 All right, I think that we are about ready to get started. Hopefully that doesn't keep happening. All right, welcome everybody. Good afternoon. If everybody could kind of find their seats, most people have, hopefully that doesn't keep happening. So my name is Chris Stewart and I'm gonna be the emcee of today's festivities. I'm a proud UTSA alum and also a proud alum of the district eight staff. You know, I helped organize the councilman's first state of the district. And compared to that, this is huge. It's huge. He told me to say that, believe it or not. So I just wanted to start off by shouting out to some of the folks in the room here who've joined us. Our police chief, William McManus, who's back here in this corner. Our Bear County Sheriff, Susan Pamelo. The CPS CEO, Paula Gold Williams. So we are so glad that they are there. We also wanna thank our sponsors, USAA, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, UTSA, and True Flavors for providing this wonderful catering that we have here. I mean, if you haven't tried the fruit cups and queso and stuff they have over there, you know, it's really, really good. And we also wanted to thank Via and Elon and JCC for helping us out with the parking, which I know is definitely a challenge. We also, one last thank you to the wonderful people back there at Nowcast SA, who are making sure that people who couldn't make it out here today can still be a part of this event and get the information that we're gonna be putting out there today. So a round of applause for Nowcast. They're wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Nobody came out here to hear me talk today, although I imagine it's a wonderful surprise for most of you. So I'll go ahead and introduce our town hall segment that we're going to do here. So the format of this event, we're gonna start off with a town hall about transportation, featuring some fantastic panelists. And then we're gonna move into the councilman state of the district address, which is sort of the big event here. So I'd like to introduce our panelists. We've got Marina Gavito from TechBlock. We have Jeff Arndt from Via. Big Via presence here today, wonderful. We've got Doug Melnick from City of San Antonio. And finally, our Bear County commissioner for precinct three, Mr. Kevin Wolf. So our moderator is going to be councilman Nirenberg. He is going, this town hall is going to address the future of multimodal transportation and some of the challenges that come along with it. The panelists are gonna give opening and closing statements. And they're also going to answer questions submitted ahead of time by the audience that you all have submitted. I don't know if it was actually you or other people, but they're gonna answer your questions. So I would like to, without further ado, hand it over to our councilman and moderator, Ron Nirenberg. Good afternoon, everybody. We lowered the blinds so you wouldn't see how beautiful the day was out here. But I know it took you a while to get here, so thank you for being here to address this most difficult issue for San Antonio. If we think about how fast San Antonio is growing and just how big we've already become, it really boils down to how you feel about the way you travel around town. So this is a really fitting conversation that we're gonna have with some very distinguished experts in our community. I do want to recognize a few other people in the crowd, though, our CEO for the Hispanic Chamber, Romero Cobasos is here. NEISD, board of trustee member, and also a spouse to Kevin Wolf. Sandy Wolf is here. The director, executive director of SA2020, who is also another sponsor of this event, is here, Molly Cox. And one of my favorite San Antonians, a tri-chair of the SA Tomorrow effort and former director of SA2020, Darrell Bird is here as well, thank you Darrell. And to recognize the significant contributions in making this event possible, we have UTSA, as well as Security Service Federal Credit Union, one of the major employers in District 8 is also here. So I'll start with the opening statements from each of our panelists, and I'll start with a guy who probably has been working in this area the longest and probably ad nauseam for him at this point, Kevin Wolf, our precinct three county commissioner, to talk a little bit about just open statements about the future of transportation in San Antonio. Let's see, transportation. Obviously one of the biggest, most important things in our community. First elected in 2005, and I've had the pleasure, I guess, of serving on our MPO, Metropolitan Planning Organization. We as a community are in what I will call transition. We haven't quite reached our threshold of pain. Let me explain that. My wife and daughter and I used to live in Manhattan. And when we moved to Manhattan, we decided we had to keep at least one vehicle. And of course I had to keep the four-wheel drive expedition. At any rate, it cost us $750 a month to park it four blocks away. I used it one time to go out to a site on Long Island 35 miles away, and it took me three and a half hours to drive there. It was at that point in our lives where we reached our threshold of pain. We got rid of the car and I fell in love with mass transportation and enjoyed my ride on the six train and the E train to work every morning. We're not there as a community yet. We're getting there. And the more we don't plan long term for mass transportation, the faster we're going to get to that threshold of pain. So for all of those folks and I'm one of them who really, really want expansion of our highways and our roads, long term we really have to be thinking about how do we expand our use of multimodal and mass transportation. Otherwise, you're gonna feel like Sandy and Sydney and I did in New York and that's not a nice feeling. And Doug, real quick before you start, I keep seeing people that you all should know. I don't want to recognize Katie Reed and ISD, Northside Independent School to Board. Board member, Tessie, Katie Reed and her husband, Jim, who is the president of the San Antonio Medical Foundation are also here. Thank you both. I'm Doug Mellon, the Chief Sustainability Officer for the city of San Antonio. And first I would just like to thank Councilman Narenberg and all of you for taking the time to come out to have this conversation. It's really transportation is perhaps the most critical aspect of our long term sustainability. My office focuses on sustainability which covers water quality, air quality, equity, affordable housing, it's everything and it all ties down to transportation, how we move about our community and how we connect to services and resources. And we have a critical decision to make. We know that population is increasing significantly over the next 20 to 30 years and we need to ask ourselves, is the status quo going to suffice? We know that there are some beginning pain points right now but we need to understand that those perhaps are going to get worse and are there other options? The other thing I just wanna mention very briefly that this isn't just about transportation, it's about health, it's about access to jobs and resources for all of our citizens, it's also about economic competitiveness. We are in a global competition and we are competing for jobs and talents and people and people are looking at us to see where we stand and we need to ask ourselves is what we're presenting good enough? And so I think I really look forward to this conversation. I've only been here to be in here for two years so I'm not gonna speak to you but I have a lot of impressions of a lot of good things going on here that we can build off of. So I'm very excited about these conversations. Thank you. I'm gonna keep introducing people. I'm gonna introduce Bonnie and Charlie because they're part of my speech so I'll say that for later but we also have here Diane Rath who's the executive director. New executive director who's really done a tremendous job for bringing this organization back from the brink really for ACOG, our executive director, Diane Rath is here as well. And Pat, I introduced you, Pat, didn't I? Okay, you're on my list here. So Pat DiGivani, the executive director of Centro also known as the Dantan Alliance is here. Thank you, Pat. Jeff, go ahead, I'm sorry. All right, first of all, is this working? Okay, first of all, I was a little worried when you said about the person who's been doing it the longest. Thank goodness you went to come. It's time now for a commercial. So many of you are wearing a button, ride via and vote and it's partly through the leadership of Councilman Nirenberg that this came before our board but everyone needs to know that on Tuesday, on election day with your voters registration card that becomes your pass. All day passed to ride via and we thank you for raising that to us. So it's a great, great opportunity for people and it removes one possible obstacle to getting people to the polls. So that's my commercial. Yeah, thank you. And I want to say Commissioner Wolfe said we're in a time of transition and the first seven letters is transit. So that's perfectly appropriate. So I'd like you to, one of the challenges when we talk about these kinds of things is that we live in the here and now and sometimes it's hard to imagine what that future might look like. So I'm gonna try and kind of paint that for you. If you close your eyes and think of Austin right now, think of the traffic in Austin. Many of you have been in the freeways but even on the roadways and now imagine all those cars being dumped in our highways right now. That's kind of where we would be because the number of people moving into this area is about the same as the population of Austin is today. So we will have Austin plus San Antonio traffic. So it's not a small thing. It's not something you build your way out of. We have been at VIA really delighted to be part of the essay tomorrow process. One element of essay tomorrow is a multimodal transportation plan and we've been building our vision 2040. And let me just give you a quick overview of that and we may have further discussion but the planners are always gonna tell you oh there are three pillars or whatever the planner speak is but I'm gonna, you'll remember this. We are baking a cake and the first piece of the cake because it's carrot cake. The first piece of the cake is your bus system, your fundamental bus system because you can't have a cake without the cake, right? And so our fundamental bus system is like carrot cake. It's got some BRT, some Primo service. Those are like the raisins and nuts. It's a dense system. It's not like angel food, it's a carrot cake. So that's your basic bus system. Your next layer is the cream cheese icing which quite frankly I love but I do have to have some cake to go with it. The next layer is our rapid transit layer and that is where we have dedicated rights of way, dedicated places for transit to travel. That could be a BRT at a bus rapid transit, I'm sorry, at a higher level than Primo. Primo right now is in traffic. It gets into the congestion so it could be buses in their own roadways if you will or it could be light rail. But so now we have a carrot cake with cream cheese icing and then on the top we're gonna put sliced strawberries and that is our technology label layer and that's where we put things like van pool, like ride share, like bike share, all the kinds of things that then can tie the system together