 Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Commander, Joint-Based San Antonio and 502nd Air Base Wing, Brigadier General Russell Driggers, welcome to today's event announcing the completion of the City of San Antonio's Fiscal Year 2017-2022 Bond Programs, Winans Road Project, connecting Ridham and Road to Fort Sam Houston Independent School District. I am Second Lieutenant Blanche DuDois, your narrator for today's event. Thank you all for attending and sharing in the special occasion which will feature four speakers. At this time, please welcome Major General, United States Marine Corps Retired Juan Ayala, Director, Military and Veteran Affairs Department as he provides remarks. Well good afternoon and welcome everybody. I really appreciate the delayed applause. Hey, listen, we're here to commemorate the completion of this beautiful, new Tulane Roadway for the Fort Sam Houston Independent School District which is located in District Council 2 represented by Councilman Jaylene McKee Rodriguez. Thank you for being here Councilman. This is your district. Thank you. I want to commend also the City of San Antonio's Public Works Department led by Mr. Rossi Ozany. Rossi, thanks for being here, sir. Humanist team are responsible for the completion of this project. Rossi leads the busiest and most one of the busiest and most productive public works teams in the country. Rossi, thank you and thank your team. Connecting Winans Road to Ridham and Road. What a project, 1.7 million project was part of an 850 million dollar bond approved by the San Antonio voters as part of the 1722 bond program. That program supported 180 projects. 70% of those projects were streets, city streets, drainage and infrastructure projects. A lot of them were around here. A lot of them supported the military. You know, I recall when this project was first conceived, when I first heard about it, and now we're here. I want to highlight that this was a result of many things. That's rock solid relationship that we have and continue to grow between the City of San Antonio, Joint Base San Antonio and supportive community partners, one of which is here, Diane and the Alamo Area Council of Governments led by Ms. Diane Rath. I remember you brought this up. You brought this idea up and we're here. So thank you, Diane. Later you will hear from other speakers why this is such an important project for our city, our community and our families. Again, I want to strongly emphasize that strong and long-standing relationships and partnerships between San Antonio Military City USA, Little Trademark, our community organizations and the military. Finally, our city and you see our city leadership here. Eric Walsh is here, City Manager, our Mayor is here, some of our staff are here. We are fully committed to continuing to find ways to do more of these projects to strengthen the ties between our community and the military. Thank you. Thank you, General Ayala. I would now like to welcome General Driggers for his remarks. So I was a little worried whenever I saw the script and I was trying to see where I was going to be placed in the script because usually after these things, if I'm placed last, I just have to throw this thing away because everyone already said what I was going to say. But now I get to say a few things that some of the other folks might say a little bit later. But hey, let me just first start by saying a couple of different thanks for working this out. As General Ayala just said, huge thanks to the Mayor and City Council for passing the proposed bond, allowing the execution of this project. Again, $1.75 million. And to the San Antonio voters, if it's not Military City, USA, unless the voters are participating. And to have them participating in this to pass the bond and continue to support a military community is so important. City Manager Walsh, thank you for being here today and for your executive leadership providing oversight of the project. For Mr. Hosani and the Public Works Department, thank you, sir, for executing the project. And Diane, for your support for this project. In fact, one of the first things whenever I first met you, this was a topic of discussion was this project. And so now to be able to see it to completion is pretty cool. You know, why is this thing important, you know, that we'll talk a little bit about, I'm sure we'll come up about why this is important to the city. Let me talk about if why it's important to our military. You know, you've got the high school that's right here. And, you know, Wine and Gate can be a little congested at times. And one of the areas where we do have the opportunity to have really good close connections with our community is through sporting events. And it's through the high school sporting events. And when we can't bring our community partners, the community family members, the community athletes, that just the athletes, but not with their parents or anything to be able to come here onto the installation to be able to enjoy a sporting event. That is an area where we create distance between us and our community. But now, and we've actually had this one, I think about three months, we've had experience being able to bring families to be able to enjoy sporting events together with our military families and all those athletes being able to enjoy together. So this just this just creates some amazing opportunities for our for not just the high school, but for our community as well. So we're very, very appreciative. Look forward to continuing to deepen the partnership and continue to make these projects work to bring our community that much tighter together. Thank you very much. Thank you, General Driggers. Next, please welcome Dr. Gary Bates, Superintendent Fort Sam Houston, Independent School District, as he provides remarks. Once again, everyone, thank you for coming out. It truly takes a village and thank you the City of San Antonio Joint Base San Antonio and the Alamo area Council of Governments for their work with this project. The new Cougar Road, the way is greatly appreciated by Fort Sam Houston ISD in that it provides two things for our students and staff. It strengthens, once again, our priority, the safety measures of our students and staff and allowing for second path of egress and events of emergency. And two, it allows our community to attend student events in more accessible routes. We appreciate the collaborative efforts of the city and JBSA in serving our military students. So once again, everyone who was involved in this project. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Bates. And for our final speaker, please welcome Mayor Ron Nuremberg, City of San Antonio. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm going to take a cue from General Driggers and try not to say things that have already been said, but let me add a few things. The first one is it's very easy for us to demonstrate what it means to be military city USA. Like many other cities across the country, we look for those opportunities to celebrate the service of our men and women and also to recognize and memorialize the sacrifice that them and their families make. And that frankly should be the same in every city around the country. It's the unseen things, though, that make this such an incredible city to live in and to support with regard to our nation's defense. We talk about military city USA being part of our DNA. It's part of our culture. You can feel it when you go out, maybe not be able to put your finger on it, but you know it's there. I often refer to San Antonio as one big installation. There's no fence lines. This is something that we we do citizen, civilian or military member or somewhere in between. We just do it because it's the right thing to do. We take for, we don't take for granted our importance as a community in our nation's defense. While it's these infrastructure support agreements, these projects that we do together as a city and joint based San Antonio that are innovative, but that also contribute to the safety of our men and women in the military, their families, their children that go to school. So I'm very happy to see this celebration. I just told general triggers. I can't remember us doing one of these to recognize the completion of one of these is a projects. I hope we do more of them. And I can tell you, General Yala, Tim, Eric, all of us, council member Makita Rodriguez, we are fully behind the idea that we can leverage our resources with yours and with your needs as a community to help support the work that you're doing. And these projects now that are part of over $100 million of leverage funds that we've contributed to JBSA capital infrastructure are now paving the way for the rest of the country and military communities all across our nation from coast to coast. They're taking the cue from military city USA and community wide figuring out ways that we can help support our military members are our service members. And what's good for San Antonio is that not only is this an important part of our nation's defense, but it provides jobs, it provides security, provides community quality of life for everybody. And so we are invested 100% in making sure that our missions thrive and that they're able to grow here. And this is what today means to me and to my colleagues. So thank you very much. Congratulations. And I think we're going to do something that I haven't done before either, which is to open gates to recognize rather than cut ribbons. So thanks everybody. Rise between our community and the military. Thank you. Thank you, General Yala. I would like to attend student events in more accessible routes. We appreciate the collaborative efforts of the city and JVSA in serving our military students. So once again, and to support with regard to our nation's defense. We talk about military city USA being part of our DNA as part of our culture. You can feel it this celebration. I just told General Diggers I can't remember us doing one of these to recognize the completion of one of these ISA projects that you're doing in these projects now that are part of over a hundred million dollars of leverage funds. And this is what today means to me and to my colleagues. So thank you very much. Congratulations. And I think we're going to do something that I haven't done, guys, rather than cut ribbons. So time we asked those participating in the group photo to please make your way up front. In addition to General Diggers and Mayor. It's good.