 Good evening. I am Rogelio Sainz, I'm the Dean of the College of Public Policy here at UTSA. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our beautiful downtown campus for this evening's forum on clean energy. Thank you for being here tonight, and thank you especially to Mayor Ivy Kaler, and Representative Mike De Avial for being here with us this evening. We know you have a very busy schedule right now, and we really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us tonight. We also thank the Butler Firm, Clean Text, and the UTSA, Texas Sustainable Energy Research Institute for teaming up with the College of Public Policy to co-sponsor tonight's forum. Thank you also to Naucast SA for producing the webcast of this event, and to Jennifer Lanta as well as Michelle Skidmore from the College of Public Policy for helping organize this event. We are very excited to host this mayoral to establish a platform for discussing clean energy and sustainability for San Antonio. As election day nears, we have to get a unique perspective from the candidates on their views for helping San Antonio become a clean tech leader. The candidates have discussed numerous issues including housing, water conservation, gentrification, and today, very appropriately, on Earth Day, we are fortunate to give them an opportunity to share their views regarding clean energy and economic development for the city. Thank you again for being here with us this evening. I am now pleased to introduce our moderator, Dr. Thomas Kunstall, who is an expert on economic development and research director with the Institute for Economic Development here at UTSA. And thank you for moderating this event. Today, mayoral debates on clean energy, sustainability, and economic development. This must feel like the 100th day of this season. I don't know how to keep the exact count, but welcome candidates. Before we get started, I want to... It's 46. Is it real? Okay, great. For the record, 46. All right. Let's keep the count. Just go over the ground rules real quickly. Each candidate will have three minutes for opening and closing remarks. Responses to questions will be two minutes, and then follow up from the moderator 30 seconds, and then at the end, we'll have questions from the audience. We'll run for about an hour, and then we'll have questions from the audience. So that's sort of the general format for the event. And before we get started, I'd like to read a couple of intros for each of you. That's all right. And then we'll get started. Let's start with Mayor Taylor. Ivy Taylor was appointed to serve as mayor of San Antonio on July 24th, 2014, to fill Mayor Cooney and Castor's unexpired term as mayor. Prior to her appointment, Mayor Taylor served as the district two city council representative, to which she was elected in 2009. Mayor Taylor ran her career in the City of San Antonio in the Housing and Community Development Department, and the Neighborhood Action Department. While at the city, she worked with a variety of neighborhoods, developers, and nonprofit organizations in order to facilitate inner city redevelopment. After six years, she left to become the Vice President at Merced Housing, Texas. At Merced, she worked to create and implement programs to improve family stability for apartment community residents. Mayor Taylor is currently a lecturer at UTSA in the Public Administration Department, and she joins us tonight as a candidate for mayor of San Antonio. Representative Mike Villarreal was born and raised in San Antonio. Mike trained in economics and statistics first at Texas A&M and later at Harvard. He worked for the Board of Governors of Federal Resources at Washington DC as a research analyst. Mike returned to San Antonio and joined a non-profit that empowered neighborhood leaders to collaborate on common ground in challenging circumstances. Inspired by this work, he served as Vice President of his Neighborhood Association. At 27, Mike won a seat in the Texas Legislature, where he served for 15 years at the capital and improving children's education. He successfully fought to expand Texas grants, the state's most significant college financial aid which has demonstrated academic achievement and financial need. Mike also helped reduce our state's overemphasis on standardized testing and health advanced quality technical training in our hospitals. Mike joins us tonight also as a candidate running for mayor of San Antonio. So if you wouldn't please let's give a round of applause to the candidates. With that, I'm going to jump straight into the questions. Again, the overarching theme for this Earth Day event is clean energy, sustainability, and economic development. And as an academic, I'm very big on definitions. So I wanted to start with a question that is sort of basic but one that I'm always surprised at how many different definitions we get. And that is what is your definition of sustainable economic development and how will that guide you as mayor of San Antonio? And Mayor Taylor, I think you won the toss, so you get to go first. Good evening everyone and happy Earth Day. Thanks for being here. I was kind of chuckling as you, as you pulled the question because I was reflecting back to when I was in graduate school in 1996 and at UNC Chapel Hill in the planning department. I was focused on housing and community development. But I had a classmate that was obsessed with sustainable development. He talked about sustainable development with like every third word and every sentence that he talked about. And at the time, I remember, and I was in a planning program, I could not understand what he was talking about. It seemed like just a buzz phrase and a buzz word. And I think a few years into me working in the affordable like a light bulb went off and it finally made sense to me. And I think as a planner, that's what I refer to when I, you know, in trying to describe what sustainable development or sustainable economic means. What's so exciting about planning is the opportunity to connect the dots because a lot of folks like energy or the environment or housing or economic development and not realize the links between all of those. To me, sustainable economic development refers to connecting those dots in relation to building our economy and creating opportunities for San Antonians to live a prosperous life. For San Antonians now to live a prosperous life without preventing San Antonians in the future from living a prosperous and healthy life. And so really that's really my definition of sustainable economic development. And as mayor, I look forward to working with folks across the community because I don't claim to be an expert in any one of those fields, but I believe that through all of us coming together, working together in efforts like SA Tomorrow, which is a series of plans, provides us the opportunity to drill down and be able to create programs that will lead to sustainable economic development and a prosperous community for us here in San Antonio. Great. Thanks. Can you hear me now? Yep. Can you hear me now? Sure. Do that commercial. So sustainable development. Well my background is in finance. I worked for over a decade in investment banking with my clients. We're sitting in the local governments to help them manage their debt, put together their bonds, structure them so that they could afford to pay them off in a real time horizon and help them make the right decisions so that the investments that they were making were really building the right and not just taking on debt that would strap future generations and cause