and that's our vision for 2040 but we're trying to solve this problem that I just described, Austin being slapped down on San Antonio and it's something that we have to sometimes work hard at seeing because what we see today is just what we drive in today and sometimes we think well it's not that bad but it's gonna be exactly what I described. So we at VIA are trying to contribute part of the solution to that added people, added trip making, added congestion. Thank you. Hi, I'm Marina Aldera Tecavito. I'm the executive director of TechVlog and I'm gonna piggyback off of what Doug was saying about how we need to attract the new workers coming in town. I think transportation is critically important for that. If we're looking at attracting a knowledge worker, an innovation worker, young skilled talent, these people look for things like walkability and multimodal transportation. That's critical for them in order to decide what city to move to and so I think San Antonio is in a place of transition but it's a very, very important time for us to get transportation right so that way we can attract the next generation of young tech skilled talent. Great. So I'll address the first question I have and feel free to go ahead and start whoever wants to. You don't have to answer all of the questions for everybody but as you see fit, what do you see as the biggest challenge facing transportation in San Antonio and what do you see as the biggest opportunity? I'll start. I think one of the biggest challenge is the ease and quickness of our transportation options. I'll give you an example. So there's this app called Ride Scout and it tells you all the different modes of transportation you can take from point A to point B. So for instance, I loaded Ride Scout earlier and said how long would it take me to get to the Pearl? It says driving, it'll take me 17 minutes, I think it was. Biking, it'll take me an hour. To get on a bus, it'll take me right at 52 minutes and I would have to change a bus three times and all that kind of stuff. So you can see with the different options, it gets just a little bit more complex, it's just more time consuming. So I think if I were able to take a bus quickly, that could get me to the Pearl in 20, 30 minutes, that's an option I would take. One of the other problems I think that we have is that we have different hubs in San Antonio. We have the downtown hub, we have Pearl, we have UTSA. We need a good connection system between them. And so I know we're working on that, but people need to be able to transfer from UTSA to St. Mary's campus to downtown easily and quickly. I'm gonna pick up on the fact that a challenge we have is the way the city is built. We were built around a car, there's no doubt about that. And so having been built around a car, it's sometimes difficult to get other solutions to work. And that is, if we continue building that way, it will limit what other solutions can be applied. The opportunity we have is that we do have a lot of opportunity for infill development, for building neighborhoods, sustainable neighborhoods, which I will hand this to you in just a second, Doug. You can pick up on that. So that's the opportunity. The other challenge we have, I think, particularly with respect to building out a transit system is that we spent 65 years building a very robust roadway highway system. And a lot of resources, and I can promise you, you had to build it today, it would not be cheap, but we've built it over time. We haven't really spent any significant money in this region building a high capacity transit system. And so when you start building that high capacity transit system today, you look at those dollars and you think, wow. But if you looked at the dollars, it would take you to build the freeway system. That was pretty significant too. So I think you have both of those challenges. You have the challenges of making the city and the transportation network work together for a sustainable community. And then you're always gonna have funding, whether it's roadways or transit. So because we're passing the mic to Doug, Doug, let me focus this question for you then because Jeff mentioned something that I think we need to discuss, and this cuts to the heart of our comprehensive planning activities, which is the way the city is built. So talk a little bit about what SA Tomorrow is attempting to do to integrate how our city is being built with the needs and obstacles and challenges and opportunities for transportation. So I'm a planner by training and there's this bumper sticker that's been around for ages and it's a person driving ready to go ballistic. There's traffic behind them and so clearly there's a traffic issue and the tagline is it's the land use stupid. And so it's not just a transportation issue. It's a land use issue. So what SA Tomorrow is, it's a three pronged planning process that the city of San Antonio has been working on. It includes a comprehensive plan led by our planning department that covers land use, urban design, the physical environments of San Antonio. It includes a transportation plan, which looks how do we move people around the city between employment centers, between residential areas, between services and institutional areas. And it includes a sustainability plan which provides a framework for quantifying the social, economic, and environmental goals that we have as a community. And so I think I started thinking about what the challenges that we have is that change is difficult. And I think what we're experiencing here isn't any different from any other community that has gone through this. The opportunity is these discussions that we're having now. It is the SA Tomorrow process. And I ask you all to get engaged in that process because the goal is we can start sending some long-term priorities and start planning for making these changes so we can get ahead of this growth that's coming and we don't have to react at the end of the day. I'm not sure if that answered your question. Doug, you know everybody loves good land use planning until you're starting a plan for their land. Yeah, we have a saying in my office, start with the ideal and work back to the real. Great ideal. Let's talk a little bit about the real. Revenue is the biggest problem for transportation. MPO has a 25-year plan with over $20 billion of projects in it. Projects that need to be done just to keep up with our growth. Over that same timeframe, we will collect less than $7 billion. It doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that there's a huge gap in between those numbers. And so what you see happen all the time, I think correctly so, is we try our best to prioritize what sort of transportation projects we're going to do. So if you ask me what is the biggest long-term problem in regards to transportation, it's how we fund it or more importantly, how we don't fund it. So let's stop right there for a second, Kevin, because a lot of people I'm sure drove on Worsbach Parkway to get here. And if you are just driving east of Northwest Military, it's great. It's wonderful. For all the folks that live west of Northwest Military, they're wondering, well, what happened to us? Why aren't we getting some relief? So talk to us a little bit. You were in the lion's den so to speak with regard to how this project got funded, why some of it got funded and others didn't. Tell us, illustrate that revenue problem that you just mentioned. You bet. I'll give you the short version of this story. Some of you folks have heard it before. Most of you who are from around here for any length of time have known that Worsbach Parkway has been a project since the late 80s. There was about four miles left to do and that was that stretch over 281. Now for those of you again who have been here for a while, used to be at 281 and 410, you'd pull up to it and there was no interchange. And the thought in your mind was who's the idiot who decided not to put an interchange here, right? Apparently that same idiot was around when they did 1604 and 281. So I promised myself that if I were ever elected to office, I would hunt down and kill the idiot. Four or five years ago, we get a call from Textot to come and do presentations for projects up at the Transportation Commission. I go, I'm sitting there in a room about this size with about this many people, but every single one of them was an elected from somewhere across the state. Whether they were a state senator or state rep, a council person, a mayor, a county judge, a commissioner, six congressmen, you get the idea. And they were all there to do the same thing I was doing and that's pitch one project because Transportation Commission had $500 million to give out. And I didn't figure there was any way that they were gonna pick the one I was presenting, but I get up there and I speak my three minutes on Worstbock Parkway and the need to complete it. And I decide I'm not gonna sit there the rest of the day and listen to everybody else say the same thing I do about their major important projects in their areas. And I drive back to San Antonio. And right before I get back to San Antonio, I get a call from a Textot staff person and she says, congratulations, commissioner. Worstbock Parkway was chosen. And I'm like, this is tremendous. This is great. And you don't understand the community is gonna love this. It's gonna relieve traffic off of 410 and 1604. And she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I said, no, no, I mean, it's terrific. It really is. And she goes, that's fine, commissioner. Where do you want us to send $140 million? I said, wait a minute. That's a $200 million project. And she goes, yeah, I know. I said, well, no, you need to send us $200 million, not $140 million. And she said, commissioner, do you want the money or not? So when you drive over that new flyover on 281 in Worstbock Parkway and you wonder who the idiot was that decided not to put an interchange at there, it's me. Unfortunately, it's a true story. But I tell it to you as a really good example of what happens when you're trying to fund projects. The councilman mentioned specifically going from military down to I-10. There are plans for that. Anybody who lives along that area will hate them. Anywhere from an upper deck to a taking of property, including half of St. Matthew's Church parking lot in order to do expansion. Or better yet, let's take all of those stop lights and make them right turns only. So all of those are planned and talked about. But then you go back to what I was talking about earlier and it's a funding issue. It's a revenue issue. So any one of those three plans could be done. All of them have very different costs. Every single one of them would make people so angry, especially if you live along that corridor. It doesn't mean we're not gonna do everything we can. There are a lot of other smaller activities that we can do and we're working on those now. But I tell you those stories just so you have a point in time and an example of the struggles that we go through in order to try to get these things as best we can. So the challenge of moving people and moving people on fewer vehicles is still remains with us if we're not willing to pave over Elm Creek. So what do you think needs to be done? What do we have to do in San Antonio for more people to leave their cars or choose to drive at a different time or consider transit? All right, so first of all, I wanted to respond to