 Welcome everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started in a minute. Thank you so much for coming out to tonight's budget open house. We're looking forward to sharing with you some of what's in the proposed budget for fiscal year 17 for the city of San Antonio. I'm Megan Dodge. I'm with the government and public affairs department with the city. And first I'd like to just give a quick mention of translation services. If any people need translation services, please call there in the back of the room. Okay, thank you. First we'd like to share a quick video that just gives a high level, highlights of what's in our proposed budget. San Antonio, you spoke up and we listened. More than 5,000 of you told us what you wanted in this year's budget. First off, this budget has no... San Antonio, you spoke up and we listened. More than 5,000 of you told us what you wanted in this year's budget. First off, this budget has no city property tax increase and our public safety spending stays at less than 66% of our budget. You told us streets, sidewalks and drainage were your top priority and we delivered. This year's budget features $79 million for street improvements and sidewalks. You told us neighborhood services were really important, so we made some cool things happen. This year's budget features $900,000 more for animal care services and $900,000 more to care for our city parks. You also told us public safety was important, so this budget features 32 new police officers, 9 new parks officers and 42 more employees to answer your 911 calls. Fire and EMS will also receive new equipment and gear for 1200 firefighters. There's so much more included in this year's budget and you can learn all about it at saspeakup.com. Now it's time for you to... Again, fill out the survey today. We'll have a presentation from Councilman Gallagher. He'll say a few words and we'll hear from the city manager, Cheryl Scully, and then we'll invite you to visit with each department that's here represented today and give you an opportunity to interact one-on-one with our city employees and talk with them about what's in the budget and about the services that they provide. So now I'd like to pass it along to Councilman Gallagher. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? They've got me with one of those microphones you're not supposed to be able to see. On my spurs tie. Okay, it works all right. Well, thank you very much, Megan. I appreciate that. You know, one thing that makes me so proud and you have all heard this before, it's just amazing that when you neighborhood leaders turn out the kind of turnout we have compared to a lot of the other places that these meetings are held. I'm very pleased the fact that you have turned out and one thing that I would ask that you do besides your input tonight is please get the word out to everybody in your neighborhoods. Let them know what the priorities are and how they're going. You know, we've been through, and a lot of the people sitting in this room have been through in this very room here with me, a lot of these budget hearings in the past. And we've, I think, told city leadership that there are some priorities that we have and we don't have to repeat those to you too many times because you all know what they are. You know, such things as infrastructure, our streets, our sidewalks, our drainage and all that. And I'm so proud of the fact that right now the way that Cheryl has got this designed out, we're going to see that money held up this year so that we'll have something like it was last year so that we've really made our effort a lot more than it's been in past years. So I'm so pleased about that. I'm really pleased that we're, say, in 79 million allocated to streets and sidewalks. That is good news for us. The thing is, of course, I could use all of that in District 10, but we're glad that that is being done because that priority has to be set. The fact that we are getting more police officers, I'm really pleased to see that. I think that's very, very important. One of them that I'm very proud of and when I heard Cheryl first mention it, when she was briefing council, guess what? We've got three more personnel assigned to the Northeast Senior Center. So that organization has been overwhelmed with customers. So I'm really glad that that's happened. I really look forward now. I can be very proud of the fact that our city manager, Cheryl Scully, has turned out tonight to give us this presentation. And with that, Cheryl, if you'll step forward, we really do appreciate your support. And I'll tell you what, if you want to talk about who's got the toughest job around here, I'm introducing her right now. Thank you very much. Okay, well, good evening. It's great to be back out with District 10 and conduct our annual budget meeting with you, answer a few questions, and we have lots of staff here tonight. I hope we haven't outnumbered you, but I think we're pretty matched up here. And didn't Megan Dodge do a nice job in English and Spanish at the beginning of the meeting? Megan works in our government and public affairs office with Jeff Coyle and a team that helped to communicate with the community, and they've done a great job this year. We try to do something different each year and get some information and on your priorities before we prepare the budget during the month of July. And so they were able to conduct surveys and interviews with more than 5,000 people so that we could get that input and use it in the budget process. So this is the third of our workshops out in the community. We have two more next week, and then the City Council will also conduct two public hearings in the City Council chambers before budget adoption on September 15th. So I presented the budget last Thursday, and this is the beginning of the review of the presented and proposed budget. We'll take your input, and then Council members will deliberate