obligations, taking away their choices in the future. And so for myself in sustainable development, I think about meeting today's needs in a way that does not harm future generations ability to provide for themselves. And if done right, this generation is not just going to be about meeting our own needs today, but we're going to be making commitments that future generations will be benefiting from. For example, I think one thing that we can all be proud of is that today we are making a sacrifice to environmental easements, conservation easements over our water supply, over the Edwards aquifer. We are purchasing these easements, so in perpetuity, perpet, forever. How's that? That we call the Edwards aquifer will not have a lid sealing it up and I'm talking about development, being paved over our aquifer. We're sacrificing today so that 100 years from now the next generation will get to enjoy clean water. And so I think we're sort of doing more. We're going beyond just meeting our own needs today, but we're making sacrifices so that the next generation will have more freedoms, more liberties, and more prosperity. So as your mayor, I'm very interested in this concept of sustainable development so that we not only are providing for ourselves, but we truly are leaving this city stronger, healthier, and the next generation will go even further. In fact, do you like... So how do you build on the vision of community sustainability as outlined in Mayor Casper's or former Mayor Casper's SA 2020 meeting? Yeah, it's an ambitious goal and we're well on our way meeting a number of measures. For example, I believe we are on track to meeting the goal of having 20% of our energy production be represented by renewable energy production by the year 2020. It's something to be proud of. We are taking great strides, not just to make this happen so that our air is cleaner, our environment is cleaner, our carbon footprint is smaller, but also making big steps to connect the dots between how we do that and how we grow our economy and how we educate our people to be better stewards. And so I'm very excited about keeping the energy going, excuse the pun, in terms of clean energy, but also finding opportunities to develop economic development agreements with contractors who are part of the new energy economy. I think that initiative is spectacular. It's an example of what's possible when you own your own utility. I believe the initiative to invest in UTSA's research and development, so UTSA is an R&D center for CPS Energy, is brilliant. As Mayor, I'm going to be seeking more kinds of initiatives like these when we leverage our publicly-owned utility for the advancement of our economy and our educational institutions. Great. Next slide. I think mine is working. Thank you. Well, I've already been working on building on what the platform that SA2020 established through kind of pivoting towards a comprehensive plan for our city, and that effort is referred to as SA20. The effort to ensure that it is a relevant and accessible community-wide effort. First of all, we established tri-chairs to help bring the community into the effort, Dr. Akamya Alkanat, who is a professor here at UTSA, and Daryl Burr, who was the former CEO of SA2020 and is now a board member, and Councilman Ron Muirberg. They are our community tri-chairs that are leading the effort for us to develop three plans in one, a comprehensive land-use plan, a sustainability plan, as well as a transportation plan. And so SA2020 certainly provides a great foundation for us to build on, but now we've got to use population projections and other models to help us get to a set of objectives for the community that we can then use to prioritize our investments related to infrastructure, and also we can use as the basis for other policy-making and decision-making on investments related to CPS and other policies that the city puts in place that impact use and the environment in general. So I'm really excited about that and I encourage people to get involved in that because it is designed to help us think through the connections between all those various areas and lead us and guide us through the year of 2040 to anticipate experiencing tremendous growth as a community. So what energy programs will you propose to finance and subsidize the deployment of community solar projects and distributed solar and energy storage projects? Can you hear me? Some control over the microphone. So what new clean energy programs will you propose to finance and subsidize deployment of community solar and energy storage projects? I don't have any plans for new clean energy programs, but I believe that that can come out of the sustainability plans that is a key component of the effort that I just discussed. I am particularly interested in community-based grassroots efforts that can provide opportunities for employment and training for people in disadvantaged communities. I think there's a great opportunity for people to learn valuable skills that will allow them to be employed and also help us to generate energy for our community. That would be an area that I personally would be particularly interested in but certainly the line on the expertise of community leaders who can help us think through what we think is going on. Great. Thanks. I'm interested in returning to an initiative that I helped pass legislation for called PACE. What is PACE stands for? Property Assessed Clean Energy. Thank you. It's been a while. This legislation in 2009 we had a lot of hope for this concept and the idea was that property owners often are deterred from pursuing purchase of solar panels because of the upfront costs. They can rationalize the long run, it will save the money but it's that upfront costs and getting the financing to purchases, solar panels that hold for that. PACE was intended to help homeowners and property owners in general be able to finance solar panels by using the credit of a municipality. So the city of San Antonio had plans on issuing debt and using that to finance a fund that could be tapped by homeowners and those funds would go to pay for the panels and the savings realized in the reduced bill would represent savings to the owner and also represent the source of the payment back to the city. Very smart way of doing this. Unfortunately Freddie Mac found a step in and said now we don't want that loan to be superior to banks who loaned first lien and so for homeowners that's been a door that has been shut. I think there are other states that have been aggressive about figuring ways around it. I don't know if we've made much success in the state of Texas. I think there is opportunities with commercial property owners to make this work as mayor I want to return to this and have this mechanism of financing open the door wider to more property owners to finance these solar panels. Along those same lines let me ask how would you plan to use the purchasing power at CPS as leverage to create the sort of environment and programs that make the city attractive to innovative firms? Oh, sure, sure. How do you plan to use the purchasing power to leverage and create the sort of environment and programs that make the city attractive to innovative firms given that CPS provides so much in general to economic development in the San Antonio area? And Mike, I think it's back to you? Yeah, it's back to you, sorry, yeah. Well, you asked all these questions. I don't have answers for all these questions but what I want to do is leverage the fact that we do own our public utility or electric utility or water utility and I think doing that