Commissioner Wolf. I don't think anybody here would say that you were an idiot for accepting that sum of money. The idiot would have said, no thank you, I don't want any of it. So I don't think that that's an idiot by any stretch of the imagination and I wanna tell everybody here that I've seen Commissioner Wolf in action with tech stock commissioners bringing money for I-10 or for 281 and so he knows it's a challenge and because he's right there fighting for it. So take credit for that. All right, now I'm gonna talk a little bit about what I think it might take to get people to move into transit. So I think it's a pretty straightforward thing and I think all of you will agree. So what would make you take transit? Well, first of all, you'd probably wanna make sure it was reliable that it got you where you needed to go. Second of all, you probably wanna be fairly frequent. You don't wanna have to wait an hour for a bus, right? And if you just miss a connection and transit is full of connections because buses typically travel in a fixed route and they're not gonna make a turn necessarily where you go. If you just miss a connection and you have to wait another hour, that's why you get the kinds of travel time you see there. So you need frequency and then the thing you probably would like most of all is if you could be competitive with your car travel time. So if you got into the bus at Stone Oak, up in Stone Oak, you got in downtown about the same time it took you to get in your car and if you could beat that time, even better. So now I'm going to tell you a story from my days in Houston and what got me into a car because when I moved to Houston from San Jose, California, I had no air conditioning in my car. What a fool. Uh. Didn't need it in San Jose but in any case I had no air conditioning in my car and my wife and I, we were only married six months and we survived it only because of transit. My wife and I would carpool in this un-air conditioned car on the freeway into town and we would sit there in the congestion with the window down. So not only were we stuck in congestion and hot but all the exhaust was coming into our car. It was the ideal circumstance for newlyweds. In the lane right next to us, there was an, or right next to us was an HOV lane. It was contraflow lane at the time but a high occupancy vehicle lane. So it was open to buses and vans at the time and later carpools. And we would sit in that congestion and we would see that bus go by and wouldn't be stopped with us. In fact, it never stopped until it got downtown and then on top of it, adding insult to injury, the windows were all frosted with condensation from the air conditioning that was keeping those people cool. So it didn't take me a long time. Now I want you to know at that time I was a traffic engineer. I worked on traffic signal timing and all kinds of car related stuff. So that was really what my background was, a civil engineering degree but about a year later I had the opportunity to go into public transportation because I was so excited about that. And I can tell you that in San Antonio, we run a limited number of express type routes. They run about every 20 minutes at the peak and they're in mixed flow traffic. And so you're not getting a huge benefit for that. But if you were in Houston and you were going by the traffic and you were in an air conditioned vehicle, for me, the demand grew to the point where we were running articulated buses. That's the Premo type bus with the Bendible Center. We were running articulated buses every three minutes, a three minute frequency. Now let me tell you, that's a thing that's gonna be appealing to somebody who's gonna be willing to leave their car behind. If you know that you go out to a bus stop and your average weight is 90 seconds for a bus, you're gonna find that acceptable. And then when that bus gets on an HOV lane and it goes by all the congestion, gets you out there faster, you're gonna find that acceptable. You're gonna find that attractive. And so it is this combination of frequency and having a right of way, having that through way, which an HOV lane, a dedicated bus rapid transit or a light rail type project, those are the kinds of things that really start attracting the people who have a choice in how they get around. And so it's that combination of things. Just to add to that, yes, I think it needs to be convenient and quick. Absolutely agree with all your points. But I also think one, we need to highlight that public transportation is cost effective for most people. I lived in Chicago while I was getting my MBA and my cost, my monthly transportation cost was $75 for a CTA pass, which was unlimited rides on the bus and the trains. And then I would plan for around $50 in caps for like when I was going out at night or whatever. And so 125 max, 150 monthly transportation costs. Then I moved back to San Antonio and I have a car payment and insurance and gas and washing the car. And I mean, if I could give up my car today, I absolutely would. And there's actually a lot of people with the same mindset as me. I mean, one, it's environmentally friendly. Two, I just don't want the payment. I don't want the household and car. And if I had a public transportation system that I knew was convenient and quick and easy, that would get me from point A to point B then done. One of the other things too that I absolutely loved is that I would take in Chicago, I lived downtown but worked out by O'Hare Airport. So I'd take two buses and a train. And the train would go right in the middle of the highway and you would see cars just for miles, just bumper to bumper on the highway and here we were just speeding by on the train. I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but I think a lot of people see San Antonio and Austin as the next tech hub of the United States. It's the next Silicon Valley. And Light Rail is just a linchpin. We just need more transportation options between us so that we can connect our cities better. Yeah, go ahead. And just very quickly, so we can get on to the next question, Councilman. To get people out of transit, it's not just about transit, it's about an interconnected system. Once I get off that bus, great. How can I get to my next destination? So it's connected and sufficient sidewalks. It's being able to use bike share, ride share, car share, buses can't go everywhere. So how are we gonna get people to and throw their final destination? So that's part of the puzzle. I just wanted to add one thing, which is, okay, so you're probably sitting there thinking, so Mr. Arndt, do you know what it takes? Why don't you just do it? Maybe you're an idiot, huh? Well, part of the challenge that we face here in San Antonio with respect to public transportation is the fact that of the four MTAs, big MTAs in the state of Texas, we're the only half-scent sales tax property in the state. And not only are we the only half-scent sales tax property in the state, but that half-scent generates only about a quarter of what Dallas and Houston generate. So Dallas has a service area that's about 40% the size of ours, and Houston has a service area that's almost identical to our size. That usually surprises people, but Via and Houston Metro have about the same size service area. So I use, obviously you know that I like food. I'm gonna use another, I'm gonna use a peanut butter sandwich story. So you got two pieces of bread. That's Houston and that's San Antonio. The two pieces of bread are pretty much the same size. And San Antonio has this much peanut butter and Houston has that much peanut butter to spread on that piece of bread to provide service throughout the region. And in the end, which sandwich are you gonna wanna eat? And that's really the long and short of it, is that we are the least funded transit property in the state, which is why Dallas and Houston were able to introduce a light rail system without taking a money from the federal government or from a city or from a county or from anybody because they were able to effectively set up a savings account with all the dollars they received. And that's why Dallas today has the largest light rail system in the United States. And those dollars helped them draw down federal dollars. But we really exist on dollars that pay for the basic service. We don't have those dollars really available to draw down. And so I mean really what the commissioner said is true. It's the funding. So I can tell that Commissioner Wolfe is about to jump out of his chair right now. So I wanna throw it back to reality for a second and ask him to comment a little bit about the reality of where we are with transit and the culture in San Antonio. Light rail failed on a citywide ballot referendum in 2000. Streetcar proposal failed in 2014 and the charter now requires a citywide vote for any city money to be utilized for a streetcar or light rail project. Do you think that all mass transit projects are doomed? Do you, do San Antonio residents just object to the idea of mass transit options? You know we think in the state of Texas that it's our God given right to have a driver's license by the time we're age 15. I know I do. And it's very hard to convince us to get out of our vehicles. Every time a rail project has come up whether it's light rail, streetcar, et cetera it is always fought tooth and nail. Do I think that San Antonio will always feel that way? No, I do not. However, I think we have to be a lot more strategic in how we start to think about these things. The judge and I argued over this when he was pushing the streetcar. I said, why this? Why not something like rail between the airport and downtown? You hear that? Okay. Okay. So that's what I mean by, let's be a little more strategic in how we start to propose these things because for streetcars an example it was one small segment of our community. And when you look at the areas that you represent and I represent, 90% of my constituents are outside Loop 410. They really don't care about a streetcar downtown but they would care about rail between the airport and downtown. Better yet, let's be fiscally conservative about it. Rail reuse. There's a UP line that's fixing to come open that runs from downtown San Antonio all the way out to Leon Springs. That'd be a lot less expensive than to build brand new light rail. So I do think that San Antonio at some point in Bear County will be open to this but we've got to be a lot more strategic in how we do it. Let's not forget that any mass transportation on average has to be subsidized by about 70%. I'll give you one of the greatest mass transportation systems I've ever seen in Madrid. Wonderful. You've got the suburbs where a train comes in. It ends up at a subway station or a bus station where you have automatic transfer and it's a multimodal. I mean, it's wonderful. And I asked them, I said, how do you do this? And they said, well, we subsidize it to 82% and we control 60% of the land. Good luck with that. Okay? So that's me putting a little more reel around it. And I'll go back to my opening remarks. Threshold of pain. Until this community really starts to reach its threshold of pain, it's gonna be very hard to make the changes. It does not mean we shouldn't be planning long term for those changes. We absolutely should. But it's going to be very hard to make those changes until our threshold of pain continues to increase. So let me get to Jeff now because if I've learned anything