 It's a gift. Okay, we're going to get started. Better late than never. Reading the paper. Probably reading your horoscope, right, for your birthday. Catch the door over here. Alright, the question was asked this morning about how many pilot programs are being proposed for the next fiscal year budget. And during the lunch, staff put that number together and City Manager has that to share with the rest of council. Not proposed. Patrick, but rather how many are underway right now with council approval. There are three. The first one is the vacant building registration program. About $375,000 are being spent on that right now and that pilot program is running. The second one is the adult education and literacy programs at four of our libraries. And that's about $342,000. And the third is the mobile integrated health program that Chief Hood proposed last year. It's about $500,000. And he's here. Xavier is here to talk about the libraries if you have questions. And Shannon Miller is handling the vacant building registration pilot program. So those are the three major pilot programs that are underway right now. Okay, thanks, Cheryl. I'm going to refer your attention back to the agenda this morning and picking up what we left off, suggesting that the first topic here after lunch be a discussion around the living wage. And that was on slides 24 to 36. The presentation this morning by Lori thought we'd start off with that. Yes, councilman. Thank you, Patrick. I'm yawning, getting over lunch. I have not got my coffee. Shake it all out. Let's get right back to work. I'm glad that we're starting on this one. This is one that I know I sat down and talked to the city manager about. And just to be completely frank, there have been a lot of conversations that I have shared with civilian employees. Usually it not prompted by them coming up to me and saying, look, is there any way that we might be able to look in our own civilian pay? The reason they talk about it is because we talk so much about uniformed healthcare, uniformed compensation that for a long time for the last at least four years they felt like they haven't been part of that conversation. And I say to them, you know, it's almost a deferral where I say, look, let us get past the police and fire negotiations and then we'll start having a little more serious dialogue about civilian pay. And like I said, they don't happen often. And I think what's great about the city of San Antonio that I've realized is that the organization is that we don't have a lot of civilians who are really coming to citizens to be heard to pitch about this because frankly that says something about their current pay and the job that we're doing in making sure to compensate them well. But I do think that we send signals every once in a while with respect to the value that we're placing on them for the work that they're doing. Their work is genuinely public service. It is what we do on the council, but what they do is they get up and they are putting the letter on the neighbor whose folks call our office to say that is a building or that is a structure or a vacant property that nobody is taking care of. They're putting the paper up. They're cleaning our offices when we're done. They're setting up a lot of this before and after we get going. And I think that we need to send them a signal that we are interested in making sure that San Antonio, City of San Antonio is a first choice for our employees. And the last time we've really done this to the city manager's credit was about 10 years ago in meeting the living wage at the federal level which was 1147. And that was 10 years ago and I have calls with some civilians who tell me, look, the step-pay plan is really working for me. But I want to dedicate 20 or 30 years to this organization. I want to dedicate 20 or 30 years to the city and the service that I do to it. And I'll reach my minimum next year or I'll reach my maximum next year. And that's the way we can talk about ways in which we can extend a dialogue around our pay. And like I said, I tell them let's get through the contract negotiations with uniformed officers and then we might be able to bring you all up or bring you all into it. But I think right now we've got an opportunity, as Councilman Cryer mentioned, that symbols are important and that we might send a signal to our folks that we value their work, that they do deserve a raise. And we're talking about those folks at the bottom end of the living wage scale. So it's something that I hope we can consider. And I would consider it at the $15 level over the next three years because 2018 will be 10 years after the step-pay plan. So those folks who have been with us through the step-pay plan will reach their 10th year. And I think that will be an opportunity for us to really say that civilians, the folks who pick up our trash, fill the potholes, the folks who are ensuring that the city is running on time are people that we value. And there's a lot that I could say about that, but I really have felt this devoid of support for our civilians. And you think about some of the best organizations, private sector, public sector, they don't develop these sort of resistances within, with respect to union membership because they're being taken care of. And symbols are being given to them every so often to ensure that they're being taken care of. And I think that's something we can do here for our city employees who, frankly, this is not a waste of money. This isn't people who will, for the most part, I'd love to look at this demographic to see the city employees who actually live in the city. It's different from a uniformed or police and fire. The majority of our city employees live in the city. The majority of our city employees pay property taxes in the city. They visit and patron our businesses to put back into our sales tax. And so these are the types of folks we need to be investing in. And I hope that we can have a serious dialogue around ensuring that over the next three years we can get to that $15 level and send a strong signal in this city about our civilian pay. So I wanted to open up with that conversation. Thank you. Thanks, Councilman. Councilman Ward. Yes, thank you. I agree that we should move in that direction as well. I was listening to NPR last week, and they were talking about more in you where only 40% of the employees can afford to live in the county. And we don't necessarily have that scenario here in San Antonio. So I think $15 is a great goal. But I do think we have to look at this, especially with the other things that we're talking about doing, especially if we're talking about cutting property taxes. I don't understand how we can raise wages and cut property taxes at the same time. That's coming from the private sector. That's something that you don't see. Yes, I don't think we should increase property taxes at all. But until every house in San Antonio is worth $100,000, I don't think we should look at this situation because I still have houses in my district that people are living in that are $30,000, $40,000 houses that in some other parts of the city would be maybe $200,000. Okay, thank you, Councilor Mayer. Thank you. Well, I've had a chance to weigh in on this a little bit. But not with the entire council. So let me just share with you what I've been thinking. And I'm open to continue dialogue. First, I'll start out by, of course, acknowledging the hard work of our city employees. And I'm speaking as someone who is a former city employee. I worked for the city for six years, and my husband worked for the city for almost nine years. So we have firsthand perspective on, you know, being on the front lines