and having this ownership of this control of these public owners or public utilities gives us a chance to do some creative things. As I mentioned earlier, the idea of CPS turning the UTSA is brilliant. I think that's a great way of using their purchasing power in this case research to help support local universities to become a tier one research university. I want to look for other opportunities that belong to I believe the OCI contract that was part of the new energy economy initiative to bring in contractors to make them relook at their headquarters or significant partner operations here in San Antonio in return being a privileged contractor helping roll out an initiative of distributed solar energy production is very smart I want to keep encouraging and supporting those kind of initiatives. I'm going to be looking towards the leadership of CPS energy on their ideas but I also know that we have grassroots community in San Antonio that has a lot of ideas of their own and so as your mayor I want to make sure that CPS is open to ideas of the organization that aren't just located in the public utility there are a lot of great ideas that are in the community that we need to consider to be open to. Thanks Mike. I would just point out that CPS is a big asset that we have we have the opportunity to work closely with them on our economic and sustainable strategies for our community of course they're in place as we develop this plan but I would just say that I embrace innovation and my experience is that they've been a willing partner and they have been open to innovative approaches in relation to economic development and that they've been at the table when we've been talking with firms that have been interested in moving to San Antonio or local businesses that have wanted to explain that they have been great in helping us to design again innovative business strategies to promote the development of growth of those businesses so I look forward to continuing in that vein and believe that other than some guideposts that we develop through sustainability can help us to know where there are more of those opportunities great, thanks and I'm going to shift gears a bit now and talk a little bit about water so Ivy, what is your position on the proposed purchase of water from sources outside the Edmontoc for under the Vista Bridge project? my position is that I support it and let the council in a vote an affirmative vote to Sol's to move forward on that project and as a member of the Sol's board I'll be diligent in overseeing the execution of the project to ensure that it occurs in accordance with the plans that were outlined from the beginning I'd also say though I know there were some hesitance in the community related to the project because I think some folks are concerned that it might mean that we are backing off of our commitment in conservation but we are still firmly committed to conservation Sol's has been a leader and San Antonio has been a leader in that respect that's the only reason why we've been able to grow to the extent that we have over the years and so though we are diversifying our water sources we have to remain vigilant in relation to conservation and I will continue to promote that as your mayor I want to maximize the sustain of the nature of this project it's an agreement that has already been signed I do everything I can to make sure that we use this water supply not just to meet our local needs but it becomes it should be used as a solution for our region and it can be used strategically I believe to encourage development and move development off of environmentally sensitive land of our aquifer closer to highway 35 so that we support development that we know is coming but on land that is less environmentally sensitive and that we share this water and we share the water bill because this is very expensive water and it represents 20% I believe one estimate is greater than or 20% of our current water demand that's a very large number we don't need all that water supply up front we are going to need it over time but if we sell water to communities along the Austin and San Antonio port with 35 I think we will be able to mitigate development over the aquifer and we will be able to reduce our costs we should move forward with other initiatives of the desalination unit that has been developed and the possibility of adding other components to that increasing our capacity desalination here in the modular kind of rain that makes a lot of sense to me that also helps us be a water that is put in our local immediate ecosystem as Mayor Taylor just described the information is hugely important we need to continue to be national leaders push the envelope on commercial use and out there we have a lot to gain in those areas so along those lines what is the response to the argument that the ASR the aquifer storage and recovery system by delaying or avoiding every other week water restrictions essential states 3 and 4 water restrictions is effectively subsidizing summer long water I want to encourage and support the shift to zero escape I think that is an important thing to come along way I was born and raised here in San Antonio and I was growing up here in the 70's and 80's everybody had tried to have a green line and now we see a lot of new development and innovative use in residential parts of town I think there needs to be more I am very interested in challenging SAWS in their position being anti rain bearer we are my household big fans of sisters and have been able to meet all of our outdoor water needs with our sister system and I know other folks around the community would like SAWS to be more open to this idea and so I think we have a long way to go in this area but we have come a long way and I am committed to keeping this effort going on this topic I would say that if we were to try to make a drastic change overnight it could lead to a revolt I learned by council colleagues that if you want to zero-scape you can do something ridiculous but in some cases that type of landscape I think also another way we can address that getting back to the growth that we will be experiencing as a community is looking at alternative housing types as well having that spacious green lawn and the responsibility of cutting it may not be the dream of every San Antonio and some San Antonio's might prefer to live in a smaller footprint in denser communities which could help us to make progress in that area I think it will take some time for us to get to the point where that's not an expectation of San Antonio's but there is an opportunity to grow for us to shift in new developments in their city different housing and garden types so that we can get away from just that One more thing not only can we offer incentives and programs and expose to introduce people to the beauty of zero-scape but we also need to make sure that our structure recognizes there are different types of water consumption and I'm a supporter of sending a market signal, a price signal to users so that they can serve if you're going to have a large water hungry yard you're going to pay a different rate than if you're going to be a water consumer that manages a small footprint of water consumption Thanks Any other comments? Alright, again, shifting gears just a bit and I think this question goes back to Navi, what's your perspective on the role that energy and environmental programs should play in advancing San Antonio's education and workforce goals? Okay, well I touched on it a little bit earlier in relation to workforce development I was talking about I was