 Good evening, everyone. I'm Charlotte Ann Lucas, the Executive Director of NowCastSA, and I want to welcome you to this mayoral candidate town hall on quality of life issues and how San Antonio can remain accessible to people of all ages. The event is sponsored by AARP in San Antonio, which has supported NowCastSA's broadcasts on these forums since 2015. Thank you AARP and San Antonio for your service to our community. NowCastSA has decided to feature two candidates tonight based on our viewpoint neutral criteria for candidate inclusion. These are rooted in principles of editorial integrity and judgment of the candidate's newsworthiness and voter interest. We consider the candidates campaign activity and voter interest, which can be also measured by the percentage of votes cast for a candidate in a previous election. And so a candidate would have had to receive a minimum of 10% of the votes in a previous election for the same office or a comparable office out of the field of 14 candidates on the ballot. Only incumbent Mayor Ron Nuremberg and his challenger Greg Brockhouse meet that test today. Here's how tonight will work. Each candidate will appear separately and give a two minute opening statement and then have one minute to respond to questions that came from you, people in the community. Ron Nuremberg will appear first, then in about 735, Greg Brockhouse will take the virtual stage. But first, let's hear from Barbara Aguirre, an AARP volunteer about why this is important. Barbara? Hi, I'm Barbara Aguirre, an AARP volunteer in San Antonio. There are many candidate forums this election cycle. This one focuses on something a little different, livability. Really just another way of saying quality of life, how to make the community more livable and even better for all ages. I'm sorry. Well designed, livable communities promote health and sustain economic growth because they make for happier, healthier residents of all ages. Since then, we've spent years asking what's most important to San Antonio and listening carefully to the answers. We heard that housing, transportation, health and employment are among the most important issues. And they don't just matter to the AARP members in San Antonio and Bear County. They matter to their families as well. These issues benefit San Antonians of all ages from the two year old to the 100 year old from the grandmother crossing the street with a walker to the parent pushing a stroller. We also know that older adults vote. So candidates running for office this May would do well to listen to the concerns of the older voters so they'll likely be the ones electing our next leaders. Similarly, I encourage you as voters to do your homework. Ask who really stands for you for the issues that matter to you most. That's why I'm excited to hear from the candidates today. Thanks for being here and please remember to vote on Saturday, May 1st. Absolutely. That is what this is about. Please remember to vote. This is super important. Now, let me introduce our moderator for the evening, my fellow journalist and dear friend, Elaine Ayala. Elaine is a metro columnist for the San Antonio Express News and has had a long newspaper career spanning 40 years, almost as long as mine. The native San Antonian has won numerous awards for her work and her leadership in the journalism industry. She's a graduate of Memorial High and the University of Pennsylvania and several journalism fellowship programs. Elaine. Good evening, everyone. It's so lovely to be here. Thank you now, Cass and Charlotte Ann for hosting this important event and thank you to AARP San Antonio for making this all possible and bringing us together. Thank you for joining us. Our first candidate tonight is incumbent Mayor Ron Narenburg. Now, the mayor of the seventh largest city in the United States, Ron Narenburg was reelected to a second term in June of 2019. Before that, he represented District 8 on City Council. He serves as chairman of the Sister Cities International and prior to his public service, Narenburg founded a small, a couple of small businesses and was general manager of KRTU FM San Antonio. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Pennsylvania, Go Quakers. Ron, you get two minutes for an opening and then we'll pose our first questions. Great. Well, thank you very much Elaine for the introduction and to the board and community of AARP. It's a great honor to be with you again this evening. As I seek another term to serve as mayor of San Antonio, it has been a challenging year for every community across the country, including San Antonio. But I will say that based on my conversations that I have with peers across the country on a nearly daily basis, it is clear that the work that we have done together as a community with a sense of teamwork and compassion has placed San Antonio on as strong a foundation as any city in the country to come back stronger, more equitable, and more resilient from this pandemic. I'm very grateful that today, as we work on the vaccination process that over half a million of our neighbors here in San Antonio have been vaccinated with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, a full 300,000, more than that actually, have now been fully vaccinated. We've been working very closely with our public health professionals to give our community the tools that they need to keep themselves, their families, and their businesses safe from this virus. It has been a devastating pandemic, however, so we have been working together to ensure that we survive as a community. What I'm focused on in my third term is, number one, putting this pandemic behind us. We have to ensure that we have a healthy community first, and that is protecting the physical and mental well-being of us all. Second, we have to ensure that we have a healthy economy and that we can have businesses come back to life, and employers and employees come back to work safely, providing them the resources and equipment they need to do so. Finally, that everyone in our community, everyone, no matter where they are in this community, when they got here, how old or young they are, has an opportunity to thrive, that we have healthy opportunities to get access to education and jobs here in San Antonio. And if we do all that together, as we have shown throughout this crisis, that we have seen the very best of our community, we will truly have a healthy future in San Antonio. So as we stand today, we're starting to see the pandemic finally subside. I want