 I'm Jesse Zapata, the vice provost for the downtown campus and it's always a pleasure for me to welcome anybody really, but especially a group like this to the downtown campus and to UTSA. The downtown campus, as many of you are aware, opened in 1997 when we welcomed about 1,900 students. Today we are approaching 7,000 students on this small campus and we're very proud of that. We were very well received by the community and again I'd like to welcome all of you, I would especially like to welcome our Mayor Julian Castro who I will introduce in a few minutes. But I'd like to give you just a little bit of context as to why we're here. Two reasons, really, that does tell together very nicely. One is the Great Cities Dialogue that I'm happy to say that I was dean when the Great Cities Dialogue was initiated a few years ago and we've had several, the college has gone on well beyond me and continued this Great Cities Dialogue lecture series and today is one of those. In addition, the Mayor initiated, as all of you know, activities that led to what is now called Vision 2020 and resulted in a number of initiatives that the Mayor and the City are committed to. One of those initiatives is Civic Involvement and Government Accountability and that is what you are here today. Bob Ambrosino and his advanced class of community activity, forget what it's called exactly but Bob and Francine can tell you more about it later, embraced that initiative and the result of their work is what you will see today. One final comment about why it is appropriate and there's a nice connection between this campus and what's going on today is that this campus itself was born out of civic activity, civic engagement, a commitment of the community to produce something that would encourage young people to pursue a higher education in San Antonio. This campus is a result of that kind of activity and so it is fitting and proper that this kind of dialogue about civic engagement take place here so you are in the right place. Our Mayor of course so all of you know him, out of his own personal family background there was commitment to civic engagement and involvement and participation but his own personal philosophy and his own political structure and vision suggests that he is committed to this kind of work and welcomes the City of San Antonio providing input to San Antonio's future. So I would like to introduce Julian Castro our Mayor. He will also issue a welcome and I'm sure provide a great deal of enthusiasm and encouragement to you as this work continues. Thank you very much Dr. Zapata and it's always wonderful to be here at UTSA and thank you all for getting up on a Saturday morning to come down here today. My apologies I have a bit of allergies, it's getting the better of me like I think it is many folks this winter but you know when we kicked off SA 2020 in September 2010 we asked San Antonians to dream about our city's future. To dream about what kind of city we can be on Friday September 25th 2020. There are only about eight and a half years left until that date when we measure our accomplishments. In the 2020 process we set about creating goals for 11 different issue areas from economic development, downtown development, health and fitness, environment, to government accountability and civic engagement and the fact of the matter is that no matter how you slice it as a community we cannot accomplish our goals unless we get this one right of civic engagement and government accountability. Unless we have a San Antonio of 1.3 million people that care about what happens in their community that vote, that volunteer, that participate, that hold their elected officials accountable for their actions. And so this morning I wanted more than anything else to begin by thanking Dr. Ambrosino's Advanced Communities class for taking this matter to heart, taking it seriously, putting in the effort to get the input of a broad cross section of San Antonians and put together something that we can work with, a citizen's bill of rights and responsibilities for the future. Thank you very much for doing that. Let's give them all a big round of applause for their participation. We appreciate it. I also, of course, want to thank Dr. Zapata, Dr. Romero, all of Dr. Sines, all of the UTSA, particularly UTSA downtown faculty and staff that have been instrumental in the development of this and so helpful during the 2020 process. Let me say that I'm not a stranger to cynicism. I grew up with a mother that was a Chicano activist in the late 1960s and early 70s. I grew up understanding the beauty of the United States and the golden opportunities that we have here in our country, but also understanding that our country has not been perfect, that oftentimes there were folks who were cut out, who were treated as lesser than, oftentimes communities that could not reach the American dream in the same way. And growing up, I internalized that. I also got dragged to millions of political events, rallies and election day handing out flyers and things that would make any 10, 11, or 12-year-old frustrated about having to deal with any of it. And between the two of those things, when I was in high school and as I went into college, I wanted to do anything except participate in the American political process. But over the years, I came to see, as I know many, many other folks come to see, that at the bottom line is, this is the only system that we have, and although it's imperfect, this democracy is also the best system that we can have. It calls for the most from its citizens, and it respects the individual and gives each and every one of us the opportunity to own our destiny. And that's the spirit that I think we see this in over the next 10 years in San Antonio. Each and every one of us at San Antonians can take an ownership role in the destiny of our community. We've set some bold targets for increasing voter turnout, increasing volunteerism, increasing neighborhood association participation. All of those things are going to lead to a stronger, civic San Antonio. I believe that at the end of the day, what we're going to get from that is policies that more accurately reflect the wishes of San Antonians, governments that have even more integrity, are more efficient, are more precise in their policies, and we're going to get neighborhoods in San Antonio where neighbors still know each other. Ultimately, what we're going to get is a San Antonio that keeps the wonderful character that it has as a place where people still feel connected to each other. That's the beauty of this 1.3 million people's person city. It still feels like a place that you can call home and where you can know your neighbor. And this work, the work that we're doing here today, the work that the students are showing us the way on, that's the work that's going to help ensure that we retain what is precious about San Antonio over these next 10 years. So I look forward to a great session. Thank you again for the wonderful work, and let's do some great things. Thank you. I'm Francine Romero. It's hard to see you all out there with this light. I'm the Associate Dean of the College of Public Policy, and I want to welcome you here to our downtown campus and just give you a little background on the Great Cities Dialogue and our college. We've been doing the Great Cities Dialogue for more years than I can remember, so I can't exactly tell you when the first one was. But this is part of our mission of the College of Public Policy. We are certainly not here downtown as any kind of an island. We are here, part of our mission is to work with the community. And a lot of times our mission involves just stepping back and providing a context and setting for the community to work on making our city even greater than it already is, and that's what we're hoping to do today. We have, because sometimes UTSA can be confusing to people. There are two colleges that are entirely housed downtown, College of Architecture, College of Public Policy. College of Public Policy has four departments, Social Work, and you'll be hearing a lot from Social Work today. Public Administration, Criminal Justice, and Demography. We offer two bachelor's degrees, three master's degrees, and one doctoral degree. We are, I'll just say, the fastest growing college at UTSA. I don't know that, so don't quote me. Just wanted to talk a little bit about our history with SA 2020. About a year ago, we started thinking about how we could be involved. And actually Francis Gonzalez, who's one of the mayor's assistants, suggested that this particular element, the civic engagement, government accountability, would be a natural one for us. So this is now the third event that we've hosted down here. And the mayor has been to every one of those, and we really thank him for that. It's meant a lot. And just real briefly, back in April, a lot of you were here. We had a big session, and we just got lots of ideas out. What kinds of things can we do to enhance civic engagement and government accountability? In August, we had a second meeting, a little bit smaller, but where we tried to distill all those ideas down into an action agenda. So what kinds of things could we actually start making happen? And that didn't mean necessarily handing it off to the city council and saying here, do this for us. But we were thinking about how can all of us make these things happen? And one of the ideas that emerged on that agenda that had a lot of support was a citizen's bill of rights and responsibilities. And that was an important thing that came out of the August meeting, was it's not just a bill of rights, it's responsibilities as well. And about that time, Dr. Bob, we were fortunate enough to have two, Dr. R. Ambrosino's here. We have Rosalie and Robert, and so the students call Robert, Dr. Bob. So we'll call him that too. They do wonderful projects every semester. And this semester, they wanted to do something having to do with SA 2020, and they did focus on this particular project. I don't entirely know what's going to happen today. When we had an early meeting, I also want to mention there's an advisory group that has been really helpful in this project. We had an early meeting where I was, I guess, as usual, trying to be a little micromanagy and telling Bob, we should do this or that. And he said, well, that's a great idea. And when you do this with your class, I think you should do that. So Bob and I are both from back east, so we have that sarcasm in common. So I don't know exactly what's going to happen today, but I know it's going to be good. And I've seen the list of rights and responsibilities. And these are ideas today. We're certainly not presenting these as a done deal, as something that's already happened. These are a list of ideas. And I hope that all of you today can help us and the panel to think about these ideas and do we want to add to them, subtract from them? What do we want to do with those? If this Bill of Rights is in some way gets buy-in from the community, is in some way recognized by the city of San Antonio, that will be wonderful. Because one of the things you'll see in this Bill of Rights is it really reflects what came out from the whole 2020 process. All the things that are in here, there's really nothing in this Bill that conflicts with what was already said. So if this is to get buy-in and recognition, I think it will just strengthen and cement our shared commitment to these ideas and ideals that came out of the larger SA 2020 process. And the other thing to keep in mind is this Bill of Rights and Responsibilities is not self-enforcing. This is going to involve further work where we all talk about, okay, well, what can we do to make this particular thing happen? Again, what can we commit to? What can various nonprofit groups? What can citizens do to make these things happen? So I just want to thank all of you for being here today. And this is a cold Saturday, December morning. And so many of you are here. That's one of the things that really makes our city great. And so I am going to turn it over to Dr. Robert Ambrisino. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you so much for coming out on this very cold day. And I was just out a minute ago, and it seems like it's getting colder as time goes on. So maybe we'll all want to stay here for the rest of the day. And I'll tell you it's a nice cozy place to be. This project represents several months of work by a group of 30 students as part of, it was mentioned in an advanced, what we call advanced communities class in the Department of Social Work. And we got involved in this because, as Francine mentioned, or Dr. Romero mentioned, because we were interested in civic engagement and government accountability as part of what we do to promote social justice in the Department of Social Work. So actually, we do have a couple of surprises for Dr. Romero in this presentation and hopefully for you as well. But I want to point out before we start is that what you're going to see here today is, while it's the work of the students in terms of gathering the information, it's really the voice of the people that were interviewed either through a town hall meeting or through focus groups or by putting a table in front of some public conveyance and asking people, would you be willing to sit and talk with us for a minute about your views on citizens' rights and responsibilities. So what you will see here today truly reflects the voice, if you will, or the opinions, and I didn't, I haven't memorized the number, but it's about 640 different individuals from across the City Council districts here in San Antonio. So we are really pleased that we have this cross section of people who have shared their interest with us, their concerns with us, and most interestingly their willingness to say if we're going to have these rights, these are the kinds of things we're willing to do to preserve those rights and to have those rights. And that's, as Dr. Romero mentioned, that's kind of a unique part of this activity. Before we actually started the activity, we looked around the country to see what other municipalities had done in this area. And we, it was an interesting mix, okay, some municipalities where they did it had a little bit more luck in getting buy-in than others, but actually to the project none of them had included responsibilities as part of the project. So I'm pleased to say that at least in our research that what you're going to see here today is unique, and I think it's compatible with what's going on here in San Antonio. We are very excited about the people's interest, okay, and wanting to become involved in wanting to have a say in their government. So let me start by saying, and I usually don't stand at a podium, particularly when I have to do this, but I want to make sure my voice, what you see here, the logo with the river running through it was actually something that was designed by the students and one of the students husband was a graphic artist, so he did the artwork for us. But the students themselves designed this logo and every project that we do, whether it's this one or a policy project, we always create a brand for the project because we want people to remember what we have done and when they see something they say, oh yeah, that's it, that group of students did that. So I'm going to abbreviate here and I'm going to call CBRR the Citizens' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities because I used a pretty big font here so everybody could see it, okay, and as the mayor indicated and Dr. Romero indicated that the work here is really an outgrowth of the SA-2020 vision or sustainability initiative that was unveiled right here at the downtown campus in March of 2011. And I went to that presentation or that event and I really got energized about what was said there and the report that was produced as a result of this. So this is really where it all came from. So we feel like what we've done is close to or compatible with the SA-2020 initiative and we have been working with staff from the mayor's office as well as with Daryl Bird who is the new CEO of SA-2020. And so we feel like again the product that we're going to show here today is something that can be used as a stepping off point for future dialogue. The panel that will be, has been convened that will speak after the student presentation. The panelists are going to speak to that thing. How might we take some of the features of this Bill of Rights and responsibilities and find some action steps? Because this is a dialogue and it's an ongoing process so we don't see this necessarily as a destination, we see it as a journey. So for those of you just a little reminder, one of the things that came out of the SA-2020 initiative as the mayor indicated are these things that were called vision areas. And I've reproduced them here just so that you can refresh your memory of what they are. As you can see it's a broad range all the way from arts and culture to family well-being. I think this was an excellent example of community involvement. The mayor mentioned health and fitness, natural resource environment. All of these here are important visionaries. Each one of those vision areas is set for sustainability. And one of the challenges of a sustainability project like this, and I spent a number of years in Austin and they have a central Texas sustainability indicators project and so they had a little bit of a head start. And many of these vision areas are similar but we have a little work ahead of us. So let me go to our specific focus. The specific focus of the Citizens' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities is government accountability and civic engagement. So we zeroed in on one of these 11 areas and that's the work that you're going to see here today. We had two objectives. The primary objective was to develop the Citizens' Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. But as I mentioned, we have always had the goal of getting the voices or however you want to mention that or term that of a broad cross-section of the Citizens of San Antonio. So we planned that and you'll see here in a minute we had a broad range of individuals that we targeted whether it was by age or gender or race or ethnicity or place of residents in the city. The secondary objective which is part of what we do in the Department of Social Work is to create a transformative learning experience for students in the class. And by that what we mean is that this is something that students do in the community and are transformed by the process in terms of their thinking, in terms of their belief system, in terms of how they look at things. So at the end of each one of these projects, for example, we always debrief with students and say well how did this impact you and how were you transformed by this process? And it could have been, well I had this conversation with an elderly community resident and I learned a lot about the history of San Antonio and I'm more appreciative of where I live now. So this is the objectives. I want to talk a little bit about the responsibilities of the students and let me say that this group of students are advanced students and advanced means they're an advanced portion of our curriculum. They're headed toward graduation and they're advanced a field placement in agencies in the community. So these are seasoned experienced students. Our program was initially created for working professionals so many of the students in our program have worked in this community in a variety of roles for years. So they're very comfortable with what's out there in the community and also knowledgeable. So that was sort of a plus for us. But the students did it all and here are the things they were responsible for doing. They were responsible for reaching out across the 10 council districts and finding the people that were to be targeted whether it was a focus group, a town hall meeting or as I said come talk to us at a table that we set up outside a church or a community center or HEB. The students also were responsible for engaging the media and that's an interesting experience for students because the media it plays a significant role in advancing things like you're going to see here today. They also were responsible for seeking in kind and other donations. We don't have a budget for these kinds of projects so the students are either finding organizations that are willing to donate things or in some cases to get actually a cash donation. And then finally the students were responsible for this event today. So in some ways I guess I was a coach but I want to make sure that the credit is goes where the credit is due. This is really about the students. Now here was our approach. We did as Dr Romero mentioned is we did create a project advisory committee of a small group of people who had already expressed an interest in being involved in SA 2020 initiatives. And what the committee did was to give us some idea which is the second bullet on what kind of strategies we could use to find the people to talk with and how would we go about doing that. And it was very helpful for us again because we have some of our own ideas but we really wanted this to represent something that was relevant to the community. The class was divided into three work teams of 10 students each and they were all assigned a number of city council districts and that was their responsibility to gather the information. The first step was to contact city council members and or their staff. Many of the council members worked directly with the students. Some worked through their staff but they were involved and that's very important for us because they also made it possible for us to use some of the venues and do some of the outreach for us in their own districts. Sorry. The other thing in terms of the approach is of course finding the venues. The next step was to collect the data and a lot of time was spent doing that outside of class during the evenings on the weekends at a variety of venues as I mentioned to you. We as you will see here in a minute we had information from almost 650 individuals across the 10 city council districts as well as a broad representation of zip codes which I will also share with you here in a minute. So when we had to sit down and analyze the data okay we had pages and pages and pages of information and if the student if a student was standing up here now they would say oh I remember that that was the Sunday that we spent all day right after Thanksgiving. You know laboring away and if you were watching some of the pictures in the other room you'll see a picture of the students doing that. So what we had to do is we had to condense the information into themes and again it's not our themes it's the themes that came from the people. We were particularly careful not to interject our own points of view in their own lens okay this truly represents what has come forward from the people that the students talked to. And then the last step is well how do we take those themes then and translate them into the bill of rights and responsibilities that you have a copy of that was handed out on your way into this room. So what were our guiding principles? We know there are a lot of community advocates and people who've been very active in this committee for years and years and we value their opinion and some of those individuals were part of this process but we also wanted to go beyond what the advisory committee helped us to think about is the usual suspects and those in fact are the people that typically step up and their voice is heard. So what we were really trying to do is define people in neighborhoods and across the community whose voice maybe not had been heard for a variety of reasons so part of our strategy was to find those individuals. Of course we wanted to be respectful in our approach. We had to be persistent because many times we said well we'll get back to you and I think one of the things that students learned in practice very well was persistence. We were very clear not to make the town hall meetings and the focus group gripe sessions because that's not very productive and so we were clear about that and I was surprised that we really didn't have a lot of trouble with that. I thought we were going to you know people were going to start complaining about the city. They really took this seriously. We in our department okay were social work and we were dealing with a lot of cultural issues across the city so we wanted to practice cultural competence or diversity or cultural awareness in the process and so we did that in two ways. One when we were out in the community and the other was in terms of identifying groups that whose voice may have been left out in the past and then of course as I mentioned before we wanted to make sure that we had representation for each council district. This is a very broad view of what the results are. There's clearly many more details and we will be producing a report with those details but I thought it was probably beyond this presentation because I don't want to be standing up here taking all your time. There's lots of other people that have important things to say but as I mentioned earlier we had 654 individual responses and in the period of time that we were able to do this project I think that's pretty amazing and this is not people coming to a central site. These are people coming to a variety of sites whether it be a church or a community center or a home owners organization or a school or a PTA meeting or as I said tables that were set outside of some public venues. So we have in our findings are represented almost 60 zip codes across the 10 council districts and I mentioned the third bullet is self-explanatory and again it's really a broad cross section so what you see in front of you represents the voice of many many different kinds of individuals. This map is the map of of course the city of San Antonio with the various council districts. The yellow areas are all of the zip codes that were covered by our