 So much for being here for our fifth and final of our budget open houses. We're really, really excited about all the feedback we've gotten so far. And when we're looking at the development of the budget, almost 6,000 residents have participated, which is well more than we've ever had before. And that's all thanks to you. So thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to be here tonight and learn all about your city budget. Before we get started, we wanted to show you a little video that has some highlights about our budget and we'll kick it off with that. San Antonio, you spoke up and we listened. More than 5,000 of you told us what you wanted in this year's budget. First off, this budget has no city property tax increase and our public safety spending stays at less than 66% of our budget. You told us streets, sidewalks and drainage were your top priority and we delivered. This year's budget features $79 million for street improvements and sidewalks. You told us neighborhood services were really important, so we made some cool things happen. This year's budget features $900,000 more for animal care services and $900,000 more to care for our city parks. You also told us public safety was important. So this budget features 32 new police officers, nine new parks officers and 42 more employees to answer your 911 calls. Fire and EMS will also receive new equipment and gear for 1,200 firefighters. There's so much more included in this year's budget and you can learn all about it at saspeakup.com. Now it's time for you to... Again, fill out the survey today. That's just a little preview of your budget. You're going to learn a little bit about the tables. Make sure to do that. There's lots of department heads, officials here and technical staff who can answer any questions you might have. But first, I'd like to introduce Mayor Ivy Taylor to kick things off. OK, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for taking the time to come out, be involved in the process, be engaged. Provide us feedback on the things that are going on in your neighborhoods and how we could address those things through our city budget. The budget really is the most important policy document that we create on an annual basis because it's a statement of our priorities, you know, how we decide to spend money in order to ensure that we have great quality of life in neighborhoods throughout San Antonio. And so this is your opportunity to share with us what your thoughts are. I think we have a very strong budget proposal that addresses many of the concerns that we've heard from citizens focusing on infrastructure and neighborhoods and our public safety. And I will say to you that I feel much better at today's budget hearing than any of the others that I've attended because at this morning, city council meeting, we, the council voted to approve the contract with the San Antonio Police Officers Association, which means that the numbers in this budget that are being presented are firm. And we will have the dollars to, of course, take care of our public safety workers, but also provide other critical services. So I'm breathing a little bit of a sigh of relief. But I just want to, again, thank you all for being part of the process. And a challenge that I usually issue to everyone is that when you leave here tonight, I ask you if you would tell 10 people, 10 friends, family, neighbors about what you heard at this evening's meeting so we can get the word out and have as much participation as possible in creating the budget for our city. And so I'll go ahead and pass the mic over. I have two of my wonderful colleagues here this evening. They're both very hardworking and we're here in District 3. It's great to be here on the south side. So I'll turn things over to Councilwoman Rebecca Villagran. Thank you, Mayor. I'm Rebecca Villagran, Councilwoman for District 3. Mayor, thank you so much for being here and City Manager Scully for being here and, most importantly, all of you for being here, for taking time out today, traveling over here if you're not from District 3 or wherever you're from. Thank you for being here. Thank you for using your voice and thank you for speaking up here at this open house. We have a very, very dynamic budget. I said when it was proposed that this is one of the most transformative budgets that we have ever had, I believe, at the City of San Antonio because of one, it's 2.5 billion total. But then what also has been put in the budget is something that has never been done before and we are breaking new ground and moving things forward. So I'm very excited about that. A couple of other things I'm very excited about is our World Heritage and the money that we are putting forward towards World Heritage, a total of 2.5 million that will directly impact the South side, but also all of our streets and our sidewalks in our community. And our World Heritage director, Colleen Swain, is here. I had to she doesn't have her own little booth, so I had to just single her out over there. But this is critical for your voice, for you to speak up and for you to share all of the ideas and the information and the questions that you have. And that's why we also have our wonderful departments here. So if there are specific questions you have, we want to make sure that you have those specific questions answered with the people who are working on those issues. I guarantee you, you'll be face to face with some of the people who are intimately aware of some of these issues that you're dealing with. So I want to thank all of them for being here. Some exciting things also in the budget. And I know they're probably going to talk about