and interacting with citizens. And so, of course, we certainly value the great job that our public servants do. As far as the living wage, I thought that the presentation was very compelling by Ms. Stewart about the impact of the STEP program over the last few years and how we really have come a long way and in comparison to other cities, both in Texas and in other places, we are in, you know, a fairly competitive position. Now that's not to say that the folks who are paid at the lowest rates don't still struggle to meet all their needs. For me personally, when I think about folks that are paid at those wage levels, I don't just think about city employees. I'm thinking about people all across San Antonio because we know that we have a large percentage of people here in San Antonio that are maybe underemployed or not earning as much as they could be and struggle to meet their obligations for their families. And so when I think about balancing investments that we could make, in my mind, I'm thinking does it make sense to, you know, provide some assistance to a small number and I don't know what the number, that might be a question, how many employees are at that level or, you know, if we're going to invest, I think it was nine million a year or more without the compression being a factor, I'd like to see how we could do something that would help a larger range of San Antonians to have the education and skills to qualify for jobs that actually pay more. And there's been a lot of evidence to show that there are jobs out there that are going unfilled because people don't have the skills or education. So that's the way I've been looking at and I will not provide just that focus on city employees who, again, I know do a great job, but given the limited resources that we have, my perspective has been to think about how we can have the maximum impact. And I do, we just did agree that symbolism is important, but I believe there are opportunities for people to move up the job ladder and earn more when they take advantage of educational and training opportunities. And I think that there are some great organizations in the city that do that type of work and that we could work to help facilitate connections for people to access that type of training. So that would be my comment. But I would, Cheryl, do you know right now how many employees were we talking about that's at that level? Lori, why don't you come up to the front? Is your question, because today we pay the federal living wage, the lowest paid employee earns 1147. Lori pointed out this morning that was the highest among major Texas cities. To move to, do you have it broken down, Lori, by $13 an hour or? Yes, I have the breakout, but keep in mind this is going to include all of our part time, all of our full time, and also includes all of our current vacancies. So as far as impacting the current employees, I don't have that number, I have a number that would include every vacancy. At our current living wage we have about 800 people that it impacts when we make that move, if we make the move to 1167, it's about 800. The move to $13 would be about $1300, that's full time part time including all the vacancies, and about $2300 for the 15. Thank you. Councilwoman Viagra. Thank you. I would be in favor of continuing to keep this on the table as a conversation piece to look at our increasing our living wage and also, because I do believe that there is a balance that we need to maintain here obviously, and we will have some more questions answered when we get our contract moving forward as well. So that's always a piece of this puzzle here. I am, Lori, if I can ask you to come back up here. On slide 26, prior to 2006, the city's wages were below market rate. Back in 2006, maybe you can answer that too, how many employees did we have at that time? Authorized positions. Full time part time. In 2006, probably in the 10 to 11,000 reign. Actually, we had more employees because we have fewer city employees today than we had 10 years ago. Maria, if you have the exact question. Okay. So over the past 10 years, we have cut 1200 civilian positions and we have added nearly 500 police and fire. Now that's new police and fire. So we fill the vacancies and then these are new positions, 473 to be exact, police and fire. We have added. And eliminated 1200 civilian positions. In 2005, when I came to the city, we had 900 employees who were earning less than the federal living wage. And I actually moved all 900 up even before my first budget and then thereafter, we have adjusted the minimum wage to the federal living wage for our civilian employees every year. Plus, then we implemented the step plan. We worked with the employee management committee and developed the step plan and then implemented that over six years. And that was the $80 million number that Lori described earlier that the council approved and we implemented over six years. So we actually had more employees back then than we have today. Right. We have less civilian employees and they have been on the step play pay plan since 2008. Is that correct? That's when we started implementing it. We phased it so each year we added more employees to the step plan and now everyone is on, everyone eligible is on the step plan with 10 steps. Right. And then on slide I guess 30, the civilian compensation. Now when we're talking about the step play, we're only talking about just the hourly employees. Is that correct? Which employees are we speaking of? The majority of our employees Lori had that chart. Lori, if you could pull it up. The 44% Yes. So full. Slide 30. Right. 30. No, not slide 30. Slide 25. Let's try that. So slide 25 it's 44% the civilian step play plan and those is that hourly paid employees? Is that correct? For the most part that's correct. But the managers and professionals they are done on the COLA, is that correct or is it, I'm sorry, the performance pay correct? Performance pay. COLA typically would apply to both groups. So COLA would apply to both groups. And that can or cannot happen every year. It depends. In most years it has happened. I think on the chart there were only two years that we didn't do a cost of living adjustment. One was during the recession. Maybe both were. But COLA, we've only not done a COLA. I think twice. And this 3% performance pay for fiscal year 2015, that was for how many of those managers and professionals? The entire group would be eligible. They were eligible but they all did not get 3%. Some would, depending upon their performance, 1%, 2%, 3%, 4%, not to exceed 5%. So 2% to 4% for performance pay. But not all of those individuals get the 3%. So I think going back to the point of what Councilman Saldana was saying, I think making a conversation to continue to have this conversation about a symbol or some sort of movement forward if we can on increasing the pay for our civilians is very important because we have some employees, civilian employees who have not seen the needle move for many years. And when we do have staff who have worked here for 30 years, but have hit that ceiling and aren't able to make anymore, but they want to continue to work here, I think that's, and they're doing a good job as well, what can we do to help move that needle forward. And I know that's going to be a lot of balancing and looking at different areas, but I think this is something that I would like to continue to have that topic and that conversation on the table. I'm just going to try to offer, I know there's some questions, but I'm just trying to make sure there's clarity here about people that reach the top step, though and I don't know this more than likely are probably past that living