to thank everyone who's worked together as neighbors or healthcare workers or grocery store clerks or teachers to come to an end of this crisis. I want to thank you for all the work you've done together. There is good reason to be hopeful in San Antonio and I look forward to your support for a third term as mayor. Thank you very much. We have a lovely timekeeper mayor, so you'll hear her voice when she wants you to wrap it up. Age friendly issues are some of the most important to AARP San Antonio and seniors everywhere. So let's talk a little bit about how age friendly you see San Antonio and what programs new or old that you continue to promote in your next term so that San Antonio can become even more age friendly. Yeah, thank you, Elaine. And I was very proud to continue the commitment that originally Mayor Castro had signed on to in creating San Antonio or making San Antonio an age friendly city. And in doing so, we created a strategic plan to focus on age friendly infrastructure and services in our city to be equitably distributed and it's founded in a framework of equity that we have now made part of the budgetary process here in San Antonio. It's focusing on improving transportation access, things like increasing complete streets, increasing the use of public transportation and ensuring that we also don't have to rely on cars everywhere we want to go. It's also about ensuring that we have affordable housing, equitably and sustainably affordable housing in our communities in all corners of our city and that we increase the amenities available to our community in terms of walkability, etc, as well as access to senior services, which we finally now have in every single district in San Antonio. All right, that's it. Very good. One of the latest issues that access has become a center focal point is vaccinations. So tell me how the city is doing, how it will improve a vaccination, especially to the most vulnerable and to seniors, some of whom are having a very hard time, have had a very hard time signing up for a vaccine and really has not been user friendly in any way. Yeah, thank you, Elaine. And I will be the first to tell you that the severe imbalance between the demand and the supply of vaccines has been a great challenge for every city in the country. And I've been on the phone almost every day over the last several weeks with the White House and with our state leaders to give us more doses of vaccines so we can make them more widely available. Despite those challenges, though, we've been setting aside a significant number of doses for people who didn't have access to the internet or who were homebound. So we were the first city in the country to have a homebound vaccination process in which people who could not leave their homes were getting the vaccines delivered to them along with their meal distributions. In addition to that, now that we finally have more supply vaccines coming in, we've opened up the process for our public health labs so that if you are over 80 and very soon if you're over 75, you can go to any one of the vaccination sites, WellMed, Alamo Dome or UHS, the Wonderland Mall and get a vaccine without an appointment. We're clearing out clearing the path for our seniors to get vaccinated as quickly as possible. During the worst of the pandemic, we saw those issues that were always on our mind like public housing and housing in general and affordable housing and evictions for that matter. All of these issues were always there but have become exacerbated by the pandemic. So tell me what can those seniors, those adults with so many varying income levels that feel so vulnerable to the problem of affordable housing, how much more can the city do? Highlight some of the things you're doing but also what some of the new innovative things are that the city might do. So thank you for that and I will say that when the pandemic began, I couldn't agree more. The pandemic revealed the inequities in our community, not just in San Antonio but across the country where we saw those food bank lines it was a reckoning for us and how close to economic brink that millions of Americans were living in, particularly our seniors and many folks on fixed incomes. What we did at the start of the pandemic was build our recovery and relief programs on values and the first one was no one should lose the roof over their heads. They should be safe and they should be housed and so we established what has become the largest emergency housing relief program in the country or in the state and we think the country over $133 million of mortgage and rent assistance during the heights of this pandemic that is still being funded through the end of this year. We also before the pandemic created the first ever Homestead tax exemption and we have to work with our state lawmakers to continue to provide relief for legacy homeowners who have been in their homes or in their apartments for a long, long time providing tax relief for them in specific that includes what we already have in our senior exemptions etc. Some of the people out there who are homeless are also senior citizens and they are especially vulnerable. The city has done suites of homeless camps and just tell us how you see that. What are your plans to help those people who have decided that a camp is the best option for them? They have no money and it's hard to get into affordable housing when you're in this situation so what can the city do besides sweeping them out? Yeah and that is not the solution to the challenge and I think it starts with understanding that homelessness is not the problem in and of itself. It is a symptom of other underlying issues including housing affordability. We have to ensure that we have an affordable and sustainable supply of housing of all types particularly those who are housing that people including seniors on fixed income can afford. That's number one. The second thing is that we have to connect people with resources. We have many non-profit service providers. We have the city programs and we also have the faith community. We have to redouble our efforts and provide resources for those service providers to do outreach into those areas that are having homeless encampments to connect people with resources and then in addition to that transitional housing so that folks who do accept services are not just getting shelter but they're getting shelter to help address those root causes. I think we have to have an comprehensive approach and that's how ultimately we can