 Hey everybody, hey welcome, I'm Joni Brooks and I'm the new president of the Native Association board, so glad to be here, 2017 and we're excited about the year. So the first thing I wanted to do is introduce you to the board members, so I already introduced myself, I live on Davis Court and so I'll let everybody else introduce themselves. I'm Steve Amber and I live on Elgin. And he's the vice president of the state board. I am the vice president of the state board. And you can stay in the house. You can stay, you can stay, you can stay. Look Chase, good meet you all. I'm Kamma Smiley, I'm the secretary, I'm not sure why I chose to help. Why did you do that? You were elected. I'm just going to hang up. Davis Court? Yes, I'm on Davis Court as well. Which is on Elmhurst? And then Steve's on Elgin. I'm Holly Newell and I'm on Queen Anne's Court. I'm on Elmhurst. Matt, nice to have you on Elmhurst. So we have a great agenda today and so I'm just going to get it going. I understand Councillor Ward is going to be showing up, is that correct? Yes, he's running a little late but he is on his way. I'm Millie Ray. I'm the director of neighborhood engagement for councilman Ward. Okay, well when he comes in, whoever, wherever we are, we'll finish up the meeting. Perfect. So we have a very, very special guest here tonight, Cynthia Spillman. She's the president of the Beacon Hill Neighborhood Association. Who's heard of the Tier 1 neighborhood coalition? I don't know what it is. Well Cynthia is here to explain about the coalition. And I'm very excited that she's here. She's health founded. And very powerful people on this coalition. And they're doing a lot of good things. So excited. So welcome to the meeting. Well thank you. It's a small miracle. The Tier 1 neighborhood coalition has been a game changer for our neighborhoods. And it was, you know, I have tried in the past to start some kind of coalition. And it always falls on its face almost immediately. And Joanie actually was after your case, you know, Beacon Hill came and attended those meetings. It was after one of your zoning cases. And we were undergoing some stressful situations with the city. And they're, you know, completely disregarding our neighborhood plans. And it was the beginning of the formation of the new SA Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan. And it just spontaneously, like Venus rising from the ocean. It just came on its own. And in fact, Facebook page, Joanie and I were talking outside of the zoning commission. And we're like, maybe we should do a Facebook page. What should we call it? I mean it was that fast. And strong leaders from different neighborhood associations got on board immediately as they could see its potential. And we haven't ever really focused on our organization other than creating a steering committee. It's all been about what do we need to do to insert ourselves in the city processes so that we are not just at the end for our community engagement or our neighborhood input. But we were at the decision making table. And we were extremely successful. I mean, the people that are, it's not so much power. It's ordinary people showing up, voicing their opinions and not giving up and being smart and strategic about it. And we happen to have a couple of people on the steering committee. People like me who don't come from a zoning background, but have had to educate ourselves and stand up for our neighborhoods. And other people who live and breathe this stuff. They're so smart at it. But we managed to change the lobbying and just from January through August up to the very last minute working with our council people working with the mayor to get some language change. At best, the language is ambiguous. But it's not at least saying straight up, we're going to erase your neighborhood plans. And so we now have asked, we asked, some of the things we asked for was we needed four planners. New planners to help implement through the neighborhoods, to be liaisons, to be neighborhood planners. We have at least one that's been hired on. We think about that, would you have thought even five years ago the city would have hired a neighborhood liaison? So we got that. We want a neighborhood commission. We haven't gotten that yet. We wanted to be on the steering committee for the implementation plan. Don't put us at the end and when you've got a done deal and we're asking for our advice and our input and we all know what happens. That's just something that they check off. And so they said that they would give coalitions a seat at the table but no coalitions that were formed after the new comprehensive plan was formed. So that meant not tier one. And we lobbied Trevino, put a lot of pressure on him because a lot has come from district one. And so he got one of us to be on that steering committee to represent us. And we're just beginning. When we have won some significant zoning cases, we've also lost some because other tier one members come to the zoning committee, come to the zoning board and say, this is why all of us in different districts and in district one needs to honor our neighborhood plan over and over and over. That makes a difference. And so I'm very proud that the new SA Tomorrow plan came out and under neighborhoods one of the 2016 highlights is tier one neighborhood coalitions. Ones that we've been recognized by the city as much as the city. And I consider it a compliment. We are not a threat to developers, but we want an equal place at the table. One of the things that got us going was that when we looked at all the committee members and researched them on who was on the committees that were making direct decisions about our neighborhoods, not one neighborhood leader. They were all developer or developer oriented. That doesn't mean we're, at least in Beacon Hill, we're not anti-development, but we want to have a say about what happens. There has to be thoughtful development. There has to be development that's compatible with the neighborhood plans. We have a long road ahead of us with this plan. I mean, I think the point is they want those plans to go away and have us in a larger community plan that encompasses a huge amount of area when some of the neighborhoods have nothing to comment and water it down. And so we have, it's important, when we look at a list of members of tier one, all the rest of them have maybe two or three. Matney Park has like 10 members. Like you're a very involved, engaged