 Alright. Hello everybody and welcome to UTSA's downtown campus here at the College of Public Policy. My name is Chris Stewart. I'm a student here in the College of Public Policy and welcome to our event to pay or not to pay talking about the issue of city council pay in San Antonio. First we'd like to start off by thanking the College of Public Policy and thanking everybody that made this possible and thanking our fantastic professor Dr. Francine Romero for all of her hard work. And also here we'd like to recognize from Congressman Lloyd Doggett's office Andrew Solano. So we're here today to discuss the issue of council pay in San Antonio and it's important to remember that we're doing this as a part of a class so not as the College of Public Policy, we're not advocating any policy change or advocating any specific avenue. We just want to have a fruitful dialogue, hopefully have some engagement going on and maybe come out of this with a way forward and sort of figuring out where the public is on this issue. So without further ado to do a little bit of pre-event live polling I'm going to introduce a member of our logistics team, Drew Gatling. Thank you so much Chris. Thank you Chris. Today we're doing a very interesting thing. We did it for our first event but we're doing a live polling event. So basically the way it works is if you'll break out your cell phones you're going to do this via text message. If you have any questions feel free to just raise your hand. We've got some guys that can come around and help out. So our first question of the day is how much do we pay our city council members? The way this works is in the two line to your cell phone like where you text a person's name you're going to text the number 376707 that's 37607 and then once you pick your answer in the message body of it that's where you'll put the rest of the code. So you'll put if you don't know you'll put 44355. We'll give it a second and it should auto-populate. There we go. And what this does is this tracks the answers but it also gives us the number of people that respond. So we'll give it probably another 20 seconds or so to populate and then we'll move on for the rest of the presentation. But thank you so much for this information. We really appreciate it. This will continue to auto-populate and then we can use this information for future research and everything. So thank you so much. At this time I'd like to introduce Lorna Griffin. She's going to come up and give us some information and some data on this topic. Thank you so much. Good afternoon. My name is Lorna Griffin and I would also like to welcome you all here today. Thanks for taking time out of your day to be here for this important discussion. So the focus of our topic today is around the issue of city council pay. As many of you are aware San Antonio pays its city council members $20 per meeting. This was adopted in 1952 as part of our city charter and our city council basically meets weekly. So what if we wanted to make a change to our city's charter? Well there are a couple of ways that we could do this. One way is for a city council to bring it to a vote to present to voters on a ballot and the other way is by way of citizen petition. An amendment can be proposed every two years. Our most recent charter change was in May 2012. So this chart here lists council member salaries in major cities throughout the country. It's a little tough to read the numbers just because of the contrast on our chart. But on the far left side we have Los Angeles at the top end of the spectrum with 178,000 compensation per year. Houston here in Texas 55,000 Dallas is at 37,000 and way on the right end of the spectrum is San Antonio and we pay our council members a thousand forty per year. So when we consider council pay we have to think about what we ask of our city council members. What do we ask them to do? This is a chart. I know again the numbers are kind of small but it represents the number of citizens per council members in major cities throughout the country. So Los Angeles they compensate their council members a lot but they also represent a lot of citizens here in the middle highlighted in yellow is San Antonio and basically each council member represents 124,879 citizens. So let's take a look at council salaries just outside of San Antonio. San Marcos pays its members 11,400. New Bronfills compensates theirs at 1,200 per year and again San Antonio is at 1,040 per year. Here we see how other elected official salaries compare and when people talk about making a change to city council pay they talk about median income for the city. So highlighted in yellow is San Antonio's median income at 43,961. So in 2004 San Antonio voters considered making a change in city council pay by way of charter amendment. The proposition to proposed a change which was the median income at the time of 30,000 per year for council members and about $41,000 salary for the mayor and it was rejected by 66% of the vote. But if we take a look at voter turnout we have 7.2% of registered voters vote in that election. So very clearly the voters were opposed to that in 2004 Roddy Stinson who was a colonist for the Express News who was opposed to the measure at the time wrote an article no no no. So this is following that election in 2004 and actually the Express News did endorse the charter revision before the vote. But fast forward to 2013 there's been some attention this year especially about the issue of revisiting city council pay. There's been some stronger support. Here are some recent headlines from the San Antonio Express News and other local media. So as Kristen Drew mentioned a major focus of our class this semester is the issue of civic engagement and two weeks ago our class here on campus hosted a research event and we had a group of about 30 participants and our group was pretty diverse. We held a roundtable discussion of about four or five people at a table. Of those surveyed we see that we had pretty much all age groups represented during our focus group. This is an ethnic breakdown of the people that participated. It's pretty representative of San Antonio. Some of the general findings from our session were people some of the members that were here were very civically engaged and then other people who participated never even heard about city council pay. So towards the end of the session there was a general support for a move toward increasing city