solve the problem. Okay we might get back to another issue there at the end if we have time and I know I'll be getting questions from Charlotte and from our audience. How will you make this is a transportation question. I know you've been very passionate about transportation issues. How will you make San Antonio a safer place for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists? And as a frequent motorist never a cyclist there's danger out there and so many of seniors like in my part of town are on foot a lot of the time to get to HEB and to get to the via bus stop. So how can we how can your policies help bring more resources to these San Antonians? Well this is a we have plans but we need to effectuate our plans. We have to build our city in a different way for more than a generation we've been building San Antonio into a car-centric culture and you can see them when when former city manager Alex Prasenio was saying that three-foot sidewalks are not enough for a couple to walk beside each other. We have to build sidewalks that are large enough for people to walk down and for wheelchairs and other devices to get down. We need to separate them from the roadway so that they're not right up against fast-moving traffic. The same is true about bicycles. We have a great bicycle master plan and we have to build it and it's not just it's not enough to simply paint a white stripe down a road and say that you've built a bike lane. So what I've advocated for is to put our money where our mouth is. We have plans and we have a lot of talk. We have our resources into the place that can actually build those plans and that's ultimately what the the vision behind Connect SA was all about to build a San Antonio that is about more than just cars and I look forward to making that happen. Yeah we can have a whole issue on Connect, a whole period on Connect SA because it's fascinating and I love the innovation in it. Perhaps we can talk about that another time. By the way I love that you use the word effectuate. It just doesn't get on broadcast very much effectuate. It's a good word. All right here's one on the economy. Older adults have been disproportionately affected by job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. How will you help address unemployment and actually in San Antonio I think it's more under employment of older adults. You see them at McDonald's. They work at McDonald's and they do a really good job at McDonald's and they must continue to work because whatever they put away, whatever they're getting on Social Security is not enough. Well I'm glad you pointed out we have a tremendous under employment challenge here in San Antonio and that is another form in of itself that we can talk about but let me talk about how we can intervene in the pandemic created under an unemployment crisis. First we have to recognize what every economist under the sun is telling us which is that the economy has changed and some of the jobs have been lost are not going to come back soon if at all up to a quarter or a third of them. So what we've done in San Antonio with the benefit of voter approval is that right now and for the next four years we've worked with Project Quest and other providers to create a training program that takes adult workers including seniors and brings them into training programs to in some cases two weeks long get them in the jobs that are available in our community today that provides them a meaningful job with economic ability. So we are targeting folks who have been who have been affected by the pandemic and I will tell you in the current program that's underway right now that's exactly who's enrolling we have over 5,000 people have been through the pipeline already. That's good news okay um this is from a person on Facebook mayor concerning the problem we had with cold weather this past February who is making sure ERCOT is working to prevent it happening again we are only hearing about the blame and the failure. Well this is an excellent question and ERCOT is overseen by the public utility commission which up until I believe yesterday was a horse without a head and and finally that has been reappointed now by the governor but ultimately ERCOT for all is within the jurisdiction of the public utility commission whose members are appointed by the governor. We are calling for the state lawmakers our legislature and our delegation has been brilliant for us in standing up in our defense. We are calling for our state leaders to hold the PUC accountable and fixing ERCOT because ultimately it's within the state's jurisdiction and I will say that we've heard some talk we haven't seen a whole lot of action with regard to holding ERCOT accountable and fixing the mismanagement of the grid but we are hopeful that our state delegation will finally be heard and some laws will be passed that will change the change the circumstances of what happened on ERCOT in February does not happen again. This is another question for for for you from Facebook and it also involves the freeze and it might give you a chance to continue that conversation. Seniors suffered greatly during the recent freeze some died their homes were without water or power and you know the seniors not really asking a question I think he's asking you to defend yourself and to defend city council and all its members. What kind of resources and an emergency emergency plan will you have in place when there's another emergency you know climate change is showing us all too vividly that it's that it's real that we're going to expect more of it that 100 year floods are not happening in every 100 years and for that matter in other emergencies we're going to have climate refugees coming to our door all over the country so expand on what city government can do on the lowest on the grassroots as well as big picture. Yeah and I think Elaine you you hit the first most important thing is that we have to recognize that what happened in February is not going to happen every 100 years it's going to happen more often than we have to be prepared for it more contingency planning is required and we will hold ourselves accountable to doing that as it relates to seniors and housing. We do know that one of the gaps that we need to address is ensuring that there is a plan for communication to seniors and housing particularly within our public housing community so that there is constant communication and in the event of any kind of impending weather crisis whether or not we we think there's going