community. And so I'm thankful that you've allowed me to come talk to you today. Is there any questions about tier one neighborhood coalition? We're 27 neighborhoods right now, and we're growing fast. Is it basically neighborhoods within 410? It's neighborhoods within 410. We first were going to do just those tier one, and we've gotten critiqued for the name tier one. It's like, oh, you think you're all that? It's not that. I thought it was a plan, but any time I've read literature about urban planning, the word tier one meant the first ring of neighborhoods around the central downtown. Tier two would be the set like Castle Hills. But what was the question? It's a big question. So it's a hill incident that we do have a lot in common with a lot of the other neighborhoods, and there is some power in group that we've expanded to neighborhood associations. Not only within 410, but we also don't, we're not part of the neighborhood homeowners associations. We're not, we don't allow HOAs, because they have very separate kind of agendas. They're a very different kind of neighborhood. But we've had, you know, I had a neighbor that was outside of 410 call me, and it's like, well, you know, I'm sorry. You're not, maybe you could call me. He said, well, we have issues too. I mean, you know, so we let him in. But it just shows that people are understanding that we, by ourselves, we keep thinking we're an island. So we're not, we're not just formed to take on city issues, but one of the things that I found very valuable about this is what we're doing for each other. So, you know, we're learning each other's best practices. We're learning things about how our neighbors run. We're educating each other. And so the fact that the last couple of zoning cases that Beacon Hill has had, we had five or six different neighborhoods show up and speak was so powerful. I mean, it was, it was, it was, I got chills. It was so powerful for us, but for those zoning commissioners to hear like this, they're not alone anymore. These are issues that are common to all of our neighborhoods. And Mackney Park is one of the big players in it. So thank you for that. Was there any other questions? Imagine Ingram Hills and talk about it. So Ingram Hills, I think it's a little bit different because they're more suburban and it's kind of a country. They're kind of out of the country or looked to me by the pictures. But developers coming in and doing a huge development of affordable housing. I don't know what affordable housing is because no one ever, you know, what that means exactly. But it's a problem for traffic. It's a problem for the local schools. When you have an influx of that many people all at once, that middle school, I can't remember the name of the middle school, but my husband talked there when the last time they built some big development. And what happens is we give developers the okay, but we don't stop to think of the ripple effect, the problems that when you do things on that scale. And I'm not saying it's even. The schools are particularly the developers, you know, like that's something they should be taking care of. But as a city we should be thinking about how to mitigate some of those issues. I think in the end what they really wanted was some kind of barrier. I'm not sure if that compromise was ever reached. When I understood the developers looking at a bottom line and said that doesn't work for us, but maybe they came up with some of the compromises. That went before zoning today. I know the zoning rep for that district, for district three, was going to okay the developers' wishes. I don't know how Medina felt about it. But we showed up to planning. The three or four neighborhoods showed up and spoke on their behalf. And they made a lot of mistakes. And that's something that you see a lot of neighborhoods who have never thought about these issues. This is a whole hat for you guys. It's a whole hat for us. It's a whole hat for a lot of the basic inner cities. But there's a lot of neighborhoods who've never had reps go to zoning. They have no idea, like the things you should not say, the things you should say. And there's a way of conducting yourself that's most conducive to getting, you know, and a lot of it's about discipline. Just having the discipline to keep your mouth shut and not, you know, saying all the angry things that are coming out right now. Like, you know, that's part of how to do this. And so that's something we can help each other with. Yes? Sir, do you perceive that here one will do public education that's sort of like workshops or training? Right now we're thinking about, I want to say, I mean, we're still in that stage where all of us are trying to figure this out. Like, even what we're going to be in the future. But one of the things we did at the last meeting and we're talking about is maybe having some workshops for neighborhoods that we can talk to each other about zoning issues. Because there's a lot of people in neighborhoods that they have no idea. Like, what's a UDC code? What comprehensive plan? And I don't blame them for that, but we can educate each other in a way that's understandable and help people to be able to represent themselves in their neighborhoods in zoning and city council cases. And we need to make neighborhoods more of a political issue. You know, how do we make that as part of the platform? That, you know, the way water issues are are other kinds of important issues in our city. Where do you find your apartment? Um, I... I don't really find it. I have contact information. I don't have cards. I wish it was that. I, like, write stuff on my hand. But... It's sort of wood in the 37 neighborhoods. I mean, is it south as well? Yes. Yeah. It's out. Yeah. It's King William and Lovaca and Mission, Mission Burial, Five Points, and there's all that. And we can get you to that list. We're not... You don't have a website or anything like that. The Facebook page is talking about it's private for the members where we can discuss issues openly. Without anybody. Without anybody. You know. But I send out, I send out, um, maybe once a month. Right. A contact list of all the neighborhood associations that are involved. The people that are the contacts. Sometimes the president of the neighborhood association, sometimes they're not, sometimes they're representatives that they send that that's their, you know, expert. And their contact information. We're working on a calendar and