council salary. A couple of numbers were suggested probably the most common salary amount suggested was the median income for San Antonio. Some suggested a higher amount. They agreed that the current system sort of precludes typical working people from serving on our city council. And participants generally wanted more details. They wanted to know how would this happen. You know how would we decide on a proposed salary. What's appropriate. They also wanted to know where the money would come from especially with some our city's budgetary constraints. They wanted to know you know exactly how that would happen with every a cost of living adjustment you know rolled into the proposal. Everyone generally agreed that there should be a broader public dialogue on this. But but they weren't sure how that would happen. A lot of the participants thought education and awareness were key to letting people know more about city council pay issues. So also at our last event we had instant polling of the participants of our focus group. 48% of them got their main news source from the Internet. 66% felt that a salary would make council members better representatives and 68% of the group had they had heard about the city council pay issue prior to the event. And the last question we asked during our research session was whether their perspective had changed and 50% had said that they did have some change. The civic questions from our research event and getting back to city council salaries was why does Los Angeles pay their city council members so much again that number is 178,000 per year. And we wondered why that was. So prior to 1990 they were compensated 61,522 per year. And they passed measure H, which basically gave them a $25,000 raise to match compensation of the municipal judges. And because there was virtually no media attention to that measure, it passed. Also, some members of our focus group had questions about inflation. The $20 amount that was approved in 1951 would would equal $9,341 today. And also from our event, we have some sample quotes. These are things that we actually heard from our participants. People said we need more dialogue. People don't pay attention to local government because they feel that they aren't directly affected. People wondered what council members public interest change. Are they going to do the right thing if they are paid? And they wondered why pay them more? The family represents special interest groups, not me as an individual. And another participant said, well, whether we pay them or not, they should be held more accountable. So I'm going to ask Drew to come back up and do a mid event poll. Thank you so much, Lorna. Thank you for that. If everybody will take out their cell phones again, we're going to do two more quick questions. Same style as previously and the same exact number is what you're going to text to, but the numbers for the message will change. The first question is, do you think that we should pay our city council members more than we do now? We'll give it about another 15 seconds, and then we'll move to the next question. Okay, and our second question of this session is, if we were going to pay our city council members a salary, how much should they be compensated annually? The first question is the same as the first answer is the same as we do now, $20 a meeting. The second answer, the 93-41-80 is adjusted for inflation only, and then 25,000, 35,000, 45,000 or more. We'll get another 10 seconds. Looks like we've got some consensus between 35,000 and 45,000. Okay, we're going to move on to the panel discussion. If I could ask the panelists to come forward and go ahead and take your seats, I'm going to pass this over to Mr. Chris Stewart, and he is going to lead us as our moderator. And this is the last of the clap until the end, I promise, but I'm going to go ahead and introduce our panelists here. We thank them all for being here. Great panel for today's discussion. First, we have former councilwoman Elena Guajardo. She was raised at a family grocery store business in West Side San Antonio. She earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Texas at Austin, and her master's in social work at the Working School of Social Service at our Lady of the Lake University. In 2005, she won an open council seat in District 7, a position she served in until 2007. Next up, we have Mr. Christian Archer. He has years of experience in Texas politics, having worked for such figures as former Austin Mayor Will Wynn, former Houston Mayor Bill White, and San Antonio Mayor Bill Hardberger and Julian Castro. Under the Hardberger administration, he was special assistant to the mayor, in which he oversaw the passage of the largest bond package in history at the time. He's currently a partner at the Adelante strategy group. Next is Mr. Gilbert Garcia. Gilbert Garcia is a metro columnist for the San Antonio Express News, with nearly 20 years experience writing for weekly and daily newspapers. Now as a graduate of Harvard University, he has won awards for reporting on music, sports, religion, and politics. He's the author of the 2012 book Reagan's Comeback Four Weeks in Texas that changed American politics forever. And one of his future stories appeared in the National Anthology Best Music Writing in 2001. Final panelist, Weston Martinez. A fifth generation San Antonio Weston Martinez has a bachelor's degree from Oil and Baptist University, and over 18 years business experience for the AT&T in the oil and gas industry. He has been active in the nonprofit sector, including involvement with the United Way and the San Antonio Children's Shelter. In 2011, he was appointed to the Texas Real Estate Commission by Governor Perry, a role in which he has served three of his six-year term. Thank our panelists for being here. We're going to try and get in as many questions as we can. So we're going to start out with our first question. A general question, and this is going to be a tough one. In 10 words or less, because as we know, brevity is the soul of wit, what do you think of the current situation? And we'll start with you, Ms. Warda. Okay. First, thank you. Don't put that as my 10 words, please. I want to thank you. I want to put an announcement. Gilbert's birthday is tomorrow, so we got to give him that. This will be very brief, and it's going to be concise. The proposal has merit. It really does. However, it will always be, the devil will be in the