 I don't know where he came from, what his deal is, he went to Highland High School and then he went from there to... Oh, okay, okay, alright. Then he went to A&I on a football scholarship and from there to the Detroit Lions to play football and from there to the L.A. Rams. And when he got through with the Rams, he got some cushy job, like most of them I think do, and was coming back to be inducted in the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame. And I love what he said. I love what he said. He said, it's really great to come back to a community where people look you in the eye. How cool is that? And how unfortunate would it be if they said, you know what? I come back to this community. Nobody wants to connect with me. Nobody cares if I live or I die. That's not the case in San Antonio, O'Barre County, Texas. And a lot of that is because of you. You are the ones who are the backbone of this community. You're the ones that keep it positive and a great reflection on all of us. Well, at this point, I'm going to be introducing, if I may, Girl Scout Troop 978 and Emily Bochum. Let's have a hand for Emily Bochum. She's our moderator, a great supporter of neighborhoods, and certainly the Bowen Center's dear friend. So Emily, I'm going to let you guys... Emily Bochum with News 4, but more important are these Girl Scouts who are here to support neighborhoods and patriotism. So I will hand the mic to them. Good morning Girl Scout Troop 978. We are Nermal Emerson. Please stand and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Please be seated. Thank you. I think we have a representative from Councilwoman Anna Sandoval's office. There she is. If you want to come up here and let's introduce Councilwoman Anna Sandoval. What a lovely person Anna is. I'm so impressed and pleased that, you know, you're not from the office. You are the office. Excuse me. I'm so impressed and pleased with Anna Sandoval because she's... Oh, I'm sorry. You're going to learn from me how to make sure you're heard. And Anna, we're delighted with your good work. We know you have many years of service ahead of you. And we're hoping to be good partners with you and all that you do. So Anna, it's all yours. Thank you. Good morning everyone. How are you today? Yeah? So-so? Oh, the pastor? Because you didn't hear an invocation. Is that why? Sorry, let me just get this set. The truth is I'm giving a speech this morning and I can't quite do it without notes yet. So give me time and it may-it may happen. So I see here some neighborhood leaders from District 6 and 7. Bill, how are you? Anyone else from District 7 here? Oh, Frank, Mike Phillips, Diane. Oh, I see. We've got the whole Woodlawn Lake and Monticello Park contingent. Wonderful. Thanks for-oh my God, Mr. Fonseca, right in front of my face. Um, Maverick Neighborhood that's right by the Fredericksburg Corridor. Anyone else? Am I missing-am I missing my special peeps? Frank from Ingram Hills. Thank you for being here. And also someone who enjoys a classic, what would I call it? Soft Rock, yes. What they call Yacht Rock. Yeah, we both like that kind of music. We ran into each other at the Empire. Is that where it was? One of the theaters. All right. Well, good morning. I know you had originally intended to have the mayor here, so I will do my very best, but I'll tell you right now I'm not the mayor. I did not write that 80-page booklet that, you know, with his plan for everything he was going to do once he took office. But that doesn't mean we're not working hard in my office for neighborhood. So, all right, so you've heard probably from me describing some of the neighborhoods that are here that District 7 runs from the northwest, in the northwest of San Antonio. It starts at Woodlawn Lake with Mr. Soto's house, or a little bit beyond Mr. Soto's house. And it runs past Bill's neighborhood all the way out to Helotus. Once you get to Helotus, you know you're no longer in District 7 because that's its own jurisdiction. So, you know, we're one of the districts that has outside of 1604 and inside 410. We've got some historic, one historic neighborhood or a couple of historic neighborhoods, and we've got lots of HOAs as well. So, like San Antonio, we are diverse. I like to think of us as a microcosm of most of the things that you see in San Antonio. We've got, you know, a little bit of the gentrification. We've got the neighborhoods with the extreme code compliance issues. We have the stray dogs. We have it all. Past May, during our election, and then I took office at the end of May, beginning of June, there were some contentious neighborhood issues happening. There was some developments going on in the northwest part of San Antonio and also in the Ingram Hills area that the neighborhoods were not aware of until a lot of decisions had been made. And that's what I heard a lot about during my block walking and campaigning. So, I made it a priority to work with neighborhoods and try to improve those channels of communications. And in fact, one of the pillars of my platforms is shaping our growth and making sure that neighborhoods have a voice in the growth that's happening in San Antonio. You all are probably not surprised to hear that we're growing faster than we ever have before. And that means the decisions that we make right now as a community are going to shape the future of this city and set us on a course. The decisions we make will have influences for decades and decades to come. So we want to get it right. We want to think about the future thoughtfully. So, sorry, I also see Cynthia Spielman here. Her neighborhood also had an issue with their neighborhood plan and some developments that happened there. That was also very inspiring for me when I was running for office. Cynthia, thank you for all the work that you did in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. So that's why I'm here today. I think that's why Commissioner Adkison invited me. Thank you very much for having me here. But I'll start from the beginning. So, I grew up here in San Antonio in District 7 down the street from Jefferson High School on the other side of St. Cloud, not on the Jefferson side of St. Cloud. I'm an immigrant. My family moved here when I was one. They waited about five years to get their green cards and we got them and then we came over. So, I was not even a fetus in my mother's belly when that application was made. Like many young San Antonians who went away for college, I spent a lot of my early adulthood out of state trying to find my independence. So, I was in Boston. I was in the west coast near Stanford. Well, okay, at Stanford. And I was in Mexico City as well. And despite, I mean, these were wonderful places to live. I also lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for about eight years. And then I went back to the east coast because I loved it so much. I went to study a master's in public health. But of all the cities that I lived in, and those are some beautiful cities that you've ever traveled over there, and they have some wonderful economic opportunities as well and some wonderful neighborhoods. But of all those cities, none of them felt like home to me. So, I wasn't able to throw down any roots there. And it was my mission to come back home. So, when I came back, and this wasn't in 2015, I saw this community a little bit differently through the eyes of someone who lived far away for a long time, which means I loved seeing a lot of the things that I had missed, right? It was great to see Henry's Puffy Tacos again. It was great to see the beautiful campus of Thomas Jefferson again and Woodlawn Lake. But I also saw it through the eyes of not just what was, but what could be. I saw a city that was also growing more prosperous. I think when I reconnected with some of my old friends, at least four of them said, hey, let's go have coffee at the pearl. There's this place, the pearl, and there's this local coffee. And so I had local coffee, like I don't know how many times, and the truth is it's too strong for me. And I also, you know, some folks invited me out to La Cantera and look at all the shops that are here, and I think we have a Neiman Marcus here, like, who knew? So, but then I'd come home, because of course I was crashing with my parents in the guest room up front, and I'd see the neighborhood that I grew up in with some of the same streets that didn't have sidewalks, with some of the same streets that didn't have curbs, with the same streets that got flooded every time it rained, with garbage cans that got taken down to the lowest point in the neighborhood every time it rained hard. But in fact, I quickly saw that San Antonio's prosperity, even though it was coming, it was a hip city, right? I saw, who was shocked the first time they saw one of those tour bus, the double-decker tour buses with the... Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, my... Oh, okay, thanks. That the prosperity was... I quickly saw that the prosperity was uneven. So that is one of the reasons that I decided to run for office, and that's what I'm working on right now. So what have we done to try to make... What have I done to try to make our growth in San Antonio be a little bit more even and better for everyone? Well, I think you may... If you're following some of the issues at City Council, you've heard that the way we do budgeting for streets has changed. That is the number one thing people come to our office about. The number one thing they call us about is a pothole or a street that's not properly in good condition or that they want sidewalks. In the past, we've taken a certain budget, divided it by 10, and spread it out. So that means if you've got great streets to begin with, got great streets to continue with, but if you've got streets that are in really bad condition, you may have the money to really bring them up where they need to be. So that changed and there was a target set that all the districts would have an average pavement index to use a slightly technical term, the same level. That's a two-year plan. We're hoping to get there at the end of this next budget cycle. The other thing we've worked on is sidewalks. I don't know if anyone saw a recent discussion that we had at what we call the B session, which is like a working dialogue of council. It's not as formal. We don't take any votes there. But there was a proposal to finally get us to have sidewalks throughout our whole city. It's going to take 20 years to get there, but I love the fact that we finally said enough patchwork. We are going to be committed to this and we're going to get there. I think sidewalks are a tremendous equalizer. ADA accessible sidewalks are a tremendous equalizer because it means anyone who can't drive, whether you have an impediment, an injury, whether you've got a stroller, or if you can't drive for some reason, sometimes I can't drive because of physical pain. So I love the idea of having sidewalks for everyone, not to mention the fact that it makes our lives more affordable if you're able to walk and get around without a vehicle. Those are some of the starts. We've also made some progress in health. Right now, I don't know if anyone has heard, but a couple of years ago there was a health assessment done for Bear County. It gets done every three years. And one of the most striking findings was that there was a disparity in life expectancy among us, that people who lived north of a certain street lived 20 years longer than people who lived south of a certain street. So a 20-year life difference between the wealthiest neighborhoods actually and the poorest neighborhoods. And that means someone in a poor neighborhood will not live to see their grandchild. That's what 20 years means. It's a generation difference. That's too much and that's unacceptable. So we're working with a number of different strategies in the health department to change that. It's not going to happen overnight, just like the sidewalks, the sidewalk plan. It is going to take years to get there. But I'm happy to say the city's already received two awards for the progress it's made in the past two years. One of the things we did was pass an ordinance that we called Tobacco 21. I don't know if any of you have heard of it. Yeah. So it means it raises the minimum smoking age for purchase, sorry, the minimum age for purchase of tobacco from 18 to 21. Because, and you guys probably all had this experience in high school, even though you were 18, you were able to get cigarettes from someone who was, right? Because you went to school with them. But by changing it to 21, that changes things. Because 95% of adult smokers began before the age of 21. So what does that mean? We could reduce the smoking population in say 20 years or a few years to 5% of the new smokers to 5% of what they are today. That's transformative. Because smoking, I know this is a neighborhood thing, but a neighborhood event, but I'm talking about smoking here. Because smoking affects every other single disease you can possibly have. Who knows someone with diabetes? Everyone, right? Everyone knows someone with diabetes. Your diabetes will be more complicated if you smoke. Your chances of having an above-the-knee amputation much higher if you smoke. Who knows that we have a problem with infant mortality here? With premature birth weights. Sorry, with premature babies and low birth weights. You know that those will be made more complicated by smoking or by exposure to second-hand smoke. So I'm proud to say we're making progress in that. I can't tell you how transformative that will be. Oh, thank you. You were really throwing me off. Keynote speech, five minutes. Okay, thank you. All right, I won't take all 20 minutes. Promise. Okay. The other thing that we're working on that I think is also going to make life more equitable in San Antonio and help us deal better with this growth, this tremendous growth that we're experiencing is we've got to get a hold of the drainage and stormwater problem. Thank you. You resemble that. Mr. Fonseca, how many homes flooded or had water running through them in your neighborhood during some of these heaviest storms that we've had? September 2016. 20 houses. In two different parts of the neighborhood. So I'll tell you with one of the tremendous challenges that I have and people tell me my house got flooded, I'm in the floodplain, when are you going to get me out? I wish I could wave a magic wand and do that. But the truth is, if we can't clear up the drainage downstream, we can't start to work on the drainage upstream. So that's what's happening right now and it is a long process. And as we continue to develop and we continue to lose cover, in pervious cover, we need to really think about where we're sending all that water and the truth is stormwater doesn't know political boundaries. It doesn't say, okay, I'm going to stick in District 7. It does a thing called watersheds. It moves through watersheds, right? And we have four of them in San Antonio. I was fortunate enough to meet the, we have four watershed captains in the Department of Transportation and Capital Improvements. So I think it's really, it's great that they have, they feel ownership over their own watershed. So it's not by district. And if we're going to get a hold of this drainage issue, that's how we need to start thinking about it. Not district by district, not fighting for dollars, but reducing the risk of flooding by watershed. Now, our city was founded about 300 years ago. If you haven't heard of it, heard of that celebration come out from under that rock. But 300 years ago, guess what? There was no FEMA, right? In fact, FEMA didn't come around until 1970. So we have a lot of backtracking to do. It's funny because I chide unprofessionally. So our transportation folks, when they say like, oh, we have the best development. We don't build in the floodplain, blah, blah, blah. And I say, but when did those regulations come into place in the 70s? The rest of San Antonio built. Mr. Sotho, when was your house built? 