work so we're really pleased to see that and we didn't we had intuitively we thought we had covered them all. I mean when you look at the map that's pretty amazing. Each one of those zip codes and they're kind of in the background were represented. There was people who lived in those zip codes who either participated in a town hall meeting or a focus group or who gave us information who were willing to share information with us that kind of one of those tables. The only information we asked of people was their zip code because we wanted people to feel comfortable. All of our work was done in English and Spanish so that we were able to capture the voices of people whose native language was different than English. Now I wanted to share some general observations. One of the things and I think the mayor underscored this as well is the people really took this task seriously. We didn't have to struggle to get people to participate and once they showed up they were very serious about the information that they provided so when we looked at the themes and we translated the themes into rights and responsibilities we really felt comfortable that it's not our lens it's the lens of the people we spoke with. Because they took this task seriously there really is a genuine interest in shaping the future of San Antonio and I think the mayor has done an outstanding job of reaching out to the community and saying you know what this is your job this is your future and so this it feels good it feels like wow you know I may be one individual living in one neighborhood but you know people are asking me and what I think and how might I participate in shaping the future. There was very little griping and there was a balance between rights and responsibilities in the sense of everybody didn't come forward and say well I have the right to this I have the right to that. It was like well yeah I have these rights but I also have these responsibilities. There were some specific action items identified there were some people who said to us you know I'd like to walk my dog in the neighborhood that I live and not have to come upon a pack of loose dogs and possibly get into some kind of altercation. There were some specific action items like you don't have a right to get a job I have a right to work so some of those also came out but we didn't see any big surprises and if I if we were to overlay the work that we did with the SA 2020 initiative there is a fairly close overlay. So the people of San Antonio are being consistent with the voice that they're sharing and then finally which is part of the participants took the task seriously is that we really believe that the people we spoke to are willing to step up the plate to take responsibility for shaping the city that they live and work and play in. Okay now students we're going to present the students now are going to present the rights and responsibilities okay and we have created a little interesting what we think is an interesting way to do that and so I'm going to back away and I'll just stand over in the corner here because I'm going to have to flip these things. My name is Allison Vandenberg I moved to this city four months ago and I intend to make it my home. I am a citizen of San Antonio and I have the responsibility to abide by the laws. Good morning my name is Jessica Stark and I am from Denton Texas. I am a citizen of San Antonio. I have the responsibility to treat others with dignity and respect. My name is Storia Rodondo and I am from the south side of San Antonio. I am a citizen of San Antonio and I have the right to a city that is committed to improving its resources for community members. My name is Crystal Calvill I'm from Robstown Texas. I am a citizen of San Antonio and I have the responsibility to make my voice heard. My name is Clarissa Zamora and I represent the lesbian gay bisexual and trans trans sexual community. My partner of 21 years and I adopted our two children five years ago. My family and I are citizens of San Antonio and we have a responsibility to be informed and active members of our community. Hello my name is Raul Hernandez. I am a citizen of San Antonio and I am also a member of the LGBT community and I have a right to fair and equitable distribution of resources. Buenos dias. Mi nombre es Cristela Garcia. Yo soy una emigrante mexicana y ciudadana de San Antonio. Yo tengo la responsabilidad de ejercer mi derecho de votar. Hello my name is Kami Gilliam. My heritage is American Indian of the Choctaw Nation. I am a citizen of San Antonio and I have the right to economic opportunities. Hola me llamo Marta y soy de Managua Nicaragua. Mi responsabilidad como ciudad de San Antonio es ser una buena vecina. Jindobre. Nazivam se Tami Machigamba-Hoshek. Yestem polski. Yestem avantelam San Antonio. Bravo do zalete publicny lutz. My name is Lindsay Minerovic and I come from a military family and I'm a citizen of San Antonio. I have the responsibility to volunteer my time talents and resources to the community. Josui Paul Hildebrand. Josui's originaire de Canada. Josui's un citoyen de San Antonio. J'ai le droit aux services sociaux qui répondent adecatement aux besoins de la communauté. My name is Abel Garcia and I'm a bilingual citizen of San Antonio. Yo tengo la responsabilidad de preservar y promover la diversidad cultural. My name is Alithia Tamez and I'm part of the Christian community and I have the right to a city that promotes equal access to affordable quality health care. My name is Denise and I am a first-generation college student. I am a citizen of San Antonio and I have the right to a public education system that equally and adequately meets the needs of the residents of San Antonio. Excuse me, good morning. My name is Joshua Nugent. I'm a disabled military veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom and I am a citizen of San Antonio and I have a responsibility to be a good ambassador for our city. Okay we have a special entertainment for you now. A couple of songs from a local artist, well-known artist and then we will move forward with the panel presentation and questions from the audience. We'll take just a second here to set up. This is Roberta Morales, formerly from the Sisters Morales here in San Antonio and we've asked her to come and do two songs for us as part of this event. Just what you wanted. Temperatures rising. Sometimes it's boiling hot. Neither one of us is ready but something made me stop. Only gets better. Ain't never felt like this before. Spend most my life. Only gets better. Crashing down on keep on dreaming because love that's what you need in life. Now these lies it just don't make things right. Only gets better. Love's round the corner. Sneaking up on thank you. Dicen que por las noches nomas se le iba y empuro a llorar. Dicen que no dormía nomas se le iba y empuro a tomar. Jurán que el mismo cielo se estremecía en su llanto. Como sufro por ella que hasta en su muerte la fue llamando. Dicen que por las noches nomas se le iba y empuro a llorar. Dicen que no dormía nomas se le iba y empuro a tomar. Jurán que el mismo cielo se estremecía en su llanto. Como sufro por ella que hasta en su muerte la fue llamando. Las piedras jamás. Thank you so much. Thank you for me part of this. Thank you. At this point I'm going to turn the program over to Joshua Nugent who's going to be the emcee from here on out. Joshua? Good morning. How's everybody doing this morning? All right good thank you for coming out and being with us here on Saturday morning. We're currently just going to take a few moments to get set up for a panel discussion that's going to take place in just a moment. At this time I'd like to welcome Mr. Darrell Bird and invite him to come up on the stage. Thank you sir. Mr. Bird is the former CEO of Pearl Brewery in San Antonio and he's the current CEO of San Antonio 2020. And on a personal note he's also been a critical player in our class and has come out and spoken with us at length and so we want to thank him for doing that as well. And he will be leading and moderating our panel discussion this morning so at this point I will go ahead and turn it over to Mr. Bird. Thank you sir. Francine you're right these lights are bright. Good morning everybody. Well it's good to be here. I tell you we had a couple of comments earlier which were absolutely true about how kind of dreary and bleak it looked like outside and how cold it was. But after what we've seen this morning so far I can tell you my heart's pretty warm right now. How about you guys? I'm going to invite our panelists to come on up and join me on the stage. I'm going to make a couple of quick comments and then introduce them to you. You're in for a treat this morning. We've got some really strong people to share their thoughts today and answer your questions as it relates to government accountability and civic engagement and some other things that relate to the work we're doing together with SA 2020. You know it is truly an extraordinary time to be in the city of San Antonio. It really is. The stakes are high for our future as we've declared but it's a great time to be in the city. I was having a conversation with someone recently about our city and we were both agreeing that you can move to another city like a New York City or a Chicago or you know London or Barcelona. You know name your city and you can if you think of city life in a city and the quality of life and your experiences there as a performance or a play you can go to some cities and they've already got or had a run on Broadway for a long long time a successful run and everybody recognizes it as a successful performance and you can be an audience member probably a best and observer of that wonderful performance. We have an opportunity in this city, our city, to be on the stage to actually be a director, a writer, a performer in the creation of one of the most extraordinary plays in the nation and that's what we have before us and that's what we've declared. I wanted to quickly before I introduce the panel recognize again our mayor because without him and his vision long-term serious vision for the city we wouldn't be standing here today together planning an extraordinary future so Mayor Castro I wanted to thank you very much again and recognize you. Government accountability and civic engagement. Of the 11 focus areas the mayor mentioned this this is probably the one we have to get right first. You know 11 areas across very very important topics of downtown development, education which is extraordinarily important. You've got health and fitness, community safety on and on and on that are going to require a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the public sector, the private sector and individuals but if the most abundant and powerful resource that we have available to us which are the citizens of San Antonio 1.3 million people, 400,000 plus households are not engaged and actively working towards that desired future. All those 11 will collapse under their own weight so this is important we've got to get it right. I also want to recognize the students in the advanced communities class I did have an opportunity to visit with you guys guess about a month ago when you were into your research and planning this event today and doing the work that you were doing with the community and you know it's a rare opportunity when you have super high hopes and expectations and then you walk into something like today and those expectations have even been exceeded so I commend you all for the work that you've done commend you for the community engagement and you guys are great students I know you're going to do great things in the community and you're doing great things today so thank you guys very much. What was the vision in the first place for government accountability and civic engagement? It was that in the year 2020 San Antonio citizens are deeply engaged as elected leaders, business leaders, volunteers and voters in the process of making government more responsible and accountable to San Antonio's. That was the vision, the bold vision frankly for the year 2020 in government accountability and civic engagement. I'm going to encourage you as we have this discussion with the panelists and answer your questions that you think about what are the practical things that we can do in service to that bold vision over the next 10 years. A friend of mine in college used to always say don't always talk about it and be about it. It was time for us to be about it every single one of us so think as this goes for the panelists as well think about the things that we can do from a practical perspective that are going to lead us towards this extraordinary future. Our first panelist is a student you saw her earlier her name is Kimberly Hall. Kimberly is an advanced student in the UTSA graduate social work program. She's from a military family and has lived all over the United States of America. She was born in Junction City, Kansas to a Korean mother and a rural American father. She's active in the social