to be any kind of service disruption that there are wellness checks in place and they're being conducted frequently and that the property management companies that are managing facilities are held accountable to doing that and there's some fail-safe checks in the process. I've established a select committee to look over all the response at the local level and we're going to get recommendations and implement the things that we should be responsible for. We were talking a little bit before we went on to the public about the unfortunate politicization of masks and vaccines so let's take the issue of masks for a second before we get into vaccines. I might pose that in a separate question. What is your advice? What is your hope for San Antonio to toward masks toward the future even beyond the time frame of the coronavirus? I told you that my plan is to wear masks when I travel from now on because I would get sick during every vacation and I think it was because of what was on that plane so what's your feeling about masks in the future perhaps even post-COVID pandemic? Yeah well we know from the public health professionals from the very start of this that wearing a mask which is a layer of fabric between your nose and mouth and the rest of the world is one way that you can protect yourself one simple way that you can protect yourself and protect others from you potentially of having the virus and so it is a simple thing to do and it protects you provides a layer of protection against COVID or any other kind of respiratory virus and we know how prevalent they are whether it's flu season or just plain old cold season so I think there is some logic Elaine and if you go to other countries you quite often see in a train or in a plane people wearing a mask and it's simply because they don't want to have a cold the next week after traveling so I think that one of the experiences through this pandemic and how commonplace mask wearing has been is going to result in people being more cognizant of how they can protect themselves during these nuisance virus seasons in addition to when we're in the middle of pandemic it is unfortunate it's been politicized but there's great logic and medical science behind mask wearing. We have a little bit more time and I'd like you to discuss vaccinations in the same light we've heard some really wild conspiracy theories about vaccinations and people who remain reluctant whether it's because they don't believe COVID can kill them and don't quite believe that COVID is as serious as it is even after going way beyond the you know so many predictions of deaths and injuries and long-term effects for those who had COVID so tell us talk to our audience about vaccinations and their fears about what can happen to them if they get vaccinated. Sure well I will say first that the vaccine development and approval process in the United States is the most rigorous in the world and that there is great science and due diligence behind the production of vaccines and we know that vaccine technology is almost a hundred years old at this point so if we want to be fully confident that this pandemic is behind us we have to reach herd immunity and you only do that by getting everyone sick or by getting people vaccinated so we are on the cusp of seeing herd immunity in our country over the next several months and so I would ask people to please look at the data and the science the fact that over 100 million people have already been vaccinated in our community there have been some minor side effects reported nothing major that this is one very simple way that it has been tried and proven to protect yourself and to ultimately save your life and the life of those around you I'm sure that there have been experiences by people who are that are inconvenient and perhaps they don't want to take the vaccine again but I can tell you with full confidence that there has been so much study and scientific analysis of this vaccine above all others that you should feel confident going to get one. I agree I don't know how much time we have left before we go to a video but you have at least a minute to make your pitch for your continuation at City Hall. Thank you Elaine and thank you to AARP for hosting this event tonight I want to say first it has been the great honor and privilege of my life to serve as your city councilman for two terms and now as your mayor for two terms I'm seeking a third term to continue the work that we have started together that really is generational in impact and as we put this pandemic behind us I look forward to continued service it would be an honor to again continue as your mayor and also to pursue the goals that we've all set together as a community in La Vida Buena which is our strategic plan to make San Antonio truly an age-friendly city I'm honored to be here tonight and look forward to earning your support. Okay I think we still have more time correct me okay so another question just popped up on my chat and this is what do you think of the efforts to cut voter access to the ballot that's going on in Austin right now? I think it's wrongheaded it's once again a case of lawmakers in Austin trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist it's further politicization of our electoral process it's unnecessary and it would be a step backward in in our pursuit of a fair system of elections I hope it is not is not successful because it's going to have far-reaching impacts not just on the vote but also on the economy of San Antonio or the economy of Texas as we've seen at play out in Georgia as well credit to the business community in that area for standing up for the values of democracy I hope we do the same here before it's too late. I agree and I hope that seniors along with young people come out and and get more people to vote I mean the best way to fight these efforts is to come out and vote and whether you're a young person who's voting for the first time congratulations will make a big deal of it. Mayor you and I voted in the last election at our Lady of the Lake and we were there as young people were we being cheered because they were voting for the very first time it was very exciting and we saw lots of seniors line up including that 103 year old woman from the west side who was just lovely and so if they can do it all of us can do it okay what are we how are we doing in time guys I see the clock at at 731 you you are just about perfect we were going until 732 so well thank you for coming on mayor I know you do