1940, 30 years before that. Mine was built in 46. So what do we do about what's already built? We can't pretend it's not a problem. So have you guys heard of something called FI and LUAV for new development projects? All right. So you build, I'm building a target in San Antonio, not balcony's height, but let's say I'm building it in San Antonio. And if I'm in a certain part of San Antonio, I may not have to do on-site water detention. I may be able to just pay a fee in LUAV doing the on-site water detention. Okay. So then that detention has to happen somewhere else, right? And doesn't it have to be maintained as well over time? That one-time fee doesn't necessarily cover the lifetime costs of maintaining the on-site detention. So I think it's fair, this program's been around 20 years, I think it's fair to take another look at it and see if... Thank you. And see if there's some way we can make it just a little bit better for us. The truth is we're growing, like I said, faster than we have before, but we're also living in a changing climate. Who can admit to seeing more intense storms in San Antonio in the past, you know, 20, 15, 20 years versus before? I think most of us can. Something's happening. We can't ignore it. That means our actions have to be bolder and bigger than they have been in the past. So what does that mean for rapid growth? Does that mean it's a good thing or a bad thing? I think it can be both, but we have to be careful about how we grow. The fact that we're growing so quickly is really highlighting all these challenges that we have in our streets and their conditions, in our lack of sidewalks, in our lack of drainage infrastructure. So we hope, I hope, that with some of this increased revenue from new development that we'll have the funding to do some of those things. But we have to have fighters out there who are willing to distribute the funding in these areas and not let these neighborhoods like Maverick, like Donaldson Terrace, get left behind in the growth. Maybe we won't have double-decker buses coming through our neighborhoods. And that's okay, that's okay. But we need what I would call first-world infrastructure, and we don't have that right now. Sorry, now that I have 20 minutes, I need to go back to my script. I'm sorry? Oh, that's not in here. I also wanted to mention some work on the mayor's housing policy task force. Has anybody been following some of that work? We're starting to experience the crisis, and it's going to be a lot worse. I know some people don't like to hear a million new people are coming to San Antonio. In fact, one gentleman said at a public meeting, he said, I didn't vote for that. How can we stop that? I mean, the only way you can stop that is if we're not cool anymore, right? Or if things go really bad in San Antonio, and we're not about to do something like that. So with this demand for housing, the price for housing has gone up. I remember when I lived in California, the cost of housing and actually perching a home was so high, you could earn $200,000 a year, but never be able to buy a home in San Francisco, because the cost was just so high, right? You need a million dollars to buy a condo. So what did those people do with their money? They invested it, right? Guess where they invested it? Yeah, in Texas. In fact, I remember sitting down with a guy, and he said, oh yeah, look, I just bought this house in San Antonio. I have four others. With that kind of money, you can invest homes in San Antonio. I'm blessed because I was able to buy my house that way, but I'm here, right? I don't live with my parents anymore. The house next door was vacant. It had been vacant for several years, so I went ahead and I bought that. I think we hadn't even closed yet, and my dad was cutting open that chain link fence between both properties, so I'm still their little girl. Okay, so the Mayor's Housing Policy Task Force is looking at issues of affordability, gentrification, preservation of neighborhood characters, and displacement. I think those are so critical, especially the displacement and affordability issues. District 7, like I mentioned early on, is home to diverse neighborhoods. We have all of those issues in District 7. I think most districts probably do. But there is a big role for neighborhoods to play here. Neighborhoods, like yours, have been committed to preserving and protecting the character-defining elements that are unique to each community. I know when I'm in Beacon Hill. I know when I'm in the Woodlawn Lake area, or Monticello Park. I definitely know when I'm in Montevista, right? Because I know I'll never be able to live there when I look at those homes. Other neighborhoods are struggling with affordability, and the Housing Policy Task Force made their preliminary recommendations last weekend. Ms. Spailman, you were there. You gave some of the recommendations, and let me tell you, they were bold. There were no half-measures. I was very, very impressed. And in fact, you know, the solution to a lot of the issues is, A, they were able to identify the issues, which I think is really critical, is what are the decision points that need to be different for us to address these problems? And what they found was it wasn't all money. Most of it was coordination or policy. That's great. That means we will not have to spend, you know, millions of dollars. Well, we will spend millions of dollars to fix the problem. But not hundreds or thousands or billions, right? It means there's a lot we can do without spending a lot of money. Their final recommendations will be shared with a council committee next Monday. That'll be downtown at City Hall. My office will be Facebook streaming that. Is that true, Bianca? Yes, she's nodding her head, yes. So if you can't be there, follow our feed on Facebook. We want to make sure, I want to make sure I see it too, because I won't be at the meeting. So in addition to these recommendations, the full city, that the policy task force is making, the full council discussed budget priorities for the next coming year. And housing is definitely one of those. Another thing we're focusing on is public transportation. You may not know this, but I am proud to tell you that I teamed up with Councilman Saldana, who's been a strong advocate for public transportation here in San Antonio. I teamed up with him, and we put together a proposal on what I call, what is called in the industry, transportation demand management. And I like to think of it as adding capacity without any concrete. Reducing congestion without any concrete. What does that mean? It means that you connect people who commute maybe every day to the same place at the same time, they leave at the same time, and they sit in the same traffic, that you can connect them to an alternative. And they may not always be able to ride the bus, because maybe the bus doesn't go to their home or near them. However, maybe they can share a ride with someone who lives nearby them. It used to happen when we had really high gas prices. I mean, I'm too young to remember that, but I have seen pictures where people, lots of people were in the same car going to work. So it's not impossible, but if we're willing to spend billions of dollars adding lanes, disrupting traffic, we can certainly spend thousands of dollars incentivizing people, giving them something to share a ride. And not only that, you give them the incentive, but they're also saving that gas money as well. So, like I said, I think it's adding capacity without laying down the concrete. So it's a lot cheaper. Oh, wow, my staff put some great speaking points in here about this. There is also the risk that every time we