a, like, a group name that you just say the group name and it goes out to everybody. And the steering committee comes from several neighborhoods north and south. But the steering committee doesn't make decisions. The committee kind of facilitates things. Organizes, like, the needs. We don't raise roots. We have no money. So, you know, we don't have a website or anything like that. So, it's just a training part of it that's really going back and forth. And the DECA building, Monticello Park, Bianca Maldonado has allowed us to use that. But there are other options. And that's one of the things we've talked about as a steering committee, is that's a real need right now. Is to have, that people can start getting educated. And it's not that hard. I mean, I'm a former M.M. Charlie Bush teacher. So many of this kind of thing is so out of my, you know, realm. And, you know, I've been able to do it. So, everybody can. Thank you. Thank you. And, yeah, if you want to know more information about it, just email. Email. We have, you know, our, our, yeah, so give us a, or you want to, you know, join us. Because it's, it's really, you know, that the comprehensive plan, one of the things is to get yourself educated and you go online and get educated on the comprehensive plan. It's coming. It's coming. And we are right in the middle of it. Oh, yeah. We are right in the middle of it. And how it's going to get implemented is through rezoning. So, we are in the middle of it. So, the more that we can get everybody educated and involved, absolutely. And right now is so critical. There will never be another time in the history of our neighborhoods that will be a more important turning point than it is right now. And you're lucky. I mean, the people that, in McNeil Park that have been involved have really been the people that have shaped this. Cameras and Steven and, and sometimes Butch is going, going down once a month on Saturdays and going to these meetings and they're open or closed. They're, they're closed. But if you want to, if you want to be part of that. We started out where you could have two reps from each neighborhood, just because we needed to, like we trusted those neighborhood leaders to then, you know, get there. Like we have a committee in Beacon Hill. That's our tier one committee. And it's our, our way of being involved without every, but then like I said, you've got 10 names under your, I think he's going to come. That's okay. Yeah, that's okay. So at least you can get the minutes and stuff. Well, thank you so much for coming today. So next on our agenda is NowCastSA and Lucas. She's the director of NowCastSA and she's going to talk to us. She lives here in McNeil Park and she's going to talk to us about their mission and then how they can interact and support our neighborhoods. Take it away. It's really great to be here and yes, in full disclosure, I've been a resident of McNeil Park since August of 1995 and I only accidentally kind of became a resident of McNeil Park. We'd actually had a contract on a home in Beacon Hill on Summit Street and that fell through and we were driving around the end and there was this house that kind of said, it was by me. And perhaps in my lifetime we will have finished reading it. Yes, since I thought about it in six months. So that's part of why, frankly, since NowCast started back in 2010, we actually launched on the day of the MLK march in 2010. That's part of an explanation of why McNeil Park and Beacon Hill have sort of been gotten a little extra attention from NowCast. We're like public television on the internet and we really focus an awful lot on very local information, local civic information. We do a lot of webcasts. We webcast tons of civic meetings when the internet is available. Right now we're recording and we'll upload it to YouTube. We have about 1,300 videos on YouTube and our offices are at the Central Library on the sixth floor because Ramero Salazar believes we are in the same business of empowering people with information. And we pay our rent by webcasting things in the auditoriums of Central Library and other branches occasionally. But that explains why we actually have, we're the only city in the country, I think, with a YouTube playlist of poets' laureates. There you go. We come in peace and we try to do good. And I want to tell you two stories that really go back to these neighborhoods that are really, really important. A couple of years ago there was that city council election thing coming up, you know? And NowCast was scurrying around to every pleasant city council candidate debate, 7.30 in the morning, the formerly greater chambers, those things. And then I learned that all four candidates for District 2 were going to be at making partner put association meeting. That was the only time all four were in the same place was when they were here. I know that. I practically trolled them all. And so even though I was going to be out of town I made sure that I had an intern over here with the camera. And that video told me who I wanted to go for. And it's because that's coming this year that I want to give you guys the opportunity to help make sure we are there when that happens. So that when the election comes up you can make the most important choices. How many years ago was it that there were five candidates, I think running for District 1? One of whom was Diego Bernal. And my friends in Beacon Hill I think it was Pastor Tom Hager and Cosima said, hey would you come over to the elementary school and webcast this candidate forum and I was like, oh okay. And we did it. And that was the only time all five candidates were there. And ultimately, obviously Diego got elected but we had our cameras on it. And I want to make sure that happens again this year. That we are there even when it's someplace like this it's not at a big event. It's someplace like this. One of one of the people who's also involved with neighborhood associations realized that nowcast we are supported by donations and memberships and grants and we're a nonprofit. We take the none way too seriously sometimes. As she said I want to keep you alive and she came up with this idea that neighborhoods could adopt nowcast. And we kind of refined it a little bit and I'm kind of using you guys as anything to see if you're up for this but the proposal we came up with was to have neighborhood associations say okay we're going to become sort of a nonprofit member of nowcast because