wage, right. So those are two separate groups, people that reach the top of their step, and then there's people that are at the living wage, am I clarifying making that, those are two separate groups Yes, I understand that. Okay, I was just trying to clarify that too. Councilman Nuremberg and then Saldania. Thank you, and I think this is a very worthy conversation one we should have without too much delay. I still maintain the fact, though, that it's really important that we hold a policy that says that we have to resolve the bigger part of the bottleneck right now on our city budget with regard to employee and personnel wages and benefits, which is a bargaining agreement. I'm fully ready to take up this conversation, but we have to get that done and I think that the latter should put pressure on the former. With respect to the impact, I do want to understand, I think we need to proceed with an analysis on the compression issue, which is very real. I think one of the reasons why we've been so efficient with personnel and with services in the city of San Antonio is because we have a high performing team and the impact of compression on service delivery shouldn't be overlooked. We have to make sure that as we move up, we don't just move up certain levels that we're boosting the entire organization. I do have a question though with regard to contracts with regard to what sorts of wage level requirements we put on city contracts that was also another part of the conversation and I'd like to get some clarification on that and if there's anything that we can do to urge this move along to Mayor, to your point this is not just the city going it alone on this process of increasing the standard of living for people in San Antonio. You're talking contracts with vendors? Yeah. Ben, you can add to this Ben Gorzel, but there are some federal grants, for example, that require us to pay Davis Bacon wages, federal wage limits. There are other city contracts where we don't have wage requirements but we do require that they provide some level of benefit for their employees so we don't want to outsource or have someone do work for us that is not treating their employees at some level and we require that they demonstrate to us that they're providing some level of benefit. It doesn't have to match the city necessarily but that they provide that so it does vary in terms of the vendors it's not specific or across the board. And I don't want to get bogged down and doing too many fiscal analyses on simple questions but I mean I think and I don't know what the answer is I really don't but it might be a worthy conversation for us at the policy level to establish what those requirements might be if they're above if they're above federal requirements or state requirements and so forth. Thank you. Councilman Saldana had one and then Councilman Carr. Sure, so I think the only thing I will add to this conversation is the fact that the one tidbit that I forgot to mention with respect to my conversations with some of these is that the one signal that we have sent to them is that we really needed their help with respect to driving down the cost of our health care and they have been willing partners in doing that. I don't think that the city or city staff can disagree with that. We shifted them to a different type of plan and for the most part most of them went to plans at which there were some higher deductibles and it saved the city some money and I think that's reflected in the fact that we've had such a great partnership with our civilian employees but quite frankly with the amount of city employees that we have, it's very likely a scenario in the future where if we continue to overlook this particular issue that you could mount a strong voice in opposition or you could mount this sort of feeling among civilians to demand the same type of things that we've been great partners with and I think this is an opportunity for us to send a signal to them and I would even say that because they've been such great partners on health care and driving down the cost of that I would suggest even maintaining our tax rate to accomplish this that if we maintained our tax rate and invested that revenue into our employees because for folks who I think are going to benefit from a reduced effective tax rate it may be immaterial in the majority of cases but it would be significantly material if we were able to give that to our folks who are at the bottom end so that they might be able to increase the power of their dollar and like I said you'll write back into sales tax and property tax and I think it also to ensure that we are keeping our folks happy and that would be my suggestion that if we wanted to take this on the way we'd offset it is to maintain our tax rate. Councilman Crier I concur with your suggestion that we we deserve to put ongoing discussion into this we've spent a year discussing this issue in the context of the unions and the public safety folks but the civilian employees make this city tick pretty well too and they are essential to it. Having said that I'm as I look at chart number 35 if I am reading this correctly Cheryl the cost of implementing a 15 hour wage over three years would be a net increase in budget expense of about 18.2 million dollars is that per year? No that is total for the three years during the three years yes 18 million and what would be the increased cost annually going forward? I'm sorry Ben about 9.6 million per year yes I mean if I'll give you an example as the old line goes if you feed a man a fish he won't be hungry that day if you teach a man to fish he won't be hungry ever again I'm responsive to your comments mayor about if I had a choice of putting nine and a half net new dollars into for example increasing our annual budget item for project quest which in my judgment has done an incredible job for 23 years of getting people good jobs who otherwise would not have had them by teaching them how to fish or if I could put that additional money into the academies which support our target industries in aerospace and biomedical I would rather spend that money there because it has a much bigger long-term impact in a wide variety of ways in helping people move into jobs that pay a whole lot more than the living wage and seeing the data which clearly indicates that we are ahead of most of the cities we compare ourselves to it just seems to me that our goal should not be to have the highest paid city employees in the United States they should be well paid and well benefited and well compensated and I'm entirely for that but that our larger goal should be are we using our budget in this area to incentivize people learning how to be qualified for good jobs and learning how to keep those good jobs and learning how to become an asset that we use in economic development to bring people here because we say hey we've got these programs that are helping you get employees with good jobs so yes we ought to have a longer conversation about this but for the moment at least I would argue in favor of putting more money into programs like Quest and the academies that help us achieve what we say is our long-term big goal in economic development councilman Gallagher thank you Patrick interesting comments I think one thing that we all need to do and just keep this in perspective is that wonderful slide 31 that is something that we can all be proud of I mean if you look at the city of San Antonio compared to how other cities are doing this state is something that we need to keep mindful of we're leading right now the most concerned about in the whole discussion slide 34 where we talk about salary compression because we can talk