get behind the wheel, over 3,700 Texans died in traffic collisions in 2016. Some of them drunk driving, of course, but it's a problem that we have more so in cities that lack really robust public transportation. Also, the more we drive, that's the more wear and tear in our roads, right? Who likes, and how many of us have problems with torn up roads that get a lot of use? Yeah, exactly. It's like a self-propagating problem. But there's a consequence that's really a lot more subtle, and that's that 80% of every dollar you spend on gas leaves the local economy. That's a lot of money, right? For all the money we spend on gas. So we're working on a robust public transportation system. Compared to some of the other major cities in Texas, we've really under-invested in ours. How many of you have heard that Via runs on a half-cent sales tax? Okay, well, it does. That's its primary source of funding. Every time you buy something in the city of San Antonio or in participating suburban cities, half-cent goes to Via. In Austin, in Dallas, in Houston, it's a full-cent sales tax. So we deliberately made that choice as a voters before I was born. But that's a choice we can reconsider. I think it's going to be a difficult choice to reconsider, but this growth and our congestion is having us think twice about that, right? How much are we spending in other ways for not spending that half-cent sales tax? Okay. So how many of you have heard that the mayor made an announcement on something called Essay Connect? It's... You know everything, Bill. So the mayor is planning to... Let me tell you, I used to work at Via. So I saw lots of challenges when I worked there and I saw a full... I didn't think the whole community supported Via. I saw it as kind of as a... It's a chip on my shoulder. It was kind of a stepchild of city services, right? It was off on its own. But things are changing now because we've got people like Ray Saldana and Hope Andrade on chairing Via and Mayor Nuremberg. Via is working together with the city and I think we're going to make progress that's never been made before. So the mayor has proposed that we take something to the voters, not necessarily asking for more funding, but a transformative transportation plan, something that is going to be robust. I'm sorry. Oh, now I do have... I'm running, all right. In 2019, it might be May. It might be November. But we're really excited about it. It's like the future is here and we'll be able to shape it ourselves. Sorry, I already did the stormwater. This really threw me off. Anyway, the last thing that I'll... So the theme of today or the prompt I was given is how can we deal with this tremendous growth and have equity and still work with our neighborhoods. So I think we have to do a better job of involving our neighborhoods and some of the growth that we have right now. And part of it, everyone has heard of the essay tomorrow, the planning process that's going on with the comprehensive plan. It's huge, it's fast, it's intimidating. But in a sense, it needs to happen so that growth isn't totally crazy. We want to shape it, right? So we've got to take the reins. And that's why there's a sense of urgency around implementing this plan. But we've got to be careful with how we do that. Because, guess what? We've already done a lot of planning. Ingram Hills, Beacon Hill can speak to that, right? You've got a neighborhood plan. We can't chuck that out the window because we're coming in and doing a comprehensive plan. You guys are the best audience. You put hundreds if not thousands of neighborhood men and women hours to make that happen. Those plans are the work of dedicated leaders. We can't disregard them. Maybe some things will have to change in this era of rapid growth. But that doesn't mean we just scratch it out and start from zero. I'm glad you're here today. You want to have a voice in our growth and you deserve to have that. So beyond respecting what residents have already voiced, the city, the council, and the city staff have to improve how we communicate with the residents. Who's been down to citizens to be heard? Yeah? Lovely time, right? Lovely time. So I think, you know, you go out there, oh my God, there's our number one citizens to be heard. We don't start the meeting if he's not there. Jackfinger, everyone. One of the most engaged citizens. So when you go down to council chambers and talk about your issue, there is not a process, a formalized process right now to follow up with each person who comes to speak. Or if you come and you talk about whatever the issue may be, maybe it's the ACS ordinance, the Animal Care Services ordinance changes. We don't have a mailing list that we automatically put you on or that we even ask to put you on when there's going to be updates to that ordinance that you came to talk about. That's kind of a no-brainer, right? We've got to connect you to your area of interest. Because that says, we were listening to you. We know this is important to you and we're not going to not treat you as a stakeholder. We want you to be part of the process as we go forward. We can also do a better job of engaging our neighborhoods. So with these thoughts in mind, I formally requested that the city commit to well-developed principles of public participation. I'll describe them to you. The principles I'm proposing are that public participation efforts are meaningful. That means that they make a difference in the outcome. That they are inclusive so that typically underrepresented populations are at the table. They are transparent. That means you know what the process is and how your input will be used. They're informative. That means you actually get the information you need in order to make educated input. They're timely. They don't come at the end of a process when there's too much at stake already. And they're responsive. That means that when all is said and done, you're told how your input was used. And if it wasn't used, you're told why. So we have to do a better job of involving those who are directly affected by city policies in this decision and not stop removing the barriers from participating and doing so openly and in the public. How we grow, how we grow will be determined by our ability to do just that. Thank you very much. Thank you councilman and the commissioner has a gift for you. Thank you councilman for that speech that was very informative. Just to reintroduce myself, my name is Emily Balkum. I'm a reporter for news 4 and Fox 29. When I come to work every day, I always push for the neighborhood stories. It's so wonderful to see people in this room who truly care. I was born and raised in San Antonio. So I want to help you guys make your neighborhoods better as well. Thank you. A quick housekeeping note after each session. There's going to be some time for questions and answers and I'm going to have anyone line up on this black line over here. I know that sounds like kindergarten, but there's some method to the madness. If you're in front of the black line and should close the speaker, there'll be some reverb. So do our ears a favor and we'll just stand on this black line. Our next speaker is someone who can talk to you a lot about an issue that's been big in any neighborhood you live in on any part of town. Who cares about property taxes and property tax values. Yeah, huge deal. So we have the chief appraiser for the Bear County appraisal district here, Mike Amosqueda. He's going to talk about property appraisals and the protest process. So if you're here, come on up. There you are. Thank you, sir. I wanted to acknowledge the committee that helped put this together and what a great committee we have, President Cardona, Jim McNamara, Liz Trainor, Brenda Davila, Fernando Centeno, Ann Englert, Jean Mark, and Mario Llano. Let's have a round of applause for these good people. I also have some elected officials with us. Okay, Judge Rene