them, but I have to because I'm very excited is some of the complement enhancements with our animal care services. We're going to see that someone dedicated to animal care services in District 3. So this is extremely exciting to see. And on that note, too, I also wanted to say that we are having a microchip mania tomorrow, September 2nd at the Bodie Center in District 3. So if you need to get your animals, your pets chipped, please make your way over there at the Bodie Center. And also we have a lot of conversations and we're still working on this budget. This is a proposed budget. So what you say here is very important as we work in our work sessions. One of the things that we're going to continue to talk about in that, you know, we worked last year, but we're trying to make commitments this year to see find a way to find a way up to $15, a minimum wage. So we want to make sure that we can work towards 14. What would that look like in our budget and then work forward? So those are things that we're constantly looking at, we're constantly working on. So I want to thank you all for being here. And I'm going to pass the mic now on to my council colleague, Roberto Treviño. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Thank you, Councilwoman Viagra, for for that introduction. And certainly we I'm very honored to be here for the final open house. Lots of great initiatives going on in this budget. One I'm most proud of is the fact that we have a new translator service. What this means is is is your government is more inclusive, more transparent. With that, I want to say we have Ezekiel back in the back over here, a translator, if you need anybody needs any translation services, please go to the back, get pick up a headset. This is a great way to get to get to be included and experience our services in Spanish if you prefer that language. But again, I just want to say this is really a great event to talk about our budget, how we're working to to improve the quality of life of all our citizens. And speaking of citizens, let's let's introduce Councilman Ray Saldana from District 4. Well, good evening. When I started this, it is great to see folks out here today. Well, I'm glad to be on the other side of the south side. You see the the councilwoman is the queen of the south side. And my name is Ray. So it makes me the king of the south side. So we got both of us here tonight and we have our mayor and we have our council member. We've got folks like Tommy Atkinson, who I see is running around here today. This is an important time. It's for the city, the city manager and her staff and everybody who works for the city. This is like our Christmas season. There's a whole rush of people who are coming to us. We're telling us about all the great things that are happening. So we're actually each one of the departments you see here is telling us about necessities and needs that that they need to make sure that they're serving you, our public. So oftentimes you have to tell us where we're where we're failing, where we're needing, where we need some help, where we have some challenges. So that's why we're having these meetings out here. With that, I find that it's best that we speak less. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and pass it back to I'm sorry. Oh, to our city manager, who I think doesn't need much of an introduction. So Cheryl, thank you. Thanks. I'll give it back to you. I think I'm wired, so I'm on. I'm wired. Hi, I'm Cheryl Scully and I see lots of familiar faces in the audience. So thank you for being here again. Several of you have attended these meetings regularly and we appreciate it very much. So what we'd like to do is share some information with you about the budget and the way we're organized is having several city departments. Most of our city departments here. So if you have a specific question about streets or drainage, public safety, animal care services, libraries, you can talk with those individual department and staff and I know our police chief, McManus is here and we have a variety of departments all represented. So we'll answer all of your questions and we can do that individually. So we get to everyone without monopolizing all of your evening. So as an overview, let me just tell you a little bit about the budget. Of course, we're required by law to maintain a balanced budget and we do. It's balanced today. It's balanced when it's presented to council and balanced at the end of the fiscal year and part of my responsibility is to ensure that we are working with our departments to make sure they stay and work within their financial guidelines and also carry out the policies of the mayor and city council that are the result of the input that we receive from all of you. So it begins the implementation of essay tomorrow, the process that many of you participated in on the development of the city's comprehensive growth plan, our transportation plan, as well as the sustainability plan for the city. It also invests in streets and sidewalks. That's what we hear most about from the residents in the community. And also enhances public safety in our neighborhoods. So I'll talk about that in detail in just a moment. Of course, we're preparing for the 2017 bond program and the mayor and council members are inviting representatives from each of the council districts to participate in that citizen process. Has anyone here served on one of the 2007 or 2012 bond program? Thank you for doing that. We have completed the 2007 bond program. We are 90 percent completed on the 2012 bond program, either under construction or completed, and the balance of those projects will be underway before May of 