work students activities organizations and served as president during the 2010 2011 academic year. She worked as a case manager for three years for an early childhood prevention program in inner city San Antonio and is active with San Antonio Voices for Children Child Welfare Coalition. As she completed her first internship at Port Vita Academy, a youth school for students at risk of dropping out of school. Please welcome help me and welcoming Kimberly Hall. Diego Bernal the city council person for district one which actually includes this fine university here so as long as you students are studying here he's your city council person. Maybe many of you will live in downtown and district one as well. But Diego is probably no stranger to most of you. He is certainly the city council person for district one but he's really been a leader for the entire city and I'm proud to say that most of the city council people that that I encounter have that perspective. Yes they are responsible to their the folks in their individual districts but they see the value of San Antonio seeing itself as a cohesive unit and thinks that way when he makes decisions there for district one but they certainly are to the benefit of the entire city north south east and west. He has Jefferson High School graduate University of Michigan BA and masters of social work so he is probably very familiar with the work that these young people are doing here and received a law degree also from the University of Michigan and he has worked six years with the American Mexican American legal defense and educational fund. Help me in welcoming city council person Diego Bernal. Phyllis Ingram. Phyllis is president of the League of Women Voters in the San Antonio area. Previously she has been board director silent auction chair and treasurer and second vice president in the league. Phyllis is also on the board of the San Antonio media alliance where she serves as a treasurer. She's held every office in her local chapter including two separate terms as chapter president and has also served as a national president of American women and radio and television from 1996 to 1997. Phyllis is an honorary board member of the children's shelter of San Antonio where she serves on the advocacy committee and she was also a founding member of the San Antonio chapter of executive women's golf chair the 1998 north San Antonio chamber of commerce enterprising women's conference and was named women in business advocate of the year by the United States small business administration in 1999. Welcome Phyllis. Ron Nirenberg. Ron joined Trinity University's KRTU FM as associate general manager in 2009 where he leads the public media campaign that serves both a community focused higher education mission and a burgeoning arts audience in South Texas. Under Ron's leadership here in San Antonio the station has unveiled an unprecedented year-long collaboration of over 20 area nonprofits the Year of Jazz serving the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau the Public Library Foundation and KLRNTV while also launching the the station's first integrated marketing campaign. Prior to joining KRTU Ron worked for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania where he developed and directed award-winning civic engagement programs in cities across the nation including San Antonio. He also worked in communication research and television production for the Intercurch Cultural Development Research Association and the city of San Antonio. Ron's also got another life and he's an experienced entrepreneur he's a founder and operator of Nirenberg Fitness Training LLC and co-founder of Collectiva Mente Consulting a market research group. Ron has a BA from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from San Antonio's Trinity University. Welcome Ron. Graciela Sanchez. Before I get into the rest of her bio I just wanted to say that Graciela was a very strong powerful member of the steering committee for SA 2020 so she has been involved in our effort together with SA 2020 for the past year and a half or so and I'm proud to say that we were partners in that effort so thank you for being here Graciela. Graciela follows in the footsteps of her mother and abuelitas strong neighborhood women of color cultural workers and organizers of San Antonio as a buen agente gente of Esperanza Peace and Justice Center a community-based cultural arts social service organization Graciela works with staff and community to develop programs and culturally ground working-class people of color queer people and women individuals who are survivors of cultural genocide she challenges notions of arts and politics as separate work environments leading the vision and operations of the Esperanza as a community center art exhibition and performance space policy change hub and network facilitator for social justice. Graciela also works with community members to develop and curate programs such as Sena Mujer, KQueer San Antonio, Upro de Tierra, Gente y Cultura, Palestinians and other occupied people as well as organizing people to challenge oppressive laws in the city of San Antonio, the United States and throughout the world. Welcome Graciela. First for a couple of minutes one to two minutes each of the panelists is going to beginning with Kimberly is going to give us about one to two minutes of their observation based on the reflection on what they saw from the students. I'm going to talk about what the opportunities that they see moving forward to make sure that the declaration that the public is made in the area of government accountability and civic account government accountability and civic engagement is actually catalyzed into action. So beginning with Kimberly one or two minutes. As was said before I think this is a really great opportunity for our city government given this information from people in the community to move forward with it and to and like it was said before it melds very well with the SA 2020 initiative and the different areas that they're working on and their vision. I really hope that it's my genuine hope that it's it's taken very seriously and that everything in there I think is something that is something that we can do and I think every single one of those rights and every single one of those responsibilities is possible. Thank you very much. I'm particularly encouraged by the the list or the bill generated by the students because in many ways it reflects the motivations I had for running in the first place. This is essentially my fifth or sixth month and a lot of the things are discussed here are things that I believe not only needed to change but also we needed to broaden the the conversation in return government to people. I believe that that is a a commitment we have from our visionary mayor but also something that we need to get right. So as I embark on trying to do those things and exercise like this is very helpful to me to know what I'm doing right what I'm doing wrong and also what maybe I and my colleagues haven't even thought of so I'm I'm particularly encouraged by this. Well first of all first of all I'd like to applaud Dr. Ambrosino and his class for the effort and hard work that they've put into this project and your presentation was outstanding so thank you very much. I'm happy to see so many people and I'm happy to see the direction from the mayor and the city council and I hope you'll take this presentation back to the council for further discussion because so many times you hear people being cynical saying my voice doesn't matter and it really is important that the citizens of any city get engaged in their city and how their city runs learn how it runs. The responsibility to vote I was so happy to see here because that's how you make your voice that's one of the ways you make your voice heard. Good morning. I think a lot of different governments and cities and municipalities take on a challenge that that we've essentially taken on with SA 2020 and a lot of them grind to a halt because they just lack that actionable plan that goes along with it. What makes San Antonio different in the SA 2020 process is that there was a real commitment not only from the administration but also from the citizens of San Antonio to be part of the voice that moves and creates the vision from the very start and so this process of a citizens bill of rights and responsibilities particularly I view as almost a mandate if we want to be more than those municipalities whose vision strategies get left in a file cabinet somewhere in order for us to really accomplish the vision that we have in September of 2020 we need to have a set of action plans and a list of responsibilities that each of us takes home to our families and to our communities that says yes it's not going to stop here it's going to carry on throughout the years and in 2020 we have to make this a reality because it's my responsibility to do so. Buenos dias. Too short. There we go. I really also want to thank the students and Dr. Ambrosino for the amazing work you all have done. I was especially touched during the presentation. I started crying when I heard the first person speak in the Filipino language and the continuation of others in the different languages including sign language. These are many times the criticisms I have that we live in a city that is very bilingual, trilingual, multilingual and yet when you go to city hall when you go to school board meetings when you go to via meetings it's always in one language and people who speak in Spanish or are hearing impaired or again need sign language we don't have that present and so what is our job as a city to make sure that it's inclusive of everybody so it was very profound to to watch you all do that to see that you all had thought about that and again the complexity and the diversity of all your voices but then there's social workers which are really connected to social justice and that's obviously the work that I do at the Esperanza. It is a very much a living and working document and for myself I hope in the next point I get to offer some other ways to expand this bill, a bill of rights and responsibilities and I guess what some of us as panelists have had an opportunity is we got four pages worth of those bill of rights and responsibilities so it's a little more comprehensive and so it's better than the bullet points that you got and one of the things I also hope that in terms of language it says my responsibilities my city and I always like to do the we and the hour because it also then it's not about a selfish need but how it affects all of us together so I'll stop at that and we'll go to the next question. Okay great thank you Grasiel and thank you panel you know one of the common things that we've heard this morning is personal responsibility community collective responsibility for a few our shared future so I wonder though what are the what are the steps that we take to help us overcome the disaffection that we often see in the community and in all sectors you know to overcome the sense of ambivalence the sense of the fact that we've got to take ownership of our own future you know I was looking at some statistics recently about the the voter turnout levels and they're they're pretty poor I think it was somewhere around 11% in the 2009 city council elections that actually of registered voters that actually turned out to vote actually turned out to to elect those officials that are going to be making you know big decisions in service to them and their children and their grandchildren but such a small amount of folks actually showed up and took the responsibility took the responsibility as seriously as they perhaps should have to make their voice their voice known so I'm going to ask a question of the panel and I want to start with with Phyllis what are the things the tangible steps that you think are necessary to really make a serious change in that voter participation number you know our goal at SA 2020 through the year 2020 was to increase that voter participation 2% every two years with the league of women voters voter turnout access to voting voter education all are very very key things that you guys focused on tell me what you think are some tangible steps we can take to increase that number well first of all I'd like to to say that the league of women voters is a non-partisan organization and our goal is the informed and active participation in government of all people like the bill of rights and responsibility we believe in respect for individuals we value diversity and and I'm so proud of the diversity that you brought into this this project and the empowerment of the grassroots so to get people more engaged I mean I'm going to speak now for me personally not on behalf of the league and I have to be careful for that but for me personally I think we have elections a lot we have city elections we have school board elections we have I think if we combined some of those elections so that people weren't having to go to different locations at different