details and in the implementation. It is time that you're going to need a leader, and you're going to have to have the right timing, and you're going to have to figure out the complexity of when to put that in, because with longer terms, it is more complex than it would have been had we had the same structured four-year terms. So brevity, that's it. I think that was just about time. Getting better. Same question. You know, we're the seven large city in America. We expect our council members to oversee a $1.4 billion a year budget, and we don't pay them anything. How do you expect excellence when our council members have to swear an oath of poverty in order to serve their communities? It's absurd, and we need to, you know, we need to move with the times and we need to pay them an appropriate salary. I think that the debate is what is appropriate, but to expect someone to, you know, work full time around the clock, administer a $1.4 billion a year budget and not be paid anything, nobody in this audience would be willing to do that, you know, and go to work every day. Well, if you are willing, if you're willing to go to work every day and work around the clock seven days a week, 24 hours a day for $20 a week, I would like to hire you because that's that's the community that shouldn't be a surprise. So again, clocking it just at 10. Yeah, that's perfect. Sorry. Over the years, I've talked to people who've a few people who've served on the both City Council and Bayer County Commissioners Court. They always say, I worked a lot harder when I was a council member than I did when I worked for the county. And I got $20 a week working City Council and then I made more than $100,000 a year as a commissioner. Something's wrong with that picture. Thank you for having me. Happy birthday, Gilbert. Thank you. That doesn't count towards my 10 either, Elena. We need servant leaders. We need people that are going to be statesmen. And I think we have to try everything we can to try to produce that type of environment that requires people to have a passion and a heart to serve. If you're going to approve paying city council members, then you're going to have to change the form of government from a city manager form of government to a strong mayor form of government. And by the city council's vote today to increase Cheryl Scully's salary to $375,000 and then up to $400,000 in 2015. To me, it sends a mixed message. All right. So now the next question is going to be from Mr. Garcia. Now nine years ago, as Lorna had talked about, we did have a proposed salary increase that was shot down at the ballot box. Why do you feel that that is? And why do you feel no one has taken it up since then? Well, I think at that point there was, you know, we'd had some some scandals in the early part of that decade involving a city council. I think, you know, I can't speak about the, you know, the broad history of San Antonio politics. But I think we're looking recently, that was that was a period when the voter confidence and support for city council was was at a real low. And so I think also the forces against it were very effective at mobilizing. You know, the thing is it's always hard to get people to feel sympathetic about elected officials. It's I think there's something in our collective DNA that, you know, if you met anybody else who told you, you know, I'm working 40 50 hours a week and I'm getting paid $20 a week, you think what's going on here? You know, this this out, it sounds like, you know, like some kind of sweatshop situation or something. It really sounds kind of absurd. But we don't we don't have that. We think, well, these people, they shoot, they chose to do it. Nobody forced them to do it. They decided to run for office. So that's the reward is is the the position. And even if they're having to scrape by and, you know, and borrow money or do whatever they have to do, you know, that that's that's the deal. And, you know, I would say people enlisted in the military, when they do that, they're choosing to do it. No one's forcing him to do it. Should we not pay people who serve in the military? Should we should we if we I mean, that would be absurd. But for some reason, we don't recognize the service when it's an elected official. We don't see that as service. We think, you know, they're this is this is something that they that the reward is the office itself. And I don't accept it. So Mr. Archer, same question. But you know, more specifically, why do you think no one has taken this up since then? Is it still toxic? Well, you know, when I ran Phil Harburgers campaign, you know, we had a we had a funny line. There were three council members in jail at the time. And I said, if we just put two more there, we'll have a quorum. And we can go ahead and we can pass legislation in the local jail. So I think that that really is is the heart of the matter. Same thing happened in Austin, by the way. And Austin went to these incredibly restrictive terms and amount of money that you were able to and when I ran Will Wins campaign for Mayor of Austin, the most you could give to a to a campaign was $100. You know, it's absurd to run a big citywide campaign when the most you can contribute is $100. And since then they've come back to being more reasoned and they've actually taken San Antonio's approach to 10 10 council member districts. But so I think that I think that that hurt a lot. Having the corruption played a played a major role in it. But let me say this, that during that time period, they also restricted the term limits to two two year terms. So the most you can serve is four years as a council member. And that's what Mayor Hardberger served four years. And then I ran the campaign to extend the term limits from two to your terms to four two year terms. And, you know, the confidence was growing in San Antonio in the elected officials in the council and Hardberger's approval rating was consistently in the mid 80s, which helped boost your confidence to allow us to even approach term limits at the time. I wanted to include council pay at the time. And it would have been it would have ended the campaign. It would have been the death now. But three weeks out from the election, it was still 60 40 against extending the term limits. You know, that's absurd. I mean, you know, when you get there, it takes a long time to get the process and to get to know, you know, what you're even doing every day as a council