2017. So we're developing now those lists of projects to recommend to the citizens committees, and then they will deliberate and make recommendations to the city council by the end of this calendar year so that we can set that election for May of 2017 by the 1st of February. And most importantly, no property tax rate increase is included in this budget. In fact, the city has not increased the property tax rate for 24 years. And over the past decade, we have recommended the council has approved lowering the city property tax rate four times. So here's our total city budget, two point five billion dollars. It's slightly less than the 2016 budget. And that is because our capital portion of the budget is a little bit less. We're finishing up our bond projects. And so we have less capital construction in this year's proposed budget. So it's slightly less, two tenths of a percent less than 2016. But these are the three major components. The general fund, one point one billion. And that's the portion of the budget that you think most about in terms of city services, police and fire, street maintenance, park maintenance, libraries, the health department, code enforcement, animal care services, municipal courts, social services, all of the variety of services of the city. One point one billion dollars. The next largest component, restricted funds are the enterprise operations of the city where the fee for the service pays for that operation. And they're restricted because there are legal requirements wherein those funds cannot be used for other kinds of services. For example, garbage collection. We pay a fee for our collection of our for the single family residences, garbage collection, our automated garbage collection. And that covers the cost of that department. Likewise, our aviation department is not supported by city property taxes, but rather the fees from the airlines, from the commercial operations at the airport, the car rental facilities, the users of the airport pay for that operation. And by federal law, we can't use those dollars for other kinds of services like animal care or libraries or public safety. So those are the restricted funds. And then the capital budget reflects not only our bond program and those projects. There are 140 projects in the 2012 bond program, but also, for example, in this year's budget, the convention center. And of course, we finished that expansion and opened that in January. It was funded with hotel occupancy taxes and also the work at the airport, the consolidated car rental facility that's being paid for by the users. Of the airport. So those are the three major components of the city budget. Let's zero in on the general fund. You can see on the inside of the circle how the dollars are appropriated and spent. Police and fire representing 65.9 percent of the general fund spending. And council adopted a policy that said, let's keep public safety spending under 66 percent. And so you can see, we're just under that, 65.9. The next largest portion of the budget here, street maintenance, for those of you that can't read that in the back. And of course, parks and recreation. All these other pieces of the budget are reflected here in this list. Human services, libraries, municipal court, code enforcement, animal care, historic preservation, economic development, the municipal detention center, the general administration of the city, purchasing and accounting in human resources, those functions. Those are all those are right here in the budget on the outer circle. Those are our resources, that is the revenue to the general fund. So the biggest piece represents CPS revenue, three hundred and forty two million, and that represents what CPS energy would pay if they were a private company, they'd be paying taxes and there would be a return on shareholder investment. But we, as the residents of San Antonio, are those shareholders. And so 14 percent of gross revenue is paid to the city from CPS revenue. Second largest category, property tax at 28 percent, sales tax at 24 percent. And then other resources about 18 percent. And those would be fees for service, transport fees for emergency medical services or for renting some city facilities. Let's say you're renting a pavilion at one of our parks and there is a fee, library fees that are paid. That's in the other category. So that reflects our general fund revenue. And you know in the city property tax of the total tax bill, the city receives less than a quarter of it. So about half of the cities, half of the taxes we pay in property taxes go to the public schools, about 30 percent to the county, the university health system, to county government, to the community college district, to the San Antonio River Authority, and then the city receives about 22 percent of the property tax bill. So the 2017 budget as proposed includes additional planning staff to help us with the implementation of the essay tomorrow plan, our Comprehensive Growth and Development Plan for the community and begins the process for implementation of the regional center planning. And you may recall from the comprehensive plan development that there are 13 regional centers that were identified and adopted within that comprehensive development plan. We had a presentation about that in discussion with the council already in one of our council work sessions and they identified and are asking us to take a look at how we can increase the effort to help us with the implementation of the planning for essay tomorrow. So we'll be studying that and that's some of the feedback and direction council has given us already on the proposed budget. In terms of service delivery, the fire