times of the year that that might increase participation I think if it were easier for people to get information that that would increase participation and the league publishes voters guides for every election they're non-partisan they list all candidates answering similar questions or this actually the same question of each candidate for an office and those are in libraries and they're online but there should be I think even more information available for people I think and I don't want to take this from Ron because we were having this discussion earlier but more broad-based candidate selection I'm going to let you do that because that was really your conversation and I don't want to take it away from you I agree with you on it but we have to have a broader selection we elect judges and I would venture a guess that most of us have very little information on which to make that selection and I think people naturally say well I don't know anything about any of them so I'm not going to vote so I think information I think making voting sites accessible for people I I love that we have early voting because that should make it easier for people to vote I think we have transportation challenged people that that if we could have some sort of system to get people to polls that would help increase voter turnout and you know just I think trying to make it a more exciting process Ron did you want to add to that thank you Phyllis sure thank you Phyllis I think well we have a systemic issue with regard to participation at the polls and you know I I appreciate all the the concerns that are raised about voting and all that but we really do have to look at local elections I mean that's you look outside your front door and the people who are have jurisdiction who can help you make a better life for yourself in San Antonio are sitting here we have the mayor here we have councilman Bernal they're here and and they get less than 10 percent of registered voters out to every election and we do have some issues we've had some embarrassing things in the paper in the last 20 years in san Antonio politics and that's fed into the distrust but we have now a time in SA 2020 that people are really talking about how can we move the city forward some things that I think need to be addressed are the city charter congratulations to mayor hardburger for bringing charter reform back and you know dealing with the term limits issue there's another huge issue though to deal with with this which is the fact that our representatives work 80 hours a week for nothing they get no pay no living wage nothing a stipend for lunch and parking I think what that creates is not an accessibility to the polls issue it creates an accessibility to the ballot issue for candidates who would be very appropriate for us to be looking at as as realistic representatives your teachers they can't afford to run for office in city politics although they know a lot about it because they can't afford to go without a paycheck it's time that we institute a salary for our representatives or the seventh largest city in the United States and I was just reading in the in the business journal that we are now either the or one of the largest data security centers in the entire world denim group rack space they're all right here we can lead the way in creating that accessibility to the ballot box for rotors by you know let's the security issues are real for e voting but let's let's look at it let's make it a reality for people living in san Antonio let's start here there's no reason why we can't so that those are a couple of nuts and bolts things I think we can do but we really have to turn the tide in terms of apathy and and charter reform and all that and that really starts with getting these responsibilities out to young folks and making it part of their code of conduct that they're raised with as they become san atonians later in life thank you ron crossiella one of the barriers that we often see to to strong robust voter participation is a sense of disaffection with elected officials and appointed officials and their leaders can you and you've spent you know a career a lifetime and fighting for the rights of disaffected folks can you talk a little bit about where you see the what are the opportunities for us to change that relationship to change that that intellectual connection between those you elect what they're elected to do in service to you and then what your relationship is specifically with them yeah I think it was earlier this year in one of these government accountability and civic participation conversations that I heard you know people in san Antonio are apathetic they don't vote because they're apathetic and I said that's not true they don't vote because they're because of lack of because they're apathetic they vote they don't vote because they're tired because they don't believe in the system anymore because they go before hundreds of thousands of people to sign petitions to say they don't want to build on top of the city's edwards aquifer because it's sacred because it's our own source of water and they don't want any more development there and that's in 2001 and 2002 and young councilman Julian Castro says speaks out as the only voice that supports what those hundred thousand people say and says I don't want to build on top of the aquifer either and he gets attacked he gets demonized and he's not going to be a mayor in the future and then the council accepts those hundred thousand signatures and five weeks later comes up with another document that doesn't allow the citizens to vote or to even petition so what does that do to a community that went out you know for many hours over two months to collect those signatures they don't believe in the system they obviously say somebody else is more important than the hundred thousand people who signed those petitions which were more people that had even ever voted at any one election up to that point so you basically throw away what the community has to say so people get angry you know I had a lot of young people that worked and volunteered at the Esperanza at that time you know went went off to California the other one went off to New Mexico another one went off to New York they didn't feel that it counted for them to be here and it was easier for them to struggle somewhere else and be heard than to stay here so it's not apathy it's the same thing people said no to you know charging people to march and and process during on the streets of San Antonio that only a few people get the free bees of the city of San Antonio but what about our free speech doesn't everybody have access to the streets to be able to speak out against the problems that women and girls face the domestic violence the rape the incest that goes on what about the lesbian gay community what about the Arab community it can't just be the selected Martin Luther King March or the Cesar Chavez March or the Veteran's Day what about everybody else this is the government of the people right so people say and twice people voted against the Alamo Dome and the third time there was enough money by wealthy business people that got the Alamo Dome and what is it now it's a 10 million dollar expense for the city that's a debt but the community knew right so the community knows a lot about what it's trying to do and when when the city leaders appointed or elected continue to support wealthy business people you give up and so the citizens bill of rights and responsibilities should be a document of framework to strengthen our democracy and to enable participation in this governance right thanks Brassie and I want to follow up on that that point one thing i'm hearing from you you're really talking about the relationship between you know elected and appointed officials and and the governed you know the folks that they are ultimately responsible to their shareholders councilman Bernal I want to see if you can talk a little bit about in your role as a city council person every day you know being responsible to you know what over at least for over a hundred thousand folks in your district but being a representative of the entire city as well how do you strengthen the relationship to where they see you actually as a partner and somebody that is really representing their interest so you don't have that disaffection uh that uh that Graciela is talking about right well I think I think there are two answers one goes directly to what Graciela was saying I look at voter apathy as sort of a different way and that is that you have to deliver something to their front door so they know that it's happening in a lot of our older and I'll argue to say sort of historically neglected neighborhoods you know potholes not a pothole after it's been there for 40 years it starts it means something else at that point it means that that that's emblematic the way they believe the city government feels about them and so that's what I think generates apathy I mean the big issues of course but I also think there's the front door issues that are important and so part of our job is to start to deliver things to the front door not wholesale that's not possible but just enough given the resources we've got to say look we're paying attention and we're trying to move things along and at the same time use that opportunity to to generate buy-in for the bigger picture issues or the big policy issues the second thing to your point is you have to be found when I ran and now what I do is I try my very best and it's not always possible to be found so you you have to make it a priority to answer as many phone calls as you can you make it a priority to answer as many emails as you can in my field office I have office hours the first third and fourth Monday of every month from five to nine p.m so that people can find me I think that in in this city especially it's a very one-on-one we have a very one-on-one relationship not only with our city government but with everybody I mean if you will see David Robinson at Best Buy and people know sort of to leave him alone because he's spending time with his family but people want to have that one-on-one relationship with their elected officials and so part of the challenge I think is being able to be found and I think the more that not only that people find you but also that you go out you go to HEB you go to the front door you block walk if someone has an issue I'll be right there those sorts of things I think help bridge that gap but if you if you sort of take the ivory tower approach then then I think that also creates this affection so allowing people to find you and know that accountability can happen one-on-one accountability can happen where they're in your office telling you that you've done something they don't like and willing to sit there and hear it I believe is very important to generating or regenerating some lost trust and as I listen to you speak you know the words that keep coming to mind are it's public servant you know and it's public servant you know you're in service to the public and sometimes I think whether you're an elected official at whatever level or an appointed official or civic leader or business leader you often can lose track of what you're there truly to do in the first place you know it's easy to do linear things and get small things accomplished but if you're not thinking about the big picture and who you're actually there to serve you know you create more of a disconnection between those folks in the first place but you have to remember that you are not the boss you are the employee yes that's that's a great point the Kimberly I want to ask you a question about the work that you do when you're not in the classroom you know you've got a real life experience in the social work world world and you spend a lot of time with folks who have maybe more challenges in life than than the average American or the average San Antonian can you talk a little bit about how they see the political process how they see their role in you know achieving real change in the city or the community that they live in absolutely I think the people that I have had the pleasure to work with have been really strong resilient amazing people who have been in terrible circumstances and they faced a lot of challenges but even in that they are passionate about making things better for the next person or I wish somebody wouldn't have to go through what I went through or maybe you know the next time I'm in this situation it can be better and I think there's a big there's a big responsibility that they have shown of I want to give back this experience I've had has given me insight and I want to give back for the next person and I think that's been really really amazing and I think it can be hard when you don't have like Phyllis said the information to make the decisions as to how can I make this better okay I have this ideal how do I practically put that into play and I think actually Diego Bernal is my council person and he's my friend on Facebook and yeah one of the things