member. So it takes a period of time, much less to think, you know, visionary toward the future of what we want to get accomplished. And so we kind of spun the campaign message on its head. And we're pulling 60 40 against, we're going to lose, we know we're going to lose. And so we turned the message around and said, Well, you'll get an opportunity to vote them out every two years. And everybody responded and says, as long as I get to vote them out of office, they were willing to extend and allow for two year terms. And we flipped it on its head in the last two weeks and got it to pass. We actually ended up getting some margin and they passed with with about, I think it was four or five points. But it was a it was a dramatic turnaround. So I think confidence in City Hall started going on. I think confidence in City Hall is really high. And I think now it would pass if we put it before the voters. And it was a reasonable spark, smart point. So this is why, yes, as a former city council person, in your experience, do you think that constituents place a value on what their city council people do? I mean, do you think there would be a willingness to make this change? Can I go back to this question? It ties into this question. I wrote some history this morning. I was getting my, my because I was coming. And it was like when it was it was Mayor Ed Garza that took the first initiative. And then it was it was length of term and then pay. He fumbled that football so many ways. It didn't happen. So here we are the city of San Antonio. And we got Mayor Phil Harberger, someone who wasn't a politician. He was an elder statesman. And what I loved about serving with Phil Harberger is was he didn't have anything to gain. It was about public servant just like you say, sir. And so he looked at the dynamics of our city in a totality. What is best for the city? It's not for my next political game two or three cycles from now. It's what is best now? The urgency was for him was what is best now at this moment? And so when he there was polling done, and I asked the mayor, why two terms? I mean, two year terms, sir, I say, how about three? Because at least you're in the, you know, you get into the saddle, and then you have to start another campaign. And he gets this little paper out of his pocket and goes, Elena, three won't win, two wins. Okay, sir, but you know who really wins? The political consultants and all the signed people and everything went to another campaign. So why it worked was what was happening there, the confidence level, but you had a senior statesman who took the leadership and they did it in a timeframe at the beginning of a second term when he had nothing else to lose. It's like I'm taking the bull point. I'm going to say this is what we need to do now to create better government. Now one of the slides that you had here was conversation points about how people saw city government. So that might have been people in this audience or other class people that those were the quotes for from one of the last points on those one of the quotes was there's seen what the whole total package is there's a disconnect between who sits at a diocese and you and your neighborhoods, your communities. I would say on council and when Dr. Romero has asked me to come speak, I'll say I love city government. I fell in love with city government. You give me an agenda. You give me enough dots on every vote. I'll get it back to your neighborhood. I'll get it back to your pocket book. Anything, everything that happens on Thursday when they are voting, it affects our city. It affects you. It's going to affect you faster than any other place under the cycle of government. And what I love about it, it was nonpartisan. It is the only still place in our governmental system where I could sit next to the only declared Republican was Kevin Wolf. And sometimes he came to me one day, he says, colleague, you're sounding pretty Republican today. And I said, colleague, I can be just a fiscal conservative as you. But in my neighborhood, they call it being pinche. And it was like, we could debate an issue on the merits of the issue. And sadly, what those comments showed to me today, there's still this disconnect. And I'm sorry that it's happening, ladies and gentlemen, because it is affecting you, your families, your neighborhood, everything. You need to be involved. When there was a line, they're not held accountable. Well, it's not just the voting that holds them accountable. You do every Thursday. Are you saying are you being involved? Some people think it's it's it's, it's dull to see City Council. There's a rhythm about it. They they show me get involved. Look at it. Go sit there one day and show your face, because that's that's true participation. I want to let me just add one quick thing to about term limits. And I think that if you would get council pay on the ballot, one of the one of the big talk points was it didn't apply to anybody on the council. And so when Hardberger said, I want this to pass. And I won't accept the benefits of it. In other words, you know, I won't serve four more years. I'm done after this. And it had to apply to you. It applied to everybody on the Dias was it wasn't it wasn't a personal thing, a personal gain. And that went a long way with people understanding and nodding their head saying, Oh, he's doing what's best for the city and not for his political career. And that is an important question that we're going to get into a little bit later. But I have to get down to Mr. Martinez promise I haven't forgotten about you. So our question for you, you know, we saw on the slides that San Antonio is different than other cities in terms of how it pays its council people. But the flip side of that would be it makes us unique. So is there something special or unique about the way that we have our system now? What do you think we lose if we start paying council people? Well, first off, people that people generally make the common mistake statement, that San Antonio will be a world class city. You know, there's a futuristic, you know, chase to the end of the rainbow to find where we're going to finally become a world class city. Alamo Dome, you know, going down the list pre K for essay. Charlie, hate to educate our kids, you know, and, and I really, I really believe that one, we have to recognize that we are a world class city. And we have, you know, it's the biggest small town in America