 Obviously, we funded it in the first year of the budget process when I was on council. We have now, this coming July, we'll be celebrating our third year of being open. And I remember when we first talked about what would make it a success, they were saying, you know, if we got about 50 members a month for the first six months, and then a little bit more for the rest of that first year, it will be a success. So that means, Abe, we can put three or four or five hundred people coming and signed up. It'll be a success. We'll have over 6,000 seniors registered in this center. Thank you. Congratulations to you. Because the need is there, and that's what these budget sessions are all about, setting the priorities. I mean, you've heard this, you probably have used this yourself that says, well, there's not enough money, right? The kids come and say, I need something, I need a new dress, I need a car, I need something for school. And you go, gee, I just don't have quite enough money to get there, so let's try to figure something out. Well, the reality is the same things at the city. There's never enough money to do everything. But there is enough dialogue, enough will on the city council to make sure that we listen to the public and set the priorities. We must fund the top-level priorities. That's what we're here to do tonight. So I'm glad to see that we have virtually a full house. We're going to go through a process here that kind of tries to put some structure around what your priorities are, and then we're going to have an opportunity to go around talking about them. And Eric Walsh is going to kind of kick it off, lead it off. Actually, I guess I'm the one that's kicking it off. And then he'll kind of walk you through the logistics of it. But what's going to come from this is we're going to take this information. This is the first of a series of meetings that will be happening this week. We'll take all of that. City council ultimately will be having our own meetings just us. We'll get the feedback from this. Ultimately we will give direction to the city manager, and in the month of July they go put together a budget that they bring back to us in August, and guess what? We'll be back to say, this is what you told us. This is how we interpreted it. And this is what the manager thinks she heard and her team, and this is the budget that we think we're going to move forward. So through the month of August we'll have more discussions. Ultimately we'll be approving it in the September timeframe, I think, right, Eric? I think it gets approved in September because it goes into effect October 1st. And in that budget we'll have to make accommodations for more parks, fixing streets, picking up animals, caring for them, doing all the things that we have to do. So with no further ado, let me welcome all of you to the district sick center, but those of you that this is your first time, don't let it be your last. For those of you that have been here on a regular basis, I see a lot of familiar faces. I see some that just aren't old enough yet, so don't get too excited, Melinda. You got 20 years to go, maybe 30. So for those of you that have been here before, talk to your friends, tell them to come out. We're in the process, last year we got into the budget, another center, which we'll be opening up on Ingram Road. And again, so we listened to what the folks had to say and we know that the need is there. So another center, about this size, we'll be opening up in the Ingram Road area, again, to provide level of service for the things that the community said it was a priority. So again, thank you very much for being here and I'll turn it over to Mr. Walsh. Sir. Thanks, Councilman. Just before we start off, I wanted to ask all the executives, we have a number of city executives here sitting at a lot of the tables, just to stand up or raise their hands just so you know they're interspersed throughout the room, they're at each table to help facilitate the discussion that you'll have after we have the video. And I see both of our chiefs just walked in, so thanks, guys. So as the chief, as the Councilman mentioned, this week we'll be having a series of five meetings across the city to do preliminary, to get preliminary input from the public on our proposed budget process and tonight is our first one. Last week, the city staff presented to the Council our five-year financial forecast projecting our revenues and expenditures for next year and for next year what was presented with the Council was based on our current spending and our current revenue. There's about a $27 to $34 million gap that we'll need to cover during the summer. Now, unlike other parts of government, we have to have a balanced budget and do so every year, so part of the input that the Council will receive tonight and through the other meetings later on this week will be the ground floor on how the Council decides what their objectives and goals are at next Tuesday's Councilwork session. So over the next two weeks there are a lot of budget activities and you guys are kicking it off tonight, so just a little bit in terms of what is our budget. We have a $2.3 billion budget as a city. Just under a billion dollars is our general fund and our general fund is primarily the services that each of us rely upon every day. Public safety, police and fire, parks, library, health department and that's the majority of the revenue that's collected in the general fund are property taxes, our sales tax and our collections from CPS. So the other funds that make up our $2 billion budget are functions like the airport, where revenue raised at the airport stays at the airport, our solid waste fee, the fee that everybody pays on a monthly basis that is set aside strictly for solid waste services. So just a little bit more background in over the last 15 years and some of you may have certainly heard about this over last winter, fall and winter, we had a consultant, we had a task force group that was created by the Mayor and Council to look at our public safety expenses and one of the general findings of this task force was that over the last 15 years, actually over the last 10 years, over the last 15 years and over the last 20 years, our public safety expenses have grown at a faster rate than our general fund revenues. That's one of the things that we'll need to deal with, the Council will need to deal with going forward. Police and fire expenses are about 66.5% of our general fund budget. They are the basic service that taxpayers expect. Those are the services that we want to be available when folks call 911, but they also take a significant amount of our budget and I think every table's got some handouts and you'll see a bar chart where it puts in perspective how that relates to other services like the Health Department or Animal Care Services and Public Works. So what we're here to do tonight is we're going to show you a quick video. I'll come back and give you some kind of the budget direction or budget instructions or if the Council will. But basically what tonight will be will be a lot of table work. The facilitators at each group will help you. You'll record the suggestions and there are a series of questions that we'll ask each table to answer and then you'll report out to the group. We've got a number of folks from the budget staff here tonight. They're recording, they'll record suggestions and then that'll be compiled and shared with the City Council at their budget work session next Tuesday. So with that let's kick off the video. The City of San Antonio are prioritized and funded through the adopted annual budget. This video will provide you with an overview of the many services provided by the