and make final decisions before adoption on September 15th. So our budget is balanced. We're required by law to maintain a balanced budget. So unlike a couple of other forms or higher levels of government, state and federal government, we are required to maintain a balanced budget. Our budget is balanced when it's presented. It's balanced throughout the course of the year and it's balanced at the end of the fiscal year. So it implements, it begins the implementation process of SA Tomorrow, which is our comprehensive growth and development plan. We also have a transportation element and a sustainability plan. All three of those plans were adopted by the City Council just two weeks ago. So what's included within the budget is consistent with some of the planning goals in that document that were developed through a series of meetings over the past two years with the community talking about our growth centers and 13 growth centers were identified where there are 15,000 or more employed in those growth centers. And what will it take to help the business in those areas continue to grow and how do we also transport everyone and make sure they're getting to work and to home and to recreate and to school all of those things in our lives in the best way possible. So a lot of work yet to be done will be developing action plans over the upcoming months. This budget as the Councilman said continues our investment at high levels in streets and sidewalks, increases public safety and our neighborhood quality of life issues and we're preparing for the 2017 bond program. So the voters approved the 2007 program, $550 million, no tax increase. We completed those projects, 153 of them. In 2012, five years later, we presented another bond program that was developed through citizen input, $596 million. Most of both programs have gone into streets and drainage, no tax increase. And then this spring, what we're considering is an $850 million bond program again to repair streets and reduce flooding in neighborhoods, repair sidewalks, and again, no tax increase. Likewise, this proposed budget does not include a tax rate increase. In fact, the city has not raised the property tax rate in 24 years and over the past decade, I've recommended reducing it four times in the councils, excuse me, approved reducing it four times over the past 10 years. So the community priorities, I mentioned the survey process that we did with the community and what we consistently hear is that the residents of the community would like to see more streets and sidewalk repair. Any guesses as to how many miles of streets we maintain? Some of you know from past meetings. This is a little bit of a quiz. 4,000, yes. So more than 4,000 miles of streets. And we all have a favorite or a list of those not so favorite streets that we know need to be repaired. Nonetheless, what the council members must do in concert with the community is decide and prioritize which ones first. And our engineering staff also make recommendations based on how we can do some preventative maintenance on the streets as well as reconstruction and overlays based on the condition of the road. And every street in those 4,000 miles is categorized A through F. And so we know which ones need which amount of repair and we discuss and make recommendations to the council on repairing those roads on an annual basis. Secondly, adding more police officers and firefighters. I'll talk about that in a minute and what's included in the budget. Neighborhood services. And that includes libraries as well as animal care services, senior centers, those neighborhood issues, code enforcement, and economic development, workforce development. How do we help the community help itself? And also parks and recreation. Now, in all of these departments they're all represented here as a staffer because there are so many here. But I want you to know that we're here to answer your questions and so we'll stay a little bit after the meeting and talk with you about other questions you may have about the budget. Okay, so the total city budget, $2.5 billion, and it's slightly less than the current budget in 2016, two-tenths of a percent less, primarily because our capital budget is slightly less. We're finishing up the 2012 bond program, so as those projects near completion, less money in the budget for capital spending this year, so it's slightly less than last year. It's divided into three major categories. The general fund, that portion that you think about when you think of basic city services, police and fire, street maintenance, parks and recreation, libraries, community and senior centers, animal care, municipal court, health department, social services, all of those things are included in the general fund and that portion of the budget has an increase of about 3.4 percent for the 2017 fiscal year that begins October 1. The second biggest portion of the budget, the restricted funds, and these are what we call enterprise operations. That is where the fees charged for the service cover the expense for that department. So our garbage collection, our automated garbage collection, that is based on the fees that are paid by the 340,000 single family units that receive garbage collection from the city. So that's an enterprise operation. No property tax dollars or sales tax dollars are used to support garbage collection solid waste, but rather the fees for the service. Our fees are some of the lowest in the state, so David McCary and the solid waste team have done a great job. Where are they? There's David Newman over here. So they've done a great job with the implementation of our automated garbage collection. The recycling program, we're now up to over 30 percent, about 33 percent on recycling. When we started 10 years ago, we were less than 10 percent, 6 to 8 percent in our recycling. And now, of course, we've introduced the organics program. And as you get less and