is what I tell people to come here. If you sit and think about it, it really is. It's the biggest small town you can go to downtown and see your neighbor. You can go north to the airport and bump into somebody else. But we have to we have to somehow balance it so that we don't create some sort of aristocracy. And I think that in today's environment, because people are so connected to their, you know, to their, their face in their face time and their, their faces right here. Well, where's the elected official? Where's the representative government and a little set, the people need to get back engaged. How are they going to get engaged? If you allow the elected officials to become more disconnected, because now, right, they're more equipped and more able in certain ways. And I'm very concerned that you create a bigger vacuum that is already there. Okay. So now we're going to have a general question. And on this one, I just need a number. If you could wave your magic wand today and, you know, put city council paid in what would be the, you know, your sort of ideal amount. And we'll start with, we'll start down with Mr Martinez. I'd keep it the way that it is zero. I would say 50,000 for each council member and 60,000 for the mayor. I'm kind of in line with Gilbert. I think that sorry, the number $50,000. I was asked this same question in 2005 in my first race. So here we are 2013 and we're still asking the question. And my answer then I can't give you a number because I don't know the specific number. But my answer then and we are conservative city when it comes to money. So knowing that my answer was whatever the poverty level rate is for a family of four in San Antonio. If you have to sell it, you can't go high. You have to put it to some brevity. So it was then that's even less than a living wage would be. So that was my answer then. And it has to be to me. It has to be something that people could upset and then later increase. But we are so into numbers in this city. You want to say something? I mean, you listen. I mean, come on. I, you know, put it put it to a principal of a high school or or a district judge or some some other relative person. I mean, poverty really covered. I mean, I looked like three nine. Well, okay, I said $50,000. I mean, you can equate it to something that you expect from other people at that same level. But it's like I said, 1.4 billion dollars. We don't want to say, oh, well, let's just go right at poverty for these folks. I mean, we expect excellence and we shouldn't accept anything less than excellence. And you know, I'm not saying pay them. I think Cheryl Scully, you know, the comment that Weston was making, we're going to pay her $400,000 a year. Well, let me say something. I was I was there when Cheryl Scully was brought to San Antonio. I was part of that team that did that. And by having a triple A bond rating by not by going after the best in the nation and saying, you're going to run the city, we have a triple A bond rating. When we went after I've run the campaigns for $1.2 billion in bonds by having a triple A bond rating, we have saved tens of millions of dollars by having a triple A bond rating. And that's because of Cheryl's leadership $400,000 a year. Of course, it's the easiest money that we could spend by having excellence. And that's what we ought to demand from our elected officials as well. But businesses are moving to shirts and north of San Antonio, E.T.J. because they don't want to be into the city of San Antonio with the tax rate that we have and some of the other things. So, you know, tax rates have gone down every every year since I've been involved in San Antonio politics. All right, well, let's let's refocus. This is what will happen in the inner circle. Because I think I think that is that's sort of a good point to bring up. So Mr. Martinez, I mean, do you think there is any good about keeping the job purely about public service without any real pay? Or I mean, what do you think is the value? What do you think is the value in that? How many of you go volunteer somewhere anywhere? Next question. How many y'all get paid for that? Is that not a value to our community? Is are we not when we talk about getting our citizens engaged? If we're going to let them be engaged, why don't we allow them to be engaged? And let's see where their heart is. You know, everybody makes a political statement. You want to see where politicians' heart is? Look where they donate their money. I won't get into who's donated what recently, but just look at it. It's a big issue. So the question is, how engaged do we want the city? And that is really, that's really the heart of it. So you've got to you've got to keep servant leaders in this position. If you're going to pay, then would you really think they're going to want to get paid less than county commissioners? I don't think so. I don't think they're going to have to. I don't think they're going to. So now you're talking about a million dollars a year in salary to those people. And we've got a shortfall in the budget. You know, again, unless you're going to change the form of government to a stronger form of government, you know, let's let's keep it the way it is. So we can, like you said, we had some bad apples a while back. How do we go a little bit longer to show that people's true heart is in the service to keeping sense on your work? OK, now we're going to have one more question than a general question when we're going to wrap up. So this one's going to be for you, Mr. Garcia. Now, you said that, according to a city hall insider recently, nobody wants to be the poster child for paying council members. Now, why do you think that is the case? Well, you know, kind of getting back to the point I made earlier, which is that no one has a we don't tend to feel sympathetic toward our elected officials. And so elected officials recognize that nobody I don't think there's I mean, there are council members who are who are struggling right now financially. I'm sure they would welcome a pay increase. But who wants to who wants to take the lead on something like that when it and we talked about how Mayor Hardberg, when he when term limits were extended, he was able to frame it as something that was not he was not going to benefit from and the current council members are not going to benefit from. And that's an issue we have to get into, I think here as far as how, you know, Christian talked about