City and explain how the City pays for these services. With an annual budget of $2.3 billion and 11,300 employees, the City of San Antonio strives to provide you with high quality services every day. So how does the City's budget work? The City's total budget is divided into separate funds including the general fund, restricted funds and the capital budget. The largest of these funds is the City's general fund which receives funding from four major sources of revenue. Property taxes, sales taxes, CPS energy revenues and other revenues. Property taxes represent the City's portion of the taxes you pay on your home and business. However, the City's portion of your total property tax bill is only about 25%. Sales taxes are collected on purchases made throughout the City and are dependent on the local economy. CPS energy provides a portion of its gross profits to the City as a return on investment and these revenues vary based on the South Texas weather. Finally, other revenues represent funding collected from user fees, licenses and permits. Together, these revenues support the majority of City services. Two-thirds of the total general fund budget is allocated to the police and fire departments. With more than 4,000 uniform personnel, the police and fire departments enforce the law, protect San Antonio residents, their families and their homes. The remaining one-third of the general fund resources support critical City services such as streets, parks, libraries, code enforcement, health and human services and animal care. The City of San Antonio is facing a financial challenge of $27 to $34 million in fiscal year 2015 in the general fund. Expenditures in the general fund are growing at a faster pace than general fund revenues. The financial challenges that the City faces in 2015 include the increased cost of providing health care benefits to uniform police and fire employees, maintaining a triple-A bond rating, maintaining a balance between public safety and other services paid by the general fund and the many needs across the City, including street maintenance, new sidewalks, library services, human services and the maintenance of City facilities. In order to maintain a balanced budget in fiscal year 2015, as required by law, the City will have to prioritize services and redirect resources in the general fund. More than 66% of the general fund is allocated to the police and fire budgets. If the community desires to maintain or increase the funds allocated to police and fire, other City services such as streets, parks, libraries, animal care, code enforcement and health and human services would have to be reduced. The City maintains more than 4,000 miles of streets, more than 400 miles of drainage infrastructure and more than 1,300 traffic signals. The maintenance and preservation of the City's streets and sidewalks is the responsibility of the City's transportation and capital improvements department. Each day, City employees work to preserve and maintain streets across San Antonio by filling in potholes, as well as maintaining city drainage channels, adding bike lanes and building new sidewalks. The Parks and Recreation Department maintains 244 parks, 14,816 acres of parkland, 145 miles of trails, 24 outdoor pools and 29 community centers throughout the City. San Antonio's 26 libraries provide residents of all ages access to books, computers and educational programs. Through the libraries, you can receive live homework assistance and download e-books, audio books, music and videos for free. The Animal Care Services Department is committed to improving outcomes for San Antonio's pet population through increased education, adoption and enforcement. For the current fiscal year, resources were added to increase spay-neuter surgeries, enhance licensing awareness and reduce the number of loose and stray animals. As a result of these additional resources and many other efforts by the Animal Care Services Department, the City has been able to increase its live pet release rate from 30% in 2011 to 80% today. The City provides code enforcement officers who work throughout San Antonio to maintain the safety and integrity of our neighborhoods. These officers enforce the City's Property Maintenance Code, address concerns caused by unoccupied and dilapidated structures and help prevent and abate graffiti. Other important City services are funded by restricted funds that are not supported by property tax revenue. The rates and fees that support services paid by restricted funds cannot be used to pay for services in the general fund, such as police, fire, streets or code enforcement. Services paid by restricted funds include garbage collection, review of new commercial and residential development permits, operations of the International Airport and the City's parking operations. Ensuring that the fiscal year 2015 budget is financially balanced and reflects the priorities of the community is a collaborative effort between residents, city leaders and city staff. The City wants to know which services matter most to you. Let us know your priorities by attending one of five community budget input hearings scheduled from May 19 to May 22. You can also provide your input through the City's Budget Input Box, located inside libraries, senior centers and online at www.sanantonio.gov slash budget. With your assistance, the City of San Antonio can continue to deliver high quality services to all residents in our great community. Alright, so, again, each table has a facilitator and we're asking each table to do three things. The first is to identify five programs or services that the City currently provides that the table or you as individuals feel could be reduced or eliminated next year. The City every year for the last five or six years has reduced a significant amount of our expenses in order to balance our budgets. And frankly, part of that is just naturally reviewing what we spend our money on and being as smart as possible on that. The second thing that each table is going to be asked to ponder and provide input on is whether or not you'd be willing to increase revenues as a way to balance the budget. Now, there are only a couple of revenue levers that the Council has complete control over. There are fees, user fees for things such as parks. There are fees, there are permits and licenses that we can increase. The Council can't raise sales tax and they can't raise any additional revenue from CPS. And the only other big item is property tax. The City has not increased property taxes in about 21, 22 years. But so, from the tables, would you be willing to increase revenues to help cover that difference? And then finally, the last question will be what are three service priorities? Areas that you think the City should do more of or at a minimum maintain as we go into next fiscal year? At the end of each, at the end of that time, we'll ask each table to report out. And Maria, we're giving each, we're giving how much time? 30 minutes from now for you to do the table work. There are a number of staff that'll be walking around. If you need anything or have any question, please don't hesitate to ask the Executive who's sitting at your table or one of us that'll be around the room. So 30 minutes, three questions and you've got a recorder there and then we'll report out. Con mucho gusto, señora. Yo soy María Villagomez, la directora del Departamento de Presupuestos. Y lo que les estamos pidiendo hoy es que nos ayuden a balancear el presupuesto para el año fiscal 2015. Tres preguntas que tenemos para ustedes, la primera son las áreas que ustedes considerarían reducir para el año 2015 servicios que se afondean en el Fondo General de la Ciudad. La segunda