Yanta, District Court. Judge David Rodriguez, County Court number three. Judge Karen Kraut, County Court number 10. Candidate Monique Diaz for District Court 150th. Former Councilwoman Tony Morehouse. Thank you for your steady support, Tony. And Senator Jose Menendez has a representative here and Judy Lopez for District 26. And Representative Barbara Garvin Hawkins has Langster Durham in her place. Anybody else I'm missing? Who stepped up and became sponsors to help us. Franklin Properties. The NRP Group. The University Health System. Bath Planet. And Bear... Oh. Hello, Bear Appraisal District. That's great. Thank you, San Antonio. CPS Energy. National Night Out. Ring Video Doorbell. San Antonio Water System. San Antonio Housing Authority. And let's hear a round of applause for all those wonderful people. Thank you so much. And without further ado, I... Yeah, I had the privilege and the pleasure of being on the board there for a while. And to say whatever you want to about the process, he doesn't control the legislature. He doesn't control the economy. He is a consummate professional. And your friend in mind, the Honorable Michael Amosquita. Mike? Thanks, Tommy. Thank you. Can everybody hear me? Okay. Staff is handing out a couple of different pamphlets for you. I'm going to cut short, and that's probably a good thing. So I took the time to make copies of most of the presentation that I made to a B session at City Council here a while back. Back in February. A couple of things I wanted to mention right off the bat. I'm kind of a dinosaur. I've been at this 37 years. I've been a chief for 23 years. And we just got a Facebook page and a Twitter account. I never thought I'd do it. I mean, I thought, why would I have social media? Who's going to be my friend? But seriously, they want me to talk about property values and the protest process. Does anybody in this room not understand the protest process? How many of you have protested your property previously? Good. I'm going to hit a couple of high points on that just because I think there's some important information out there. Our social media is going to play a really effective part of helping us get a message out that I think a lot of people miss. Hopefully we'll also be able to make sure everyone in Bear County has the exemptions that they're entitled to. First of all, this document is being handed out. It has a tax calendar on it. That literally came off the controller's website. Everything in this document is much about what I'm going to talk about. But you'll notice there's a link where you can go to and find where I found it on the internet. Every single document in this report came from a third party, mostly the controller's office or the LBB or some part of state government. Tommy's exactly right. I do not control the legislature. I cannot tell you that we're going to help you keep your home. I can't keep people from moving here. I can't keep your values from going up or down, like they did in 2008 and 9 when we had the recession. What I can tell you is and most importantly because you guys are obviously the leaders in your communities, what I'm hoping to get across to you today is a way for y'all to take the heart, the data that I'm giving you and to make an impact with your own legislature. This isn't a partisan issue, folks. Property taxes are out of control. If you look at today's Express News, the Northeast Independent School District published their proposed tax rate. If you go to about the middle of the notice, they're very hard to read. They don't mean a darn thing to anybody, but there's two columns. One column says how much money Northeast ISD is collecting in local property taxes per weighted average daily attendance. That's how the state references children weighted average daily attendance. How many kids are in school every day? Northeast ISD currently is proposing to collect $8,800 per student while your state of Texas legislature is only contributing $1,100. Why is that significant? If you'll turn to the back of about, oh, the back of the second page, you'll see this chart. This talks about state-wide funding formulas. Your governor and your lieutenant governor are very interested in talking about limiting the growth in taxes for cities and counties. Cities and counties are not your problem, folks. Cities and counties make up respectively about 16% of your total tax bill. That's not insignificant, but the state school system makes up 55 and by 2019 is projected to be 62% of your tax bill. Why is this significant to you? The biggest part of your tax bill, whether your taxes are frozen or not, the biggest part of your tax bill is the school system. And I'm not anti-school system. I'm anti-the state not paying its fair share and spending taxpayer money on something other than schools. If you look at the amount of money that Northeast ISD is spending or projected to collect, about a third of that is going to be recaptured by the state of Texas. Currently in Texas, we have what's known as a Robin Hood plan where they take money from wealthy school districts. That's a Chapter 41 school district. Northeast is one, Northside is one, Alamo Heights is one. The rest of us are poor Chapter 42 school districts. What's the difference? Chapter 41, there's only so much state aid, so much state revenue allowed per weighted average daily attendance per student. That number has been around $6,800. So about $2,000, or roughly 25% of that is going to go back to the state. Out of Northeast ISD's local property tax collection that may seem obscene, but in Austin, Texas, they fund 30% of the entire recapture budget for the entire state of Texas. Values in Austin are crazy. Values in San Antonio are getting crazier. The problem is the state controls the entire process. All local property values are predicated upon how well the appraisal district performs according to the state controller's biennial test of our local property values. This year is a study year for Bear County. They're going to look at all the sales that they can find and see whether or not we're within plus or minus 5% of 100%, which is what the law requires. 95 to 105. Anything below 95 is a failing grade for me. Anything above 105 is a failing grade for me. If I fail, and you're a rich school district, the state assigns what the values should have been, so not only are you not going to collect what you would have normally collected, but you're going to return more money to the state than you had originally projected. If you're a poor school district and I fail, not only are you not going to get what you thought you were going to get in state aid, but you're going to get less because they projected you were wealthier than I did. This happened to us in 2014 when I failed preliminarily 10 out of 12 school districts. It took a year appealing to the state. And Lord, mounds of paper, they require everything in triplicate because they anticipate us going to a SOA hearing afterwards, which I certainly would have. I would have seen the state of Texas. We probably tore down a small forest because the level of documentation required by the state is so bureaucratic. It's just ridiculous. We're doing everything we can to eliminate paper in our office. It seems like the state wants to tear down a forest. At any rate, we were successful in 2014 in making the state see the light of day and that in fact we had not categorically undervalued property in Bear County. I had 100,000 people tell me that I didn't undervalue their property that year. I was going to call each of them as witnesses and inundate the state with people who think that their taxes are too damn high. Darn high. I forgot where I was. Sorry. I'm hearing from a lot of you. If you'll look at this chart, back in 2012 it was almost 50-50. Local effort and state aid was actually 54-46. About four years before that it was closer to 50-50. As property values grow tax