department budget reflects their continuing in evergreen. You may recall that the collective bargaining agreement for public safety, both unions, expired in September of 2014, two years ago. And those contracts include what's called nevergreen clause, meaning the terms and conditions continue even though the contract has expired. So step pay increases, longevity pay and healthcare as provided for in that collective bargaining agreement continue under the current terms. So this budget for 2017 assumes evergreen because we have not been at the table to negotiate with them. We have invited them eight times. They have refused to negotiate, but we are hopeful now with the settlement of the police union contract that they will be a little more motivated to come to the table and settle that agreement. Nonetheless, for now, it does reflect evergreen. And I'll tell you that to continue under evergreen does cost about six million dollars to continue their healthcare plan under the evergreen portion. And those funds could be used for some other services, but they're being spent on evergreen at this point in time. Nonetheless, we are fully funding the 51 firefighters that were added in 2016 to increase service in the community. We had a partial year in 2016. So this budget includes the full year of funding since those staff are already on board. We have two more classes planned for replacing firefighter positions for vacancies, those that are retiring from the organization and an EMS class, Emergency Medical Services, so that we keep those vacant positions filled. We're retrofitting our older fire stations that haven't been improved with new exhaust systems for the fire equipment because some of those fumes get into the living quarters for the firefighters and so we'll be retrofitting some fire stations in this budget and also adding a second set of bunker gears so that each firefighter has the equipment that they wear to fight fires, two sets of that equipment. Within the police portion of the budget, we will be filling all of the vacancies and we talked today with the council about having about 150 cadets in training. We plan another class to begin a 45 to 50 recruits at the end of September, early October and in addition to filling the vacancies, we are proposing adding 32 additional police officers, 25 of which will be directly related to community oriented policing in our neighborhoods in the community. We're also proposing nine additional parks police and those officers will be working in our expanding park system. So as we add acreage, that is additional parks as approved by the voters in the bond program and bring those online and construct more of our linear creeks, we're adding additional park police to be able to protect our residents and keep them safe as they use those facilities. We've had some challenges in our 9-1-1 operations, dropped calls, some call waiting when people call to report a 9-1-1 emergency and so we've done an analysis, have added some staff mid-year and are recommending 42 civilian positions, call takers within the 9-1-1 center. We are now approaching 1.5 million calls for service on an annual basis and so to keep pace and do the best job possible on a quick response time, we need to add more staff. Body camera implementation, you know that the council approved a policy to equip all of our patrol officers with body cameras. We have more than 700 already officers already equipped and we will be continuing the implementation of the body cameras in this budget and a pilot program, a gang violence intervention program. We're studying best practices across the country and I'll share with you that no one has the market on how to solve gang violence but we're constantly looking at new and different ways that we can work with partners in the community as well as those who have perhaps been in trouble in the past, how we can improve and reduce the amount of violence in our neighborhood so we're also including in this budget a pilot project to work on gang violence intervention. So in our street maintenance budget, you'll see what has been spent in years past and this year we included in the 2016 budget more funding for street maintenance, you said that over the past year and again this year we want to see more maintenance of our streets. Any guesses as to how many miles of streets the city maintains? Besides a lot, 4,000 miles and so with 4,000 miles of streets to maintain it's a lot of responsibility and our transportation and capital improvements department does a great job at trying to keep our streets as great as possible but we all know we could off the top of our head tick off probably two dozen streets that we know need major repair and so this budget at the direction of the mayor and council includes more funding for streets again in 2017. Likewise in the area of sidewalks you'll see some of what has been done in the past in the annual budget and of course we try to incorporate sidewalk improvements with each of our bond projects so as we repair a street where there haven't been sidewalks if we have the room to add sidewalks and it makes sense on that road to do so and we have enough funding we try to add sidewalks but in the budget even though eight and a half million in 2015 was a lot of money it's not enough because with 4,000 miles of streets we know that there are sidewalk gaps and areas that need repair throughout the community so 15 million in 2016 and another 15 million for sidewalks in 2017 we're also taking a look at including within this proposed bond program a major component for adding sidewalks as part of the bond program as well so that we can make a dent in the gaps throughout