pregunta es si ustedes desearían incrementar algunos de los cuotas que se pagan o de los ingresos que entran a la ciudad como son el impuesto sobre la propiedad y algunos de las cuotas que se pagan, por ejemplo, en los parques. Y la tercera pregunta es si ustedes desearían que se incrementaran algunos de los servicios que se proveen el día de hoy por medio de la ciudad que nos den tres de esas prioridades, vamos a decir, programas de parque, programas de calles y drenajes. Así que esas son las tres preguntas, si alguien tiene alguna pregunta en español, yo les puedo ayudar, traducido, ayudarles a proveer información. Gracias. Good job, María, thanks. Alright, so if you have a question, wave, yes ma'am, permits or licenses, yes. Development permits are in a separate fund, but there are other permits within the city's general fund that could be raised. Yeah, or some of them deal with park reservations. They're very, they're, they're permits as well. Yes, yes ma'am. Alright. I'm here with Councilman Ray Lopez and we're at the very first night of a marathon of community budget workshops. And this is not the first one for you either, is it? Well no it isn't, as a matter of fact we started doing these a couple of years back and it worked out quite well. We used to do these but kind of differently, right? We'd go out and create the budget and we come out and look what we've created and that was okay, but we realized very quickly that really needed to get input up front and that's what this is all about. Trying to set priorities, listen to what the public is saying before we go and set our own priorities. Then take that into account, do our thing and then come back out again in the August time frame and say did we get it right and we'll still make modifications for September, ultimate September approval for an effective date of October 1st. So the process is long and grueling but very well worth it because the community expects us to set their priorities. Right, absolutely and to listen to what they have to say. Absolutely. Right, and do you find that people take this more seriously now because you're listening? I think more and more. I think in the beginning they were a little skeptical and saying you're just going through the routine but what they're finding is where I recall the very first one that we had but we heard very loud and clear was we need more senior facilities for example. Very big issue. Well, we're sitting today in a senior center that we built the following year by applying dollars out of the budget to build this beautiful facility. Now we have a 55,000 square foot facility with over 6,000 seniors signed up and they're going like they did listen and our city is working on our behalf. Unfortunately, there's never enough money but you know once we define our top priorities those are the ones we go after and there's got to be money for us to fund our priorities. The tough part is defining them and we need that input and I think we'll come out of tonight. So you told them tonight that they had to choose where to add, where to cut, make those suggestions and that's what they're doing right now? And that's exactly what they're doing in tables and there'll be a readout. Each one of them will talk about I think you ought to do this and maybe even some areas where you don't want to do or maybe in some areas you want to keep it. What we hear a lot of is we want more money in parks, we want more money in kids facilities, senior facilities and then the question then becomes how do we fund those and strangely enough when you ask the public they're pretty tough. They'll tell you exactly where you can go and cut stuff and that's the guidance we're getting. So we're giving them some priorities and then it's incumbent on us to listen to what they have to say and implement it into this upcoming budget. I think it's kind of encouraging that people are paying attention and people are saying this is an area where you can take it away. Oh that's right and I think you'll find tonight that a lot of people will be making some very tough decisions and saying because they're debating it. I mean they're talking about and there will be folks that are very adamant about one thing or another and other people are saying that is not important to me or as important as it is there are things that are even more important. And that's what it boils down to, setting priorities. Now after this is this the end of their ability to put it and give input? No, there's something more beyond tonight, right? No, actually this is the first step. The next step will be the council will be hearing what the output was, the readout then we will be going into and of course the public will have an opportunity to go and listen to that readout and say well that's not exactly what I said or let's add a little bit more to it. Then the council will then give its feedback, our own personal, what we've learned, what we've heard and then the manager takes all of that together and through the month of July she craps what she thinks she heard. Then in August she'll come back and say this is what I think I heard. Is that accurate? We'll review it and then we'll be back out in this process saying alright you guys told us we listened, we put something together, did we get it right? And remember we still at that point still have six weeks or so to make more additions, more modifications, I can assure you we will. And it goes down to virtually the last minute when we're adding and moving a couple of programs around or maybe some program we forgot that is incredibly important. So yeah, long grueling process, but I think people have realized that it's real. We do listen. And at this stage of the game people can, if they were not here tonight, there are four more, five more, they're five total this week. Right. And then after that even they can still have an input on the city's website. Sure, absolutely. They can go and I'm using all the technologies that are available. Sometimes people want to do the eyeball to eyeball technology and combine and tell us and they do that. We encourage that. Then the other one is the sit at home, think through it, talk to your neighbors and submit online more recommendations and suggestions. And we do get a lot of that. Okay. And for folks who are here tonight, they can also watch the next four of them online. Oh, absolutely. And many of them will. Many of them will. They'll go tonight. Tomorrow night I believe we have two. So they'll have to kind of clone themselves a little bit to attend to them. But they will. They'll go out there and they'll share and we'll start hearing a theme of what's important and there are some folks that attend them all. And the good thing is then they get engaged and they hold us accountable. And we know that. That's why we try to do our best to listen. And when we can't, what people want to hear is don't just walk away and not do it and say, well, we just couldn't get to it. Give them the rationale. These are all adult individuals that manage personal budgets, large budgets and in many of them have their own businesses. They understand that there's priorities that just can't be gotten to. And so what we need to do is tell them, this is why we're not going to do it. And this is where it sits in the priority and continue the dialogue. Maybe it goes on some list where we might be able to apply budget in the middle of the year or maybe we stack it up for next year. But that's the process and it worked well so far. That's terrific. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Oh, not at all. And we will see you online. That's right. Likewise. Thank you. Do I have a volunteer table that would like to start? Any volunteers to start? Okay. Let's get everybody. Too late, Troy. Okay. We're going to go ahead and get started. So we've got a table that's ready to report out. She got it. Okay. Go ahead and stand up and let's report. Are you doing that, Mark? Okay. Okay. Here we go. The first group is speaking. Okay. This one here is trying to address this 27 to 34 million shortfall. It's difficult to do the benefits of police and fire compared to other city employees was there. But it wasn't really a consensus to lower their benefits to the same. There was talk why not raise the city employees up rather than tear fire down fire and police. But there was there was a if and nobody knows how much this is going to save because it's got to be bargained. But we picked $3 million. Historic preservation, which you said, well, we're not going to save in all the billions anymore. We'll cut them $2 million. Delegate agencies, we cut them by $2 million. And I forget what they are. But they were cut. Then looking for revenue, there was a talk that commercial properties are not paying their fair share on property taxes. These huge businesses will fight the appraisal district. And if these people win, the appraisal district has to pay for their lawyers. So they back off. And a lot of the big properties are undervalued. And you don't know what they sell for because they don't have to disclose it. So we were saying, hey, let's tap them for $19 million. And then there was collections that some of the taxes that were due weren't really being collected. So if we could collect everything that was due, because most of us pay, so get it from everybody. And that might offset it. So this is kind of a rough cut of how we think we could save the $27 to $34 million. And cutting, we didn't really add, I think we said more, hey, we want to maintain, these are our priorities, streets, code enforcement, police, fire, public safety, parks, an after school program, and a cola for the civilian employees. There was talk of that. Now that would add some. Then we came up with some other stuff like street cars, but we didn't really get into that heavy. Executive pay and CPS bonus. Thank you. Next table. We have another volunteer table. Right here. Catherine, Mel, either come up here so everybody can see. Is this on like this? Closer. Okay. Here we go. We looked at police and fire. And by the way, I don't think we had consensus on anything because it was really hard to hear and people wanted to talk. So putting numbers to these and saying these are, this is our consensus really is not the case, but these are some of the ideas that came up. And some of the ideas were with police and fire to maybe align their benefits as far as what they pay for, such as uniform, what they don't pay for, such as uniforms or healthcare benefits might be more aligned with the other city employees as far as what they're paying for their healthcare services and like that. And another thing was tax abatements that we can get revenue from not giving away the store every time a big corporation is coming or we want to get a certain company in our town that don't give away so much. We need more for our commercial ventures because I think if any of you read the papers, you'll see that a lot of times the ones who promise a hundred jobs, they never come to that or when it's 200 and 300, they don't quite make what they said they were going to. As well as as far as animal care services, there may be ways to cut staff or people that are not on the front lines because the ones that do a lot of the work, the people that pick up the animals, the people that are caring for the animals, there might be a place of getting that. But on the other side, we're saying that we really need more education because the education in getting animals adopted and getting people to understand about spaying and neutering and how to keep their animals properly in their yards or in their house and how to take care of the health of their animals. These are things that can help people to be more responsible pet owners. In regards to the revenue, we talked about property taxes also that a lot of people that have high value houses don't really disclose how much they paid for their house and so the property tax isn't really related to what they're getting from related to the cost of their house. Another thing, and this is one I brought up, so any seniors in the audience blame me. I think that it's not really fair for all seniors to get blanket fixed taxes for the rest of their lives when we have so many young families trying to get, to raise their families and it just seems like the burden has been pushed back to younger people. Now I'm not saying everybody should have, I know it would be a big fight and everything else like that but I think that maybe others can pay a little bit more for their taxes to help the younger people in our society. Again, no consensus there, just a thought. Parks and fees, we think that there's a lot of places where the parks could have reservations like with Easter and deposits for things that their user fees of, so the city doesn't have to pick up everything and again with the parades, you know, how many people end up just leaving all their trash right there, there might need to be some sort of a fee of users. If we have more people doing, supporting parks and libraries which are the two most popular things in our city as far as services go, they might be able to help out the parks in getting things that the parks need and getting things that the libraries needs, you know, so be the fundraisers, just like we have that wonderful library foundation that does collect. And in animal care, definitely more education, we have to keep putting more money into education, probably a 5% budget. Streets, we need better drainage, so that would be one we'd like to improve and savings from more adoption, so that was, I had already talked about that. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Next table. There you go. That's okay. Go on up there in front so everybody can see. Okay, so the first one we did was a San Antonio General Fund Budget Balancer. For us, we don't think anything needs to be cut. Everybody should be equal. We should have equal health costs for all the city employees in San Antonio and we didn't put a price on it because it should be balanced out by the city officials. One thing we do want to reduce is the parks reduce trellis and trellis maintenance and that we put $10 million. Something we can increase on, like the fine gentleman on this side said, the tax for commercial businesses, they really don't pay what they're supposed to. As he said, they go to court, they fight it. The city usually backs off because they don't want to do the fight. Or in some cases, when they come in, they get a 29-year break, 15-year break. They don't have to pay their taxes. So in that, that would bring $100 million. A sales tax should increase about half a cent, which I think is reasonable for everybody. But it's something they can work out. These are just... And maybe a business tax for the business that want to come in for the bigger businesses and that could increase $5 million, something they should look at. I work for a business and they make pretty good money and I think they can pay a little bit more. That's the next one. Okay, for this one, the adding, we did animal control officers. There is only one animal control officer at a time. I think we should increase that by 50,000 if we get some people in there. It's true that people should be take care of their animals, but there's a lot of people who really don't. And as education is fine and everything, but let's be honest, I think some of you are tuning me out as I