talking about how there could be opportunities for folks in disadvantaged communities to be part of training programs where they learn about how to farming in the city or to be part of some sort of solar firm I think that that is an opportunity that is right in front of us that we should build out a system to allow that to happen but certainly there are many opportunities for San Antonio to learn more about these technologies and then also be part of the solution on many of these things institutions like UTSA but in our other wonderful higher educational institutions here at community college level there's an opportunity for folks to be in shorter term programs possibly that would connect them employment in the energy or environmental fields but then let's not forget about our younger students as well and I think certainly in high school there's an opportunity for us to help make education more relevant that's been longer in conversation that we've been having community life how we can help students to understand that what they're learning in high school how that can translate into career options and I think there's a great opportunity for us to do that what comes to mind for me I'm a lecturer here at UTSA so I teach a class I teach a class on urban planning there's a video that I always show my students it's a TED talk from a woman named Majora Carter and she leads this non-profit and she had an initiative called Green the ghetto where she was able to obtain grants to bike trails near the waterfront in the Bronx and through doing so she provided employment opportunities for residents of the Bronx they were doing green groups in New York and coincidentally I learned to go back to that the green city in the U.S. by many standards is New York City and so this was I thought it was just such a great example of improving the environment and then also providing options for job training and development in a community that's been historically distressed and I'd love to see us replicate some of those models here and partner with many of our educational institutions to help make that happen Thank you Well the campaign trial talked a lot about an opportunity that we have as a community to shift from thinking about our high school students as considering them some going to college and some not to looking at our young people and knowing they can all have careers and if they're successful by them we will have introduced them while they're still in high school to who our biggest employers are what jobs are in the greatest demand what economic opportunities are here in San Antonio relevant to them so they can start thinking differently about their education in more concrete terms relevant terms probably the biggest thing we could do is take this idea that right now it's just emerging called Essay Works it's a program that is funded by Charles Button he's the primary and the supporter of this idea he has a stream of making San Antonio a place where our children learn by doing and for me when I heard that I thought about our high school students and how we could connect them to internships summer jobs, apprenticeships co-op programs that feed the sectors of our economy that have the promise of providing good paying jobs careers that you can keep climbing educating yourself, advancing yourself with it so you can provide for your families and get ahead in life Mayor, I recognize I'm not in the education business I will not have formal authority over our educational institutions but I believe this is our greatest challenge as a city upgrading the quality of our workforce making sure that our young people we have plenty of them to learn at the youngest ages what they want to be when they grow up have role models that will inspire them I'll share a really brief story when I was in high school my role model was the mayor of San Antonio and so for more than two decades I've been pursuing this dream role models are powerful I was the first in my family to go to college but it was this person who I looked up to who went that gave me a roadmap and that's what New York kids need in San Antonio and I believe the energy sector is one of those sectors in our economy that a dream for our youth and given that we own CPS energy we have we have the strength that we can play to make it be the next leaders of that new energy economy great next question are you committed to this mayor of San Antonio to decarbonizing CPS's generation fleet with renewables and so what trade-offs yes I'm committed to that goal I think it's a part of it's very much in line with CPS's goal of reducing carbon footprint producing 65% of our energy from low to no carbon sources and certainly on the consumption side we need to recognize that our automobiles are the biggest source of air pollution here locally and CPS can lead on this front this is an example of full purchasing what we can do with not just CPS but SAWS and the city of San Antonio I'm committed and I believe there's a real opportunity to having us lead in a way that creates the public infrastructure for individual consumers to also drive clean energy cars yes I'm committed to decarbonizing CPS's fleet to the most practical possible and believe we've been moving in that direction because they've included renewables in their portfolio to lead to energy generation however I would certainly proceed carefully because we want to ensure that we can continue to have low rates because the low rates that CPS energy offers is part of the bigger of our economy what makes it attractive for our business to be here to stay here and for businesses to move here and then certainly as someone who's former district council member who heard one-on-one from constituents we have to be concerned as well about the average standard community and what they're paying for energy usage and the delicate balance that we've got to have for our community great thanks and this is back to you I mean what policies will you put in place to ensure that the both side and west side San Antonio are integral to the revitalization of downtown San Antonio we see that downtown San Antonio is starting on that process it was interesting that Austin's revitalization of downtown from the place that he and Anthony added to a vibrant community and it is so far the west side and the east side haven't really just paid to the extent that the Muslims would like so how would you address that that's probably a softball question for me because I think most folks in the room know that as a district council member pretty much effort to focus on reinvestment and revitalization of San Antonio's east side which culminated in over $50 million in federal grants to rebuild housing there to make reforms and improvements to the schools that feed into the Wheatley Middle School and also to just overall improve the quality of life there we receive several federal designations and continue to garner more grants to help us more specifically with many of those areas what has been so what has been so exciting the work that's going on there right now is that in the past we've usually tried to tackle one issue at a time housing or education or even on development and now we have the major partners who are engaged in all of those things actually at the table and working together so the folks from the housing authority are talking to the folks from the school district are talking to the folks at the city and are talking to community members about how we can improve their community and invest there of course I see the efforts that have gone on so far is primary purpose for private