about Jeff Arndt and his team, some of which used to work at district eight that he's taken over there is that they are very strategic and they've been working on a vision and a strategy now for the better part of the last year and a half, two years. Jeff, what's Via's vision for the next 25 years? It's a carrot cake. It's the carrot cake vision, my friend. Well, let me ask you it a different way then because if you talk to my neighbors who travel on Worsbok out to I-10 in the morning to drop their kids off or to go to work, that threshold of pain has already arrived. So what is Via planning to do about it? So what we, as I said before, we are not funded to build a high capacity system right now. So in the short term, most of our investments are going to be in finding ways to speed up our buses or to put in services like commuter type services where at least it would be non-stop and you would have those benefits and to increase the frequency on our main line services so that they're more attractive. So we're really challenged beyond that financially to do a whole lot more. But we do have in our plans, we have Park and Ride Lots ringing 16.04 so we have one planned at 151 and 16.04 on 10 north of 16.04, 281 north of 16.04 at Stoneup, which we're about to begin building and then over by Rolling Oaks Mall. So a ring of Park and Rides that would have direct service. We're building a network of connections. So many of you have seen the Plaza at Via Via which is down by the historic train station where a lot of the services come together. We're about to enter into an agreement we believe with Brook City Base, for example, I know it's a different part of town, but building those kinds of connections where you have a location you either drive to or take a bus to and then we express you. So in the short term, that's what we're looking at. That's why we have to really look long term as far as being able to build up the resources and the support, if you will, for to make sure that we have the opportunity to put icing on our cake, if you will. Right, and let me shift gears. Before we get out of our cars entirely, let's talk a little bit more about cars and I want to ask Marina, what, tell us a little bit more about TechBlock, its mission, how you got involved, what your transportation agenda is and how you see technology impacting the way we can move around in our single occupancy vehicles in the future. Sure, so a little bit about TechBlock. TechBlock formed last May and what happened was a couple of techy people got together and we were to put it nicely agitated with some of the decisions our city leaders were making regarding rideshare, such as Uber and Lyft. We said, hey, rideshare helps out cities so much. One, it means that we're open for innovation. Two, it reduces drunk driving. Three, it has a ton of benefits. But anyways, we said, let's see how many kind of techy, forward-thinking folks there are in town like us and we had an event at Southerly at the Pearl and we would have been happy if 200 people showed up and instead we had 1,000 people show up and party shut down by the fire marshal, that's when you know it's really good party. But it spoke to the need, you know, that the tech industry in San Antonio needed to organize itself and come together and advocate for issues that are important to us. You know, we're also gonna be advocating a lot for Lone Star Rail, I mean, that project's been 20 plus years in the planning process and we're saying, hey, we just need to connect to Austin. Austin will benefit from connecting to San Antonio and we're gonna benefit from connecting to Austin. But back to your question about what role technology plays in transportation's future. I mean, we also see Austin have Google self-driving cars there. You know, I mean, we would love to kind of piggyback off that and bring Google self-driving cars to San Antonio. And I know the thought of self-driving cars make some people uncomfortable like, what, a car is just driving itself. And I think it's gonna be a transition. It's gonna take some of us, some getting used to. But, you know, and I don't know all the statistics. I mean, I hear that it's so much safer because, you know, it's obviously rid of human error and stuff like that. But I think technology's just gonna play a role in bringing autonomous vehicles to life. I mean, I don't think it's gonna be very far in the future where we are gonna see autonomous vehicles all over the city. I think it's awesome because, one, to me it would rid of parking garages downtown. Like if I have a car, come pick me up and take me to work, you know, then that reduces the need for parking garages downtown or as many parking garages. Then I wouldn't also need a car and your garage becomes a bonus room. You wouldn't need a driveway and you could have more lawn space. Like, there's all of these things that would be so nice if you didn't own a car or didn't have to worry about a car. Obviously I'm talking about several years in the future, but my hope is that it comes quicker, sooner rather than later. And let me ask Doug then a similar question. Autonomous vehicles were thought of as a thing of the future five years ago. Now they're actually being piloted in Austin. They're software that are updating Teslas that drive autonomously now in some areas. What is SA Tomorrow, our comprehensive planning effort which is supposed to be forward thinking and anticipating these new opportunities. What are we doing about that future? Technology in general or? Technology in general and specifically autonomous vehicles. I think there's a national movement around something called smart cities. And it's basically how do we use technology for local governments or county governments to provide more efficient services, more transparent services. I think all three plans that are part of the SA Tomorrow process are really looking at what role does technology play. And specifically to self-driving cars. You know, again, I think it is something that is being piloted now in Austin. We are looking at it. You know, I think what we're looking at right now in my office and working with our transportation department, while we are looking at self-driving cars, we are looking at some sort of real transportation and technology options around how we use our existing traffic signal network to tie it to real time information that can be provided by Google. So we can basically really find out where traffic congestion is occurring and directly modify those signals immediately. So while we are looking at self-driving cars, we think there's a technology there now that's going to really impact us right away. So it's self-driving cars, you know, I'm sort of... So we're looking, I'm talking about technology that may be here in who knows when 2025. Let's talk about technologies that's been here since the 1700s or way before that. Bicycles. Bicycles. Anybody, when was the bicycle invented? I just made something up, but it was a long time ago. So talk to us about what do we have in place now? What are we doing to leverage our B-Cycle program in our hike and bike trails? I think biking is really, I really want to say it's an untapped opportunity here. Again, I've only been here for two years and these two years that I've been here, I've seen a growth in biking in the community and it's broken up into a couple of different segments. There's the recreational biking that's occurring as well as there is a commuter opportunity. What we have is a bike master plan, a document's about this thick and it basically covers every possible route that we could envision. What we need to do and what we are doing as part of the essay tomorrow process is fine tuning that. Where do we start building the spines of a network? How do we start connecting the greenways into neighborhoods and to downtown so we can start providing more opportunities for people to get out of their cars and use this transportation option? Again, it's a long-term process but it's coming up to the commissioner's point, it's developing that long-term plan and starting to chip away from it. In terms of B-Cycle, we are the first city in Texas to have a B-Cycle program. It's a bike share program. Basically, anybody can walk up to a station downtown. You can rent a bike, go right around for recreation or to a particular destination and you check it back in. We've got 55 stations, 450 bikes. The real opportunity here is as we start creating this interconnected mass transit system where somebody can take a bump, for instance, downtown, leave their car home. If they need to go to a meeting downtown, they can check a bike out, go to the meeting and bring it back. So it's again, it's part of an interconnected bike share and transportation network. One thing that I'll add about kind of transportation via B-Cycle is that we need to make sure it's safe. I'm a marathon runner and I run all throughout this neighborhood and putting me right next to a 30,000-pound car is just not fun. So I'm sure B-Cycle is still the exact same. So whether it's having a running and biking lane and then a parking lane and then the street, like something like that, just put any sort of barrier between me and a moving car would be awesome. Kevin, I'm gonna go back to you for a second because you mentioned and actually a couple of people now have mentioned this thing called Lone Star Rail. Explain to us what that is, how it's supposed to work and how it fits into the broader conversation about transportation and sustainability. And then I'd like to have Doug talk a little bit about it as well. You know, the problem with the counseling is he knows I can't resist answering direct questions. First off though, I'll tell you, Jeff, you wanna know where some of your sales tax is? Eighth of a cent is in pre-K. Anyway. Um... Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Lone Star Rail, a project for at least the last 15 years, the idea that's railed between San Antonio and Austin. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on, you ask people, everybody says, rail between Austin and San Antonio is a good idea. However, once you get beyond that good idea and you start to ask, okay, how much will it cost and where are the dollars going to come from? That's when all the question marks start to come up. So, depending upon who you listen to, the cost of doing that rail today would be somewhere between two and a half to four and a half billion dollars. There has been zero dollars spent on capital infrastructure over 15 years. However, we have as a community, a larger community between here and Austin, spent over 30 some odd million dollars in talking about Lone Star Rail. You will notice in the paper about three weeks ago, UP, which Lone Star Rail was counting on, was completely dependent upon utilizing their right-of-way, at least sharing it, essentially said not ever gonna happen. Lone Star Rail as a project had expanded over time from between Austin and San Antonio to 19 stops between Austin and San Antonio. Remember, the idea was to provide quicker transportation between the two major cities. Now all of a sudden, you might as well take your car on 35 a day, because it's gonna take you as much time on that rail project. It is my opinion that Lone Star Rail, as a project, just got killed when UP said, no way will we give you, sell or share our right-of-way. That doesn't mean that the idea of rail between Austin and San Antonio is dead. In fact, there's already talk about, all right, why don't we use the existing right-of-way along 130 and do rail between Bergstrom and San Antonio Airport. Now all of a sudden, that starts to make a little more sense, because right now, Bergstrom as an airport is doing much better than San Antonio as an airport. Now all of a sudden, maybe you've got, we'll call it a regional airport connected by Direct Rail, which would be a lot faster than driving on 35 or even SH-130. Another option is looking at Amtrak, who already runs rail once a day from San Antonio to Chicago. What are the possibilities of them increasing their frequency from San Antonio to Austin? So, while I think Lone Star Rail as an overall project in its current form is not viable, that doesn't mean that some sort of rail between Austin and San Antonio can't be done. I mean, I think all I can add to that is, in terms of our long-term sustainability, air quality, economic vitality, transportation options, some sort of interconnected rail system should still be evaluated and a priority. Again, how it comes about is the challenge, but there are significant costs, but I think we really need to evaluate it based upon what the cumulative benefits, but it is going to be a challenge to come about. Marina, do you want to comment on that because y'all have pivoted to that issue? Yeah, heard about kind of Lone Star Rail in the current form, kind of not fizzling out, if you will. But I mean, our opinion was a reboot almost needed to happen because it was a 20-plus year project and just not a lot of stuff getting done, so I'm excited about us visiting different options. I think for us, all we need is San Antonio and Austin to be connected. How that comes about is yet to be determined, but we just needed it to happen, and we almost needed it to happen yesterday. And let me ask one question that we didn't get to because the most classic form of getting to from point A to point B is using your feet. What are we doing in the city of San Antonio and all of your agencies in Bear County about this initiative called Vision Zero? A city initiative, actually a national initiative that seeks to achieve zero fatalities on the roadway, be it a bike, car, or pedestrian accidents. We understand all of us that safety is the top priority for transportation, and it's the responsibility of those who build the roads to make sure that they are, in fact, safe. So who wants to take that one? Vision Zero. Yeah, I mean, really the only thing I'll say is that, yeah, it needs to be safe. Anything that puts me between a 30,000 pound moving vehicle is a good idea. This is way more than that. Yeah. Well, Via is a partner in Vision Zero, and in fact, people often is remarked that the safest vehicle to be in on the road is a Via bus. We haven't had fatality accidents in Via buses, and so we're an active partner in that. We have pursued funding from sources outside to invest in pedestrian infrastructure to support a lot of the work that the city is doing. So we've gotten money through the MPO and through TechStot. I believe we have about $31 million that we've been, we've taken $3 million and leveraged that to $31 million, so that's a pretty good investment. So we're working on improving the pedestrian infrastructure because the fact is nobody gets to the bus except by walking for the most part, unless you park, you park and ride, and then you still have to walk from the car to the bus. So we're very concerned about the pedestrian environment. The other thing that we've invested in for public safety is our shelter program. We are installing 1,000 shelters throughout the region in a two-year period. It's interesting because we were at a national conference and a board member from another city in Texas said, we're just trying to do 38 in a year and you're doing 1,002 years, pretty awesome. And we are putting solar-powered light in shelters that are not located directly adjacent to light fixtures and you can see we have a few of them on the road. So that, again, that enhances the, identifies a safe place to, and when we do that, a safe place to wait, and when we do that, we also ensure that the ADA accessibility is provided as part of that. We currently have a campaign and it is, stop looking, listen, I can remember that because I learned it in kindergarten, stop looking lesson. So every year we have a campaign that we try to drive home throughout our system because once the person gets off the bus, they're pedestrian again. And so we're concerned about what they do as a pedestrian in reaching that bus and in leaving that bus because if we have an issue, it is what happens when the person gets onto the bus or going to the bus or from the bus. And that's our big concern this year. From the city's perspective, again, Vision Zero is a tremendous priority working with VIA and other partners. City has inter-departmental coordination that's really trying to identify where those critical areas are, developing plans to identify those areas and try to make those necessary changes and really, really looking forward to as new road projects are undertaken, designing them in a way that really is going to address long-term safety for all users. You know, the reality in this community is we've actually been looking at this longer than that's been a program or a project. Go back to Howard Peak and the linear parks that we've done along our different creeks. I'll give you a perfect example of a really good one. Riverwalk used to be three miles long. It's all below street level. Today, once you add in the northern reach, the southern reach and the mission reach, it's 14 miles of walkway and bikeway below street level. So it's providing that separation in those routes because you're right, Ron, walking is another form of transportation. And I think we've done a pretty good job in doing these types of projects. I think with more push, as we've seen here recently from other areas, it brings the focus a little tighter. But it's part of our MPO plan as well. Whether it's biking, whether it's walking, whether it's mass transportation, whether it's new highway construction or road construction, we try to take that into account on MPL. Great. Well, I will close the panel, ask you to close by asking you one question that I think we really want to know at this point and give your closing remarks as you do it. Should we be optimistic about transportation in San Antonio? I'm gonna qualify this answer a little bit. You've already heard me say, you know, start with the ideal and work back to the real. And I've already told you a number of the different issues in regards to transportation and they are not small issues. They're very big issues. And while that may be depressing and dampen hope, I do personally think that we should be positive in our outlook for transportation in the future of San Antonio, specifically because as you can tell from this sitting right here and you folks out in the audience, you're paying attention. You're asking the questions. You know, what are you people doing that have an impact on day to day life of your transportation in your commute? What are you doing to make sure that you get the service that you need? So I am encouraged by that. And yeah, there's a lot of problems that we have to overcome, but just sitting here listening today gives me a lot of encouragement. I would say that yes, I think we should be optimistic and to follow up. You're all here. You know, we need to have these conversations. The one thing though I want to say though is we do need to dream that future. You know, and I know we do have, it has to be tempered with reality. But you know, when I've spoken to my peers in other cities that, you know, nationally that we can look to and say, well, they've really gotten transit right. When I've spoken to them, they said, look, you know, we've been working on this for 30 years. It wasn't, it didn't happen overnight. And so it's a combination of really thinking big, thinking what that future is that we want, and then just taking those steps forward. Nothing's going to happen right away. But you know, these million people are coming and they're going to have an impact and we're going to hit those pinch points. The question is, are we prepared and did we take the steps to handle it? So I think it's a combination of being realistic but having that big vision to really get you all where you want it to be. So I am always optimistic. But I'm particularly optimistic because of a lot of the work that came out of the essay tomorrow and part of the vision 2040. Let me tell you, there were questions on that survey where you asked the public, if you had $100 to invest, this is my favorite question. If you had $100 to invest, where would you invest? And gave them choices. You can put some of them on roadways and highways, some on buses, some on light rail, some on sidewalks, some on bicycles. And the answer back was like $32 on highways and $30 on light rail and then some dollars on the others commensurate. And I think that's pretty remarkable. It says that people are aware that we need to start changing things. That's the first thing you have to do is you have to be aware. So there's been a lot of stuff out there. I mean, all of you are aware that the entire city of Austin is about to descend on us, not literally but figuratively, and that we have to do something about it. So that makes me optimistic, first of all, that people have that kind of response. And that wasn't a VIA survey. That double makes me excited. The other thing that makes me optimistic is just the nature of San Antonio is that when this community gets behind something, they make, they do it and they do it right. I only dampen that a little bit because sometimes I think the city doesn't feel they deserve the very best and they do. The city deserves the very best. And we need to do the very best for ourselves but I have seen over and over again, I've only been here a short time as well but in the history and even in my short time that when the people here make up their mind that they want to do something, they put their mind to it and they do it the right way. So I think the combination of the awareness, the openness to these changes and the value of the city, the value of the people of the city bring to the city and they can do attitude. I think those three things in combination makes one optimistic. Thank you. So I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm optimistic because I think we are talking about great ideas but I think we all need to have a bias for action and I think that there's a huge sense of urgency around this. One, because San Antonio needs to be attractive to a young, skilled workforce. If you all have kids or grandkids who have moved away out of San Antonio, you want them back and you want San Antonio to be an attractive place for them to come back to. After I graduated from St. Mary's, I moved to Chicago and I came back because of my family and I got a good job at Rackspace but San Antonio is gonna need to have a vibrant, urban core and walkability and be a very cool city where people can see themselves, where young people can see themselves living and building their family here. So I think that we have, or at least I feel that we need to have a huge sense of urgency around this. Yes, I understand that this can't be built overnight but we need to start having things in progress so people can say, oh, you know what? They