that he's done that I think makes such a big difference is one of his constituents challenged him on Facebook and said I'm having major issues with transportation I'm having problems keeping a job because of it you know what are you like I challenge you to take the bus you know to get to your job and he said okay and so I think that willingness that you will step in my shoes for a little while makes a big difference on disaffection or voter turnout or things like that so making a very personal connection with your constituents as well as making sure that you are truly seen as a public servant that in education I'm seeing education come across the board voter education education on issues is a major major issue and we're trying to get to one of the tangible things that we're going to take with us out of this room and employ and service to those goals so it's education keeps coming up as a really as a really big one. Phyllis our musical performer had a statement that she made and that wonderful I think it was her first song Ms. Morales and it was never thought I could never thought I would it only gets better from here that really spoke to me in this conversation when you think about disaffected folks when you think about folks who are undereducated on the on the issues but many times and think that they have no power in the political process or no power to change their communities their neighborhoods the education system the the strength of their downtown maybe their own physical health you know all the things that touch the 11 areas and as a 2020 they often feel powerless you feel like the the usual suspects that were on the screen earlier are the only ones who can make a change that that can materially affect your life or the life of your your progeny yet the power really is with the the millions of the millions San Antonio's and the hundreds of thousands of families in this city how do you see voter education really getting people a strong sense of the issues before them as a major part of making sure that they can't do believe that they can do it and that it does get better once they're engaged um well knowledge is power and the more information that you have i mean i applaud you for having a facebook page believe it or not even the league of women voters is going to have a facebook page but i will caution you that not everything on facebook not everything on the internet is true um and so sometimes a second source is valuable and getting information is not easy um but you can call or write or email your city council person you can call or write or email our mayor our county commissioners and that's how you get your voice out there and when they reply to you it may not be what you want to hear but think about it research it a little bit more and then make your decision you it a lot of decisions can be made on emotionalism those aren't necessarily good decisions the more information you have the better citizen that you are i want to follow up with kimberley i know she works for child safe preventive services in our city if we can get out in front of some of the problems that we have i'm aware that there are several we have a very high teen pregnancy rate in this city but we have some excellent programs preventative programs that need support and if you can volunteer for those organizations you're going to help to improve your city um our educational system is stressed right now due to budget cuts um you need to make your voice heard you need to let not only your city representatives but your state representatives know that you value education enough that that's where you want them to focus budget dollars all of those things are things that you can do as an individual you don't have to be part of a group um obviously you have a louder voice as part of a group but as an individual you can write a letter you don't have to be mobile to be able to do that you just have to sit down think about what you want to say and say it get to know your city council person friend them on facebook if they're on facebook if somebody can put a face to a name your opinion's going to have more value to or at least more weight they may not do what you ask them to do you're not always going to get 100 percent of what you want none of us ever do but you've got the responsibility to make your voice heard thank you phyllis ron relevance uh is a word that we often use in these conversations about relevance to what how the issue is relevant to me you know or how why should i get out and vote why should i sign a petition why should i uh advocate through my neighborhood association or association and spend the time away from my family or away from work or recreation how does how does that change my life how is that relevant to me and i want you to talk a little bit about that as it relates to the long term because that makes relevance even more difficult when you have big things that you're trying to accomplish say through s a 2020 with changing the face of education uh with making san antonio a leader uh in health and fitness having one of the fittest cities in the nation making sure that san antonio is is one of the most economically competitive cities uh in the nation those are big things that require huge steps they're not incremental they're not little how do you get people engaged in service to those huge long term things that don't always give you a tomorrow return but have the biggest benefit for the community as a whole yeah i think um that's essentially the essence of of the educational process is showing how different issues and problems and societal concerns are relevant either to you immediately or relevant to your life later down the road or your future generation's lives you know educating people about the civic and about the citizenship process in terms of what do i do once i become a citizen is extremely important um and we need to do it at a very early age we have you know some crises in our city with regard to what phyllis mentioned teen pregnancy um literacy levels are um at crisis levels so the city is part of the s a 2020 initiative we've agreed that third grade reading level early childhood reading is important benchmark for us to increase not because we want a bunch of kids buying judy bloom books and five years but because we know that literacy leads to an educated workforce which is going to attract businesses down here that are going to affect my tax dollars so how do we teach relevance well i think it happens to happen in the schools and and unfortunately we don't have a lot of resources there but if we can put together an essay reads program if corporations like h e b and you know many of the big corporate citizens in san antonio get behind programs independently or because of the s a 2020 initiative we should be able to do something like that for for a civic responsibility civic literacy and media literacy what phyllis was talking about was teaching people how to become informed not by consuming as much material as possible but by knowing what's credible and what's not so i think um in terms of teaching relevance and this idea that you know what what are these big ideas how are they going to affect me we've got to teach people what the process is all about and show them you know this is social responsibility this is i'm not i may be a i may have no children which i i actually do but um why should a college student be interested in a third grader reading or if he's illiterate when he's fifth in fifth grade well that's because that third grader will either be teaching your kids one day or breaking into your car one day which one do you want everything comes back around um and everything becomes relevant in terms of making our city and our citizenship a better place thank thank you ron uh you know leadership is another one of the supporting indicators you know another one of the targets that the citizens you guys and your neighbors set that are going to satisfy us that we've achieved a high level of government accountability and uh especially civic engagement and that as articulated in essay 2020 plan is talking about young people and young at heart people who are you know taking the responsibility to truly become leaders in their communities whether it's neighborhood associations leaders in service to their city in their places of work or their places of worship even with their with their families diego if you could take a second and talk about what the value has been you know for you as an elected official to have partners out there in the community that may not be elected or appointed but that are true public servants in the private world what is the value of that partnership well for the most part i think it's it's education for me the biggest mistake that any of us could make is to assume that we know everything and we depend on the participation of other people in the community to let us know what's going on and and also to not only let us know what's going on but also they they are a wealth of information in terms of what the appropriate solution is i mean i'll give you a quick example i've got a a zoning case coming up soon where there's a proposal to put a restaurant that sells alcohol across the street from an elementary school and my gut reaction of course was this is a terrible idea and i i still feel that way but when i was meeting with the with some parents for the first time we're going to have a series of meetings the the parents raised different concerns one of their concerns was if it's a nice restaurant then it might lead to more economic development and our our community desperately needs that right now i'm not i'm still not necessarily in favor of it but the point is that they brought of a broad spectrum of perspectives that i had not considered and we're going to have a series of meetings after that to figure out if it's something that the parents in the community really wants at which point i may have to reconsider but my point being that the partnership is important because it provides me with information to make sure that i do what the community has deemed is in their best interest and it's not left for me to decide because i know but i know what it is and so i think that's for me at least the the most important part do you feel a a dearth of that resource available to you well to be honest yes i and um i have to be careful but there's in a neighborhood and i'm a neighborhood guy if you guys know where bastion blanco is i live behind the yellow tire shop um there's the there's the neighborhood association in any particular neighborhood and oftentimes for every one of those folks there's probably about a hundred and fifty or two hundred who don't go and so you need to make sure that you reach out and communicate with both so leadership in some ways is very important for getting information but i also think leadership means that you have to go and seek out those voices that maybe are not traditionally heard or that are are used it's both and i think that leadership in some ways is the balancing of those things as opposed to just taking the lead on it's it's reaching back around got it thank you i'm going to ask a couple more questions then we're going to take some questions from the audience let you get what's in your heart and what's in your your minds out grassy yellow one last question for you and this goes back to the issue of activism activism engagement but also i want you to marry that with the ownership component you know the mayor spoke earlier and others have very gracefully shared that those two things have to go together when you're trying to achieve big things you know you can be angry about something or really excited about an opportunity and you can go into action in order to make sure that the folks who you believe are responsible for to you for making it happen do that very thing and oftentimes there there's a disconnect not always but oftentimes there's a disconnect between your own ownership for that end result happening instead of saying i'd like to see this happen you're accountable to me make it happen and i'm going to hold you accountable and you know a year or six months whatever the time frame is you say all those things but you also say i'm going to do the things that i can do to ensure that that happens as well and i want to get your perspective on that from a broad community-based perspective do you see challenges in that area do you think that already exists and if it doesn't how do you bridge that gap you said a lot i'm trying to figure out i'm going to answer that question um i work for the esperanza peace and justice center the word esperanza means hope it also comes from the cons of the word of esperad which means to wait so i'm always asking especially young people to be patient because change takes a long time and it's you know so we have to continue to move forward not give up and i hear over and over that you know san antonio wants an educated community an educated workforce but i do question that because we can get all this information we