investment so we've got a tremendous amount of government resources that are going on now and my hope is that it would provide the stability and create interest in private investment but while we do that we have to ensure that the folks that have been prepared to take advantage of the opportunity so we have also been focusing on our workforce development we're also concerned with the environment over there and we have a great partnership of Bear County we're using city bond funds I think it's about 6 million and about 4 million in and we are redeveloping the Naker Creek which is basically a huge drainage ditch and turning it into a linear middle of San Antonio's east side and we'll be adjacent to public housing I could go on and on but as far as the west side what I'll say as well is that I always view our work on the east side as a template that we can then take to the west side as well and there are talks right now with the housing and thorian leaders on the west side to apply for the choice neighborhood program which is the program that we've been using for the housing redevelopment on the east side so I definitely see a bright future for both of those sides of town as mayor I am fully committed to the idea of balanced growth I don't think growth should just be in one part of growth and investment should just be in one sector of our city it should be correct and I apologize for giving Ivy a softball question but I'm sure you've got a great response as well to your original question which referenced sustainable development and here's an example of the city taking seriously this idea of sustainable development if we can shift our growth so that it's more balanced centered around downtown that it includes our older neighborhoods there are greater opportunities to find quality housing economic opportunity educational opportunities for our older neighborhoods we will create a more sustainable economy and ecology we'll be growing less over our water supply we'll be taking advantage of existing housing stock in many cases that needs to be refurbished and brought back we'll take advantage of neighborhoods that were built at a time where we were intended to walk places but in many ways are much easier to design so that hiking is a viable option and so I think we'll grow in a more sustainable way we can concentrate and really hit up to discover and rediscover these old neighborhoods I want to make this certain though we need to continue to develop but in an inclusive way we harm our efforts of growing downtown to the extent we hear about these stories of mission trails residents, long-time residents being pushed out without the city helping them either be included in that development or transition to adequate housing as your mayor I'll give you very conscious about making sure that we are in an inclusive community that as these tax initiatives continue to take root that maybe they can be tweaked to include the average homeowner who wants to make improvements to their home but is concerned about the tax bill that the extra tax bill they get hit with when they make a greater investment to do is instead of handing somebody a bill for demolishing their house hand them an opportunity to sign up for a low to no interest loan to fix up their home to stay in their long-time residents this is a complicated challenge but I'm committed to figuring it out because we have long-time residents that don't want to leave their old neighborhoods this is where they're born and raised they want to grow the next generation and we need to make sure to grow in a way that and I'm reminded by the organizers that I neglected to give the candidates their opening mark so what I'd like to propose is a set of closing remarks let's do a first set of closing remarks and then we'll give the audience time before we let questions we'd like to get a few questions from the audience and then have a final set of closing remarks and then just in case something comes up that you may want to respond to and it's your call but with that let's go to the closing remarks and then if anybody has any questions from the audience after that we can feel those okay well I guess I'd say thank you for your time and your interest in being here and for your particular interest in this key issue that probably does not get enough discussion here in San Antonio I guess I'll just say you kind of heard my bio so you know a little bit about my background I would just say that I'm asking for the opportunity to continue serving as mayor because I'm well prepared for the job having had experience at the musical level first off as a city employee and then working at a nonprofit that was focused on affordable housing and that's how working in the trenches on affordable housing is how it got to be a little more familiar with some of the practical issues related to sustainability and construction but then some cleaning members asked me to consider running for city council and I thought it sounded like a crazy idea because I didn't see myself as a politician you know but then I said well maybe I've got the background and experience that would allow me to be able to do a good job for the constituents in District 2 which is what I ran for at that time and so I won in 2009 and served diligently and I just talked about one of the signature projects that I worked on but even during my time as a council member I was always a champion for balanced growth throughout our city seeing the trend of people feeling like if they wanted to live in a safe, stable and safe home community that could only happen in one part of the city I wanted to create opportunities for folks everywhere I felt like a child zip code and what their trajectory is going to be and so that's what centers me in the work that I do at the city of San Antonio and of course it's been a privilege and an honor to move into the mayor's seat and continue focusing on those key issues for our city I just think we're a critical time and we need leadership that's focused on what our needs are here in the city and I'm not a career politician this has been an unexpected path for me it's not something that I dreamed about doing what I'm not doing is being of service because I felt that I've been blessed and I want to bless others and I'm passionate in particular about community development but actually I see that that embraces so many things I started out focused on affordable housing and realized that was not going to be the magic bullet to help improve communities and create opportunities and that's why I moved to this philosophy and creating ladders of opportunity and so if you give me that opportunity the chance I would love to continue serving oh, that's a stop sheet but anyway I'll get around two in a few minutes but welcome your question and I look forward to continue to serve well first of all thank you for giving me this opportunity to be with you and to cover this important topic it's one that doesn't come up often in our other forms they're 45 so I'm glad we had this chance to really dig deep on it I want you to know that for me my vision for our city started coming together after I graduated from high school it was the summer of 1989 I was with my father who's an AC repairman he was an AC repairman for over 30 years he worked at Lackland Air Force Base but had a small business on the side he would service home units I would go with him on these service calls I remember one of the last service calls I took with my dad before I took the long drive to Texas A&M who were outside somebody's home and at some point as he was