speak right now and you're not paying attention. So what good is that if you're not listening? Street and sidewalks, maybe add a little bit of that. Southside, west side doesn't have that great deal. Maybe you can add 10 million in there. Street and lights, 3 million. Literacy program, we should add it. It's something that has gone down a lot. And I'll be honest with you, it's 2 million should we get it up and running again. And this is a big deal to me because I don't know... You might think that I speak perfect English that English is my first language, but it's really not. So I think that works, and it works a lot. And the storm drains, maybe add 3 million, get better drainage and send them to the parts of the city. That would be 18.5 million. And where we can take in the planning, we can take 800,000 out of there. Center city, 600,000. The non-dep, 10 million. And the international government relation, we can take 600,000. And the agency is 6.5 million. And that's another 18.5 million, and it balances out. And it's something we should do. We should think about it. Thanks, guys. Okay, thank you. Table, next table? All right, right here. Okay. Okay, everybody hear me? I'm going to start with the... I guess the bad news. At our table, it was kind of... I don't want to say forced on us, but it was like... it made really appropriate that this gap is here. So really kind of at the last minute, this number was thrown together at the 25 million. But it's really, I'd be honest, it's not representative of our entire table in no way form or fashion, because once we got to property tax, we were informed by... I can't remember it yet right there, that a small increase of what was it, two cents, right? Is that what we had decided on? We would do about 15 million of this gap already. Just being property tax for citizens. We also talked about what Curtis talked about, which was the commercial rate or the commercial appraisal system of how they're taking advantage of that and strapping us and making us have to sit here and decide on where do we want to cut, what services, whose house is going to burn down, who's nephew or who's going to get attacked by a stray dog, or who's going to trip over a faulty sidewalk. And those are the decisions that we're going to have to make now because of these commercial property tax owners who are making a lot of money. So we definitely had that discussion. So that's with property tax. Animal Care, there was a reduction in one million, but also a revenue add, which we didn't put a dollar figure to, but that was related towards the actual fees that go into whatever folks do have to come out and talk or deal whatever the Animal Care folks have to do at a residence or whatever. And we do have Animal Care people here that if anybody afterwards, if you want to ask about where, why it's okay to cut Animal Care, you can ask those folks, those city employees right there, and see what they do. So we can go to the revenue. One of the biggest things, of course, is streets. We've all driven on the streets and a lot of us, I'm sure, have seen the drainage problems that exist closer within the city and all over. So we definitely don't want folks to be stranded. We don't want folks to have to put their lives in danger or drown or what have you. So streets are really important. That was something we should add. We did not get a dollar figure on that, but also with code enforcement and human services, and again, this is something that was brought up later after we had the 25 million there, but code enforcement and human services can help make sure our community is strong and make sure some of these abandoned buildings aren't catching on fire or that these aren't places for drug addicts and things that contribute to crime. And that would cut down on the strain on police and fire that they have to go through. So a lot of the things were aimed at making sure that that 25 million does not have to be that 25 million. Because we do recognize that it is a big portion of the budget, but we also recognize that we're safe right now. And I feel confident in the services of police and fire and if something should happen to me or my family that they would be taken care of. So it's something to think about when we put a dollar figure on that. That's it. All right, here you go. What we were looking at is, and we mostly looked at cuts, very little revenue generation. And as far as aligning uniform benefits with civilian employees, we felt like maybe police and fire should increase the amount they're paying, but not the same as civilians because their jobs aren't the same. The municipal court, we thought we could cut 3 million out of that. Traffic operations, 1 million. And maybe 5 million out of the police and 3 million out of fire. And maybe a million out of city manager's office. Just off the top. We were really guessing at the numbers the city's gonna do it. As far as revenue, we looked at residential alarm fees, increased nose, and increased in the property tax on the commercial buildings, as everybody else has said. Ellen. Okay. The bilingual. Bueno, bueno pues decidimos quitarles 4 millones a los civilian empleados porque consideramos que les dan mucho dinero a los de la Corte Municipal, también a los de tráfico tienen demasiado dinero porque sacrificar a gente de la comunidad otras cosas importantes por esto. Y también quitarle a la policía y a los bomberos porque la policía es más represión. Lo que debe de haber, debe de irse el dinero más a la educación y no a la represión y por esa razón. Y también a la city manager que gana 3 millones, me hace que es exorbitante la cantidad de dinero que gana, debería de ganar un poco menos. Pienso que los empleados que trabajan con ella no ganan, yo creo que 3 millones, los empleados han de ganar muy poco dinero por esa razón, pensamos bajarle a ella dinero. Y a las alarmas, pues las gentes que pueden hacer eso pueden pagar un poco más porque al fin y al cabo que tienen dinero y pueden hacer eso y a las propiedades comerciales, principalmente a esas cobrales muchos impuestos porque son un poco ricos, son los dueños de hoteles y los pobres empleados que trabajan allí pues no ganan muy buenos salarios, ganan salarios muy pobres, entonces a ellos les deben de aumentar mucho las taxas para que ese dinero se vaya a cosas importantes como educación, como las bibliotecas, servicios médicos, servicios a la comunidad, en los parques, las calles que están horribles, todo el website, están las calles que las gente ya muy viejitas no pueden andar en sus sillas de ruedas con sus bastoncitos, están destruidas las calles, que les cobren a ellos y que se vaya ese dinero para esto. As far as police in our fire departments is that we were looking at aligning the uniform benefits with the civilian employees. You can't hear me really, okay. Now the streetcar, we are looking at eliminating that, we do realize that we do have population growth coming, but we really want to push that to the back burner at this time, because we have other needs like the police department and some other things. Something that hit our table pretty hard was some of these executive bonuses. Our police and fire officers, they don't get those bonuses. It's usually the higher up echelons, CPS, folks like that. We would like to see that to be addressed. We want that money allocated elsewhere. Okay, delegate agencies. Okay, we wanted to support cut in half our delegate agencies. As far as revenue, we were having a tough time coming up with amounts, but at this point in time, when we have events like Fiesta, Cinco de Mayo, things like that, we have folks, families that they get that certain section every year. We want to look at possibly