rates stay masomenos the same. No jurisdiction lowers their rate as much as they should. The county pretty historically has done a good job of lowering their rate. They could do more. So could the city. The school is locked into the funding formulas of the state. The state forces me to make sure that your house is valued high enough within that 95-105% rate. But they don't look at the level of commercial property around the state. They look at it, but there's so many ways to fix those values in the study that the net effect is if you open the last study I had which was in 2016 it says that commercially I'm valuing property at 97% of their market value. I can tell you that's a lie. It ain't close. And the reason it's not close is because we have something called equity of heels which each of you may have taken advantage of. They were designed for you to make sure that within your neighborhood, if not on your street comparable homes similar to yours would be valued similarly. To that end it's the most important thing you do when you protest. You want to get all of my evidence. You want your evidence packet. The law requires property to be appraised equally and uniformly. The law requires it to be appraised at 100% of market value. That's the 95-105% test required by the property value study. When the state of Texas does their study this year they're going to have more sales than I do. The state of Texas has access to MLS. Bear County Appraisal District has not. So there's a good possibility that we could have to appeal one or more school districts this year. Even though I'm sure each of you think we've adequately appraised your property the state will undoubtedly come back and say that we haven't. And in all honesty the whole discussion this morning because you're here on a Saturday morning is I'm hoping someone maybe ten of you will have the nerve to get to Austin and talk to the legislature. I can talk to them till I'm blue in the face. I can give them all of my data which the law requires me to by the way. I do it every other year. They don't care. They don't care what a bureaucrat has to say. I've been doing that for 26 years with the state legislature. I promise you one taxpayer has more impact than ten chief appraisers. You just do. This data that I'm giving you this is straight out of the LVB folks that's a legislative budget board. Those are the people who actually create the budget for the state of Texas. You got a single piece of paper looks like this. I want you to know I'm not lying to you so I'm giving you the document out of page 257 of this year's state budget. Read the last sentence at the very bottom of the page. I should have brought my glasses. Property values and the estimates of local tax collections on which they are based shall be increased by 7.04% in 2017 and 6.77% in 2018. What is that telling you? They're telling you that the LVB has access to the real estate center of Texas A&M. They're telling you they know what values are statewide. They're telling you they know that values are going to go up in the big six metropolitan districts of the state and the corresponding more or less 100 counties that surround them. They're telling you that there's going to be more revenue collected locally so the state has to put in less. Can I borrow your water bottle? Diego Bernal. Anybody know Diego? This is the B thing on YouTube. You got to see it. It's hilarious. Diego always uses a water bottle. This is how much money water equals. One student, this is how much money they get from the local collection from the state. In 2016, where my thumb is was the amount of local revenue the state made up the rest. In 2018 this is what your values went up. Anybody not know that? Now it's where my thumb is. So the state's going to put in less. They're literally telling you folks the state of Texas is required to pass a balanced budget. They're literally telling you they're accounting for every single cent that your local tax bill is going up. Because they know darn good and well it's going to go up. The data shows it's going to go up. You know your tax bill is going to go up. The state of Texas is absolutely abdicating their responsibility and planning on, in fact budgeting and balancing their budget knowing your local taxes are going to go up. Why is that important? When your local effort goes up and you pay more money to your local school district, I don't care what school district the amount of money that the state puts in goes down. That's why when you look at that blue chart I gave you every year since 2012 the contributions of the state have decreased. In northeast publication in today's paper they're planning on collecting $8,800 per every child in northeast ISD. The state's only going to put in $1,100. What is that telling you? Yeah I'm the bad guy. I'm the guy that you've got to come appeal with. I'm the one that you have to make sure is doing his job and not overvaluing your property. But at the end of the day you can hardly really mess up a homeowner's property value. In most neighborhoods in San Antonio every neighborhood in this represented in this room and in fact most in San Antonio would be considered homogeneous. There's a lot of similarities from one house to a lot. One neighborhood to the next. Those are all good things. But the fact is I don't need sales disclosure. I can open up the Sunday Express news and find out 15 houses listed in your neighborhoods. I can find out more or less what they're selling for. What I can't find out is what they're selling for in the Dominion. What I can't find out is what homes really over about $700,000 are selling for. There was a study by a guy who calls himself the tax watchdog. You can google him. He's working for the Dallas Morning News. He actually does a good job. Anybody remember Roddy Stinson? Real pain in my side. Roddy and I got to be really good friends over the years because he realized I wasn't lying and I'm going to tell you the truth. This watchdog guy does the very same thing. You know in San Antonio have you all ever seen that fancy little magazine that says the 50 best homes in San Antonio? Look them up and see what they're appraised for. It's embarrassing. But I don't have the data. Texas is a non-disclosure state. Have you ever heard of keep them dumb? That philosophy don't give them the information because they might use it against you. I want to give you every single inch of information I have. If any of my staff ever refuse it to you, I will gladly fire that person. A well-armed public, a well-armed educated public is the best friend I have. That's why I'm here this morning. I want you to understand this process is so insidious. It's predicated upon each and every one of your tax bills going up so that the state can afford to do what the state does. They're actually going to take in more money. That $1.5 billion referenced in the first paragraph annually that they spend on public education. They're actually going to take in more money through recapture and spend it on something else. Remember how people always talk about the gas tax? Why can't they fix our roads? Well, about a 30-year gas tax is diverted also. They spend it on something else. This is why I think it's important for people like y'all to take the time to listen to the Ways and Means Committee. Texas Legislature online they broadcast all public meetings. That's not really true because we have public meetings that I'm required to post and I have to give you 72 hours notice and it has to be posted in a public place where you can actually have access. Sometimes the chairman of a committee can call a meeting on the floor and so you're not invited and that's where a lot of stuff gets done. But a lot of really good testimony happens at Ways and Means. No tax bill can originate anywhere other than Ways and Means. Anybody remember a guy by the name of Joe Strauss? Thank God for Joe