the community. These are just some of the projects not an exhaustive list it's not all of the projects but a sampling of the projects that are included for district one for those of you that are here from district one I think we have examples from the south side districts as well correct here's district three these are examples of what's included in the budget and also for district four what we have included and again not all of them but it gives you an idea of those projects and we have a complete list our transportation and capital improvement staff can also talk with you about whether or not your street or the one that you think needs the most repair is included in the 2017 budget but also the city council adopts on an annual basis a five year infrastructure management plan that is planning out over the next five years which streets need to be repaired and we have a list and we update that on an annual basis and the council adopts it annually and makes adjustments to it. Sidewalk projects and districts one three and four here are some examples of those streets that have been included for sidewalks. Pedestrian safety two million dollars to continue our effort to try to improve pedestrian safety and reduce maybe reach vision zero which is zero fatalities of those who are hit by cars trying to cross the street. We are using some creative solutions what we call some Z crossings and some safe harbors in the middle of some of the wider busier streets so that for those that maybe can't make it across the street in a pretty quick way they can at least get to the middle of the street be in a safe situation before they cross. So our goal is to get to vision zero and also pedestrian safety around schools which is so important flashers proper markings and crossings for children that are walking to elementary school and to middle school. OK animal care services we're adding two more animal care service officers actually for the south side districts three and four are included so we have dedicated staff to the neighborhoods here three new positions for our return to owner program. Sometimes people just let their dogs out we call those roaming dogs they may not be homeless and out and about but rather they belong to someone and of course with our microchipping program it makes it easier for us to read the name of the dog and a return phone number so we can get the dog back to the owner and then additional spay neuter surgeries. This year we will conduct over 30,000 free spay neuter surgeries and we're increasing that in this budget for another 5000 more this year or in the upcoming budget and also capacity for 2000 more strays. We had an agreement with the county we were picking up in housing dogs from the unincorporated areas they paid us to do that they are going to go off and do that on their own now with a partnership with the city of Kirby and that frees up space in our kennels so that we can pick up more strays in the community and get them off the streets because we know it is a quality of life issue that is it's hard for you to go out and walk in your neighborhoods if there's a pit bull or a rioter or any dog roaming on the streets and while you're trying to be out there with your family. OK, delegate agencies the council on a biannual basis prioritizes spending by category for social service agencies and this year they decided that we should put more emphasis on workforce development in the community for young people as well as those who may be older and need some help with their skill set. We're working closely with the private sector to identify those jobs where there are shortages of positions in the community so that we can provide that kind of training for our residents so we're increasing workforce development but also keeping the domestic violence programs funded at 2016 levels. So there are no cuts in our domestic violence agency funding programs for 2017. Senior services, whoops, go back, don't miss that South Side Lion Senior Center. So of course that will be opening in 2017 and we've included positions in the operating costs associated with the Senior Center for South Side Lions and then we're increasing some positions at the Northeast Senior Center. Have any of you been up there to see that new Senior Center? Sally raised her hand, anyone else? So Tony as well. It's it's quite a facility and we had estimated 4,500 people would be using it regularly and it's more than 6,500 are going to that facility. So we're providing some additional staffing and services there. In the capital improvement budget, you'll see that streets are the biggest part of the budget. 32 percent of the total city-wide spending. Our airport projects are big and massive and expensive. The consolidated car rental facility alone is a 170 million dollar project. Again, funded by the users of the airport and those airlines and retailers that operate at the airport and of course then capital projects in our neighborhoods, parks, drainage and some information technology projects to help us keep our city systems going and to make it much more convenient for the public. I mentioned the status of our 2012 bond program with 92 percent under construction or completed, the other 8 percent is in design and we'll have those projects underway before May of 2017. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is making sure that we do quality work in our bond programs and substantially complete those projects within the five years that the voters voted for those projects. The bond projects in District 1 include these examples within the 2012 bond program. You can see which ones are completed or the dates as to when they will be completed. Here is District 3 with Goliad drainage and Belford, a spot of road, the D3 community center. That will be completed late this year, so we're excited about that. And of course in District 4, the additional street projects and park projects that are under construction. So next steps in the budget process, five city council work sessions. We've hosted four of those, I know three of them so far and council will have two more work sessions next week and the following week on the proposed budget. This is the fifth of our community open houses and as was mentioned at the beginning of this session tonight, we did some survey work before we began preparing the proposed budget so we could get input from the community before it was prepared, get policy direction from the mayor and council as to what they wanted to see within our financial plan and then now hear from you all on that proposed budget as to what should be added or subtracted from the budget. In addition to these open houses, we'll have two public hearings on the budget. We actually had our first one last night, we'll have one more next week and then budget adoption is scheduled for September 15th. That's a Thursday during the regular city council meeting. By charter, by city charter, we're not only required to maintain a balanced budget, but also to adopt the budget before the end of September because our fiscal year begins October one. So that's a quick summation of what's included within the proposed budget. The way we have been organizing our work sessions with the community now is to break up our formal presentation and allow you to talk with our various departments that are here. We have a number of staff that are here tonight. I don't think we have you outnumbered, but maybe so. That means, though, that we can have some one-on-one time with you about those areas that are most important to you tonight. So if there aren't councilwoman, would you like to close it up before we answer questions of the community? So at this time, we're going to give about 10 minutes. If you all have questions that you all would like to ask or some comments that you would like to make right now so we can take the notes. And again, if you'd like to make them, you can. But also, please know that all of our departments that are here are ready to take questions and the specific issues that you have as well. So we're ready. We're here ready. Have any questions, please? Yes, Tony. And if y'all would just wait for the mic to come to you for our viewers at home, thank you. Oh, I don't think it. OK, I'm just going to read what I wrote on here. If that's all right, no one take any offense. I think y'all have done a great job. But the first question I want to ask is, why has it taken so long for the district three? You don't have to answer. Let me finish. For the district three Seniors Center to come to completion. When I compare that, I sit on the joint City County Elderly Affairs Commission and the senior center that you mentioned, city manager, is it went up like that. And I just don't know. We have an academy that began construction on Goliad Road. After the senior center, it is now completed and the senior center is still in process with that said, due to expected population growth. I think, and I mentioned this to the councilwoman earlier, that we need to create more council districts, support our law enforcement and fire department, increased budget and personnel for co-compliance funds to purchase a certain old golf course that the councilwoman knows I'm talking about and making it an extension of South Side Lions Park on the lakeside. The other thing is streets and drainage. We need that so desperately. I'm so glad it's being addressed here and in the upcoming bond. Brook City Base, which I'm very partial to, since I was one of the signers on that transition, is one of the catalysts that the South Side has had that we can all be so proud of. It's brought positive growth, economic growth to the city as a whole. With the jobs it's produced, with the people it's brought in, with everything. And I think that we should do as much as we can for its improvement and to keep it going in a positive direction for whatever it needs, whatever the needs are there. Let's make it happen. And the other thing is libraries with real books that children can touch, they can hold, they can comprehend. And not, I mean, across the board, all ages. It's not, I mean, children we need to really concentrate on. We have the computers, but also seniors. Seniors are going to be growing because of the baby boomers. And that is something that I think we really need to be looking forward to in the future for this city, which brings up Sidewalks, ADA, et cetera, et cetera. And I believe that's about all that I know I've got other stuff, but I don't want to take up everybody's time. But I do want to thank everyone for coming to a positive conclusion with the police union contract. We have, in my opinion, one of the best police departments in the United States. So thank you. Well, Tony, thank you for your comments. And I want to thank you for sending me very supportive notes over the years, too. You've always been very kind to offer your suggestions, but also to say thank you for the work that's going on. Rather than, since you covered almost the entire city budget with your comments, I'm not going to address every every point. But our Transportation Capital Improvement staff is right over here. They can talk with you about the senior center and that work. And our libraries, just a comment about that in our library staff is back there in the corner and Remito is here, Ramiro Salazar, our library director. We