adding permits at that time to raise revenue because the city still has to clean up after those people, and that's a heavy burden on the city. Okay, as far as where we wanted to see improvements, animal care services, we wanted to see an increase. Again, we don't have an amount. They have several needs as far as education, the amount of calls that they're trying to take, and TNR. So they need more personnel, more animal care services officers, people who can take their calls, and if somebody finds a stray, they really need to have a place to take it. The street and drainage maintenance, the roads do get a lot of wear and tear. We do have a lot of people coming into the city, moving into the city. We do need to be able to give them the logistics to get from point A to point B. Our police and fire manpower, just again, we need to be recruiting right now if a lot of our firefighters do decide to retire. A lot of them are eligible. They are of age if they want to take their retirement. We need to be looking at recruitment at this point because we don't have enough people as it is, and if those folks decide to retire, where are we going to really be? The library, maintain, or add. Our table strongly feels the library is a huge equalizer as far as digital divides. People looking for jobs need those computers. You can't get a job really without applying online. Like they said, they offer a lot of education services, not just books these days. So we feel the library needs to either maintain or even add to those services, okay? Thank you. Okay, who's next? Back to the front of the room, okay. First, some of the things we're looking at how to save some money. You know, obviously we're not looking just for this budget, but we're looking ahead towards future cost. One of the issues that came up was the reserve fund. I think it has about $80 million in it, and I believe about $10 million is allotted to go to that, this next budget. That sits there. I understand we need a rainy day fund, but, you know, that's $10 million can go somewhere else. We know there's nothing in the budget this year for the street cars, but we're looking for future legacy costs. So we want to address that issue. Revenue type. Everybody here, we actually kind of greeted our table once we heard the actual numbers on what property taxes would go up. While the property tax rate hasn't gone up, our property taxes have gone up due to evaluations. So we all know that, and we're not paying what we paid 20 years ago, and I'm sure a lot of you got your evaluations already, and they've gone up quite a bit. But if there were some sort of limitations on that, we're okay. We were okay with actually raising it two pennies, which comes out to, I think, a little less like $48 who'd come out for the average home. Our table was okay. We're putting a little bit more skin into the game. Well, I think it was 26 per penny, but some of that, right around $50. Like a lot of other groups that spoke, the commercial property tax rates, we need to hold their feet to the fire. We understand we need to get businesses here, but we feel that that's something that needs to be addressed. The parks fees, maybe increase that a little bit. I don't know how much revenue that would generate. One of the things we had a lot of discussion here is streamlined to vendor contracts to make it more flexible. We let department heads have the ability where we don't have to have long-term vendor contracts. There's a lot of money savings there where you don't have to go with somebody, has the contract, you're paying three times the amount. Give the department heads and have their individuals have the ability just to go on Craigslist, eBay. A lot of savings out there. Let's use technology to save some of that money. And one of the other things to add was residential alarm renewal fees. We don't know how much, but that was one of the ideas to raise some revenue. But we're looking even the property tax that we're willing to do two pennies. That's $14 million. Rainy Day Fund, that's $10 million. All these other ones we don't know for sure what that would add up to. Our group came to the consensus of where we wanted to add some money to their budget. It was libraries, animal control, basically a lot dealing, not necessarily personnel, but on the education side of the house. We'd like to add some to parks. And for all our civilian employees, we'd like to get them coal us. Make sure they get some pay raises. The areas we looked at wanting to cut, we didn't have a dollar amount, was city center development and city center development. Okay. It doesn't sound like I'm stuttering, but that's pretty much it. Okay. Right there. Okay. So it looks like everyone here is pretty much in agreement with a lot of the stuff. Our board here kind of mirrors a lot, except with some minor differences. So we talked about the library. There's a lot of legacy involved in the library. The library can be run a little bit more efficiently. So we wanted to do a little bit of cutting there, except without reducing the level of service. So technology nowadays can really streamline a lot of the manual processes that the libraries do. So that's one thing we recommended. We didn't come up with any amounts either, because it's a little difficult. I mean, I could just imagine how the city council and all the budget planners do it. I mean, it's just hard to really do stuff like this. So these are just our recommendations. Now we did see like a figure for, I don't know what it was exactly, but it was pretty high amount on the list. I guess I had to do mostly with the use of city, of the city paying rent for buildings that they occupy. So of course, we all know the city owns plenty of land, plenty of buildings all across the town. So we're kind of recommending that they renovate some of those buildings or build a new building or whatever that will help save on the cost of rent. Because why pay rent when you own land? You know, or own an existing building. So it makes sense to just go ahead and use an existing building if it's available. Again, we decided to align the uniform benefits with the city employees. That's a biggie. That way, I'm not sure how much they'll save, but we were all in agreement. Public servants, firefighters, police, we all need them. We're all in agreement on that. We don't want to hurt them that much with noble profession. But the benefits packages, as we all know, I mean, it's pretty generous. That's unheard of in any city in the whole United States. So there has to be some work in there. So hopefully the unions can figure that out. But at minimum, hopefully, you know, the actual covered police officer or firefighter can be covered at 100%. And maybe their dependents can be, you know, pay a certain, you know, pro rate or something. That's our recommendation. Downtown operations, we agree that could be cut back a little bit, you know, there's a lot of duplication. For example, you know, the part of downtown occupations is that, you know, there's guys that go pick up trash. Well, I don't think that's solid waste that does that. I mean, I may be mistaken, I'm not sure. But, you know, solid waste could do that. You know, why do you need somebody else to do that? Municipal court, there's a lot of processes there that could be improved, especially online. You can pay a lot more tickets online. If you need to see a judge, there's a lot of virtualized judges nowadays. You can do that, go in front of a computer from your house or somewhere at the library and, you know, see the judge without even having to go. You know, so that'll save some money there. As far as increasing revenue, we decided that the residential alarm and renewal fees