all we want about providing higher levels of income for those working for the city however we then have to think about their supervisors we have to think about the people above them which also drives up the cost and that isn't in what we've been talking about so far so I mean it is a it's explosive so yes let's do it let's do whatever we can but at the same time we have to think of the long-term implications of it and it's something that we could pay dearly for if we're not careful thank you okay councilman Lopez just my comments are you know we'll be brief but I mean generally speaking we do need to give attention to the wage scales I mean there's no question councilman started off with his commentary and I'm you know right on and the reason for that is to me very simple we are doing you know the work with less people then the question becomes are we efficient and effective with that and if I'm not mistaken last year we had a very favorable customer satisfaction report that said we're doing a very good job so those people that frontline group although there's less of them they're doing more work and we need to recognize pay for performance and the performance has been spectacular you know looking at charts and maps and how much we pay and all that that's all good for comparative analysis but we have got a spectacular group of folks out there working incredibly hard there's less of them doing more work and doing it well to do anything other than recognizing them significantly I think would be a shortcoming on our foresight so I certainly support us continuing some aggressive dialogue around how we can strengthen the weight scales thank you Cheryl do you want some more direction or do an analysis how do you want to handle that you good this has given us some good feedback okay I'm trying to let me offer this to so I want to say this respect you all have much to share about these topics I'm just trying to be mindful of the time as well because you still have several other topics to cover I'm going to ask if maybe the comments can be really concise and brief so you can get through your agenda we're going to hit the food coma here pretty quick from lunch and so I'm just trying to keep people moving through that and to give you a chance because all these topics absolutely deserve time and attention I'm just going to ask a little bit of assistance in that to keep the agenda because once these agenda items are done then you want to move on to those the opportunities going to be discussed the items that came out in the community meetings and then once those are finished hopefully there'll be time for you all to express an item or two that's not on the agenda about some topic that you want to talk about I'm just going to ask your help in that if you would please so is that good okay so that one to cover the next one was the just the south annexation south annexation comments about that thoughts questions okay so everybody's good with the presentation the direction moving forward okay good now we go from talking a lot to know what to say in anything so okay somewhere in the middle so okay the Alamo master plan time frame was shared today coming back to you with the full plan I believe it was by next summer is that right I think it was my next summer over the next year is the planning committee doing their due diligence Cheryl so the financial issue possibly for you all to consider is that at one point as we talked about the master plan first that one million was approved in the bond program to fund the master plan so that master plan money is already appropriated when the council decided to no longer pursue the streetcar there was capacity within the general fund budget to fund that project that capacity is there for work on the Alamo Plaza I know that there's been discussion about should some of that be devoted to the actual capital expenditures that will come out of the master plan or should that be used for streets and drainage projects in the community I just mentioned that because that is some capacity that you have available for capital projects so again that's not 32 million sitting in an account but rather financial capacity over time to accomplish some capital improvements and that's the reason really that it's on the agenda for today in addition to Lori going through the timeline master plan as she said will be completed next summer councilman gallery I think that's a very good point and if you look at what all of the reaction has been to the meetings that we've gone to and the budget priorities it sounds to me like you've made a very good suggestion here in a very subtle manner we should be filling potholes with that money thank you thank you other thoughts or comments about the Alamo master plan I do have one just real comment and I think it's more just a comment and it's just a real simple concern I have a tendency of putting doing my analysis based on historical experiences and I can tell you that things like the Alamo plaza are very worthy initiatives for a city to take on there's a bunch of others like that that are capital intense I don't know if our intent is at some point to get that roll, that capital expense rolled into a bond program the concern that I have over that is that if you get outside the core of what people core function of these bonds you have a tendency of not being able to pass on the example that I go back to from experiences at the school district when we passed a lot of bonds we were very reluctant to put football stadiums anything other than school function or educational functioning capital my concern is if we don't dedicate some money from somewhere this one or another one what we're going to wind up with is a very capital intensive revitalization of Alamo plaza which is a very worthy but I believe can be a polarizing deal to put on to a bond and that's my only reluctance is that we find we wind up only being able to do new bonds Alamo plaza which I think could could be a difficult sticking point for the public as a whole again I don't know if I articulated my concern well but that's the notion that I get well you don't think it's going to be a problem we said the same thing when we were trying to pass a bond issue that had a football stadium on it and people just don't want to spend money on football stadiums this could be conceived in the same way it could very well be a problem I'm just concerned that we would not find other earmark dollars that we might be able to move over the federal government can earmark but we can and maybe we ought to consider that as an option for funding future Alamo plaza investments other than solely looking at bond dollars for it again I don't know that I have much more of an observation than that but that's my only thought thank you I'm sorry Cheryl may I ask a question just so I understand your point then you would perhaps dedicate some of that 32 million to the plaza or suggest that we should consider that I think we should consider it don't dismiss it completely and if not that some other revenue source I don't know where it would come from but as revenue sources become available that we start to appropriate those and not necessarily rely for the Alamo plaza investment capital investment which is a very worthy one to come strictly out of bonds and that's the only thing we have then we wind up having to attach a large project onto a bond package that potentially could get some negative pushback from the community that's my only concern to your point it may be not an issue but if we don't consider them in advance they can come back and buy this and that's my only Councilman Carr I'm sorry Councilman Carr I had people stand up