working on the unit he stopped, set his tools aside and he turned to me and he said I'm going to go to college be the first in the family and then you're just going to keep on going and what he was trying to share with me was, number one he expected me to do well in school but he didn't expect me to come back home he figured there would be bigger cities that would offer more opportunities and I wouldn't return home it really made me appreciate for the first time his dreams and his sacrifice and in all for the hope that I would just go for it even if it meant leaving San Antonio this is why I'm running I want our city to be a city of opportunity for our people for all of our people who earn in education whether it's a vocational education like my parents or an advanced degree I want them to see as the place to launch their careers start businesses raise their families in a way this is a selfish goal I have two children Marcos and I want to play with the grandchildren so that means I want them to get a great education to feel compelled to leave San Antonio because there isn't the job opportunities or the opportunities to realize their potential the quality of life to keep them and so as your mayor everything I do is going to be focused on this single goal making San Antonio a city of opportunity for me it starts with the basics we need to keep our city's finances strong rock solid so that we can keep San Antonio affordable by keeping taxes low we need to make sure that we grow public safety by making it more affordable right now probably the single biggest issue challenging San Antonio is the police and fire contract negotiations which have not been able to be accomplished this is a major concern if you care about new energy you care about arts, libraries really anything else that the city does we've got to get this contract right up our general fund as your mayor I will unify city council to get them around the idea of financial sustainability so we can have a new police and fire contract that allows us to grow public safety because it is more affordable if you give me this opportunity I will help lead our city in a new way I will embrace technology starting with bringing back Uber companies I will govern in a collaborative way to the mayor's office as a solution for doing things alone and make sure that City Hall remains nonpartisan that's very important we're only going to be able to tackle that if we bring the community together around our common ground this is my agenda it will create opportunities and that's why I'm writing thanks very much so now I would like to open it up to the audience for questions if you have any methods I've got a microphone up here and I think we're limited on portable microphones so I guess why don't we something like that but this gentleman up here raises his hand so we'll start with you just come on up here because we're really limited in terms of the logistics there's a stationary microphone so you can speak into that where is it I was pleased to hear Mr. Villa Real talk about the desalination plan I think I have real hopes for that a pretty long term resident of San Antonio and I believe wholeheartedly in climate change and I think that this community being where it is is going to be pressed for drought this is not a term thing it's probably real serious so I anticipate something major has to happen and I was curious about asking was the desalination plant you said in a modular way and that was really sparked an interest in the desalination plants that they were doing in California were being very expensive and very costly in power needs and very costly in water circulation do you know more about that this idea struck me when I first came across it my understanding is that the way the plant has been constructed is that we can grow our capacity with desal that it isn't a one size you have to scale up immediately that you could and we have created one and we can add greater capacity as needs grow that's an attractive feature why don't you call the specifics on how the plant is going to be pulled out but have them excited by the opportunity as a council member took a trip down to El Paso about three years ago to look at how the technology works there and just think more as far as letting the public know about that possibility and it certainly will be so much fun for kids to get the details about how that works so that we could build basic support that might be needed in case we need more rate support in order to add additional faces to the project it's sort of a brackish word great next question can you guys hear me so how exciting I asked this question that plants in politics to a little over a week ago or maybe around a week ago and in interest of time I guess neither of you have to answer so I'm so excited now in October of this year the EPA is going to issue new standards for minimum air quality standards for ozone and it's widely expected that San Antonio is not going to be able to meet those standards so citizens are going to have to make sacrifices here businesses are going to have to make sacrifices here and a lot of people aren't aware that there are areas like oil and gas activities outside of the metropolitan statistical area of San Antonio that are contributing to that ozone and so my question to you is as the next mayor what would you do to make sure that anybody in the oil and gas business in the evil for shale region who's contributing to that ozone is doing their fair share for sacrificing as well on the EPA standards in general I mean that's been coming for a while I think we're probably the last big city that's still in attainment and we have been having some discussions on the council which are particularly very open so you're interested in and as we're focusing on that issue part of the that's been discussing that but as we know as you pointed out air moves so while certainly we'll develop solutions and strategies that relate to the area within San Antonio proper which will probably discourage people from being in their cars as much and hopefully some kind of development in relation to your question about folks and people for I think the solution is going to have to be more region of cooperation and conversations on that particular issue but very difficult I think politically if it requires some sort of slow down that activity because you know seeing you say evil for shale everybody just gets dollar signs in their eyes so I think we would have to build in order to have some sort of mechanism for regional conversation the impacts on San Antonio and be able to work on the impacts I think Mayor Bill White attempted to regulate or influence manufacturing plants that were just outside of the city of Houston with not much life and so the reality is that we lack formal regulatory powers authority to influence what's going on outside of our but the mayor does have the bullet hole and can create a dialogue with institutions like UTSA UTSA has been an institution that has done research on people from shale as convened people around this natural resource and could be an opportunity to bring together and raise the public awareness so that ultimately all of the actors and stakeholders that are part of this arena are pitching in and changing behavior and putting things in place that allow us to mitigate the rise of ozone difficult challenge that wind does move and and ultimately it's going to have to take a lot of persuasion and public attention to try to get folks to be more back in the day. Alright we'll take two more questions. One's a comment and one's a question. First