are creating a connection between San Antonio and Austin. That place is gonna boom soon and start moving and gravitating over here. So I'm excited about it. Like I said, I think all great ideas but I kind of want to get moving on it. All right, well thank you to our panelists. Everybody give them a round of applause. Thank you all for enlightening us with your perspectives on transportation. Obviously we can agree that this is the number one challenge of growth in San Antonio. We appreciate you spending some time to talk with us about it. Stand up in stress if you want. We're almost done. I'll be back in a second. We're headed to the restroom. Please come back in four minutes. We'll get started right at that time. Folks, we're gonna start up again in about just a couple of minutes so if everybody can get those last minute refreshments and find your seats, we're gonna start up again in just one or two minutes. All right, thank you. All right, if everybody can start finding their way back to their seats, we are going to start back up here. Everybody find their way to their seats. If everybody can find their way back to their seats, we're gonna go ahead and get started again. All right, which one's doing it? I'll do a little bit. All right, it looks like most people have been able to successfully find their seats. Some people are still struggling with finding their seats. Well, we are going to jump right back into it. All right, let's have another round of applause real quick for our panelists. Wasn't they wonderful, weren't they great? I mean, that was not the most cheerful panel and I'm hungry for carrot cake, but I think that we can all agree that it was very informational. So they did a great job. Real quickly, I just wanna mention something else that we've got going on here. We're going to have neighborhood workshops coming up this week for Essay Tomorrow, our comprehensive plan. So that's gonna be Thursday, March 3rd at Two-Yard. We've got from two to four and from six to eight, we're gonna have these comprehensive planned neighborhood workshops. So there's over there on that table, you can see there's handouts for those. So obviously, when everybody be a part of the comprehensive plan or else it wouldn't be comprehensive. So check that out and we'll get those going this week. Now I would like to welcome to our podium here somebody who's a very good friend of mine, the student body president at UTSA. She's also chair of the San Antonio Higher Education Representative Assembly, which has been doing some great work to represent students in San Antonio. I'd like to welcome to introduce the councilman, Ileana Gonzalez. Thank you, Chris, for the introduction. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is so great to be out here at this amazing District 8 facility. My name is Ileana Gonzalez and like Chris said, I'm the student body president at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How I got to where I am today is quite the story. I'm originally from Guadalajara, Mexico and I moved to Texas when I was 13 years old. The transition was not a very smooth one since it's quite hard to learn a complete new language and leave your family behind. But just like there are negatives to situations, there were also a lot of positives that came over time. One of them being that I became the first one in my family to go to college in the US and hopefully also graduate this upcoming May. Did I think I would also become the student body president of the greatest university of all? I've enjoyed my tenure at UTSA more than anything and I'm so incredibly blessed to have had the mentors, advisors and friends that I have had throughout my journey. But aside from me being student body president, I'm also a very big Ron Nuremberg fan. I met Ron in 2013 when I was a freshman and he was running for city council for the first time. We were having a debate at UTSA and as usual councilman Nuremberg was the most gregarious and loquacious person in the room. I was stoked when he came up to me and introduced himself. One of the qualities I have always admired Ron for is how relatable he is to his constituents. Whether you're a student, a resident of district eight or a city official, Ron knows exactly how to make you feel like you're the only one in the room by paying close attention to what you say while he analyzes it at the same time. Since that day that I met him, councilman Nuremberg has kept in constant communication with UTSA and our student government. I don't know if he realizes how many students' lives he has changed since then, including mine. Thanks to councilman Nuremberg, I'm the youngest member of the Ethics Review Board. He appointed me to the board in August, setting the example that my voice matters. Sired to find ways to increase student participation in local government has been an inspiration to me. It served as motivation to formally ask city leaders to consider recognizing the San Antonio Higher Education Representative Assembly made up a student government association from several San Antonio universities as the city commission. I strongly feel that this would help bridge the gap between students and city government. Moreover, it would position San Antonio just one of the few cities that has to establish the connection with a student body that is eager to get involved and be represented. This work could not have been done without councilman Nuremberg's help and guidance. Since he was first elected in 2013, councilman Nuremberg has focused on issues that will move our city forward. From looking for ways to improve transportation infrastructure and ensuring the city's sustainability through environmental and economic initiatives to closing the workforce skill gap and ushering in policies that create transparency in city government and support ethics reforms. As trash chair of SA Tomorrow, he has helped guide citizen-driven strategies on housing, transportation, health and wellness, natural resources management, and economic development. In this role, he's working to ensure that the future does not take us by surprise, that we plan wisely and strategically as we accommodate for the addition of one million new people here by 2040. He also serves as a board member of the Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization where he works on region wide transportation solutions to alleviate congestion in one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the nation. But perhaps his most important role is the one he plays as a father to his son Jonah, who keeps him honest and keeps him working to create a legacy that he'll be proud to leave him. Please join me in welcoming councilman Ron Nuremberg. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you, Iliana. That was a very gracious introduction and she's doing us all proud on the ethics review board. You can be sure of that. Could I get a glass of water? I just realized I didn't bring one up here. I apologize. And first, I wanna thank our sponsors for making this event possible. You heard all their names before, so I won't belabor the point, but they really have made this day impossible by their support, not just in their resources, but also their encouragement. So thank them very much. And I do wanna thank Maria Cesar, our communications director, and Macy Hurley, who have been working overtime to make sure that this event actually is twice as big as it ever has been before and we had a wonderful panel, so thank them, please. So good afternoon friends, neighbors. It is an honor and privilege to be with you today. So let me start by taking a moment to thank our panelists again, Mr. Wolf, Doug Melnick, Marina Gvito, and Jeff Arndt. We have seen seismic shifts in the landscape of San Antonio over the past two decades, and particularly on the future of transportation where there can be no understating, the critical roles that each of them will play in the kind of city we build for ourselves, for our children, and for the world. In San Antonio, the seventh largest city in the United States with a population of almost one and a half million people, the growth has been undeniable. For those of you who live, work, or go to school and district date, you know that all too well. Our population has increased twice as fast as the rest of the city, and that puts pressure on our roads, our schools, and even the lines that our supermarkets check out counter. And trust me, my son knows that when I show up from H-E-B with a half-eaten box of H-E-Buddy cookies. As it stands today, Northwest San Antonio is still one of the most diverse and desirable places to live in Texas. It's a great place in a great city. And in a city that the state demographer tells us conservatively will double in population within 35 years, our challenge collectively is how we prepare for that future so that every family has a chance to thrive in it. In short, how can we be a better San Antonio and not just a bigger one? How can we be more effective with limited public resources so that we can be proud and confident of the city we live behind? The second question is the one I grapple with every day. It's the reason why I've continued to host kids' town halls at schools throughout our area. And just a few months ago, I walked with a group of students from Garcia Middle School along a sidewalk that they had proposed and you funded that is now getting them to school safely along Kyle C. O. Parkway in the morning. That happened because we invited them to speak up at a town hall. They did, Carpe Diem, now it's a better San Antonio for all Garcia gladiators. As you've heard me say many times before, I get the simplest yet most important job critique I will ever need from my son, Jonah. When he asked me each day if I've made the world better. He's seven now, so he's starting to learn the real nuts and bolts of my job, but it's his vision of why I do this work that remains crystal clear. So it's through Jonah's eyes and those of his peers that we can truly know if we've done our jobs well as public servants. To borrow a phrase, we should focus not only on doing a thing right, but also on doing the right thing. Thank you, Jonah, for being here today and for making me proud to be your daddy and your councilman. And there can be never enough opportunities to publicly thank my dad, Ken, who is here in the love of my life, Erica Prosper. There is a sacrifice of precious time and energy in this work as you know and you ground me, you inspire me and I love you all. And so for the people who really do the work, let me introduce the district day team and ask them to please stand so they can be recognized. TJ Mays, our chief of staff. Ray Garza, our district director. Where's Ray? Where's Ray? Maria says our communications director. Gail McDaniel, zoning director. Where's Gail? Jackie Boulds, operations, and Alice Aguirre, secretary. Are they still here? And Walter Ague and Dean Bibles, our trusted advisors. I think Dean was here earlier. And then our all-star team of interns, Macy Hurley, Zach Dunn and Patrick O'Donnell. And of course, I take every opportunity I can to recognize the friends to me and to everyone in this room. Former councilwoman Bonnie Connor, her husband Charlie, please give them a hand. Their impact continues to be felt in the district. Three years ago, when I took office for the first time, I promised you that I would be guided by three important questions. Number one, is it fiscally