a lot of these and I don't know how you do it count me out you'll never have to face me in a race I'll never run for anything and I won't run against you because I don't know how you'll do it. Well I'll just say that San Antonio has some great coffee I've learned over the years. Okay terrific good luck with everything. Great to see you all. Greg Groff has served on San Antonio City Council from 2017 to 2019 as a representative of District 6 he served in the Air Force for nine years and works in the mortgage banking business and hosts a show called Broadcast on Facebook he's a graduate of Texas State University and this is his second time he runs for mayor of San Antonio. Greg welcome. Welcome it's good to be here this evening and thank you for the opportunity to talk about San Antonio my ideas and the future of who and what we can be I appreciate it very much and thank you to now cast the entire team AARP and of course Elaine I appreciate you for moderating and here you have two minutes for an opening statement so here you go. Yeah I you know it's kind of a funny world we've we've changed so much over the last year a couple years since the last time Ron and I stood before you I think it was at Palo Alto if I remember correctly we were right everybody was sitting there and the crowd was full and and Ron and I are side by side talking about the future of San Antonio and it's just different now we're on a camera it's not as it's not as personal as we'd all want it to be and unfortunately Ron and I aren't side by side debating the facts and issues either which is kind of gives us a chance to show you how far in depth we believe these things and where we're going to take the city if either one of us is either reelected or elected but you know we have to make do with what we have and I'm thankful to everybody that gives us an opportunity at least make an argument to earn a vote and that's why I'm back in 2021 you know we lost in 2019 in the closest election in mayoral history and we worked hard for it was a tough campaign and we learned a lot of valuable lessons and out of that campaign we learned that the path forward for San Antonio is all of us working together everybody having a seat at the table I think for far too long our community has been divided and hasn't had you know parts of our city left behind for generations and if the viewers are watching this they know those areas because they probably live in them they haven't seen a street in 40 years crimes always been the same the job loss the lack of opportunity for our young men and women all these areas of town have been the same for the last 40 years and they simply haven't changed I grew up on the south side up to valley high and got as far as 151 but it's never been any different that's why I got into politics in the first place was to talk about the things we can do across an entire city and that's the ideas and things I hope I can learn from you tonight you can learn a learn a little bit about me and my wife and I on a Lisa with our five children just proud to be back and our faith has brought us through that loss in 2019 to where we are today and if we win we win if we lose we lose but at the end of the day we're okay with it and seconds to be in San Antonio to be residents of our community and look forward to a great future for all of us thank you for tonight and the opportunity to talk about that with our seniors and the rest of our community one of the main issues that AARP and its members care about is what we call an age-friendly city those resources and infrastructure that help seniors have a better life in San Antonio so let's talk about what you think are the best city programs or where the city can do more so that so that this age-friendly city can become even more age-friendly we really have to take a hard look at where the city has been over the last several years and we do some things very good so for instance we opened up a super senior centers in every council district now across the city in district six we had one right on Calabar Road and it was a it was a home for people to congregate get together and just enjoy life right whenever we talk about protecting those most vulnerable in our city seniors are always at the top of that list and sometimes it's as simple as a place for them to congregate to be together to interact and to move around and to remember that life is outside of their home also and and we have to help and cultivate that and grow it but we also learn these lessons and mistakes that come from that so for instance the senior centers were consolidated but we left out neighborhoods that can't get the transportation to the senior center so I have one on District 6 and then we turned around and people couldn't make it from old highway 90 in the west side so we have to be careful with the growth in ideas and not leave seniors behind in areas that don't have services very good I'm going to have go to housing now because over the last year you know how tough it has been for people on the edge for people who either lost their homes or got evicted and really don't have enough public affordable housing in the city so what what will you do if elected to ensure that affordable housing options for seniors at adults in varying income levels can find that proper housing well a lot of that comes from of course our issue with property taxes and the available resources for seniors right because they live in on fixed incomes so a property tax rate increase or change or difference in the building around them right we freeze their property taxes but oftentimes gentrification and the city's growth plans when the city comes in and builds and grows as a community and we say we like take the pearl for example in Broadway we've priced out generations of families that cannot afford to live in areas anymore and oftentimes the families that get priced out are our seniors the legacy homeowner so when I was on the city council we worked for two years councilman Clayton Perry and I to reduce the property tax rate unfortunately Mayor Ron Nuremberg did vote against that so I would immediately go to property tax rate reductions expanding the homestead exemption which we fought for councilman Perry and I while on the city council unfortunately didn't pass but we got to make sure we address the gentrification issue and help seniors age in place and stay in the home that's been their generational family time so we I'm gonna get used to that voice it's a little it's it's very sweet