can share it with all the leadership and we have lawyers and doctors and environmentalists and healthcare workers and people give us all their expertise and we move it forward in front again of all these different entities to say here is the truth and and and we're coming from all sectors of society and still we keep on getting pushed back and the worst case is we do get attacked and we do get demonized so one thing as we need to remember as we're being patient and as we're having to continue to have esperanza hope is to know that what we're doing and and because we're saying the truth in a city that might not want to hear the truth is that you will be demonized and don't take it personally say there are many more people that are here with you supporting what you value as well i mean i see it all the time when we have those bond issues around the environmental issues you know i remember when garza was in office they turned down all these different bonds but when it came to supporting and saving the aquifer and putting more of our tax dollars to buy more land to preserve it the community went in that direction so our community knows we know um but i do question do we really want educated critical thinkers you know i think when we continue to promote a tourist economy that are low paying jobs that have that are seasonal that have no benefits you know the grand hiate got 200 million dollars of empowerment zone monies that were dedicated to districts two and five because they were the poorest neighborhoods in the city and and yet we created all these policies that made it hard for people to access those 200 million dollars you know you had to have a business that was two million dollars or more your your your entity had to be two million you know small businesses might be families of you know a small business might be that restaurant that only needs a hundred thousand dollars but doesn't have a budget of two million dollars anyway we spent those 200 million dollars gave it over to the grand hiate i just drove by the grand hiate and looked at all the top floors and they're all empty because those are for million dollar you know condos that are sitting empty um and the workers were promised living wages and to this day you know the workers of unite here are not getting living wages it lasted one year that little law that they had you know and that's where we asked the mayor and we asked the council do something hold that business accountable to paying the workers living wages because if we're gonna continue to bring tourism if we're gonna continue to have that sort of economy then it should be taking care of its workers thank you thank you if are we ready guys to us to kind of turn the lights up a little bit and receive a couple questions from the audience while you are uh while you're getting that together i wanted to just make a comment and if anybody wants to respond while we do this on the panel that'd be great you know i think about the the future of san antonio that that you all and your neighbors again have declared it's extraordinary and this isn't it's not small stuff and it's going to take take an extraordinary effort on all of us to make sure that that gets done in each of those 11 areas and we think about the stakes and 80 million folks in this next generation the millennial generation these are folks that were born you know somewhere around 1981 1982 and the 2000s you know 80 million of them that's larger than the baby boomer population and these are highly many of the students in in this class and certainly most at utsa and the other san antonio universities are part of that generation they are highly skilled highly educated highly passionate and they are going to graduate from college or high school or or technical school and they are going to go and start families somewhere in this country they are going to go and become homeowners and consumers and consumers of goods and services and consumers of arts and culture in some city in this nation so if you think about how high the stakes are you know it's going to take huge effort on all of our part to make sure that san antonio is the most irresistible place in the nation for them based on the things that they determine are the characteristics that make it attractive and we always want to be thinking about those things in all these 11 areas and then other areas of our daily lives as leaders at the high level whether you're a business leader corporate titan or a leader in a small business a civic leader a neighborhood leader or even just a leader in your house of worship or your or your household let's always remember that the stakes are very high in this city we've got great promise we're one of the richest cities culturally in the nation have some of the greatest natural resources in human human resources but we've got to apply ourselves in an unprecedented fashion in order to make sure that in the next 10 years san antonio is the place for those young millennials to make home let's go ahead start taking some questions start if for some reason you are unable to make it to the microphone and have a question you'd like to ask just please raise your hand and we can walk the microphone up to you as well hi my name is abigail and i just wanted to congratulate the students i think that their bill of rights and responsibilities were really great and i wanted to see if we could get those bill of rights over to the school systems and so that they could have their government teachers incorporated into their curriculum i think it would help to instill you know civic engagement in children who turn imparted to their parents a lot of parents listen to what their kids have to say and i think that would that would help a lot and then also i think it'd be a good idea if we could bring a city council to the community i used to work for saws and we had a few meetings in some school districts and we had a lot more people from the community attend the meetings when they were out in the community and i know there's a logistical problem in having a city council meeting like at a school or at a community center or someplace like that but you know because you need to have security and be able to have the cameras that have it on tv but i think if you plan ahead of time you could do that and then you would have people who normally don't go downtown be able to participate great did you uh that was a great suggestion did you have a question that you wanted to ask of the panel or just wanted to share that i just wanted to share that okay great thank you and we can make sure that when you come up to speak that you give your name okay my name is pat herndon i represent the science and research community here in the bio med community i'm an original participant in sa 2020 an original participant and founder in the teen pregnancy initiatives things like that so i'm involved in this community i certainly represent the policy community with regard to public education and the science and research community here in the bio med community i guess to some degree i also represent some legal part of the of the legal community here with regard to disability and immigration um the concern that i want to bring up to the panel and to the students who wrote this document is the second item on there it has to do with accountability and accessibility to the city city governments and in particular it has to do with economic access to economic information you know if you're going to have an educated voter uh you have to remove the economic barriers to that information that exists that's one of those front door issues and my comments are directed to the whole panel but particularly to d.a. going grassy yellow both of whom know me well um and i'd like to to prime this with sort of a little scenario because we actually see this happening people abuela shows up in our emergency room over utesca and she's hypothermic or she's hypothermic she's got a heat stroke because the families that that live with abuela and take care of her can't afford to pay the utility rates uh you know they can't afford to pay for the energy necessary to to heat the house or to run a small air conditioner a high efficiency window unit to keep abuela cool enough or are warm enough during the winter and um so my concern here is about uh transparency in the budget process in the budget decision-making processes for all of the public institutions in san antonio for example having access to the budgetary process and the decision-making process for cps because that's how we end up with rate hikes that are unaffordable by certain constituents that are in your district d.a.go yes sir could you uh frame that um i know you're going with it as we need to make sure we get a good answer for you can you frame it in the form of a question well i want to know how we can have input to modify the second item there to include budgetary transparency for the public budgets for all the public institutions in san antonio because i think that needs to be included in here you're talking about the second right is that correct the second left item that has to do with with civic accountability and access right d.a.go and i'm going to ask you to tackle that one first that's a right to accessible and accountable civic city government i'm on board with that i think that whether it's a cps or saws or the city having a transparent process is certainly important i know that's easy for me to say but i think there's a second part of what you're talking about that i think is more challenging is something that we're dealing with right now and that is it how do we successfully and effectively get information to people who are going to be on the receiving end of the policy changes um i i recognize wholeheartedly that newspaper internet and email is not enough to to get information to people and oftentimes you can send a mailer but you have no guarantee that they're going to to read it and so part of the challenge is identifying who the most vulnerable among us are who they are and then going to their doorstep and making sure you have a conversation with them not only so they understand how a policy change like a rate hike would affect them but also what resources are available to them to soften the blow i recognize that that's a challenge and it's something that we have actually talked about just past week because of the solid issue so i appreciate you bringing it up yeah and i know during the budget hearings this year i was in the district five city discussion there and one of the suggestions i made was rather than reacting to the city manager and staff's recommendations and just offer a few criticisms a month before they're going to make a final decision that we be part of the process starting in november and that uh we start having these smaller gatherings we just need to look south of the border look at brazil look at bolivia look at other countries and they're having these amazing engaging conversations around how they want their city money their budget to be spent the over billion two billion dollars so we don't start in june may or june to tell the people what it is that we're going to offer but we ask the community what is it that you want over here i'm concerned that what ham put percentage of our budget is going to the police department you know that's the largest dollar amount and because what we're afraid of our neighbors we're we're saying there's a lot of violence in this community i don't think so but if there are problems then why don't we put the money in preventative programs rather than this you know the reactionary sort of thing so thank you grassy i have a question over to my right okay it's not going to be quick okay my name is charles english and i am the founder and president of the jefferson heist neighbor association the east side so i was a little concerned when i saw the doctor present his presentation with the map i saw nothing to represent in me in district two i was concerned so that i called ahead of time and i spoke to a maryam bounds about my concerns she decided when i questioned that she hung up in my face so wherever she is or whoever she is that's no way to do people who are concerned about separation of church and state and concerned about uh their state institutions being involved with uh political processes and that was my a concern but so that's one issue the other issue is i respect the students and your critical thinking and things like that but for so long my area in district two where has a most teenage pregnancy rate it's not teenage anymore these girls are getting pregnant at 10 years old but the thing is we bring them to the churches in that community and we only talk to the girls what about the boys so we talk about accountability here so we still we're missing the both there we're punishing the girls and then the girls get driven to award of the state and then the cycle begins and then they have to live in boyfriends and so on and so on as representative of the poor for districts one and two as a visor city