in my budget hearing and argue against spending any money on Alamo plaza I disagree this is a once in a lifetime opportunity it is a historic opportunity if we don't do it we have tinkered around the Alamo for as long as I've lived here just as we've tinkered around Hemispheric Park as long as I've lived here if we don't do it right this time shame on us if we had been a year further along in this process when the legislature opened I am convinced based on conversations with the speaker and others that we could have potentially fully funded the entire renovation which would I think would have been 75 to 125 million dollars with money from the state surplus but because we weren't a year further along we didn't have a price tag and a breakout of costs and the speaker and others were unwilling to say well here's 150 million dollars you'll figure out what to do with it later so Councilman Lopez makes good points we ought not to rule out the possibility of going back to the 2017 session of the legislature with a much bigger ask and preparing that before we lock up a huge chunk of 2017 bond money for it and run into the risk of you know as you said over and over again we ought to pass it and run into the risk of voters and other parts of the city saying hey the Alamo is not in my district you know why am I supporting this I don't care that it's not in my district the Alamo is the city and Alamo Plaza is the city and if I had a dollar for every person who stopped in the chambers 20 years I was there and told me how disappointed they were with the experience now non-reverentially they thought the site was treated how small they thought it was I'd be retired a long time ago thank you Councilman Trevino thank you I think those are two great comments you know I'm for making sure that we allocate some capacity for what we're getting ready to undertake I think we've established that we're really about to undertake one of the most important things and one of the most controversial things we can undertake in the city of San Antonio it's a great history it's also some of it's factual, some of it's mythological but I think it's important that we establish some flexibility and if there's some capacity there so that we can continue to move forward and take time with addressing these concerns I think that's really important because I think one of the first statements that we made early on when I got involved with this particular project was the telling of all the stories even the ones we don't like and there's the controversy I think it's important that we relate this back to as many people in our city as possible and by doing so I think we create and we hedge that sort of disconnect that most people feel they have with the Alamo it's not just a tourist attraction it is an important site for us it's an important part of our history and I also think it's also an important part of our master planning for downtown what I like about what's happening right now and maybe things just happen for a reason and when they happen is a time in everything the convention center happening the way it's happening the hemisphere the river walk and what have you the Tubman center all these projects I think in concert with Alamo master plan and Alamo Plaza let's say can all work together should work together be part of something that we demonstrate and communicate as as part of one big picture part of our city so that's why I do advocate for having that capacity because the state is showing that they're going to contribute they're participating in a very large capacity and so I'm glad that we have that capacity I think we need to maintain that and we've just started the process so let's see what's coming and I can say that it's very exciting and it's about time so what I hear you saying is continue down the path with the master plan development and keep options open regarding the financing of any improvements whether it's city money, bonding money am I characterizing that keep the right okay next item on the agenda was the broadband citywide broadband that was presented this morning thoughts about that yeah councilwoman I think I have some questions first just to be sure if you or who could answer this will this help is this going to help with our the digital divide that exists in the city and how will this come into play with our different community centers are we going to be able to use that as a city for this we do already currently use this network for city services and so to help digital does from the standpoint of like libraries and community centers where we have pretty high speed internet access to those facilities that whole that whole program is going to be much deeper than that so we're looking to some at some regard to the carriers so like with the pending google fiber approach to the city some of the other carriers who have a plan for kind of the under served areas with free services those are all going to come into effect and I think as we look at we've enhanced some of the parks with wi-fi that also transport over this network some of our other facilities so it's a bigger plan than just this this is like the main backbone transport network that does a lot of high speed communications so this comes into play with other things added into it so I guess what I'm hearing then is that this is going when we invest and move this forward this is going to be laying our foundation our backbone in order to do everything else that we need to do like at our parks and rec community centers because I know some of the centers don't have wi-fi availability right now but this will help us create that foundation and moving forward and also I guess we can talk about it later but we'll talk about it later so thank you okay Councilman Narenberg I had to try thank you Hugh and I can certainly wax poetic on this but I think a key point that was left out was the fiscal impact of this and you know this city like any other is looking for strategic economic competitive advantages this is one area where we have been planning for this future for a long time we're just now getting to a point where we can leverage that the fiscal impact Hugh could you go into how that would work yeah so as we add other entities on to this network there's some enhancements that we need to do both with people and tools and so the intent is to look at that cost from the people and the tools as we progress forward and add people add entities on to the network there's a desire for them to cost share in those components so that we try to minimize the impact of the city's fiscal situation but that as they come on there's some enhance things that we're going to need to do for their specific networks and so as this the intent is to grow those things as the network grows itself and so they work together so an estimate that we kind of came up with was three to four people that would be adding to help engineer and monitor the network along with a set of enhanced tools that would that would help us transition to that bigger type of network monitoring that would be needed and so in conversations with Ben that means that there is an expense for the city but it's recovered in full by the partners who would sign on so basically the net impact for fiscally on the city would be nil with the build out of the network and this is a platform also that we're going to continue to leverage new technologies just as we have created or as we've moved more to a smart transportation grid we could continue to do that and the benefits of that we don't yet grasp is that correct? Yeah I mean there's a lot of potential I mean this network the intent of it is to build this very high speed backbone that