this would have to be done in a smart way. And I think that's that's it's going to be really tricky because now we have people can serve as long as eight years. When do we when do we say that this would kick in if it passes? But yeah, I think I think people recognize that it's it's a political it's a political loser. If you're recognized as the person who's out there doing this, it really and that's why I think it's important that we're doing this because I think there really needs to be something of a ground up a public groundswell that builds on this issue because if it feels like like people like elected officials are doing it and they're they're leading the charge in out of self interest, it's going to have problems. That leads very well into our final question. And we want to keep these answers brief so we can make sure we get to as many questions from our audience as possible. But our class we're all about, you know, civic engagement, citizen engagement. So what is the citizens role? What can the citizen do in bringing this issue forward or being engaged in this issue? What do you see as that role will start with you, Ms. Guarnardo? I think the first thing that hits me what has not been spoken about and and it's even true for new council people. I've I've some have after they win they might see me somewhere and they go I had no deal it was going to take this much time because you don't know it till you're in those shoes. And and David did a wonderful expose about former councilman David Medina because those numbers on were on the Thursday agenda was he in the chair or not. But there's a lot of other meetings that a council person has and those are never clocked neighborhood meetings, etc. So the pay is you know, what you're paying for council people that come in don't understand because they're never been in the shoes how much time it does take but you as constituents do you know when it comes to voting do you know what you're asking that council person to do when we vote council people in it is the lowest voter turnout of all the votes less than 10% and that vote was at 7.2% it is getting lower and lower when we're voting for council person and school board people and that's the most immediate effect school board and council the lowest voter turnout so when you're talking about engagement it's what with council pay you'll get more people doesn't mean you're gonna get better people so let me put that out there it is up to you to question the quality of the servant heart that that person has okay, Mr. Archie you know I there's Elena hit it right on the head people need to vote people need to get out and express their opinion by by by going and voting and and I think I think council pay would actually bring in more people that would consider running for office if they could actually feed their families you know we don't ask firefighters we believe in service but we don't ask firefighters to do it for free the over its point about the military I mean you can be a servant and you can get a check for it and it doesn't make you an evil or bad person because you get to eat at night or pay your mortgage I mean it's absurd it's a totally faux argument that because you volunteer uh... you should you know all of a sudden valve poverty for your life but citizens engagement voting participation I think that as you have more competitive races uh... when you look at district eight uh... last cycle between uh... uh... a nuremberg and bryonis because it was so there was there was a great political battle going on district eight represented one-third of all votes cast in ten districts because there was a there was a there was a battle and people were they were debating ideas and pre-k for essay was in the mix and all the different things and people started paying more attention is one-third of the entire city turnout one council district because there were engaged uh... people in in in the voting process so I think it brings better higher quality candidates the table because they can feed their families at night Mr. Graves see a question okay and what was the uh... just getting public involved yeah well I you know it's it's a tough I think that that's uh... you know there is a process by which uh... you know people petition drive could start with the public and I and I don't know if that would make a difference as far as how well the uh... the the charter amendment uh... issue would would fair if if if it came it would be tougher to get through that process than trying to get the council to to get it uh... on the ballot but I think that it might be might be perceived differently but I think that uh... you know just a very basic thing that people can do I think is to to uh... express to their individual council members that this is something that they uh... that they support you know I think that elected officials are inevitably it's natural they're going to be concerned they're going to they're going to feel that that uh... voters are going to be happy uh... about something like this and if people in individual districts can express to their council members that they do support this that they understand what the issue is that they don't see it as a as a question of people you know being uh... running for office and being greedy and trying to to get rich while they're in politics but that this is just about as christian said just feeding your family i think that's important there's so much that's happened even just the last you know eight months public trust is uh... i think there's you have to redo the polling i don't think public trust is as high as people would want it to be and you know when you have people feeling very disenfranchised by what council has done in a couple of key areas uh... and then when you have budget talks going around and you have you know even the city manager saying that the reason why our budget is under water is because of legacy costs so the police and fire that you're talking about christian we got people stating that they're the reason that we're under water they have their own pension when they retire they got their own pension now we're going to say hey we're going to blame police and fire for our expenses but we're going to pay city council roughly about a million dollars a year in salaries so i think that there's some things that have to be reworked with the uh... with the council uh... i think it's a slippery slope like christian and gilbert