nowcast does have nonprofit members. And the neighborhood association would support nowcast by an annual lump sum of $250. And then the neighborhood association would go out to its members and say hey we need at least 10 of you to become $10 a month subscribers just like you would do to Texas Public Radio or KLRN and say $10 a month and if you guys can do that then that can support us so that we can guarantee that we will be there for you in situations like this where you suddenly have all four neighborhood all four candidates district up. And the other thing that's really important and it goes back to the big webcast that we did for district one years ago I'm so excited that the neighborhoods are saying we want to host a mayoral candidate for with the legal women voters there but it's going to be the neighborhood it's going to be us guys because you folks can ask the best questions. Not me. You guys know what the issues are you can do it. And if we get enough of the neighborhoods into this program then it will be really easy for us to say of course we can because normally when we do a webcast of up to four hours we have to charge $32 a month because that's with the technology and everything we roll with $3,500 cameras in both of the cables a $5,000 tricaster and videographers behind each one, camera women behind them and more property insurance than I can describe. So it really does cost us a lot of money to roll on things. There are some tiny things that we can do a Facebook live for but my experience with Facebook live is for about 20 minutes before cameras say our webcasts are immediately available afterwards on YouTube so you can replay them as soon as it's over. And not only that it lets a whole lot of people have access to it whether it's live or later so that everybody can see. That's the proposal. I've got some handouts not many because I still want to know about if there's typos on this and what you think and what you think of what's in there we're still fiddling around with that what I put at the bottom of this was that we would the benefits that you would get and we can come up with W's curves and t-shirts if you want those too but that we'd be part of a city-wide mayoral candidate debate that we would do at least two video productions in your neighborhood association so we guarantee that we'll be here so that we decide for our district to be happy to be here. Absolutely. And I also would do what we really enjoy doing and that is doing community journalism training on media now smart phones and stuff like that so I would love to do I've tried journalism but I would love to do that at any of your meetings at any time you want and also do videography training so that at least I can give you some basic principles my basic principles after 1300 videos of what not to do and what to do and also the other thing is and I would do this for anyone anywhere we have on the website what I call a Crap Detection Toolbox that helps people determine what is crap and what is real and in this past election obviously they've had a much higher level of things I've taught it at middle school, high school and I started out this semester at A&M with my students teaching them today how to verify the credibility that comes out there and we know many of us kind of see things go flying and I would be happy to teach that class to anybody anytime as well so the donations would be tax deductible? yes I'm sorry yes we are at 501c3 so all of the donations are tax deductible tax deductible so does everybody know how tax-executive applies you on to that? so it's now tax-executive here we have more of these, thank you so we're also going to do all of these wonderful things so that requires us as a neighbor to be hot and I really think that's important it's important that you guys have ownership of this I started out with old school news but I'm not old school anymore so I have ownership of this and it has to come from that kind of support and obviously one of my ulterior motives is our non-profit mission is to promote and facilitate an inclusive civic conversation and my total motive on this is to increase voter turnout this amount of 12% on multiple elections which is embarrassing so one of the things that we'll do on this is the board meets once a month and discusses different things different issues and makes decisions so that's one of the things that we'll discuss about this and then if we decide we're going to do the $250 as an association and we'll also be reaching out to individuals for that 10 people right, 10 and 10 dollars but anyone can make a part and volunteer volunteer ahead of time too and it was more than 10 actually that's fine too and we will make it so that it's really easy so that there's an agreement on our website and on our Facebook page so that you guys can go there and say thank you we're talking about also doing a Facebook group that would be limited to people who are contributors and that means contributing stories too or volunteer time but contributors and volunteers so that we can communicate that way as well Okay, anyone have any questions or anything? Well thanks for our look Thank you so much Hi, timing is acceptable Wonderful It's all good For sure Sure, have you spoken on it in a minute? Not yet Again, I'm Alan Mark and I'm glad to be back here to make a part of the member association and I'm glad to see a nice packed house to start the year off right We just had a great demo came March yesterday that he might participate some folks after that So about 200,000 was a little bit of inclement but it was still a pretty large crowd We had a little bit of a large crowd last year but again, weather permitting we are the largest margin of activity We have a number of initiatives that are going on in our neighborhoods Right now we have a neat initiative that we have yet to do in Minky Park and we want to get that schedule Millie, do we have that already on the calendar? They're going to be February So what the neat initiative is and it's really good to let this out of the neighborhood so you can share this with your neighbors in our here A letter will be mailed to the majority of you, I'm not sure whether we get those of these lists from but it all depends on if you've voted in an election or if you've been in the neighborhood for a significant amount of time But the letter explains the program which is a neighborhood empowerment action team So we have code enforcement we have our