you that residents will also have an opportunity to provide additional feedback directly to city council at citywide public hearings beginning at 6 p.m. in city council chambers on Wednesday, August 28th and Wednesday, September 4th two more times at city council chambers you can come in, please provide your input there, there's also two more budget hearings one tomorrow night and one Tuesday night count that is on Wednesday there's going to be a B session devoted specifically for public input it'll be at city house chambers, chambers, okay councilman thank you Carlos, again I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight I found this to be very effective very impactful some of the things that I heard are reducing redundancies in the way we do things trying to find more resources for our police and fire so we can look at areas that we can cut where we can be more efficient certainly a lot of good input was gathered tonight our job continues we got to take this back to city staff and the rest of my colleagues to ensure that we have a budget that reflects what we want to see District 7 and across the city so again thank you all very much for coming out and like Carlos mentioned we have a couple more opportunities on the proposed budget and then adoption of the budget will take place September 12th but I encourage you all to email us call us, call our office and continue to give us your feedback again thank you so much for coming out thank you all again