I don't know if people can hear it but yeah Greg um I I'm gonna let you speak more on on housing because I know you have a lot to say so I have another question that's similar and I'll give you more time to talk about issues like gentrification and the rising cost of housing in this city I mean I am amazed I'm amazed at what houses are are selling for in my neighborhood in the old in the oldest part of west side so what can the city do to respond to these increases and I know you talk a lot about taxes and property taxes and all that but what can make what can protect senior citizens specifically to be able to stay in their like as you call them legacy homes or get accessible housing that's affordable in the areas that they've always known as home so the affordability factor is really on the city we have over-regulated so we put so many restrictions on home builders that the cost of houses are rising so the seniors will remember this but years ago decades ago home ownership used to be the route to prosperity and wealth in our city the number of new homes that we started building in a city really told the story of how healthy a city was and we've gotten away from home ownership and as a result home ownership costs have skyrocketed I mean at the average home costs 260-265 thousand dollars in san Antonio about 60 to 70 percent of our citizens will not be able to afford that because they don't have the income so I think about our seniors fixed income right we cannot we have to help them age in place and sometimes that also means we have to offer repairs and other things to their existing home because their income fluctuates we have to be mindful of our cps energy bills we can't overprice seniors with their electrical and water prices every dollar matters and if they got to make a payment to their medical bills or for their medicines something's going to give and oftentimes it's not their health it's their home yes okay now to the economy one of the things that of course during a pandemic we suffered mightily so many of us in terms of I'm having trouble with my computer hold on here excuse me um older adults have been disproportionately affected by job loss during the pandemic how can you help how can the mayor's office help how can city government help address unemployment and more so in san Antonio under employment of older adults who still have to work in spite of receiving just small um payments from social security and they must work like we we have to get out of this pandemic the route out of it is jobs and employment and that's why I put out a plan that talks about the mayor being me being the next jobs mayor people making more money and most importantly keeping more of the money they make our route back is path the path back is jobs and jobs now so we actually have a great opportunity look we lost a hundred plus thousand jobs due to the pandemic before the pandemic san Antonio was already lacking in job creation losing tens of thousands of jobs so we have to think about what the new world is going to look like so my concerns our seniors don't have internet broadband internet access 30 plus percent of our city doesn't the technology isn't there so we have to start at the basic building blocks for our seniors but here's the great thing the new economy and the new job market is going to ask for people to work from home or they can work from a Starbucks or a restaurant it can be mobile and work in their own home so seniors have a great opportunity if we do it right get them the technology and the internet access to get them back to work plus time more money than what they did before okay this is a question that's coming from our Facebook audience they ask seniors suffered greatly during the recent freeze some died their homes were without water or power as mayor what type of resources would you implement to protect seniors this this is a hard subject and and we have to look at what happened in February and we have to own it we can't blame ERCOT we can't blame governor Abbott there are problems with the electrical grid that we could not predict understandable but what we failed at at city hall was a lack of preparedness for instance we knew 10 days in advance 10 plus inches of snow we knew it was going to be in the teens of a temperature right and we didn't even stand up one warming shelter across the entire city until three days into the storm we didn't know we didn't notify our seniors there are residents all across the city that their water and electricity was about to be turned off yet we can text them to tell them to stay away from their grandparents who don't congregate during Christmas it's a it was a total failure but to do it we need to be prepared right we need to think about our seniors especially those with medical conditions that may be on dialysis may have oxygen needs that when the electricity turned off we put lives in danger the san Antonio housing authority failed miserably seconds and they failed because they were not prepared the city doesn't own the collapse of the electrical grid what we own is the ability to be prepared and to know in advance that we have to protect senior children those who are two most vulnerable community um what um tell us what you think about the efforts in the texas legislature to cut voter access to the ballot you know look i don't here's the thing about voter access i don't i like more people voting we have to i mean more people engaged i mean i don't know how we can be opposed to that so i look i jump all over any anybody tries to block the route of people to get out and say i i want to vote and i want to say in the future of our city or the future of our state or our country um increased turnout is a beautiful thing and san Antonio suffers from a decreased turnout i want to tell people we elect people in san Antonio more by our apathy than our actions so our lack of turnout affects people as well so we should be encouraging uh voter access we should be jumping all over to make sure that people can sign up do we need basic rules in place for who can and cannot vote absolutely and we can verify those things very simply but at the end of the day we need to encourage it people don't i a lot of times elected officials will say ah we got a lazy bunch of voters and they don't care they don't believe in government anymore they don't believe in city hall that they're actually there for the people so i think this us politicians elected officials we own lack of voter access and the lack of voter