less in that brown garbage can, you can pay for and ask for a smaller can and get a reduced rate. So we're excited with the work that our solid waste staff has done. So that's one of our enterprise departments, also the airport. So the airlines, the commercial operations at the airport, those who use the airport are general property taxes and sales tax dollars do not go to support the airport. So those are the three categories within the total city budget. And every single dollar is accounted for. It's appropriated into the various departments for the services that we provide. The general fund, that part I was talking about, that we most frequently think about in terms of city services here. Two-thirds of the budget is spent on the police and fire departments. The next largest slice of the pie goes to streets and sidewalk maintenance. Parks and recreation is third. And then you see all those other multi-colors are all the other city departments. Whether it's human services, our library department, the municipal court, code enforcement, animal care, planning, historic preservation, the one office, the municipal detention center, general administration of the city, accounting, human resources, purchasing. Those services are all in those other categories. And the council has given us policy direction to keep public safety spending under 66%. And some of you may recall from our previous discussion, that's because we're required to maintain a balanced budget. We're required to have money, and as those costs were growing faster than our general fund revenue, those departments then were crowding out all these other services. And no one wants a reduction in the senior center hours or library hours or a reduction in parks and recreation programs or in human services. And so we had to figure out a way that we could manage those costs and not let public safety expenses consume the entire general fund budget. It's a core service. We are grateful for the work of our police and fire personnel, and it also has to be affordable to the taxpayers because we're not going to let public safety consume the entire city budget and then shut out the lights in all of our other facilities and centers. We need to have a balance for the community to maintain our quality of life. And so that's what we've been working at very diligently for the past couple of years. So the 2017 budget supports SA Tomorrow. We're going to, as I said, begin the implementation planning process that is working with neighborhood groups to develop the individual neighborhood plans throughout the entire city. Now that we have the guiding principles together over the past two years as part of the comprehensive plans, we're supposed to be doing it about every five years. It has been a long time since San Antonio had updated the comprehensive development plan, but through a very extensive public engagement process we have been able to accomplish that. So we'll be moving into some of the action steps that may include zoning changes in neighborhoods, changes in council ordinances that reflect policies about trees and impervious cover, and all those complicated, very difficult things to talk about. But that will come over the course of the next year to year and a half. So in terms of what's included in the budget as increases, the FIRE EMS services reflects evergreen. Some of you know what that means. That is, when the FIRE union contract expired it has a clause in the collective bargaining agreement that says the terms and conditions continue for ten years. So because they have not been willing to negotiate a contract, their contract expired in 2014 and have not come to the table yet, we're still hopeful that they will. In fact, Rudy's here tonight, member of the FIRE union. We're hopeful they will negotiate, but we, for this proposed budget, have reflected evergreen, meaning that the terms and conditions of that old contract are what are included within this proposed budget. And it includes the old health care conditions, the terms of that, which, by the way, are costing us about $6 million more than if they had agreed to what we've just worked out with the police union. So we're also fully funding the 51 firefighters that were added in 2016 as we open and expand more service for our growing community. We're adding two more classes to fill vacancies in this proposed budget. One FIRE class, one EMS class, so we have retirements and people who leave the organization for one reason or the other and we need to keep refilling those vacant positions. We're retrofitting our FIRE stations with an exhaust removal system, which is, so when the engine companies and the letter companies come back into the stations, this will release that exhaust away from the sleeping areas for the firefighters. So we're retrofitting those stations that have not been retrofitted yet or newly constructed and then a second set of bunker gear which might not be very exciting to you all, but this is important in firefighting so that the old look of when, you know, it looked kind of gritty and maybe exciting to see, you know, FIRE gear that was all dirty from having fought a FIRE. That's also sometimes hurtful in terms of the well-being and healthfulness of our employees. So the chief has recommended that we have a second set of bunker gear. This is beyond what's really recommended or required by national standards. Nonetheless, we want to ensure that our firefighters are taking care of and best treated with regard to their health. So a second set of bunker gear for 1,200 firefighters included within this budget. Okay, in the police budget, and chief McManus is here tonight, chief. Thanks for coming out and several of his staff are here tonight as well. 32 new police officers and this includes 25 that will be assigned to community-oriented policing and seven that will help us with the annexation areas that are proposed and the council will be