both said and elaine excuse me uh... you know how if they go to do this they'll get one bite at the apple and there would have to be such scrutiny and such accountability to prove this is going to be used for what's good if they don't do that they won't get it and uh... the people the people are starting to get more engaged but i think the way you keep them engaged is by keeping the elected officials being citizen leaders that are volunteering their time just like everyone of you that raised your hand you volunteer and not a one of you raised your hand and said you got paid for that volunteering nor do they did it full time who is volunteering sixty hours a week raise your hand that might come out of the question i mean the answer is zero the one thing i'd want to say is that you know i think we should always keep in mind that when you know this the city charter that we're operating this was uh... approved as he said nineteen fifty one the city's population around the time i think was about four hundred thousand now it's close to one point four million we didn't have single-member districts so you didn't have individual council members accountable to people in individual districts for constituent services talk to council members about the calls they get the the request they get uh... for dealing with issues in their district now it's a very different proposition that was in nineteen fifty one and i think we have to take so why don't we just add a couple more council districts let there be more representation alright so change the charter again it seems like we have a very lively it is important to remember that our panelists do love one another take a picture if you could just stand uh... graduating thank you very much uh... with the current salary do you believe that this uh... this is a city of san antonio benefit by self-selecting those who are working income level because i don't foresee how those people can ever run for office effectively serve if uh... with the uh... uh... self-selecting out where they're not serving because they can't is that what you're suggesting so there's two things and again love finds a way right if you love city government alana pointed out she loves city government okay people love to watch golf people love to watch basketball you know love and love to watch for the right if you don't love it you sit there you say but it's just a ball and a little piece of green grass or what you know so there's right so you want people that have the gift and the to be in that arena and i want somebody that is truly going to be willing to to serve uh... and i think that has an opportunity to show for good people in the community so i don't think it stops as many people as people would try to say i think that uh... again you know you look at possibility of career politicians real quick tiger woods loves golf but he loves the one billion dollars he's made doing it too you know tim duncan urns his salary you know the if you do it for free though if if we pull the audience like you've done lesson and said how many hours a month do you volunteer and let's say the number is ten hours a month which is a lot to volunteer is that what you want your city council person to do work ten hours a month at city hall or do you want them to be at neighborhood association meetings and looking at drainage projects and figuring out how do we best serve the community i'm telling i know i'm all the people that i that i couldn't agree with on almost anything i'll give you an example kevin wolf kevin wolf and i barely agree on anything and i totally respected him as a city council person because he fought hard for his community you know i had to move on because he couldn't live kevin had to go at kevin had to run for another office because he couldn't eat and it's no offense i mean there's nothing wrong you've got to feed your family and kevin i hardly agree on anything and i respected everything he did on council on his hard work and dedication to his community okay so we're gonna have i think just we have time for two more questions we'll go with gg and then uh just in here hi i'm gg love i'm a major uh public administration and a minor non-profit and i put in a lot of non-profit hours like a san ministries i've had the pleasure and opportunity to work with christian archer and i love maya hardberger he was awesome he'll be the greatest mayor of any time you go to that and i tell him that too i have a question for you christian what is it going to take in the strategic planning process to spell this idea i think that's great that's a great question uh i i think i think that and i'll be tipping you afterwards uh no uh no i mean it's it's it's a it's a difficult process where you've got to go out into the community you've got to look people dead square in the eye and make the arguments that we've made here uh and get a lot of input back from regular people that that you know gilbert's point about nobody wants to see politicians you know make money or any of those things right you've got to go out there and you've got to sell it you've got to make good strong points about what do you expect from your from your city council uh you've got to pull it um as a as a political guy and a guy that is a political scientist and tries to figure out what motivates people in one way or another you know it's it is a difficult thing because of because of trust and what to weston's point about trust and city hall i would disagree with him about where city halls where trust is within city hall right now i know exactly where hulion castrow is uh as far as popularity goes in the city and it's why we're able to pass pre-k for essay which was a divisive thing that we need to get out and talk about and have people engage in but it passed because we made good strong arguments as to the the need for it i think we could make the same arguments can i ask you a cool question about that yeah how how big an issue is it as far as the timing of like you know should we didn't make a big difference if we did it in the 2016 presidential election cycle like you did it the term limits extension and how far should we go as far as saying it's not going to kick in for the the current boy every city council member and the mayor might kill me for saying this but it should not apply to them wow it should it should it should be done in a way that is not self-serving and that's and most people think of politicians as