safe officers we have animal care services for the stray animal population and then we have transportation and capital improvements depending on if you guys have mentioned any road or speed bump or intersection issues that you want to have addressed on this ride along and it's a pretty much a comprehensive process where we ride through every block and I'm on every ride because that adds to the importance for the city staff if it were just my staff person then they would send a staff person instead of the director of there So we arrive with Mike Shannon who's the director of code enforcement and the chief doesn't do the ride because there are more important things but we do sometimes have sergeants captains in there it all depends on what's going on that day but we definitely have representatives from all the parties so the first week is the letters in the mail the second week is code enforcement actually enforcing all of the violations that they see it's all about getting the critical mass of homes to a place that's beautiful really not disrespectful but getting our neighborhoods to look as nice as possible because it's a competition we want to have great neighborhoods so that we have neighborhoods of choice when people come in and it's not as much in Minky Park as it is in some of the other areas in District 2 which is why we haven't gotten to you guys we started this process in February on the other side of I-35 in the body line between wealth in District 2 North of I-35 is specifically more wealth which is Government Hill West Fort and then Minky Park South, Dignity Hill Denver Heights, Jefferson Heights Hunker Place, not as much wealth it's spreading a little bit but it's really not at the same place I guess kind of where Minky Park was 10 or 15 years ago Hanky Manky out there there's a rumor or whatever yeah you told me that, Minky Manky but yeah, with the Pearl and a lot of the economic development that's happening downtown a lot of new homes are being built a lot of new areas but again we have to address the critical mass which is the vast majority of homes that haven't still been renovated or remodeled we want to give these folks assistance so on that letter there's also a list of nonprofit partners that can help senior citizens or folks with disabilities that can't take care of their own maintenance and we get them on the list so when nonprofit organizations contact us as they do fairly frequently, whether it's a church group or someone with a group, when they come out we don't just send them to the same neighborhood over and over again, we send them where there's actual need then the third week is the ride along with the neighborhood leadership myself Millie is on the ride we have the save officer the director of code enforcement and transportation and capital improvements and then we go through a fairly substantial list usually anywhere from 200 to 1800 code violations depending on the neighborhood some neighborhoods again haven't seen a lot of attention off the major streets and that's what I noticed going and talking to neighborhood officials that the code violations will go down the main streets and they'll do the violations on the main streets but then you go in to the streets that most of us don't drive every day and if there's nobody vigilant and enforcing the law then the grass is this high and there's mattresses sitting in the driveway and somebody just moved out so we want to address all those things as quickly as possible and then the last week we bring a dumpster to the neighborhood wherever you guys choose to put it and we allow to get all the trash and debris and everything cleaned up out of the neighborhood so you don't have to have that extra burden of taking it to a dump site or one of the dump sites further away from the community so we bring it to you so that we have as few excuses as possible to make sure that we're doing our best effort to keep the neighborhood clean and we do about two or three we have about 14 active neighborhoods that we're in so it's kind of a 14 week cycle and it just keeps going so neat neighborhood empowerment action team so are you actually giving those violations to the individual homes? Yeah and again most of the violations are taken care 92% of all these violations are taken care of folks didn't even know was a violation because they've never been called on it before which it's our responsibility to make sure that we're taking care of the basics as a city government and letting folks know one of the ordinance and laws are and two it's whose responsibility it is even if you're a renter you still have to make sure that your grass is mowed and you're keeping visible trash out of you know so second anything else coming up? The East End Environment Summit? Neighborhood Empowerment Summit 90's so you guys need to come too it's everybody but it's pretty much a strategic planning and the mailers are going out this week so mailers are going out this week you should get some I'm not sure how big that list is but the Neighborhood Empowerment Summit is at Sam Houston High School and it's a strategic planning session where we're going to take three hours and go into a deep dive and here as many ideas as possible do some SWOT analysis and look at our community as a strategic vision and also the four zeroes that I've been working on and talking about since I've been in office zero vacant homes and lots zero murder, zero percent unemployment stray dogs is my idea and I can't just govern this community on my idea I think of myself as kind of like a CEO as the board of directors so you should be giving me that strategic vision for the most part and I'm acting to implement it through different policies and I think everybody can be comfortable with that so we're going to see what everyone's ideas are from all different parts and again we have a huge district I don't say to say east side so we have a huge district that goes from the north central to the northeast to the east southeast and 130,000 people 49 square miles which is a little bit bigger than San Francisco twice the size of Washington DC so it's pretty significant and again significant variations between the problems in the communities but there are some common themes that we're hoping to gather in this summit and it's also going to tie in was anybody available in 2009 when the mayor did her east side economic development at San Houston so it's going to tie in to some of those things