Strauss. I'm glad he's smart enough to get out when he did. Now these idiots in Austin are going to have to actually govern themselves. I promise you a two and a half percent cap on city and county government ain't going to fix your tax bill. It's just not. That's a lie. And I'm sad to say we're going to spend another session, maybe another special session talking about taxes and doing nothing about it unless you guys get involved. The city of Austin has really taken the lead. Neighborhood's in the city of Austin. I grew up in Austin. I promise you want to talk about gentrification? I grew up at Ninth and Lydia right in front of our Lady of Guadalupe church in the Guadalupe neighborhood. My grandfather built the house that I grew up in in 1900. When my dad broke his back we had to sell the house because we didn't have insurance and we had to pay the doctor and the hospital. So I lived in a mobile home for about 12 years after that. About 1987 I tried to buy that house back. Thought I could restore it. Three bedrooms, three fireplaces, one bathroom. The plumbing didn't come in until sometime in the 40s I think. Fortunately I wasn't born then. But yeah, maybe. Interestingly enough I make a really good salary folks. I can't afford to move back to Austin. That house was on the roll four years ago, maybe five years ago for a million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It doesn't look very different than most of the homes you see around here. It had a porch 12 feet wide that went three-fourths of the way around the back of the house. And there was no porch in the backyard. There was a dead oak tree that my father chopped down and it was really big and so we used that to kill chickens and turkeys. Food. This was not a very great house other than the memories. And it saddens me to see what's happening in San Antonio with your values. I understand they're greater forces than the appraisal district could work here. You want to talk about a weak governmental body? That's me. I can't do anything that the legislature doesn't allow me to do. But I can tell you this. Dr. Gaines at the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, I listened to him speak earlier this year. You realize that Texas has nearly one hundred counties that keep humans human. That's the economy, folks. If you didn't own the drugstore, the gas station, well, we don't have gas stations anymore. If you didn't own the grocery store or you're not a barber or you're not doing anything in the family farm, you got to move where the jobs are. That's where those million people are coming from. They're not just coming from outside of the state of Texas. They're coming from within the state of Texas. And so my hope is you'll take the data that we've given you this morning. I'm happy to engage any of you personally. My direct phone number is 242-2411. My direct email is pretty simple. It's all letters. ESCA-EdwardSimonCatAlpha at BCAD.org Anything I've told you is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because as Judge Renee can tell you, it can be used against me in a court of law and it oftentimes is. I get sued to the tune of about $25 billion a year. You know what? It's none of y'all. It's all commercial property. The Equal and Uniform Appeals have created a system where the shops at La Contetta can compare themselves to Bandera Point. Where the JW Marriott can compare itself to the 40-year-old downtown Marriott. And so when you're looking at economic entities like that and you can take the very best property, the basic premise of Equal and Uniform Appeals for each of you in case you didn't know it is that no property should be appraised above the median level of value of properties in that category. Homes on your street, in your neighborhood. It didn't mean the shops at La Contetta, the best shopping center in town should be appraised at the median level of value. It's the best. It should be appraised at the top. Just like the JW Marriott. But that's not what this law does. Folks, there's nothing partisan about what I said. Property taxes cut across all party lines. It affects rural Texas. It affects urban Texas. What I want you to understand is with Joe Strauss gone, all you're going to hear is city and county, city and county. Every time you hear that, I want you to understand you're being lied to again and think about it. I appreciate your time. I know y'all are going to break here. My staff and I are here. If anyone has concerns about whether or not you have your homestead exemption we have a couple of iPads with us. We can look up for you on our website because our Twitter and Facebook page. It's unbelievable. I can't believe I said that. Please visit it. My assistant Jennifer Rodriguez. She actually maintains all that communication. One more job she's doing for me. She's very responsive. It's an informational thing. It's not taking the place of our customer service department so she'll redirect you if you have a specific question. But there's a lot of general information out there about property taxes. For the folks back home in your neighborhoods remind them please and we're going to post on our website. If you're going to protest, do it right. Make sure you get all of my evidence. Ask for that evidence packet. It's not a requirement of law. Thank y'all very much. And thank you for that candid discussion. Anyone who asks questions please line up along the black line. We'll give you a couple of moments to gather. Right here. All right. I'll hold on to the microphone. What's your question, sir? We have a neighborhood that has a block that has 21 houses. One of them is less than two years old and valued at over $160,000, $170,000. The rest of the houses were built in 1945 by E.J. Burke, started as cracker boxes. Many of them have been added on or renewed on the outside. I know our taxes went up. Everybody's taxes go up. Did that house affect our block's value? Most likely not. The only thing that affects your value is the condition of your home. You know, homes that have been renovated. I'm not talking about paint and a new roof, folks. That's just general maintenance. You need to be able to maintain your home. An anomaly like he just talked about is just that. It's an anomaly. That property is probably overbuilt for the neighborhood. They'll probably never get their money back. But then again, they might. I mean, that's a crazy market. My neighborhood and my phone's been ringing off the hook for the past week about why did HEB get such a huge tax break at the Foster Road East Houston plant as well as Fiesta, Texas, SeaWorld and everywhere Gordon Hartman built the project be it our property taxes go up. I think that was a statement. But like I said I've been in this business for 37 years in three different counties. I still haven't been fired yet but this answer might get me fired. Tax abatements don't work for anybody except developers, folks. They do great things in terms of creating economic development. That's what they're designed to do to create patterns of growth. I'll be honest with you in 37 years the only abatement that I ever saw that worked the way it's supposed to and actually benefited the community I'm sort of restating the last question. I'm kind of sort of restate the last question you've made us all informed about the breaks that businesses get in both assessment and breaks as he mentioned. So what can I do about it? How can I make this change? Diego Bernal and I are working on a bill to try to keep legacy homeowners from being taxed out of their properties and the way that happens is obviously as your values go up and the taxes go up pretty soon I've heard people say you never really own your home in Texas because you always owe taxes and I know a lot of you probably have tax bills that are three or four times higher than what your mortgage payment was and so to that end Diego has an open disclosure sales