off both Mayor Taylor former senator have both been very instrumental in legislation for Mike Winnie was the senator we could go to him with the U.S. Green Building Council give him several things he forgot about PACE so I helped him out with the property and Mayor Taylor of course has done a lot of legislation and we've worked diligently to do green buildings and more said housing far way when we first met back in but my question is as the next mayor and on the board of both CPS and on the board of both SAWS to look at innovative ways to use resources that are available to change the way we produce energy and have water to your constituents there is a way called rainwater harvesting there is a way to use rainwater to have different piping systems one for black water to go into the sewage and for gray water to give us those green lawns and some of those green lawns and for CPS to be what it should be a municipal-owned utility by the people not CPS telling us what they're going to do and it does take strong advocacy for us to have be where we are now with them the 50 megawatt, 400 megawatt did not come from them from advocacy groups the community solar program did not come from them it came from advocacy groups and anything else that comes comes from the community so when it comes down to doing things they should embrace and they shouldn't fight us all the time my question as a leader for both SAWS and for both CPS what can you do in that capacity to have them atone for what they need to have a better quality so they don't feel like you're off thank you and I don't live in San Antonio thanks for caring thanks for caring so much to come here today you are a great leader you are a great leader so what can we do I think we can do a lot on the transparency front I hear this not just about City of San Antonio but certainly CPS and SAWS and we have open conversation about our biggest challenges what the cost with trying to be a community and what the sacrifices that we're going to have to make behavioral changes to make sure that we contain our carbon footprint as a member of that board I plan my position there to be a spokesperson a convener somebody that opens up CPS lets the light in so that our best ideas and that we can have an honest deliberate conversation about the future I agree on that point on the transparency I also believe that there are more opportunities for us to draw on expertise from people like Yusran and others who are activists and advocates for more innovation I believe we've got to think critically about the structure of that citizen input and connection to the council and those utilities of course the mayor of course I sit on both of those boards but I don't have the level of expertise especially these new innovations as the folks in this room so I believe that we should look at some of those citizen advisory groups as well as some of the city boards and conditions in addition to city council committees to try and provide a tighter connection with the utilities in fact as a council member I had asked the previous mayor can you please change the infrastructure and growth committee to infrastructure growth in utilities and let's have on a regular basis conversations in that committee that directly relate to the utilities because what I found was that we were having unless we initiated an interest or a question that we usually only had dialogue when it's time for a rate increase and then everybody gets upset and everybody's wound up so I think that we could have more ongoing dialogue and have the structure in place that really validates the expertise that community activists and advocates bring to the table and more council and mayoral emphasis on how all of the utilities do connect to what's going on on a day-to-day basis I think that could help improve the system and allow you to feel like your voices are heard without you having to shout Hi guys my questions around energy efficiency I've got two questions actually one for both of you and one for you Mike so you hear a lot about solar energy as kind of the go-to energy efficiency way of doing things and what I don't hear are things around air handling, HVAC boilers, chillers all that kind of stuff building management systems to deal with demand response and peak demand those sorts of things there's a whole sort of universe out there around energy efficiency that's beyond solar solar is actually one of the worst ROI sort of payback ones that you can do in terms of timeline and ROI and so I'm interested in is what sort of incentives particularly on the commercial side the residential side the CPS does some good things there around controlling demand through these new programs I've got in solar energy and so forth but the commercial side is really where a lot of electricity demand in general to be specific happens and what sort of incentives would the both of you look at doing around energy efficiency projects on solar and that's my question whichever one for us our ultimate goal is to meet our energy needs and we can do that as we think about it in terms of water generating more supply or conserving and meeting our demand so I think they should be on the same level playing in this case whether it's solar energy production in order to bit our goal reducing our footprint to 65% energy being produced from no below urban sources or whether it is through conservation of energy or through the way we manage our buildings and our structures I would be willing to commit to having those initiatives to be put on the same level to make sure because ultimately those metrics of return on investment is what matters and how quickly do you get to your return on investment I'm not married to one strategy I'm married to this overall whole of sustainable energy for me I'd certainly be open to conversations about what makes sense as far as incentives who's not building commercial buildings I don't know the specifics of what might encourage folks to go in one direction versus another but my general impression is that first I'm doing more education relating to some of these techniques and because I mean people are so comfortable with what they know I remember my husband and I were house judges every few years we were doing house we were refurbishing a house and I remember one of our projects when my husband always asked his general contractor through my professional work I had learned about some kind of hot water and I tried to encourage him to use that it was just so unfamiliar to have him know I don't want to do that but I felt like it was it could have been a good option for us and more energy efficient but because he was unfamiliar with the product he was going to do it I think we need more education in the commercial side where people are building large buildings and using large systems for them to understand what the cost savings can be but also on the city side we need to look at our regulations and also some of the standard templates that we are using to see if there are others that might promote more energy efficiency but they are still down because they are always down on cost savings so we need to make sure there are some cost savings and I would certainly be hoping for that The real quick second question is something you brought Mike it was about the number one air quality problem or emissions problem of engine vehicles and you also mentioned the bully pulpit but in a different thing so Bear County is the one that controls emissions for vehicles and whether or not you do it in a Travis County they required that as part of as mayor would you