considering this fall the newly 2B annexed areas of the city and when that happens next year. I want to point out that this is in addition to filling vacant positions. So these are new additional positions beyond filling the vacancies. We have about 150 chief cadets in training right now and another class of 45 to 50 that will begin late September, early October another class. We carry about 50 to 60 vacancies at any one time given the number of retirements that happen. We have 2400 sworn personnel in the police department. So changes each month and we manage that and then run classes to keep those vacancies filled. So nine park police officers and this is to service our expanding park system. The park projects that were included in the bond program as we add acreage to our system. You know that we have more than 250 parks within the city limits so as we expand our parks and increase the linear creek system we add park rangers to help police those areas and make sure that our residents are safe as they're out there using our park system. We have 42 civilian positions these are call takers at our 911 center so we've had some challenges with drop calls people being put on hold when they call the police department 911 center responds answers about 1.5 million calls per year and that's increasing with the increases in our population. So to keep up with that adding more call taker positions in this budget. Continuing with the implementation of the body camera program we've already equipped about 700 of our police officers with body cameras and for the next year and a half we will continue with the implementation of the body camera program and lastly a pilot program on gang violence intervention. If someone is able to figure out how to dramatically reduce gang violence I mean they would have a patent in the market I'm sure. So we're experimenting and trying we've studied best practices among some other cities and this GBI gang violence intervention program is something we're going to pilot over the next year and it's working a little bit closer with the community that can identify and know some of the perpetrators and working more closely to attempt to reduce gang violence in the community. Street maintenance this chart shows you that in the 2016 budget in 2017 as we've heard from the community about the priorities to still increase our street maintenance this chart shows the $64 million just on street funding 900 projects our transportation and capital improvements department is managing right now and so they're doing a fine job keeping up the workload and the schedule and accomplishing those overlays and street maintenance items in this area of sidewalks we've also you can see increase that dramatically in 2016 and again in 2016 because the needs are so great we have so many areas of the community where there have never been sidewalks and so we're focused on those areas where there are schools nearby so that elementary children and middle schoolers can walk to school and also in conjunction with bus routes so that the transit dependent population can access the via bus lines these are just examples of some of the street maintenance projects that are proposed in the 2017 budget in district 10 it's not an exhaustive list it's not all of the projects but I just wanted to give you an idea of some of the projects that will be or that are included or recommended by our transportation capital improvements department for this year and then in sidewalks here are some of the sidewalks that are also recommended as part of this proposed budget we've also included $2 million for safety issues in the community pedestrian safety in and around schools for more flashers for pavement markings and construction of the intersections to make it safe for children to be able to get to schools and also the vision zero program you know San Antonio has one of the highest rates or incidents of pedestrians that are killed by cars and so because we have so many people that live in the community that are transit dependent or that walk to work or to other activities we have a high fatality rate and so we're working to provide additional safety whether it's through additional lighting or making crossing safer where we actually create intersections that are a little bit better or a safety zone in the center of the street where someone can cross part way and then wait for the other traffic before they fully cross the street so we're continuing that program in parks and recreation these seven positions have been added to take care of our growing park system so as we bring projects that were funded through the bond program online we have to maintain them and also take care of them from that ongoing maintenance standpoint so here is an example of two within district 10 the senior centers councilman Gallagher already mentioned adding positions at the northeast senior center and those are added to the budget you know we estimated what councilman 4500 would attend that was our estimate we've had nearly 7000 close to 7000 using that facility so we need to provide some higher level of service and and that's what we want for the older population that interactivity and whether it's physical activity or book clubs or gathering so that they can remain healthy happy and productive in the community smart cities we one of our core values is innovation and we're part of an alliance of cities across the country that are constantly looking at ways that we can be creative about how we're providing services to the community and so we have included within the proposed budget funding to put Wi-Fi in some of our parks some of those that are of the highest volume of users we're also looking at community kiosks where instead of having staff there at all times we have community kiosks that provide information about programming in the park nearby businesses if they're looking for other kinds of services or retail