we can layer services on top of and in addition to that we connect a lot of the key facilities like fire stations and police stations and our data centers and large buildings that we support so it's the main thoroughfare for the data and voice services that we provide. Thank you and I would like to just share what you're looking for but I would certainly recommend we push forward on this initiative and give you our full throated support on this I do also mention that last week we passed an agreement with Verizon to cut speed along infrastructure mobile capacity is another issue in San Antonio just like it isn't any other city which will create essentially a new stream of revenue and I would like to recommend to this council that we dedicate the new revenue stream that's created by this technology to building out future technology I don't know exactly what that would look like in terms of our books or what we could necessarily budget it towards councilman we had a good ideas on that but I would certainly like us to see like to see us use new revenues created by new technologies for the purposes of advancing our position on technology in the city so that would be my position and thank you Sherom, thank you again. Just a quick comment we had a really good conversation it certainly makes sense whether it's enterprise fund or whatever but that same concept of being able to roll technology revenues into technology expansion not necessarily to maintain what we have but to go out and get the next app you know from a very simplistic perspective what we're trying to do here is if you will put it in the context of a an irrigation system in your home you know the size of acreage that you have you know you need to put you know enough a big enough of a pipe to run sprinkler heads the question becomes how many sprinkler heads do you have and that's going to determine how big that pipe needs to be and then that's how much water you're going to get from sauce to get big enough of a conduit that regardless of how many sprinkler heads we put on here we'll be able to provide the same amount of pressure across the entire the entire yard but that's the same thing here what we want to do is put the largest capacity in our network which is fiber multiple strands of fiber that gives you an awful lot of bandwidth which means we can put a lot of sprinkler heads out there those sprinkler heads are apps those sprinkler heads are libraries, fire stations Verizon other folks that want to tap into that if you will irrigation facility and we should be able to somehow part some or all of the money that gets generated from that folded back into that investment I mean that's the kind of the dialogue that we were having and that I couldn't agree with you more you know because it's the right approach to take it certainly goes to Councilwoman Villagran's concern for the all of our concerns for the digital divide because ultimately those applications will go to the house they'll go to those individuals at an incredibly cheap if not almost give away rates because the bandwidth will be there so I wholeheartedly support that recommend that we direct staff to take a look at it is there a financing mechanism that allows us to some part or all reinvest back into that enterprise I think it makes a lot of sense thank you Councilman Trevino thank you I is there a I guess to Councilman Lopez's point about capacity we talked about Alamo Colleges UTSA is there some partnership opportunities with our ISDs and we're talking about the digital divide couldn't we address some of that concern with our local school districts is that a potential it is a potential it's a little bit more complex with the school districts because a lot of this type of service they get with federal funding in the E-Rate program and for us to provide that type of service you know through that program we need to be certified through an entity called USAC and so as we move forward and we see the progression of this network one of the thoughts is that we do become registered with them and then begin to open up the offering from that perspective but it would be more difficult in the early stages of this to work on it but it's definitely something that's in the horizon that we're talking about. Well certainly an opportunity that I'm full support of this I think we should do everything we can to move forward on this broadband issue and hope that as Councilman Lopez mentioned this kind of capacity really opens up a lot of opportunities. Thank you. Full steam ahead and exploration about the revenue as a device. Okay, thanks. Final item from the agenda, two items actually was the solid waste variable rate pricing and the storm water fee had the variable rate pricing on the different containers being rolled out this fall and then the storm water fee questions about that people comfortable with the roll out and it sounds like a lot of work has gone into preparing residents for these changes Councilman Nirenberg and then Councilman Trevino. Recognizing all the work that's gone into the storm water fee this is not an easy issue and congratulations to our TCI staff for getting us to a point of near agreement on this. I just want to and this may be for my own edification point out the irony here we've got a book of what a hundred and some odd pages of comments from community members that want us to do more primarily more work in streets more work in sidewalks flat work essentially that creates in a sense more flood water more storm water more drainage problems and we also are having requests to deal with the drainage issues so we're in this conundrum of creating new flooding issues and having to deal with new flooding issues and consuming a large part of what we do with our operating budget and I'm not suggesting that there's a magic solution to this it's just the way cities work but I do think it puts the onus on us as policy makers but also as we move into the comp plan and move into our overall growth strategies as a city to really stop and look at the way we do business with regard to development we're opening up the UDC we need to take a look at this weird cycle of again development plus storm water and do so with the industry at the table and figure out good solutions to this there's already been great discussions about things like green infrastructure and low impact development and I think that this budget process especially after the wettest month on record in Texas mandates us to look at new solutions for that and incentivize the development process we want our city to continue to grow and I think our policies need to be looked at with regard to this cycle of storm water and ways that we can do this work better it's good not only for economic development because it makes our system of development more efficient probably saves people a lot of money the initial reports on green infrastructure have shown that it actually saves money on construction certainly saves money for cities with regard to all the things that our storm water utility pays for but it also makes for a much better quality of life Mayor you issued a memo to that effect almost two years ago now that asks us to look at this in a more systemic way and I think that was sort of the tipping point for the comprehensive plan and I think that this whole budget process highlights that fact so thank you. Thank you Councilman Trevino. Thank you Councilmember for those comments. I think you're right on with some of these ideas. One thing that I do want to make note of is one of the things I noticed out of these comments were that we should be very careful about how some of our how we receive some of these comments. They can