energy we got to do it and get people excited again to vote and i think we can get there and increase access okay so um i hadn't planned to ask this question but i asked it uh mayor ron narenberg so i'll ask you um um what do you think of mask wearing post or pandemic and as we hope to close out this time what do you think of mask wearing beyond this time especially given um that variants are are out there and circulating well i i'm not in favor of mandatory mask mandates um and i think we have to at city hall look i wear my mask and if i'm going to go out and i'm going to respect other members of our community i'm going to wear the mask i wear it when i go into restaurants my family does my children do uh but i don't think we can mandate that personal choice same thing with vaccines we can't mandate people taking vaccines so as we come out of the pandemic i think we have to be respectful of the entire situation what has happened over the last year and a half with covid is we've shut everything down and we mandated mask wearing and it turned it into a highly divisive and political challenge and it really divided it along party lines and i think that was unfortunate but some of that comes from the fear leadership and and if we're not talking about working together as the city if the city council themselves don't work together the mayor not working with the city council there's this palpable feeling that it's everybody for themselves we can't have that in our city so look i think we have to understand that people have seconds right and we have to respect that and we have to come together as a community to do the best we can but i would not mandate mask usage anyway shape or form and i'd open up san antonio a hundred percent we got to get back to work um you mentioned vaccinations and i think you we want to give you more time to talk about that because there are there are a lot of um conspiracy theories out there about um uh taking the vaccination by the way have you had your vaccine are you're not are you old yeah you're old enough to get the vaccine so have you had it i'm sorry all of us are all of us are old enough now but have you had yours no i uh i you know it's a personal choice for me my choice will be i will not take a vaccine until every teacher senior citizen firefighter and police officer has had a vaccine i will not do it i will not sign up for it and i get it people can say well you could be the mayor you lead us all understood i would lead by example and i'd make sure at least every vulnerable person in my city as mayor received a vaccine before i ever thought about it and i thought it was sad that council members and leaders of the community receive vaccines before those are most vulnerable and so no i haven't got it i will i don't fear the vaccine i think it's a wonderful modicl modern medical miracle i think we need to take them but if you don't want to as a citizen that's your personal choice i'm not for mandating vaccines nor am i for vaccine passports or anything of the such uh we again that's hibla requirements there's medical issues there and we have to respect that personal choice for families and what they want to do i think is huge and we need to honor that okay all right um all right i um unless i'm getting more questions from the audience i'm out of question so i'm going to give you some time here Greg to to make your plea to um AARP members about what you would do as mayor to make their lives um easier uh to and you can touch on some of the topics that we have talked about housing and transportation in particular you know i think we've gotten away from at city hall uh a respect for the two most important uh communities in our city the seniors and our children we've gotten away from understanding that we have to respect those who brought us to where we are our seniors they built this city and then our children who are going to take us forward into the future but from the senior perspective what's most important to me is they have opportunities to live to have a fruitful life to have partnership to be living in our city in any way shape form they see possible that's going to be technology it's going to be jobs it's going to be able to stay in their own home for as long as they want right and their income isn't affected by rising cps energy bills i mean think about it if a cps energy bill goes up and a senior can't pay their mortgage that's not where we want to be as a city so we have to help our seniors age in place and then have to transportation to get to the things they want to do in life and we have to be we have to think about it it's not just look we got to build here and we got to grow the pearl and we got to build 151 and this city needs to be the city of the future understand we want the city of the future but we got to remember who got us here and we have to take care of them and things as simple as the vaccine rollout right so the city of san antonio tells its seniors here comes a vaccine program this is what i'm talking about not thinking about seniors we rolled out a vaccine program on 311 and an internet access when three a third of our citizens don't have internet access and i want you my parents who are seniors took thousands of phone calls on 311 a crashed phone system so no thought to vaccinate our most vulnerable before anybody else in our city we actually had wealthy foreign nationals flying into san antonio jumping the vaccine line and getting vaccines again before our seniors so we're out of control we don't have a vaccine wait list the wait list would have given hope to our seniors to know that and i heard the mayor say well it's about you know we don't have enough vaccines of course we don't have enough vaccines nobody in the country does but i should have a wait list of who gets it next and we should have taken this to the community right so i think the attitude comes from recognizing city hall has been built so that you the citizen the senior citizen has to do everything to get to city hall it's not accessible it's not easy and we have to flip that script so as mayor i'm going to take the city to the senior i'm going to show up at the sahas senior living facilities we're going to be at every senior center we're going to bring the services to you that's how it should work and that includes the vaccinations the job opportunities the small business loans whatever it is you need so that we honor what you've done for our city and to bring us to the point we're at and i think we're failing