responsible? Two, is it fair and ethical? And three, have we done our homework? Even when the heat is on high, the District 8 team has held true to these standards, which is why we have been aggressive about our work for you in the future of our district and our city. They are working tirelessly for you and I'm privileged to be alongside them. So let's be clear. The biggest threat to the future of San Antonio is for our politics, not to take a cue from our public. You've heard me say repeatedly that District 8 and our entire city are diverse places, especially politically. On one side of the street to the other, you will find very different points of view right here in Northwest San Antonio. But if there is one message that rings clearly from Crown Ridge to Babcock North, from Tejas Trail to Springtime Road and from Hardy Oak to South Zara Hamara, for that matter, it is that our neighbors want bold action. They want smart and decisive action. In fact, you don't just want it, you demand it. And that, friends, is music to my ears. A strong city is an engaged city with active and informed citizens. In every effort we make to improve San Antonio from energy efficiency to job creation and water security, rests on our ability to get neighbors just like you involved. But when we ask neighbors to be engaged, they must be able to trust. We cannot ask them to trust in the system in which ethics and doing the right thing take a back seat. Our form of government will only work if residents have faith that its representatives are held to the highest standards of conduct. In the past decade, the city of San Antonio made great progress strengthening systems to build an ethical culture at City Hall. So when I had dissented on a vote that allowed city council to wave unilaterally and retroactively provisions to the ethics code, I did so because I shared your concern about the past government we worked so hard to leave behind in the future government that we must remain vigilant to protect. Since then I've worked with other council members to make sure that that never happens again, requesting immediate changes to city policy and strengthened ethics provisions within the city charter. These changes include a ban on retroactive immunity, bolstered independent authority for the ethics review board and ethics auditor, and more mandatory education on ethics rules. If we don't have ethics, we have nothing. It is the bedrock of a democratic government and in a city that sees turnout still in the single digits, we should seize on every opportunity to increase trust. And for the past three years, my office has also been working to make city government more accessible and more transparent. For example, council's Wednesday work sessions where we receive briefings and make policy recommendations to city staff are now televised and archived online. In January, we made available audio recordings of all city council committee meetings. Residents concerned about nearby development can access a web portal with real-time information about permit activity. By next month, you will be able to watch the live webcast of SAW's board meetings. And this year, we will add a platform that allows you to search through real-time municipal budget records to learn how the city of San Antonio is spending your hard-earned money. That's transparency. And it will be an ongoing effort because the power to verify the work of government should be the right of every citizen. But access is one thing. Focus on increasing participation is also critical. To be a healthy city for the long haul, we simply must reverse the trend of voter apathy, of well-informed neighbors staying home from the polls. We've been taking active steps to increase voter turnout in San Antonio from requesting a charter amendment to hold city elections in November of even-numbered years to working with Via on a new program to give voters free rides to the polls. Each vote cast is an investment in our future. When we stop and we listen to more of our neighbors and when our politics is held accountable by more of them, we see the future of our citizens' demand and the conversation changes. Nowhere is that more evident than in the debate about transportation in our city. I want you to think back to 2000. I mentioned this in the panel. To the year 2000, pre-911, gas prices were below even what they are today. Congestion was waiting a couple minutes to get through the light from 281 to 410 and state and federal funding flowed. Back then, people didn't see the need for more transportation options, which is partly why a ballot initiative about rail failed overwhelmingly with only 10% turnout. Fast forward to today. If we aren't listening, we'd assume the conversation hasn't changed, but has it ever? In District 8, we're no strangers to the type of congestion that brings traffic to a grinding halt. While I-10 is beginning to flow again, as with any road in a growing city, we know that it's just a matter of time before it doesn't. As we've talked about before, getting to and from I-10 or any other highway in the city for that matter is an extraordinary challenge. We could spend all of our city resources, all of them, on that alone. And for the most part, we have. The Hausman Road Project, approved by San Antonio residents in 2012, is the largest voter-approved roadway project in the history of our city. We are expecting completion this year and will transform the Tulane Country Road into a complete street with hiking and biking trails later this year. It was our signature and only bond project in District 8 from 2012. On Worsbok, I obtained funding for a study that would help us determine what kind of impact the opening of the parkway would have. And that was followed by funding in the FY 2016 budget, matched by TextDOT, to complete smaller projects that will provide relief at the intersections of Northwest Military, Lockhill, Selma, and I-H-10. The city is working double time to stay on budget and on time with construction on Worsbok, UTSA Road, Bernie Stage Road, Hebner Road, Hausman Road, and the list goes on. We are accelerating pre-construction design and engineering so that the 2017 bond program can include both Dezavala and Prue Road, and the next roads, which are both the next roads in our east-west triage, as we like to call it. And the massive off-delayed and financially complicated Fred Med separation, Fredericksburg and Medical Drive, has finally opened up travel in the medical center like a successful bypass operation. But you and I both know the patient. It may have been okay 20 years ago to enjoy a diet that consisted strictly of asphalt and rubber tires. It's cheaper at first and it feels good until you look in the mirror and you have to explain about the doctor's bill arriving. It may have been okay to let the future happen without planning until you realize your children have to deal with the consequences. Within 25 years, we will have an additional one million people living in our city. Imagine that, they're not just all moving here, they're being born here as well. That's another 500,000 vehicles. Another 500,000 housing units, another 500,000 jobs, which we hope are good ones. Data shows that commute times will increase by 75%. If we don't plan our resources accordingly and instead do the same things we've always done while expecting different results by definition, that is insanity. It would be a failure of leadership. Rather than continue to chase the ghosts of 2000, the 2000 transportation vote, or mistake a starter trolley for real transportation reform, we need to recognize a nearly universal sentiment in San Antonio and cities in across Texas. We cannot pave our way out of this problem. If we could, we would have paved over the hill country a long time ago. Instead, to ease our transportation issues, we need to define problems first, examine our resources, and then focus on solutions. Streetcar was the opposite. It was an economic development solution to a transportation problem. So what's different today? Through the San Antonio Tomorrow Plan, we're taking inventory of our challenges first and developing comprehensive solutions. The effort, which I'm proud to lead, will be built on what experts call the Polycentric Economic Center. In plain English, these are areas of high density where residents and employees have made the choice to live closer to where they work, where they drop their kids off at school, and where they shop and recreate. This is not a new concept, maybe a new label, but they've existed before. Think not only downtown, but the medical center, Brook City Base, and over a dozen developed and emerging centers across our city. Look at the IH 10-1604 intersection and district date, and you will see exactly the kind of node that we're talking about. The greenway trails and expanded transportation options will connect thousands of residents to our anchor institution of higher education. UTSA will be further connected to La Contera and the Rim, which will be further connected to some of the largest corporate partners like Newstar and Valero. A resident is literally a short walk, bike ride, or lift to her child's school, to work, or to favorite restaurants. Our public investment would be most efficient and impactful if we recognized where density exists and acknowledged that it will increase accordingly. But can you imagine our city of one and a half million people in all 500 square miles as a community of three million people? That's Jonah San Antonio when he's my age, and our decisions today need to be bold and not just adequate. Through our comprehensive planning efforts, we have identified the challenge of density, and if we're still listening, residents are pointing us to the solutions. In a five-week period in October, almost 3,000 surveys at 115 events were received by VIA around the city, highlighting 16 highly congested corridors in our area. What residents said resoundingly is they want improvement and relief stat. That means doing things differently, not putting more buses on already congested streets, not widening the road so that you're paving over your neighbor's property and waiting for the next construction project, not just throwing new money at old problems. Residents want different, they want efficient, they want sustainable. They don't want a trolley that will sit in traffic in an area of town where they'd rather walk. They'd prefer a fixed route that moves from one high-density place to another. I've been listening to our neighbors my entire time in San Antonio on this issue, and as your neighbor and as your councilman. If we consider our current and future resources and we are hearing what our residents are saying, they want a comprehensive system with the option of local commuter rail. They want local rail because in 2016, it makes sense if it's done right. Can you imagine hopping on a line separated from the gridlock roads that takes you from medical center to the airport or from UTSA to downtown? What about Port San Antonio to the forum? That makes sense. And what's more, if we're right, we'll need to prove it. In 2015, San Antonio residents added language to the city charter that would require a public vote before any city funds or any city property is used to build rail in our city. If we are listening to our neighbors, they want to vote on a better transportation future. We need a rail debate. We need a rail vote and we need it next May. The San Antonio of tomorrow