opportunities adjacent and we're also doing a park reservation system how many of you have ever called or tried to reserve a pavilion in a park for a family gathering or a birthday party you'll be able to do that online with the new system also build SA online permitting through our development services department also getting some of those building permits online submitting plaques coordinating inspections being able to do that work online and then one of my favorites our budget transparency tool called OpenGov for those of you after the meeting if you would like to look at any line item within our city budget of 2.5 billion you can go online and access all the detail about the city's budget through our budget tool so the capital improvements in the total budget divide out this way most of the money going into streets 32% of our operating budget airport is the second largest you know that the consolidated rental facility is under construction that's a $170 million project funded through airport funds and it will be completed by November of 2017 where's my capital staff where's TCI tonight okay you heard that November 2017 actually the city council just approved expanding that contract so that the contractors working 7 days a week can get that project done it is a major major project out at the airport but will provide additional parking at the airport as well as consolidate and put all together all those car rental facilities for the visitors who bring all that money and spend all that money in San Antonio so bond status from 2012 92% of the projects the 140 projects are either completed or under construction and the balance will be underway before the May 2017 election I'll tell you oh here are a few of the projects in district 10 are in the near area that have been included whether they're completed or under construction here you can see on the list it's not the total list but gives you an idea of those projects that were voted on that we all voted on in 2012 so next steps in the budget process we are doing these five work sessions with the city council we had our first one yesterday talked about the police and fire budgets and our transportation and capital improvements recommendations next week we have two more work sessions with the council and then the following week another two work sessions with the city council we're doing these open houses in the community this is the third one this week we'll have two more next week and then two public hearings and budget adoption is scheduled for September 15th so in summary that is the budget 2.5 billion dollars with the three major components it's slightly less than last year we invite your input on the budget and all the staff is here tonight if you have a specific interest for the city departments that are here we're happy to talk with you individually and answer your questions councilman thank you so much what a briefing nice job Cheryl I thought it would be helpful if we could for somebody that's got some of the big picture questions now if you've got a specific one for one of the departments all you gotta do is walk over to that table but if you've got some big picture questions you'd like to ask Cheryl right now the other experts in the room will be glad to take them but before we do that maybe you've heard of this guy former city councilman John Clamp have you heard of him yeah he asked me to make an announcement that the next northeast neighborhood alliance meeting which most of you belong to is going to be held on September 19th over at the senior center the northeast senior center on Thousand Oaks so I hope you'll go to that meeting seven o'clock right John and believe it or not we're going to have some food there and it ought to be a whole lot of fun and guess what the topic is going to be neighborhoods and neighborhood communications will really be a good meeting for us and look forward to that so thanks John for reminding us of that okay any big questions go ahead Mark yes yes can't answer that off the top of my head but they are paying us rent and that was negotiated up front so that their payments are contributing toward the payment and the cost of the parking facility I'm happy to get you that information if you'd like it yeah don't worry they are they are paying they're paying their rent and we're tough negotiators yeah okay okay go ahead speak up Roger successful contract with the police department because this is something that was tremendously needed and gave the city people confidence in our city government so thank you again thank you I didn't talk about it but if I could just say this so there does include a wage increase in the budget as negotiated with them we have a mediated settlement we went through mediation in the final steps of the process and the police employees for the first time will be contributing toward the cost of health care for their dependence we're still covering and not charging them premiums for the health care for themselves but we are asking them to contribute toward the cost of health care for their dependence since health care was the fastest and largest growing portion of the budget so we made progress in the other some other areas as well but it will it does represent cost avoidance for the city of about $87.5 million over the term of the contract the next five years so it's significant in that regard and thank you for your compliments okay Milton go ahead what do we do when we have major damages to our infrastructure due to natural elements where does the money come from is there emergency funds or something that can take care of that because our budget is fairly tight and how is that handled yes so when good question and my brother lives with his family in Kokomo, Indiana so we were able to get that information last night so we are self-insured and we have a self-insurance reserve fund where we keep money aside so that if we have catastrophic situations