but it's going to see if we can look at it more holistically and understand that it's not just you know W.W. White Road and New Braunfels and these commerce that I serve it's the entire district okay take any questions if you guys have some I am not that good was there anything unclear about what I stated or can I ask a question this is a different topic that you didn't mention but I know you have a blank agenda can you update us on the mayor's policing council sure yes I am so we have a community policing council that has four different committees four or five four committees and three other council members are on the committee the mayor is there but the number of community officials I don't think there's anyone from this neighborhood in particular but it's really talking about the training the communication how we set the tone for interactions as far as changes in the the potential contract changes in the future and then training communication contract recruitment yes recruiting new officers that are more inclusive we still have a majority of our officers that don't live inside the city limits so where we have we've already made some changes with that so we offered $12,000 homeowner down payment assistance if they move into the city and then $15,000 if they move into the iCrip which are areas that are underserved and not as the desirable so but the conversations moving forward I think people are learning we're really checking the interactions I don't know if you guys are familiar with ShotSpotter Technology the gunshot detection software so we're in the first city in Texas to have this technology I found more information on it February 2015 in April of last year 2016 and it doesn't cover this area but we do want to cover all the areas where we see gun violence because there's no reason that any part of our city should be less safe than the Alamo or the River Walker or places where gunshots went off we see tanks going up and down the street so in these neighborhoods on the east and west side of San Antonio it's not just the east side thing we found over 2,000 gunshots have gone off from April of this past year up until today which is a huge number more than most people can think in this I mean I had no idea that it would be that high but again without those data metrics we can't justify getting resources to these communities because there are actually more murders outside of these circles so who knows how many gunshots are happening in those areas so it really just sets the argument that we need to do this to spend these monies because my individual point of view not that I'm a proponent of gentrification I am not but I don't think in any major city in America there should be any properties that are valued less than a mile from the center of the city less than $100,000 and when we have $25,000 houses that look a lot like your houses it doesn't make sense that this house is $400,000 or $500,000 and this house is $25,000 outside of the poverty and the violent crimes that are happening in those neighborhoods and it's a thing as far as resources if we don't get those values we won't have the money for the streets we won't have the money for the police that we need we won't have the money for the services that we give if we think about the cities that I mentioned San Francisco or Washington DC San Francisco has 7 times our budget to spend because their property values are so high and then DC has 5 times our budget and in both of these cities have less people in San Antonio less miles of streets and sidewalks and less drainage issues and a tons of resources so we need it to be in San Francisco or Washington DC but if we raise the bar just a little bit higher it'll make a huge change and huge benefit for most of our citizens What about increasing property taxes on businesses? Do you have hotels and we're not trying I don't have an issue with any of those things that I didn't get in the Bear County tax assessors who do most of that work I just know that if there's violent crimes one they won't build hotels and the restaurants and the businesses or they'll leave the businesses in those areas vacant which happens on a lot of parts of the city that aren't necessarily the Broadway quarter that's receiving a lot of attention and a lot of positive change because if you think about the stock just let me finish for one second I don't want to go all the way there but if these houses wouldn't be half a million or 500 to 600,000 people could live everywhere downtown instead of just in these neighborhoods where it's actually forcing a lot of pressure because people want to be in these neighborhoods they're tearing down that house because they know they can build two or three for the same price that one is worth now or something like that but then that pressure wouldn't be if we spread it out amongst more neighborhoods instead of just here but I think you understand what I'm saying My question is the city has an affordable housing and part of something that came up I think it was COPS but those bonds are unable to be used for rehab only for new housing and the city was going to look into the potential for coming up with a way to help with rehab can you update us on that? Sure, the earliest that that could happen is our 2019 election that wouldn't be possible at least as far as a bond is concerned until 2022 so 2019 because it's just really a semantics thing if our election was three or four days later on in the year we would be able to do it without a problem but because it's within the year the year's time frame we have to wait until the next election that we hold which is 2019 So there's no shorter issue? We would be attempting to resolve the charter now but because of the time frame we're within the cutoff so it would be the next unless we held a special election for 2018 which I don't see happening necessarily just for the charter revision it could possibly happen but there are probably multiple charter revisions that happen in that election So the first year that we could have a potential for funding that's worth it now we have federal funding for our owner-occupied rehab already so it's already happening but again there's huge income restrictions and unless you make I think it's like $27,000 a year or less which there are a lot of people that are just above the poverty line that can barely afford to take care of their homes especially these historic homes built in the 1890s through the 1940s, 