agree with you. In fact, the feedback that we have while people do want more computer services in our libraries and we add those and keep them updated and expanded, you know, with the beautiful Mission Library here in D3. People still want to have books in their hands, right, Ramiro? So we agree with you and we're continuing our programs, especially with young people. So thank you for mentioning that. And I'll be happy to talk with you, too, and answer some of your other questions. Ian is staffed at the 50th anniversary of Makryla's library. Good. Thank you for that. Any, is there another question or two? Are we there? There we go. OK, let me just say thank you. Congratulations, Rebecca, Ray, Robert, Cheryl. Good job. I think we have a pretty solid budget and I'm always concerned about code compliance, animal care services, we euthanize way too many dogs to this day even. And our streets and sidewalks in the residential neighborhoods. It's not limited to just the south side these days. There are old parts of our city that are on the north side, but always remember that half of the north side is from the south side. The opposite is not the case. And so remember who you are. I just say thank you. I think you all done a good job. God bless you for all the hours you put in for sometimes seemingly almost nothing. But we have a great counsel and a great mayor. And I think that Cheryl, you're doing a good job. I appreciate it so much. Greatness is your hallmark. Thank you. My next man. OK, I didn't hear anything mentioned about saws in the budget. And some of our water mains are 60, 70, 80 years old and they need to be replaced. A lot of the damage to the city streets is caused by leaking our absolutely broken water mains. Yes. So the San Antonio water system is a separate budget governed by their board of directors appointed by the mayor and council. And the mayor sits on that board. But we're happy to take information from you about which streets in particular. They have they're not part of the city's budget. Saws is owned by the city of San Antonio and the mayor and council have authority to approve their rates. And we as staff make recommendations about the rates. And oftentimes when sauce comes to us, we we don't necessarily agree with them. And we try to get them to be as cost effective as possible. But we'll take any of those example streets from you and then share that with sauce or we can have them contact you directly. Pick well. That's part of the problem with pick well. There is someone from saws at least once a month working on a broken water main along that area. OK. Our transportation staff is here. They're making a note. They will talk with saws tomorrow morning and talk with them about what the situation is. If we could after this meeting, Anthony is here from transportation. If we could get your name and number and then we'll return a call to you about that street. Thank you. You're welcome. We have a question here. No, I have a comment. I just want to thank you very much and the council members for your support today, especially on project quest line item. And we want to ask you to continue your support on the living wage to the $14. We do not want our people to be in poverty. We want them to continue being able to support their families. So I really, really would like to encourage you to continue that effort. And thank you for what you have done. I just had another question following Tony's comments. I thought that the South of the Southeast Senior Center in Pecan Valley, I mean, the Northeast Senior Center was supposed to have been open November of 2016. And I heard you say it be open in 2017. Well, the staff have said early 2017. Who's here from Human Services is right here. Melody Woosley Melody. January of 2017. We slipped two months, but we are going to hold them to January of 2017. We have a question. Hi, it's more of a comment than anything, not really a question. My name is Karen. I represent SEIU, Texas, which represents the five thousand plus civilian employees. We just wanted to make sure that San Antonio is a place where every family can reach the American dream, no matter if they live on the north or south side. We are very encouraged by the city's commitment to help us reach a living wage of fifteen dollars an hour for all municipal employees. With that said, we must work together to create living wages for all. We believe that contractors should be paid the same minimum wage agreed upon by the city of San Antonio and its workers. As city workers, we are proud to be working for the city of San Antonio. When the city outsources jobs to contractors for less money, it makes us feel like we're not really needed. So that's really the comment I have this evening. It's just something for y'all to take back. Well, thank you, Karen. Karen's one of our city employees. And let me just add, I didn't talk about it tonight, but we want to be and we constantly strive to be an employer of choice. We want people to want to be breaking down our doors to come and work for us. And part of what we've done this year as part of our compensation package is to make it even family, family friendlier. That is, we're offering additional leave time for the birth of a child or the adoption of a child so that our families, both men and women, can have the proper amount of time off to be able to care for their families. And also 24 hours of leave time so that they can use time during the course of the year if they need to attend a parent teacher conference or have a doctor's appointment for a child and and do some of those kinds of things. So we're constantly working with our employees to talk with them about