we have that fund additionally we have built our reserves up over the past decade so that we maintain 10% of our general fund in reserve for a catastrophic situation yes and we try to stay away from it because having that reserve fund for only catastrophic or very serious situations then allows us to keep our excellent bond rating so our general obligation bond rating is what the major rating agencies how they view the city how well we manage our finances and as you know we're a triple A rated city and of the top 10 largest cities in the country we are the only one to have the very highest of financial ratings and I credit our financial staff our chief financial officer Ben Gorzel and his entire team Maria Villagomas you know she's been our budget director for many years our budget team we have lots of budget staff here Peter Zinoni deputy city manager was budget director when I came to the city 10 years ago so we've really worked hard to strengthen our financial management of the city and that triple A rating means that we pay the lowest interest rates in the country when we issue debt in fact we refinanced about 330 million of debt this summer for cost savings of 26 million dollars so we're constantly looking at how we best manage and it's if you think of the concept similar to your own home mortgage you may look at interest rates occasionally if you have a mortgage on your home what you're paying currently what it would cost you to refinance refinance that because then it gives you more disposable income right and that's the same concept with our bond program as we keep our interest rates low it gives us more capacity to be able to build more streets and sidewalks and more fire stations and libraries that are needed for our growing community. Thanks for explaining that one because I think we understand about the triple A bond rating and if we didn't have that think how much things would cost we not get half of what done well we get done because of it and that's really because of the leadership of somebody right here okay go ahead ma'am. Only five? Now just stay with the big one because you can always go to the department. We're happy to talk with you too when we break into the smaller groups. Okay you mentioned that you refinanced 330 million dollars of our debt how much is that question? Do you happen to know Maria offhand? 1.5 billion that includes though the general and restricted yeah that's all funds so all outstanding debt. I'll tell you so for general obligation bond issues we issue 20 year debt so we only consider projects and issue debt financing for those things that have a life expectancy of at least 20 years but on average we pay off that debt in 11 or 12 years we're conservative in our estimates and don't want to overstep and and be caught with having to reduce services well for mostly for 20 25 years but we pay it off sooner than that mm-hmm and there are rules state law and city charter as to how much debt we can issue and we are only at about 10% of what we're allowed to issue by law on the refinancing 2.4% that you financed that you did not finance on the remaining debt that we did not refinance all well that's all that debt is refinanced and we I mean I'm happy to give you it's all different kinds of things 330 million was refinanced and you said yes that you have a total debt of 1.5 million that means that that other debt was so low that it didn't make sense to refinance it at this time or the bond covenants didn't allow us to refinance it at this time but we're constantly looking at that and studying it and making those adjustments on an annual basis to refinance but we're still paying interest on that old debt too correct oh yes yeah so and it's it's in the budget well how much is it what is a percentage off the top of my head I don't know off the top of my head but I'm happy to that's another getting the weeds question alright well we can only take a couple more so let's go back here go ahead and if you give me your list of questions we're happy to get you those answers go ahead and the big question for me is on November we will not get first responder services anymore from the city of converse so where are we standing in negotiations between right San Antonio we're kind of the I feel like we're the annex step child away from San Antonio it takes about supposedly about 30 minutes for first responder to come from San Antonio to actually reach us so you live in converse I live in North Hampton which is part of San Antonio okay we you mean with them not providing the service with the agreement there was an agreement converse in San Antonio that first responder services comes from converse police or a response comes from San Antonio yes they recently sent us a letter that they want more money they want more money or so we're in negotiations with them Eric Walsh our deputy city manager who works with police and fire is in conversation with them now and before November well before we'll have that worked out but I'd like to have your name though before you leave tonight so that I can ask Eric to call you and make sure that you're up to speed speaking of that Cheryl let's make it why don't you explain how these clipboards work everyone again like city manager and councilman Gallagher explained we have all of our city staff here we welcome you to please come around and visit talk about what's in the budget ask your questions about city services that are represented here we also have staff walking around and then also a big table here with surveys where you can give your feedback on what's in the budget and we welcome that and we will be providing that back to city council as part of our ongoing public engagement it's at saspeakup.com okay everybody let's give our city manager a big hand okay your homework assignment tonight is you will fill out a clipboard before you go okay thanks a lot everybody for coming really do appreciate it