being self-serving people let me tell you it's it's so easy to go there uh i know all of our city council members that they are there to benefit their communities you might disagree with them on on every issue under the sun like i do with kevin wolf but i know the guy did not go there and some self-serving boy this is all going to be about me he got paid twenty dollars a week you know uh so it can't be self-serving it couldn't apply to them um maybe there's a time frame gobert where you could say if you're elected four years from now it kicks in or something some combination for the current council members but talk about the timeline for charter for current initiatives you have spacing oh there's so much more that i would do i mean starting at council pay let me tell you i think it's absurd that we are not paying our city council people but there there are plenty of other absurdities to professionalize what we're doing um at at city hall and and uh you've got to take them one bite you know how to eat an elephant one bite at a time you know we did term limits now it's time for council pay you know now and and future future you know there'll be time to continue to grow and professionalize what we expect from you i would say just to answer the i i think you need to do it in a november ballot it would be it would be preferred to have the highest amount of turnout because i think that there is a group of people in san Antonio that i have coined a phrase called the cavers citizens against virtually everything uh and they are going to turn out and vote every single time and you can bank on that percentage that is going to vote and the higher the turnout the better because you have people that will study all sides of the issue and and and and make a smart determined decision i think they'd vote for that's why pre-k that's a very special election coming up in May very quickly we're going to have to go right here to our final question uh my name is joseph whiteman i'm a public administration major um this is for western Martinez um earlier you said that paying our uh city council with uh breed aristocracy in our city council don't you think that paint the current pay of only twenty dollars a meeting breeds aristocracy as it only allows those members that have the means and the influences to afford to be there so it's it's actually let me ask a question with a question then i'll so do laws keep people honest or do honest people stay honest if somebody's a thief guess what i don't care if they're paid at enron they're going to steal money if somebody's a cheat i don't care if they're a contractor working a sims project for somebody at the city of san Antonio you're not a contractor i was wondering but they're gonna cheat okay so what you're asking is a heart issue and how can i best identify somebody's heart if it's masked and jaded and hidden behind 75 thousand dollars a year so that so i i am concerned how can you how do you do that i'm not smart enough to be able to do that on every single person so that's why i personally think unfortunately you've got to stay where it's at so we can really just hold these people as accountable as possible and that is an interesting and we'll let we'll let you just make a comment on that i'm just going to be very real this is what happens i got into it i was retired one of the questions i had to ask myself could i afford twenty dollars a meeting and i went i could everything was paid car house and everything as long as my dog was taken care of i was fine that's how i got into it i had to to so search me to see could i do this this is what actually happened on thursday's council meetings i was the only council person at the time that was full time because this was my job i went there it was an anomaly that the staff wasn't used to seeing a council person in the that chair in that office coming five days a week saturdays and sundays calling and whatever so what happens on thursdays back then 2005 you'd have the council people coming sitting at the dais they're having their mail brought in letters to signatureize in between council stuff happening and it's like i'd see them i said what's going on i said i'm juggling i've got to do my job i've got to do this be it everything that's what happens at twenty dollars a meeting when they're trying to feed their family etc and one of the lessons i learned i learned learn from patty rattle but i could do this because this was my full time job when you're at the when i got to the dais i said take the phone away we didn't have cell phones at those days you had landlines take the phone away i said i don't want to be distracted because what i learned from patty watching her one session you watch them in the eye whoever comes to that dais you watch them in the eye no matter if it was and our sessions can went to 11 p.m some days we were the full time you watch them in the eye i could do it because i could afford to live on 20 dollars a meeting and that was my full time job that is not what you're going to get on a normal basis with this so i just want to put out their reality and i think that is a good place to stop mainly because we're out of time so now we will welcome back up uh drew to do a post-event poll thank our panelists once again if you have to just stay seated right where you are because one of you might have won the raffle so exciting we don't have to do an ethics report we're going to ask one more quick poll which will close us out uh the question is did your perspective on this issue change any during the event today someone's got to show me how you do this i don't know how to do that we'll give it a couple seconds and then uh move on what are you doing over there randy looks like you're changing the vote no change is the uh is the predominant answer thank you so much i really appreciate you guys taking the time to do the polling for us uh we want to um acknowledge that uh and thank nowcast essay uh they are here today videotaping and they're going to upload everything that you've seen today onto youtube under to pay or not to pay so if you want to go back and review it or show it to friends uh feel free to check youtube okay uh we want to introduce um our final uh student uh Vivian Quintero she's going to close us out with the raffle do you have a raffle thank you um as a small token of our bgm you can like update live and give work or seal college of public policy we have four uh raffle prizes