1960s that are making this a little bit more that haven't been able to be eligible we have folks that are eligible but it's pretty difficult especially and that's $27,000 for one person so the more people you have in the home it makes it more difficult to qualify Thanks for showing up tonight I was kind of surprised and didn't expect you to be here tonight but now you have office hours later with them next Thursday at 1.35 Yeah 1.35 Yeah at the club which is on East Commerce Street Okay, good I have a question I've been in the 19 parks since 2005 first of all in Ellsworth and now I live on Queen Avenue and I was wondering I had a question around the development that's happening on owners and the developer and what they're developing the decision has not been raised yet has it been discussed in the previous meeting? In the previous and for association leadership so can you address that and kind of explain on it what's happening and what's Well I mean what's happening is what can happen within the law until you have a historic district in these areas that definitely have historically significant homes and I know a lot of you have gotten your historic significance to the state or even the federal government we cannot govern what's rebuilt we can partially with the NTD partially govern what's being torn down but what's rebuilt it's not it's not another check by HDRC that historic design review commission so I do think that Maky Park will eventually be a historic district but I know that's a point of attention I don't see a lot of those same faces here but I definitely know I see but no it doesn't have to be the entire neighborhood but if you and the folks on your block want to have a historic district and there's more than half of you that want to have it we will make your block or two blocks historic Is this really a historic issue? Well on the review we also have those garages on the front it's my issue but there's no HDRC oversight of that block because you're not in a historic district so I'm not sure so you're saying you're saying a historic designation what's going on if that block were in a historic district yes if it were not no okay so previously this organization would do the same convulsions a couple years ago to do this whole thing but the developers who they kind of they squashed it and made it go away and anyways people that live there the developers who were supposedly residents who were like developers that kind of torpedoed the whole effort I don't I don't think so I mean I know that there were some homeowners that were part of the program but I can see some of the folks here that were on both sides of the issue and I think they were engaged in the community again it doesn't have to be I think that the size of the neighborhood there's so many differences from you know the edge of you know Cunningham and then you get over into Minky Park and over near the school and then you go to the North of Hilda Rampark which is a different story altogether there as well and there's a bunch of pressures but talk to your neighbors if there's some kind of consensus one way or the other I'm with the neighborhood I understand why you get split but it's too late for someone that's already going on oh yes but I mean it's only going to get worse the pressures that once the developments we're putting 42 million dollars into this Broadway corridor and 42 million dollars a city investment is probably going to bring 400 to 500 million dollars of private investment on this same corridor so those pressures that within the next five years it's not an overnight thing but as this as this corridor gets more improvements we're going to have to put those protections in place to take care of the neighborhoods to keep that quality that makes people love San Antonio and love these neighborhoods that we have near our downtown I have one question about the same thing on Elmhurst talking back the other day you mentioned the development of four shutdown houses in a city almost on the property the wall of the first house that's against code should be a five percent back and they have already built and started the foundations for all these four I think that code decision was made before I got into office but I'm pretty sure if they're IDZ there's no there isn't neighbor so we just need to get a call to get a message right behind us so that he would send a call he needs to call as you call through our office I guess that's the one thing that I can implore you guys to do 207-0950 speak to Millie or Natalie or anyone that we have in the office we keep track of those calls we send you postcards after we resolve them so pending and it's continued at our database and we follow up on those without you so think of it, our office is a concierge service I tell the same thing to every neighborhood it's about customer service I come from the private sector and the city doesn't really think of itself as a customer service partner I mean you guys are paying for a service and a lot of the time you're not getting it you don't have to call what I'm saying was that now guys that's you you can tell Cheryl call me because you're wasting your time if you call 3-1-1 it's just going to take you a lot longer you can try it but we're going to get the answer first because we're going to escalate it a lot easier can you give us that number again 207-0950 is it we have calendars it's on her call but I did leave my card on the back table usually there's no proper construction going on our permits are supposed to be posted so they're visible from the street so whatever inspector comes by can see if there are no permits anywhere on this property I've notified from the city zoning office on this not her back to them but the setback is not setback is not what it's supposed to be so it's up to them to act and to stop the developer from basically taking trying to take land from the neighbor it's a lot easier if you call our office so we know these issues coming to your meeting and we can give you answers the next time we come back as opposed to saying we'll check with 3-1-1 on it and we'll see what they have to say we can do all the lead work because that's what we get paid to do for about 20 people no we can we can can you give me a schedule out there let's do it like a one hour this week just to see what's going on and let's see if we can get Mike Shannon if not we can get one of the assistants sometime before Friday no I know you guys everybody