be generalized and what we get out of this is that what the real reason some of these folks want these improvements on their streets and sidewalks for because we know that there is collateral impacts for certain wants and desires in certain parts of the city like drainage and the impact of runoff and the impact of an impervious cover to your point Councilman people wanting flat work I would suggest it's if we really take a step back and say well maybe what we're really looking for is the real answer is people are wanting accessible places accessible streets, accessible walkways we should encourage and incentivize innovation that lets us look at different ways to achieve that same thing. I think we're just too used to doing the same kinds of streets, the same kinds of sidewalks and we create and exacerbate a drainage problem so my hope is and I like this path is that that we can start to incentivize like the mayor's plan of low impact development strategies truly start to innovate and rethink exactly what some of these pathways to development are so that we can think more creatively with more innovation that's my hope I do hope that we can incentivize that kind of innovation I was going to make a comment about one of the things that Peter shared this morning which I think is worth repeating about raising people's attention for generations the whole notion of solid waste was you put it out there you pick it up regardless of the volume you paid the same rate which really solid waste is the only non use based utility I don't know if you're seeing this trend but there's a movement of foot about looking at cable to where it's going to be possibly based on usage but for solid waste to raise people's awareness about environmental impacts and all that you're definitely pushing the envelope in a good way to say I'm only going to pay for the amount of space I'm going to use in the landfill so the more space you use the more you're going to pay and in some respects that's innovative because it's very much of a shift from the past practice so I just wanted to share that I think that overall that's a long term strategy to raise your citizens awareness about all things environmental whether it's about storm water or water or sewer or electric or in this case solid waste I just wanted to make that comment Councilman Saldania Thank you Patrick I was hoping to ask David McCarrie just a cool question because I think what we've got on around variable rate pricing really will put us with respect to one of the largest cities who is doing this at the scale that we are and I think it's a really strong message to other cities that this is possible so I'm glad that we're doing this now can you tell us about where we stand with respect to the context of other cities and who's tried to take this on Right now within Texas as a whole we actually had the city of Fort Worth and also the city of Alston and the city of Plano they currently have variable rate prices the city of Fort Worth has a very moderate approach and their recycling rates are less than hours today Alston has I wouldn't say an aggressive but a very reasonable approach and they're at 40% so it does make a difference to have a very structured integrated variable rate pricing structure and this makes a lot of sense this is what's going to help us get to 60% recycling rates as an entire community and help us do a lot better at something that we haven't been doing so well because we haven't been forced to think about waste in the way that variable rate pricing will help us do which is that we really don't need to use all 96 gallons of that brown trash that there's a lot that we put in there that we could actually be putting in the blue cart so I'm glad that we're taking this on I want to offer just a quick suggestion on slide 53 to our staff who puts these together don't ever put a map up like this the immediate thing that we do as council members is look at our area and say well why isn't ours rolling out especially when it splits in this way where it's the entire northern and go for tell us what what's the real let me explain what happened you may recall in 2011 when we did our pilot program we actually had half on the north and half on the south so when we came in 2013 and the direction was changed to opt into the program meaning that you were to pay the three dollars that could be a reflection that the south side didn't want to actually pay that at the point in time so what we did discover was we did a full citywide survey and based on that survey the residents actually shared with us those that were ready to three dollars to opt into the program so when you look at that map that's a reflection of efficiencies and trying to create contiguous routing so where we started off with 30,000 customers the subscription once we expanded it because now that covers 120,000 customer service area we didn't have 120,000 to sign up it was still roughly around 20,000 actually signed up for the program so now that we're ready to take it to the next step even though each council district will be a part of our initiative when we start October 1 you'll actually have those areas that will touch each part so as we move forward that's what happened there was a shift based on the survey when we went into the opt in versus the opt out so now you'll have a very robust program where they can indeed opt out if they choose to do so but those that were paying three dollars come October of 2015 this year will no longer have to pay that three dollar rate yes because in other words they don't have, they will no longer have to opt in it's inclusive of the rate also at the same time those that have your 48 gallon carts some of our seniors they'll actually look to see a discount on their rate probably about 50 cents reduction as well the breakdown we're seeing is more with respect to the folks who have been opting in and the fact that you all are keeping an eye to efficiency so that you are rolling out this program not by sending one truck to one end of the city and the other to a few on another end is correct we're trying to continue the contiguous routing to look forward to our efficiencies each one of these routes size is about three times the size of your typical automated route so there's a lot of territory that we're covering but today we're also driving by quite a few a number of houses so as we work toward making that more efficient we have to fill in as we expand I'm going to let you off the hook David usually I don't when there's a program that isn't equally distributed throughout the city but it's because I like you the other is the stormwater utility fee I think Councilman Nirenberg hit a lot on this but we made a very grave error when we were setting up this formula back in 1993 I think it was which is we set a cap on what you would pay so that a Toyota for example or a SeaWorld would pay just as much as a family residential home with respect to the amount of money they're paying into our stormwater utility fee I'm glad we came up with a formula it makes a lot of sense it's phased in over process so the north chamber is not breathing down our necks freaking out about this like they were about a year and a half ago and I think some folks from the chamber are here now thinking about this as well so I'm glad we landed on a situation in which we can actually increase the amount of money that is coming our way from obedience to street sweep and also take care of the impact of what's coming with respect to people building on impervious cover so I think we landed on a pretty happy spot with stormwater utility fee which is not something I could have said a year ago but this is really