council for the six past years and now i'm up running again to as of today i'm only running again because the issues are still not getting taken care of so i gotta go back after being up for two years to try to help the city out again to try to get this right so there's no real easy way and i appreciate Graciela when she mentioned that she says her chavis march mother to king march i'm not a part of either charles do you want to uh yes make sure yes sir question we've got a few people behind yes sir i understand but i was asked to come here to talk not an adversarial way mr bird in all respect you're one african-american i'm an african-american male too and i don't feel represented here so as Graciela was talking about says a chavis and mother to king march i'm not a part of either and then when i got up here and i saw the presentation there was one lady who spoke in swahili i still didn't get i have a gut a pit in my gut right now it's why i'm not being represented by my government i write to the mayor no response i write to my counselor person no response and i went back to school to get an education thought that was it charles that that speaks to your sense i hear what you're saying that speaks to your sense of uh you're feeling disaffected you're feeling like you don't have that connection with your elected official no no no we're left out just as we were not there in the presentation what are you all going to do we're in an area of 78202 78203 78219 have some of the worst despairs in this city while brackets being billed our empowerment zone money went to build a hide hotel and i was also one of the coordinators of the pga agreement where 100 000 signatures ignored what are you going to do the quit telling me to engage myself i'm getting older you're reaching out to the children i love that but what about us who are in the middle who have just been skipped over we're not mr bird to be a ceo we'll never get picked out or put in a position that looks good will be put on the front pages of newspapers as criminals a person like myself so i'm asking what are you going to do to engage me who's working on the mba at webster university now charles i think i got your question you're asking not so much how you can be involved but how you what the public officials are going to do to engage individuals like you who feel disaffected in the public process thanks thanks charles and i've been american males who are doing things positive in this city got it and you're disenfranchised god thank you charles um we got one elected official on the panel and you gotta or phyllis if you'd like to tackle that when you got about two minutes okay i would just like to address his comment about the teen pregnancy and programs for the young women which there are but there are also programs the children's shelter has a program called project mass that engages the fathers as well as the mothers they have a program called compadre y compadre and i apologized to all the spanish speakers i'm a northern new yorker uh originally uh that teaches parenting skills to men so there are preventative programs that do work with men because they are part of the solution as well so i just wanted to address that one part of what he was saying okay great thank you phyllis Diego do you want to take a stab at that i do think that part of transparency is taking is taking all the questions that's why i talk to the press all the time even i don't like to because i recognize that it's part of transparency if the question is what am i in particular doing uh for african american males i don't have a program or a policy set up for that particular group the one thing i can say that i'm doing is that i do recognize that in city government there are a sort of array of usual suspects um the same people get selected to do the same things over and over again and oftentimes it's because they're very good at it and that's fine but i also think that broadening the spectrum and asking people who care very much about their city but maybe don't have time for neighborhood association meetings that don't have time to be on advisory board or commission that if you reach out to them and individually ask them to participate they will and so for example if you look at my bond committee you'll find that there is not a who's who of san antonio movers and shakers but regular neighborhood folks who care very much about their city um and that at this point is the best answer i have for you okay great thank you uh and charles and others you i think uh some of our panelists may be willing to to spend a little time with us after uh we wrap this session up and we can have some more of those conversations i think they're all great great questions and i appreciate your your passion charles i'm gonna take one more question and then we're going to close uh to my left hi there my name is daniel day and i live in district two my girlfriend lives district one about zero anyway my question is what happens how what you guys are trying to address i'm assuming is to event the failure of the civic discussion and i heard no examples of of what happens when that civic discussion falls down a good example is um from 99 cent invisible that's a podcast you can find items and one in about a few weeks back one of their episodes was the biography of a hundred thousand square feet about un plaza in san francisco how the civic process fell apart and i'm already seeing that civic process fall starting the fall apart with the introduction of the rail the streetcar project that they started to build i should know because in dalis when i lived there in dalis for a while everyone there wasn't a problem with traffic downtown like there was the day after thanksgiving because everyone wanted to see the lights people take that train and you're you've been seeing that for a number of years with the toll roads conversation especially on loop six you know four and 281 i'm questioning with with an average person working a job two jobs now just to support a family not being able to attend how do you prevent how are we going to continue to make 2020 a reality if when these projects if when the civic conversation falls apart thank you okay thank you anyone on the panel interested in responding to that question rasiela again for myself i don't i hope the students know that it you all want more community input right that this is for me it's not final i mean you're sharing it with other people i wasn't one of the 654 people that were talked to and i don't know anybody within the esperanza community that was engaged but you all did a great job but i think there's that much more i mean i had comments because i wasn't sure what how the process was going to be done today but it was trying to address some of those concerns you know again city council meetings went from being at one o'clock in the afternoon which was still hard on a thursday because most people work to nine o'clock in the morning so less number of people can work so you have to have a job that allows you to go and speak at a city you know and respond to a city council issue what about saturdays you know we're limited to three minutes and it used to be five minutes and sometimes in the last six months when many of us were there went down to 1.5 minutes that's not healthy and you've waited three hours to now get 1.5 minutes so how do we do something around that how do all the meetings that are you know again the zoning commission the planning commission you know the b-session all these meetings how are they being videotaped and put on the government channel or other channels and put on 24-7 i turn on the government channel and i'm just reading job announcements or things like that i want to know what's going on all the time but i i can't watch it just once or twice a week at this specific time it should be open all the time how do we even get information about how to what meetings are happening how did people find out about this meeting if it was only email which we did a good job with email but again so much of our community doesn't have computers doesn't have internet and the elders you know so it just goes on and on so i agree and so i think it's a living and and a project that we have to expand on right i think we thank you grassiella and thank you for that question and we can spend we probably could as bob suggested spend the rest of the day here because there's a ton of passion and and that's a good thing you know i don't think any of us expected that we would come with okay i'll give you your question thank you i don't think any of us thought we would come and there'd be a tidy bow on such a important issue you know the main driving force behind us doing any of these 11 things no no neat little bows here but a ton of energy a ton of passion and to finish my comment on what grassiella was sharing in response to this gentleman's question an enormous amount of demand for access to the political process for information connectedness and a sense of work as a citizen among your elected officials and an enormous amount of demand to actually be a driving participating force in the things that happen and not only in the political process to make change in your city but the raw sector so i'm excited about that and now as we move forward the students have given us a lot that you want and the amount of public participation that they got from the folks in all 10 city council districts you know that's fuel you know those are legitimate uh real feelings that people have about what their right should be and what their responsibility should be so that's plenty for each one of us to work on moving forward and i think leaving here we want to make sure that we make some i would suggest that we all make some individual declarations about what we've heard today and if there are things that you feel like you need to move into action on whether you are a citizen or you are an elected official you know Diego you heard lots of stuff about uh accessibility and the feeling like they're actually somebody's actually respected as a citizen and making sure that they actually understand the issues that you're voting on and service to them i mean they're probably many things that you learned today that may drive you into into action the same thing for a citizen so think about those things that each one of us can do out of the work that these students have done that can keep us moving forward in this process and we'll make sure that from a communication perspective that's important Graciela that you all understand what what fruit is born out of the work we've done today what we can share we will immediately you'll see it on s a 2020 website i'm sure u t s a will do the same and uh we'll make sure that this conversation uh continued because you're standing there 30 second question okay and then josh was gonna gonna close this out for us thank you my name is renate joy McGee and i am a very um beloved member of the san Antonio community i love san Antonio i get to work on all all sides of san Antonio and i love our community i love our city i love what our mayor is doing he's doing taking so many initiatives that are up that is uplifting all of our community but i just and i and thank you to dr and brazino and thank you to your students because i know that you work so hard and we really appreciate all your work and thank you for giving us this citizens bill of rights but i just want to say that i also am a member of the city council district too and so i saw all the districts there and i just want to say it is hard sometimes to feel engaged when you feel so left out and so i literally cried my heart really hurts uh just because i'm always working trying to make sure that our children and our people are being hurt over there because it's historic that we are left out and so i just want to say um i embrace san Antonio and i try to bring that embracement to my uh side of town but i just like to say please always when you're trying to make sure everybody's voice is heard please make sure everybody's voice is heard thank you so very much accessibility and outreach thank you miss miss mcgee well i want to uh ask you to join me in thanking our great panel kimberley diego phyllis ron gracias thank you very much josh was going to come and uh close us out and send us back to our families in our community thank you thank you well that about wraps it up uh thank you thank everybody for coming out this morning and spending time with us uh hopefully uh you took something away uh that you didn't know or that uh that you were that that you were curious about finding out when you came in here and walked in this morning i'd be remiss if i didn't acknowledge the mayor again thank you sir for coming out and spending this morning with us as well as all the panel members and the distinguished faculty and guests of the university of texas at san Antonio that concludes uh today's presentation of the great city's dialogue thank you very much and uh you're welcome to ask anybody questions after this is over thank you