could go up. Any after-school program fees, again, could go up. Property tax go up. And part fees could go up. So, as far as specifics, we weren't really sure, but we just kind of recommended that some of those fees could actually go up, especially on the commercial side, as far as property taxes are concerned. Next. So, here, we pretty much, you know, we like the level of fire and police protection that we're getting now. Code enforcement and streets. You know, of course, those are our top three priorities, and we wanted to just kind of maintain the level of support that we're getting from all those three organizations, because, of course, we all need fire police. We don't want graffiti. We want, you know, good property values and whatnot, so code enforcement is good for that. And, of course, we all want good streets. We don't want to be driving down bad streets, so streets need to be maintained and new streets built as they need it. Going back to the first one, I forgot to mention, as far as property tax increase, I know the city hasn't annexed, they usually annex every 10 years, but I know, like, the annexation cycle was slightly delayed, so they could be more aggressive at annexing other properties in their ETJ zone, because, I mean, there's plenty of tax revenue there, so you could tax a lot of people there. There'll be thousands of homes that you can get extra revenue fund as well. That's it. Thank you. Okay. Where's table four at? Right there in the middle. Okay. Howdy, y'all. Buenos tardes. Yo hablo español, pero tengo las palabras cortas y palabras como una niña. So, my name is Kristen Forrester, and I am born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Mi nombre es Kristen Forrester y yo soy de San Antonio, Texas. How many people here have lived in SA for over 10 years? And, y'all, I'm a little nervous, so I ask these questions just so we can loosen up a little bit. So, you know, I've lived here all my life. So, you know what, I think some of us here are being modest, and I bet we have over 150 years of experience living and working here in San Antonio. If we were to add up all the amount of years we've all spent here, we all have that collective experience. So, cuántos personas... Is there any way I could have a translator for the people present here who are monolingual Spanish? Gracias. I can speak German, but I think that's not necessary right now, right? Hey. So, before I continue, I'd just like to thank everyone who came here tonight to prioritize hard-working families. So, give yourself a round of applause because you came out of your home, you came over here to make sure that hard-working families became a priority, and you sat down at the table to budget that. And that is, I think, everyone who isn't paid to be here. So, who do you think is being heard in the city budget right now? Who do you think is being heard in the city budget at this moment? Do you think it's small business owners, or do you think it's big business owners? Just think about that. So, at my table, we propose, and I shouldn't say, and so at my table's table four, we propose that there are cuts to the big business incentives in economic development, that we cut, we propose to cut the tax break incentives for big businesses, to give small businesses a chance. Also, we propose cuts in the parks department. It's a highly contracted department, and we believe that there is a Parks and Recs team that is city employees that are well capable of handling the jobs. And I'll save the cuts for the fire department, because that actually requires a little bit of special attention. So, seeing as every city department is asked to cut 10% of their budget, we propose that HR lead by example, and cut their budget, more than 10%, because as there is a smaller workforce to work with in each department, because everybody knows a 10% cut usually means stopping, because that's where the most of the money goes, goes to benefits, goes to salaries, goes to retirement, goes to things of the human nature. We propose that human resources lead by example, and cut their budget by one fourth. We also propose that the delegate agencies in the health department be cut. So, for the fire department, the proposal is that the privatization of the EMS unit will be in good faith that such a transition will get the department out of the black, so that they'll actually become a revenue producing department. Does that make sense to everyone? Is there any parts that you would like me to clarify from our table? Oh, okay. Thank you. Into the black. As for improvements, we propose that the police department, especially the crisis response team in the civilian department, be improved. Thank you all, and I hope you all have a nice night. Okay. You've already heard from several tables about aligning the uniform benefits with civilian employees. Another cut we propose was for delegate agencies. We propose one of two things, either cutting funding across the board for all delegate agencies by 2%, or either setting performance metrics for each agency and then eliminating funding entirely for any agency that does not meet their performance metric. Okay. We also talked about streetcars. We've heard that before. Reducing the number of assistant city managers as well as the number of police and fire captains or folks at the upper executive level. We discussed eliminating the city council discretionary funding, that project funding that each council member can use at their will. We talked about reducing the salary for both the city manager and the executives at CPS. And we propose, we had a lot of discussion about how difficult it is to prioritize funding and discuss about just implementing it across the board, 2% cut for each department, including police and fire. For revenue types, we talked about increasing, it created a new park fee for cleanup after events or cleanup within the parks. We were very reluctant to raise park fees overall since they provide a very vital service for a lot of our low income families. And for code enforcement, we were not necessarily producing, recommending new code enforcement fees. Instead, we were recommending more efficiency of collection and making sure that we collect all the fees that are owed to us. We also had some discussion about if some of the code enforcement fees were reduced, for example, the ones for garage sale permits, is that possible that that would translate into more actually collection if we don't know the answer to that but thought that might be worth exploring? On the improvements, we talked about how important good streets are for a city and that we would be willing to entertain a very small property tax if that money would be going to streets. For library funding, we thought that it was very important to add or even to maintain at least funding or preferably add funding to it, but if it was necessary to cut library funding, we thought that the existing library funding should be diverted to focus more on children's programs and technology improvements, especially Wi-Fi, since that makes the internet access to many people who don't have it at home use the libraries for it. Okay, thank you. The whole table is going to stand up with me to show that we were in unity and agreeance with what we spoke. Talking about cuts, every year is the same story. Cuts, cuts, cuts, and it's a shame, and we all decided that the city budget shouldn't be treated like a corporate contract and always cut to save money, but it should be treated like a moral document so we can write a better future for our kids here. And we should start looking at ways to really increase public services, not decrease public services. Our city is growing and we're decreasing