praise for the staff I know Peter and Mike have been on point on this issue so thank you to them for dealing with those folks in the room so that we didn't have to hear the comment about solid there's also what's called the diversion rate which means you're taking trash out of the waste stream which also extends the life of the landfill so there's a lot of dividends from doing that some hidden some obvious councilwoman and then Councilman Crier? I have a quick question for Peter regarding the stormwater utility fee you said that the the stakeholders or yeah the stakeholders were coming into agreement with this to take place so councilwoman since last summer approximately Art Reinhart and Mike Frisbee and myself have been working with the stakeholders I would say probably late this late December January of this year as we finalize the new rate structure they have come on board was the San Antonio Restaurant Association part of that too? They were there yes Mike and they have been at the meetings as well let's have Mike give some detail I'm just I'm curious because I've been getting a lot of feedback so I just want to make sure that I know this before I can give way in my opinion one way or another so yes. Councilwoman, two processes really running in parallel we had a greater stakeholder group the restaurant association was part of that and then we knew there was no reason to come back to you all if we couldn't figure out with the chamber the north chamber the real estate council as a core group we really worked very closely with them from really after the budget process last year all the way through till February or so but concurrent with that we had some stakeholder meetings as well our most recent meeting we had was in the April time frame we have another one in July but they've seen a typical restaurant is actually going to see their fees stay relatively the same some cases reduced so they're in good shape the restaurant association. Thank you and I think it's just worthy to go and see what we can do as we move forward with this what's been proposed. Thank you. Councilman Crier then Councilman Orton. Two quick things one I'm being told by the real estate council that they have not seen the final numbers yet so we're withholding judgment on the outcome you've got two questions here how I don't expect you to answer them today but when we look at this because this is what got us into the argument last time the two key questions are how much on a percentage basis are businesses being asked to go up and secondly over what period of time will that be phased in and the answer to those two questions are answers that I think can do a lot toward getting everybody on water a lot toward getting a lot of people coming down to council to yell at us. First on the feedback from the real estate council on the final numbers so we don't expect it to change hardly at all we're doing some final crunching of you know the 360 thousand accounts throughout the city but it's going to be a matter of sense so it's not going to be a big change and those numbers are being crunched now but again we don't expect a big change with that. Through the process we heard a lot about phase in can we phase in and so what we did is we are going to phase in the revenue requirements so all the different elements that we were looking at let's do all these things first year we've kind of phased those into the program so that we don't hit all the revenue need at once so it's a three year ramp up to the revenue needs that we need to really provide the full service. We will certainly be talking to the I will certainly be talking to those stakeholders I suspect others of us here will too and we'd all be happier to find out that they're on board than to find out that they're not on board so I suspect when do you plan on bringing this to council? This will be part of the city manager's budget proposal. Coming forward so it would be enacted with the budget. I think councilman work did you have something? You turn on your mic. Peter. Thank you. Street sweeping schedule we had that mentioned in some of our budget meetings where potentially street sweeping after the brush pickup would be more beneficial and effective and they would know when the street sweepers were coming as well. I believe that's what happens today when we have the residents place the brush out in the neighborhoods that does cause debris on the streets and the TCI staff in coordination with David McCary's crews come in immediately and sweep the streets. But it only happens after one of the brush pickups happened. Right. Well there's two brush pickups per year and so it happens twice per year. So it happens twice per year than once per year. Yes because there's two brush pickups per year that wants to place the brush out and the street sweeping occurs after both brush pickups. And then are we doing any research with impervious sidewalks or impervious I mean not I guess sidewalks that are not impervious? Yeah let's have Mike and our TCI construction after that. We are constantly looking at best practices and new technology. One of the biggest elements to damage pavement and concrete and so forth is moisture underneath especially with a lot of our soil you know our clay soils underneath those materials. So if you allow water to penetrate then you're going to have some serious problems. So there are porous pavements and parking lot applications that can be used where the water is actually allowed to percolate through porous concrete and then a drain system underneath to take care of that. We're not looking at that for streets and not necessarily for sidewalks but again we're open to all that technology to look at it. Okay yes because touching on Councilman Nuremberg's point the speed of the water is really a major issue especially in pervious surfaces and that impacts us downstream. I remember the Salado Creek got a call this past week or the week before when those rains came through that you know they're evacuating a campground because the waters were looking at 22 feet above and it didn't even seem to be as hard to rain as our Memorial Day situation. We have you know we've been piloting a number of low impact development projects with our capital program. So one of the newest ones was the Market Street Project downtown where that storm water goes into the landscaping and is allowed to filter in the landscaping. Houseman Roads another one Ray Ellison's another one that's coming and that helps to get that runoff instead of allowing that to accumulate into a larger amount and waiting to get to a storm drain inlet it goes right into the landscaping so that can help a lot with velocity so what about rainwater catchment off the city roofs and city facilities? Definitely as we design buildings or do retrofits we're constantly looking at all the sustainability elements including the rainwater collection systems we've incorporated those into several projects. Thank you. Any other questions on these two? Proceeding be coming back to council as part of the budget the storm water fee affordable rate pricing is in place it's going to be launched in the fall so that wraps up the agenda items that were covered by staff this morning so I want to make sure Cheryl is cool with that and then I was going to yes thumbs up okay so I'm going to suggest that this time we take a quick break right get you up moving around a little bit then come back we address the items that came out of the community meetings especially around that street that was street maintenance see how we're doing on time and then tackle those items that are not on the agenda that you'd like to talk about. Sound good? Okay 10 minutes