at it and i owned it too i was on the city council and i could have done better myself but we and i recognize that we all have to work harder to put those opportunities in front of seniors but no as mayor seniors will not be left behind and we're going to understand that we're going to take care of them in whatever way shape form that they want their life and i think that's huge we have to flip the script we got to get city hall out into the public into the streets and into the neighborhoods because neighborhoods have been ignored forgotten for and the same neighborhoods that are broke now have been broke for the last 40 years and nobody knows that better than our seniors because they've seen it for 40 50 years and it's the same people telling us they're going to fix it so i'm just bringing a different idea and a different vision and like i said if i'm blessed to get the job i'm blessed to get it if i don't i'm still going to be working hard for san antonio i'm going to show up at the senior centers and my family and i are going to continue to say hey we love this community and what can we do to help it you don't have to be mayor to do great things for a city and i'm just thankful to be here and to show up and have an opportunity to say there's other ideas i wish ron nuremberg would debate me and and we can have a bag and forth but he won't but that's okay right we're here we're talking about the future and i'm just thankful for the opportunity um i i'm told that i forgot to ask you about ask you a question that i did ask the mayor so let me give you an opportunity to do that over um over the last couple of months we have seen various sweeps of homeless camps and um and the city has gone in um under the direction of um either health and human services or other offices of the city to discourage um the homeless and among them are seniors um uh who are who are buying um or getting um small tents to live in because there are no other places to go um explain how you view this problem and how you would approach it um homelessness is a personal faith issue for me and as as a catholic i i just inherently believe we need to go straight to helping those of us with the least in our city and that revolves in at the top of that list usually is homeless people and when you talk about homeless veterans and homeless seniors you talk about things that cut right to your heart i mean those things hurt i don't believe anybody wants to be homeless homelessness is not a crime panhandling is something completely different but people confuse the two so it becomes almost like homelessness is a crime because of panhandling we have to separate panhandling off and protect neighborhoods we must protect neighborhoods and that's what upsets people about the homeless issue it's the neighborhood impact but we have to also recognize we can do better as a city but the city's not the expert in a lot of things they deal in i would partner with the faith community and the non-profit organizations we have the resources to fund it we just need to fund it and hold them accountable we need to revamp haven for hope we shouldn't be clearing out the city a couple of months ago cleared out 85 people from under i-37 they had nowhere to go these folks had nowhere to go they literally discharged out into the city so we need a plan we need to work together we need to partner with the faith community and really focus on those addictions mental health domestic violence you go right down the line of reasons why people are in that struggle but they're not there because they want to be and we have to recognize that and treat it with respect and dignity i'm also reminded that i i didn't ask this other question in the area of transportation i asked you one question but i wonder if you would address safety issues and safety responses from the city for not just a motorist for but for pedestrians and cyclists and we all know that at least on in in poorer parts of town time poorer parts of town a lot of seniors are pedestrians they get to hb they take um all by foot sometimes and or they get on a via bus to get where they need to go well it's something you know when you think about how you build a city sometimes it's as simple as the sidewalk um and sometimes as simple as a bike lane but you've got to think about that mobility from a pedestrian perspective and there's vision zero programs there's items that we put on the table to always try to minimize traffic fatalities pedestrian fatalities we want that to be zero and we have to strive for a zero goal some people say greg that's unattainable the goal is zero deaths in a pedestrian especially when we think about our seniors it takes time a little bit further to cross an intersection there has to be lighting systems that respect that so sometimes it's as simple as the timing on the street when i was the district six councilman i'll be honest i wasn't on board with bicycle bicycle lanes and maybe lengthening sidewalks until i went and spent some time on old highway 90 and we redid those streets and i recognize the plan makes sense because if people they're gonna want to walk people are car centric community we know that that's san antonio but our seniors aren't car centric they're traveling on those areas that we need to protect and make sure they have safe passage and i think we just make the investment it needs to be a big push from city hall well we're at the end of our time it goes a lot faster than you think greg so good luck on your campaign and and thanks for coming on i know there will be we're going to go to a video before we close out so thank you again for joining us thank you okay we're out all right charlotte and are you ready yes okay i'm bringing it back in this is over thank you greg you're gonna fix my video i am one moment thank you elaine thank you all right ready one moment charlotte and all right ready mm-hmm thank you so much elaine for leading this conversation about issues that are deeply important to our neighbors not just seniors like me but people of all ages thank you everyone for contributing your questions and sharing your most precious resources your time and attention remember the election is May 1st early voting runs from April 19th to April 27th and of course at nowcast we have a map for that it's been used by more than 185,000 people to find a place to vote join them by going to bit.ly and that's bit.ly slash s a votes and vote and thank you a a rp of san antonio so very much for making this possible good night