what's the most important and to be responsive to their needs because we want our families to be supportive and you're welcome. OK, so we have time for two more questions here. So we'll start right here with this gentleman. Thank you. I do have a question and it is a broad question. I would like to know about some of the hard choices that you had to make. We've heard about what's in the budget, what had to be taken out of the budget, what programs or projects were found not to be working and that you have eliminated to save money. That's a very good question. First, let me offer this context. So over the past 10 years and I've been manager now going on 11 years, we've actually eliminated more than 1600 civilian positions. So we have met fewer city positions today than we did compared to 10 years ago. And we do that by using technology where technology can can do the work. We also examine our business practices. That is, how many steps does it take to get a building permit or how many steps is it to hire someone and how can we make that more efficient? And that's an ongoing process. We actually have a division within our budget office that's called innovation and reform and they constantly are examining different parts of the organization as to how we can improve and do things better. We haven't laid any people off, no layoffs, but we hold positions vacant so we can, as we eliminate positions that are of lesser priority, let's say a new program or service was brought into play because there was a particular problem in a neighborhood rather than just keeping that forever more. If it is solved or it's no longer the highest priority as compared to some new issues will replace that kind of program. What's not in the budget would be more streets and sidewalk construction. I'll just be very candid with you. We'd love to do even more sidewalk construction and there are many, many projects. We have the list of them in our five year infrastructure management program. We'd like to move a lot of those up and the council members work with staff to prioritize, but I'll tell you that's tough duty for the council to pick one street over another or a drainage project over another or sidewalk. So the things that have been left out have been primarily in that area of infrastructure, but we will be able to address some of those needs in this upcoming bond process that will be helpful, but there's still much more work to do. And if I can add, part of that too was looking at some of our public safety, a fire, EMS unit, different things like that that are big ticket items that were really difficult to put in, but we're still working on that. We're still trying to see what we can do as well as some drainage issues too. So we have mentioned fire. Can I add to that? Because that's an important issue in the northwest portion of the of the community, the highest call volume area where we need an additional EMS unit because then units get pulled from all other areas of the community to service that growing district. We need to add more. The chief recommended it, but we can't add that. And because the monies are not there, they're going into the evergreen cost of that collective bargaining agreement. So if you can encourage the firefighters to get to the negotiating table, we can get that contract resolved and then get those monies into service delivery for the community. So that's a big important item. I think we have time for one more question. Question. And then if you have any other questions, feel free to find our team and we're happy to help you. Hi, thank you. OK, I'm a newer level here in San Antonio recently stationed here. I originally hail from Savannah, Georgia, and so I hold the city to a very high bar, but I have to say I'm very, very pleased, is very pretty and I am very impressed with all the work that's being done in this city. You mentioned street maintenance is 64 million inside walks is 15 million. My question is, does that include new streets or is that maintenance of existing streets? Because I see I've never been in a city with more highways and spaghetti junctions and I've lived all over the USA than here in San Antonio. And I'm sure that costs, you know, all the money in the world that could be used to repave the entire city instead of building a new spaghetti junction. So does it include new stuff or is it repairing old streets that are in bad need of repair and also do either one of those include the addition of new bike lanes for citizens that want to be biking around? So it's maintenance of existing roadways. So the 64 million is some preventative maintenance and also reconstruction of those streets that are in the very worst shape. Our transportation department grades all of our streets and has an inventory of all 4,000 miles so we know which ones are ABCDEF and they put together programs that are recommended to the mayor and council discuss all of those projects with our council members and the council then decides which projects will will be done in the fiscal year. We also do some preventative maintenance. So if a road might be a B minus or a C plus and that if it had a thinner overlay, it could extend its life for another 10 or 15 years. That is incorporated into the program as well. And yes, we have a bicycle master plan. We are adding bicycle lanes where the community is very supportive and where we have the right of way with to be able to accommodate cyclists safely. OK. Well, thank you very much for all coming out. And again, we're here to serve and to answer the questions for you all. It's an honor for all of us to serve our city of San Antonio. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.