use the bully pulpit to try to get Bear County to enforce emissions savings Yes I would and it becomes particularly relevant with us as a long into on the team we can take advantage of this moment to really try to press all of our schools particularly Bear County at this step up and do what they can to get emissions Great and the last question Yes I would say that I do live in San Antonio but I live on the east side and I publish a website called so I hear a lot of information from people who are in that area technical thank yous for a quick for water there are solar powered desalination plants also there's water pipes that will generate electricity if the water goes through them and also there's more to sustainability than just gardens and that sort of thing so it's not a holistic approach but you you maybe speak to the speak to this that I hear often times from local solar installers it's like they're a CPS versus them with their policies they're going to be having one company go out on CPS's behalf and install solar but it's all going to be on the CPS side of the meter so that's taking away the power from homeowners to generate their electricity and solar installers to be able to build their business so especially long term with how each year we're done, well we're done so can you all speak to that about those issues correct thank you I've heard about this debate in the past few years and I think that was a policy decision that was made by CPS as far as conversations to see if there's some sort of balance this is the challenge of public policy we have competing interests competing goals some of them are common like for example wanting to reduce our carbon footprint wanting to generate energy from renewable sources over the long term reduce our energy costs making sure our city is affordable and so I'm going to be watching and following this pilot program and seeing what the benefits are to the CPS and the larger community and these different goals but I also see the value in thinking long term and understanding that part of a sustainable solution is one that is not centrally managed but is dispersed throughout the community where we are all part of the solution where our changing are in a thoughtful way taking steps to put solar panels on our homes so that we can do our part in reducing our carbon footprint there is value in having individual actors around the city the individual that are stewards of the environment and so as mayor I'm going to have an eye on the answers on many of these questions but note that to bridging the path that is thoughtful and has a long term vision for growing a more sustainable next mic Eric I need to call for the rule do we have time for one more quick question I need to one more question and then we'll wrap up thank you my questions about power from city of city council one of their city council members has put forth this question of deregulating as mayor how do you protect cps cps is deregulated that's a 300 million dollar gap that has to be made up my question is how do you mitigate this risk of market deregulation based on cps being community I'd like to start by recognizing that unlike well I chose to leave the legislature to run for mayor I didn't burn bridges leave town because I had to as mayor I will make sure that those relationships I have are fully utilized that I go up to Austin to make sure that our state leaders understand the importance of cps to San Antonio the next mayor be somebody that cultivates a positive relationship with our state leaders or in positions to protect our local control I think it is hugely important to make sure that cps energy and public utility it brings us so much in terms of being able to invest in places like UTSA being able to pay for a third of our city budget in some years we also have the lowest utility rates in the state of Texas this is tremendous why would we want to lose this I would make sure that we keep control of this public utility for the benefit of our public this generation and years to come that would certainly be a huge blow to our community for us to move with all the people alright, thanks I would like to give the candidates 30 seconds if we have a few closing thoughts and then we will wrap up I think the ball is back in the air okay well what is said at this point but I guess I will just thank you all again for being here for your interest in this important issue and encourage you to be involved and engaged through the SA Tomorrow planning effort in particular it seems like folks in this room might be interested in this sustainability plan so please go to SATomorrow.com because no matter who ends up being there I think it is very important for you personally to be engaged in that process of helping to plan your future but of course I would like to continue serving I think my track record over my six years as an elected official and then over ten years focused on community development as a city employee as a grassroots nonprofit organization speak to you about what my intentions are what my experiences what my abilities are and though I may not be an expert in this particular area I'm certainly willing to learn and to work with you I think all of you by us working together can we achieve the type of outcomes that we want to see and I'm also willing to create the structures that formalize your involvement your participation in that collective vision being able to address these sustainability issues that have such a key impact on our future so I just thank you for your time and attention I think this is an exciting time to be a part of city government and in the city of San Antonio we have changed so much from when I was growing up here before I left for college and today we have a much more diverse economy we're building trucks we have a real manufacturing base in the city of San Antonio aerospace manufacturing is also present being cyber security our health sector is so much more sophisticated than it ever has been and these sectors are continuing to grow we need to keep the momentum going we need to also be conscious and I gave a lot of credit to Phil Harbor for being sensitive to quality life issues making sure that we don't just grow big but we grow great we preserve what makes San Antonio special we become better stewards of our environment a project that makes my heart sing out of all the different wonderful things happening in the city of San Antonio is the completion of the emerging linear park system that brings our city the development of creek ways inside of that loop one of the reasons why I believe that is a wonderful project in addition to it being a new way of getting around a great way of introducing healthy routines and encouraging outdoor exercise but it also ties our neighborhoods together in a subtle way it speaks to us when you're walking down the creek way that's drawing you become more aware of your environment when I go on bike rides with my children down the mission reach we get to watch the birds and there are living along the San Antonio river than before we've done something to bring back the natural vegetation and habitat and our kids are learning from that we need to continue to invest in these ways that ties together as one city that help us be better stewards and also raise the quality of our life as your mayor I will not let up we will keep not just big but great I really ask for your vote once again I'd like to thank UTSA Buggford firm Clean Texas and nowcastsa.com I'd like to thank you the audience for being here and if you would let's give a round of applause to our audience