price disclosure bill he's going to file last session I suggest if each of you contact not only our delegation but the speaker whoever that ends up being the lieutenant governor and the governor's office these people are not listening we have a joke in my office when somebody's being really pigheaded about something really stupid about something and I always ask them is that chair crowding your brain? I guarantee you the Texas legislature's brain is severely impacted they're not listening I'm here and talk to you about your property taxes every year now until the cows come home nothing's going to change until you make it change what I say matters not good morning there he is the reason I came up here you're probably going to get tired of this question from me but we're talking about these abatements and everything that companies are getting what a lot of people don't realize our area we're saturated with multifamily I mean saturated it doesn't quit now they're even moving into floodplain areas however if I'm not mistaken depending on who the developer is working with and how they are associated if they are a nonprofit they don't pay full taxes and some instances depending on who they're associated with they don't pay any taxes at all but they come and overtake neighborhoods and well anyway I'll shut up and they destroy your property value what neighborhood are you in and then Highland Hills is right next door so is there anything being done I mean why should and then the tax payers in that neighborhood the taxes go up yet the developers making the money off of that they're not paying taxes that's the most understated comment I've ever heard the developers are making all the money and they're paying none of the taxes what she's talking about is community housing development organizations CHOTOs those are not all bad we really have some really good CHOTOs in Bear County there's about 12 unfortunately we have hundreds of CHOTOs because Texas law allows me as a developer to affiliate myself that's what Tony's talking about to affiliate myself with a nonprofit might be a group of nuns it might be whatever here's the formula folks so I have a nonprofit that I've affiliated myself with and I give them a skintilla of ownership in my property I own 99.999999999999999999 9% and they own that but that connection gives them access to that section of the tax code that deals with exemptions the exemption is such that it steals from the government which means you because it's all taxpayer money that's being stolen at every level the federal government subsidizes the building program the owner, the developer gets paid to build a project he gets paid to manage the project he gets paid to refit the project when somebody moves in and moves out he owns the landscaping company that manages the landscaping he gets every single dollar that apartment complex will ever make one other thing getting off of CHOTOs we understand we're projected to build about 8800 units a year from now on until the cows come home folks 100 counties depopulating we live in the 7th largest city in the nation whether we like it or not we got a lot of land in northeast not northeast north side on the south side, on the west side and on the east side that is just going to continue people cannot afford the current median level of value of a home in bear counties $220,000 I don't get to decide that that's just a fact the median level it's double that in Austin if you think you can't afford to live here be glad you live here it's worse in Austin, it's worse in Houston it's worse in Dallas but it's getting worse here too and so we need to be really talking to our legislature about limiting they can't really limit growth but limiting the amount of money that they steal from the public school system there's just no other way to say that side we have the feet which I rescue thank you seven children in it has not gone up in five years suddenly that value went from $84,000 to $54,000 now mind you when I called Bear County and asked them what that was based on they told me sales I said we don't have had those kind of sales we have some flippers plowing through there and in their wishful thinking they put prices on it but those houses have not sold they put renters in them and when I further asked oh well it's a five mile radius my five mile radius includes King William where the spurs are buying houses now I used to live in King William when I had a little problem I called and I have two police officers two cars within minutes now on Denver Heights on St. Anthony we're shooting up I called four days four times one Saturday nobody ever came what do I do when the bullets fly well I roll out of the bed that's not much I have one neighbor up the street I don't think she's mentally well but she puts a cover over the back of her SUV they're protected from bullets like a blanket okay how did this property go up three times in value and not just the property the lots how come the lots that for the house I live in is 120 years old it's Tommy's great grandmother's house and it needs lots of work for 120 years it had an average value lot suddenly I have a lot that's price like in the Dominion or in King William explained out one to me that's a really long question to dealt with a lot of things that I don't have any control over but I can tell you that I didn't know this until I did a talk over and I think it was in Government Hill and a little further east of there also that the city of San Antonio actually has a shot tracker and so they have a not anymore okay well that's news to me that's the last time I saw it shot spotter was found to be not helpful to SAPD okay here again when properties are subjected to things like she's talking about you have to assume that people are buying and selling property in those neighborhoods are taking those things into consideration when I look for my home we live on the north side I knew right off the bat we weren't going to live outside of 1604 so I went home until eight o'clock and I'm not going to do that and so what I can tell you as far as the value of the land by Texas law everything that appears on your appraisal notice is required I cannot change it I can change the values but I can't change the content of that notice so by law as long as I can remember there's always been a separate land and a separate improvement value there's a house and a lot and says I want X amount for my house and X amount for my house it's just the price but in Texas we make it a little more convoluted and we separate those two values unfortunately you have to focus on the total value when you file your protest and certainly it sounds like we need to look closer at your value there may in fact be a five mile radius but we're not going to compare Denver Heights to King William like Yamadre or Southtown so it's not going to happen your agent that answered my phone call did and I said five miles I said that includes King William I said I know what Papa Richard's daughter paid for the house she's working on I know what what's his name Mills Patty Mills paid for his house I said we don't have anything in common and as far as so it's my fault if I move into a neighborhood that suddenly has more drug problems and more shootings some of us live where we can afford to live and we expect equal protection under the law we expect the police to come out and we are running short on time for this panel we thank you for your time and I'm going to ask you if you could personally meet with these two ladies I know Edith has more questions she's been waiting patiently to get her question asked and we're going to reset though for a five minute break to be respectful to the next panelist time but I'd like you guys to meet over here personally thank you we appreciate it feel free to get up get some food use the restroom meet your neighbors and five minutes we'll reconvene for the next panel