city services, so think about that while you look at what you need to cut because our city is growing and we should figure out ways to increase public services, not decrease public services. So we were all in agreement with that. We were also in agreement that executive salaries were a little bit too high. They do do a lot of work, but they are too high. We should definitely get some cuts there and have efficiency. Get better efficiency as far as the stuff we purchase with the city. And then on saving money, we talked also about how many of you have already touched the subject, which is a surprise to me that a lot of you are informed of this subject, is the commercial tax properties and how they have these, Texas has these loopholes where they can appraise their property value and then they decrease it and then they turn around and they sue the county for it. And again, that's a lot of revenue that could be coming in. I made it short and sweet so we can go watch the spurs and I'm going to quote a resident from the east side that said, what good is it if we have money in the bank when our kids don't have a nice sidewalk to walk or don't have a good book to read or don't have a park to play with? So I'll leave you that in mind. Thank you. All right, last table over there, table nine. Mr. Zavala. For the table nine, we have a diversity of people, seniors, disabled, workers, and retired. So we had a very difficult time sort of uniting in our thoughts, but we had combined, we do have some challenging efforts for the budget. Number one, reduce the city manager's salary and eliminate her bonuses. Eliminate, not cut back. You know, when a person likes a job, they do it because it's the right thing to do and they're happy. And I'll give you a good example. I work for a millionaire and this guy wants to give me a bonus every month. No, no thanks. I'm fine the way I am. Why? Because I love my job. I do things for others, okay? And in the amount was to reduce her salary was 200,000 a year. It is deplorable when a city manager makes more money than the president of the United States. He makes more money than those young guys serving in the war and come back and have nothing, not even a job. So I say this, let's cut off 200,000 from her salary. I've always been a compassionate person and I think our table understands that when I asked to reduce the Havenford Hope budget in half, this last year they got 1.5 million, or I'm sorry, 3 million. This year I proposed to get 1.5 million. The following year we cut that in half until we wean them off of city council corporate welfare. We cannot afford to be feeding these people, housing them when the rest of the senior citizen population is struggling. So I say this, let's hold them accountable. And if you don't believe me, there are ways to do this. Go to the website, look at the homeless shelter in Rapid City, South Dakota. That city provides no funding from the city budget to the homeless shelter and yet they have survived. Animal Care Services, we want to reduce this by one-third, 867K for the shelter. We also want to reduce human services. The agencies buy one million dollars each. If we, the citizens of San Antonio, have to tighten up our belt, they can do the same thing. As far as police, the same thing, one million dollars. Let's not buy these expensive SUVs. Okay, so they have a big resale value. Who's buying them and for how much? Let's be frugal. We sell something, we sell it for base value at the moment, blue book, and that's it. Let us not waste our resources. Fire, let's cut 1.5 million. But I will say this, the police and fire, even though we want to cut them, not by choice, they do an excellent job. They strap on a gun or go into a burning building not knowing whether or not they're going to come home that night. So when it comes to their benefits, let's keep them, but let's cut some of the vehicles. Let's make sure that when we, the police and fire trucks are at a scene, if the police car is not being used, then shut down that gasoline-consuming vehicle. It is the right thing to do. Every little bit of gas that is saved means more money in their budget. We want to do a one-time project, for example, the Hemisphere Park. We want to reduce that by 3.5 million. All of the one-time projects reduce them by 3.5 million. If that doesn't help us, I don't know what will. And that's the physical year of 2016. Cut the street cars. We had them before, and then somebody came up with a brilliant idea in my lifetime, let's give her the street cars, let's bring in some buses. And as the CEO of VIA said, we're not in the business to make money. Why are you in business? That's very intelligent from a guy named Charlie Gonzalez. So we also want to make sure that the debt payment becomes productive so that we can save money, not go back and bail out somebody. Oh, and then we had two revenue property taxes. I don't like paying property taxes because I feel like I'm not getting my value of my taxes. So we want to... Really, there was no real consensus. Some of us wanted to raise taxes, and others, like me, I don't want to raise taxes, and I don't want to lose what I have now. So we just decreased the developer incentives. For example, some of you might remember the Alcolla Aluminum Company. They came to San Antonio. They set up shop ten years worth of pips of tax breaks at nine and a half years. Guess what happened? See ya. I'm gone. They lost 400 jobs. Okay? I propose, well, we, I hope, propose this. A company wants to do business in San Antonio, you lay down $1 million deposit. You don't stay your whole time, then you lose everything of that deposit. For example, the South Korean solar panel company. Why did the city of San Antonio give up $1 million of infrastructure to a company that's not even an American company? It doesn't make sense. So, to me, you give a deposit, you stay, you get half back. You don't stay, you get nothing. Okay. Now, to maintain, we want to maintain coal compliance, but we want to hold them accountable, riding around in a nice air conditioning car, eating a hamburger, drinking a coke. That's fine. But not on my dime. They need to be more proactive. They need to start doing their job and be held accountable. Streets. I can't tell you how many times, by the way, I do drive around the entire city looking for things that need to be improved. Streets and sidewalks, especially for the handicap. You can't get out of your sidewalk because there isn't any. You can't walk because some of the sidewalks are cracked. And by the way, I don't know if some of you know it. If your sidewalk breaks, it's on you. It's not the city, believe it or not. Right there by, I'll give you a good example, and then I'll be quiet. Right there on the west side, in front of Christ the King Church, there's an old man older than me in a wheelchair. He'd like to go out there and push his wheelchair on the sidewalk, but he can't because the sidewalk is broken. When I was there visiting, he asked me if I could help him, so I did the right thing. I called 311, asked for help, and I was told, well, no, sir, sidewalk's on you, not us. So where's the customer service there? So think about it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your time. All right. Well, all the tables have reported. Mr. Zavala, I certainly would like to know the address of that sidewalk because I'd like to follow up on that. That doesn't sound exactly completely true. Okay. All right. So listen. Oh, Councilman is here. Councilman, I was just going to thank everybody and let everybody know that the Spurs are ahead 25 to 18. So with that, thank you for coming out tonight. Councilman, do you want to say a couple of words? Thank you.