will be built on solving transportation issues for the long haul. So our 2017 bond program, which will be voter approved, should present bold choices to make that future possible. Let's make a significant down payment on a multimodal transportation system. I'm bullish about our future in San Antonio and we should be ready to ask voters to join us in creating it. And it may surprise some San Antonians that they've already been voting and investing vigorously in some elements of a multimodal system already. Since 2000, voters have four times approved the Howard W. Peake Greenway Trail System, which was envisioned as an emerald ring of hike and bike trails around the whole city. With the largest allocation ever by the largest margin of approval ever last May, we are filling gaps in the system that can connect strategic points throughout our city. When we extend the system into commercial nodes like USAA and Valero, retail areas like Lock and Terra in the Rim or in residential communities like UTSA or any number of neighborhoods and parks, we can transform the Creekway from simply in an amenity into a true option from moving from one place to the other. We are doing that and we are further leveraging that opportunity by placing B-Cycle along the way. Look for more of that in district eight and throughout our city this year. In fact, one of the reasons I initiated the effort to bring back proposition to the Creekway trails back to the ballot last year for your approval was this very purpose. Ample green space is a key component of a healthy city but these trails can play a vital role in our transportation future. They will extend right through Hardburger Park stopped only out here by Worsbok Parkway. So I hope you will also join me in supporting these efforts to connect the trails around the city and to make a critical connection from north to south with an iconic land bridge that is part of the Phil Hardburger Park master plan that was approved by voters 10 years ago. The 150 foot wide land bridge would allow people and wildlife to cross safely over Worsbok without a car connecting the two sides of the park and instantly standing tall among the premier urban park features across the globe. The Phil Hardburger Park Conservancy is already hard at work fundraising but make no mistake San Antonio residents from across the city want this to happen. It is their priority for a first class park system and they should be given the opportunity to vote on it in the 2017 bond election. A superior park system is also deserving of a superior security system that is concurrent with the development of the trails and the parks. So last year I initiated a park safety plan that was piloted in the summer and implemented in the FY16 budget. Among the improvements to keep residents and visitors safe critical areas in the parks are now bolstered by security cameras at trailheads, better wife wayfinding and signage, blue light call boxes in remote areas and more trail watch resources and undercover park police. We've also funded an intensive public education campaign about how to keep you and your loved ones safe on the trails. Parks are a vital component to quality of life in San Antonio but when we talk about the city we leave behind to our kids two critical issues rise to the top and have a profound effect on the health of our bodies and our pocket books, clean air and clean water. One of the major success stories coming out of San Antonio over the last decade has been our ability to keep our air clean especially in contrast to other big cities here in Texas and nationwide. We're the only top 10 city still in compliance with federal air quality standards and unfortunately the new standards adopted this year to protect public health those days are now almost over. If we don't act now this will cost billions of dollars in regulatory compliance to businesses, to governments and to you. To respond I'm leading an effort in our region as chair of the Air Improvement Resources Committee. We are assembling an early action plan with agreements on proactive measures among neighboring counties throughout our region and at the city level I've been working with our sustainability office to bring new strategies to the city council for adoption. I am hopeful that we will vote on an early action air plan in the next few months. But there is perhaps no more vexing an issue in San Antonio or throughout Texas than water security. And since I first took office I made this obviously a focus of our work. It's a big reason why we first became involved in protecting the Bracken Bat Cave, a critical recharge feature over the Edwards Aquifer which will remain our primary source of drinking water in this region forever. It's why I pushed against significant headwinds to get the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program back to the ballot last May which you were re-approved by the largest margin ever. It's why I've been working to ban carcinogenic coal tar sealants from use in San Antonio where science shows it can have a devastating impact on our water. And it's why I've pushed for increased conservation efforts including permanent stage one watering. But in a growing San Antonio long-term water security means not only conservation but also diversification and affordability. So that's why I've been supportive but critical of the Vista Ridge Pipeline project. To be successful we must address a gap in our long-term water supply and we must do so responsibly and with proper protections in place for San Antonio taxpayers. The Vista Ridge contract represents a three and a half billion dollar public investment that promise to bring 20% of our future water supply. I voted to ratify that contract on one very important prerequisite condition that saw as rate payers would not bear the risk of the project failing. I will not support this project under any other scenario which is why I filed a request signed by four other council members that would require SAWS to receive city council approved consent before any changes are made to the contract. As a city council member overseeing a city-owned agency I have a fiduciary obligation to taxpayers to remain vigilant and public to maintain vigilant and public oversight of this project. I reject any notion to the contrary. As do I any idea that the rate increase to fund Vista Ridge was a blank check written on your behalf. I ultimately agree with the SAWS staff conclusion from 2014 that the pipeline is only feasible and acceptable if SAWS rate payers are shielded from risk. And I believe council has a responsibility and the authority to ensure it. I am for long-term water security for our children and grandchildren. That's our top priority and that should be our true aim. I will work tirelessly to achieve it while standing with neighbors who demand progress and accountability. Long-term water security which proves elusive to communities across the globe is within our grasp if we remain focused on the future. It's vital to a strong and stable economy but we can't just be stable. We must also grow our economy and nothing we do will be as important as cultivating a workforce that is ready for 21st century careers. In 2016 we need to unite disparate partners in education, school districts to universities, to community colleges, to charters, on goals of literacy, college and career readiness and bridging the gap between the skills our workforce has and the skills they will soon need. This is critically important in a community like Northwest San Antonio, the center of gravity for our medical and biosciences community, the home of the city's flagship state university and the place where three Fortune 500 companies work in tandem with the mosaic of small businesses technical and vocational training academies and our military. We continue to work with the Medical Center Alliance of the San Antonio Medical Foundation to align our infrastructure priorities amid increasing competition to our north and to our south. The medical industry in San Antonio comprises almost a third of our present day GDP and the South Texas Medical Center area employs roughly 56,000 San Antonians with nearly 300 acres still undeveloped in an estimated capacity of another 50,000 workers over the next 30 years. The Medical Center is the canvas on which we will see the success or failure of our ability to build the San Antonio of tomorrow. That same kind of opportunity to build a new model exists with the University of Texas at San Antonio, a school that is already on an upward trajectory to becoming a premier tier one institution. I'm convinced that UTSA has been the center at the center of our city's growth and can be one of the main reasons for its continued economic development. An average of 5,000 students walk across the stage each year at UTSA to receive their diploma, helping to produce the workforce needed to meet demands across new industries. It is the center of the cybersecurity world, a new pillar industry in a burgeoning global field. It's a place where entrepreneurship is meeting sustainability policy in the exact recipe needed to make green tech profitable. In that way, UTSA is an agent of positive change for San Antonio, providing the future leaders, scientists, physicians, engineers, and business executives that our city, that Texas, and that the country need. For the past three years, my office has been aligning our capital improvement priorities with the university to protect neighborhoods but also facilitate a campus environment that befits a top tier institution in a top tier city. Our community stands to gain by increasing the profile of higher education in San Antonio. And as long as I'm serving, I will continue to throw my support behind this great school because when UTSA becomes tier one, San Antonio becomes tier one. And it was an honor for me to introduce Dr. Romo at his State of the University event this year. And if we don't realize what a gem we have in President Romo and Dr. Harriet Romo, then we need to wake up because we've got a real first-class operation over there and I'm proud to support it. And who knows? Maybe by the time Jonah is my age, when those additional million San Antonians will be living here, he'll have stayed in San Antonio for the same reason I came from Austin for the first time, to go to college. And maybe in 30 years, he'll be sitting at a football game wearing bright, road-renner orange, instead of the burnt orange of his mom's alma mater. Whatever the case, in 30 years, Jonah and his peers will have inherited a city that is markedly different than today. Whether we exert our influence to ensure that the intervening years are beneficial for that future rests on our ability to make difficult choices now. We need to think big, to listen, and to act with purpose on that vision that our community has established. We need to lead. And as I see it, that is the state of our district and the future of our city and that is why I'm so proud and privileged to be serving you. Thank you. Who here is proud to be represented by that guy? That's the guy I want. Okay, so we wanna say once again, thanks to all of our participants. We're gonna do this Oprah style. They have gifts under their chairs. Thanks everybody for coming out. Make sure if you have any questions about city government, reach out to the district aid staff. Grab some leftover food, because if not, I have to take it home. And thanks everybody for coming out.