in the neighborhood has told me half the people that aren't in the meeting people that are in the meeting no 500 block no you're following the meeting you guys myself, Millie and then somebody from Code Enforcement Millie before Friday please thank you I'm glad to see engaged communities because engaged communities are safer communities they're thriving communities they're growing I want to see 200 people I want to see us bust out of this room and go into the bigger room here because we have so many people engaged and I know there's over a thousand folks that live in your neighborhood so how do we get those folks part of the process if there's a way that you guys have if you want to move it around if you want to do something different try something different because that's the only way that we get the things that we really want as a as a district and we're talking about in the city paradigm because there's a lot more votes out on the north side but we got to bring the money downtown into the nearest side for real change in these communities thank you for coming okay just just real quick we met the new board just to let you know some of the major areas of focus that we're going to be concentrating on 2017 one of them is going to be the San Antonio comprehensive plan and then how that affects us like I said earlier a lot of how it will be implemented will be improved rezoning and just as calisthenor said it's coming here it's coming and density density and that's what all those things on Elmhurst is about and so that we we personally oppose this density it's about doing it as a community when it's not just the developer the working community it's no longer can be this is what I want we're a community we have to be concerned about who lives next to us and so you know we're going to be working on the comprehensive plan tier one neighborhood coalition we're going to be involved in that so if you want to know more information and we'll have to figure out how we're going to disseminate decisions and different things that we do on that we haven't figured that out yet one of the ways might be for us to since one of us does regularly go this meeting might be in good form to regularly present one more there maybe that will encourage one to come to this meeting which one of the things too that we're going to focus on is AT&T development some of you may have heard or not heard that AT&T is going to sell their their building that's on the corner of Hildebrand and Broadway so that's a major concern of ours and the redevelopment we've had two meetings with them already and one was with the land use committee and some of the board members Stephen was there but you wrote that meeting too and the issue there is that AT&T wants us to support a rezoning without knowing what they're wanting to do with it and have it be IDZ which means you can frankly do anything with it so it's not just that building on the street there's two or three so that's AT&T so who knows and then I had a meeting with the lawyer just last week and their concern is just like everybody's property they don't want to do what to do ours is that we want to have a plan full we might get together and benefit AT&T as well as us they would like to make it multi-use and one of the things that was said to me is like 800 condos or apartments in that building I said 1600 cars so think about our infrastructure and so that's going to be an ongoing thing we'll see it's in their court right now they don't want to talk to their board their stockholders about having a meeting a planning meeting so we'll see so that's big of our deal it's not a 1600 car increase what's the number of cars that's currently there because there's quite a few cars it's a little bit different I was just saying that because when you have a business cars kind of stay in the morning and then they leave when people leave when people live there you have cars going back and forth all the time so I don't know I just said that so at that meeting did they give you any further information not much they did sketch out this multi-use concept so some office some living commercial retail multi-use image for that do they have a potential buyer or they're just at the very beginning it sounded like they wanted to pre-planning before they get to a buyer at least a partnering transition but it's pretty sketchy do they talk about using the existing building? yes but building another building? or building around me they've talked years ago they talked about building in front of it yes I think that is what they envision but it's still pretty general have we talked about the conservation society for all measures? they might be good people that really exists it's a mid-century building it could be as far as the southwestern belt oh they did not have a USAA it's the original USAA so you can see why we want to sit down with them because that won't have a major impact on them they can't ask us to sign the blind check exactly do you want to say something? I'm just wondering if they have some incarnate work when I told the Lord I said AT&T know what they want to do they know that she didn't answer they have to know what they want to do they have to have a good idea of what they want to sell that's just my personal opinion that's on our radar and that's a good idea we'll see how it all goes the other thing to focus is MP is a neighborhood association membership and so as you know January the annual dues so hopefully y'all will pay your annual dues and ask your friends and neighbors also they primarily where the money goes is to that we get and what was the percentage of that we get the neighborhood 40% that paying $10 $10 a year and a lot of that goes to the newsletter we print out the newsletter and then we get delivered so we're considering a neighborhood dues paying get together party at the PPM so that's something we're thinking about and the other thing that we're looking at is sponsorships for the newsletters we typically get a sponsor and they get an ad and they pay $75 so if you know of anybody or yourself have a business or anything that you would like to showcase please email us does everybody know we have a website so you can go to the website it's makingpart.org and you can go there you can see latest news you can see the newsletter other things that are posted also numbers phone numbers you can go out there for phone numbers for code compliance you can also look at the NCD the plans posted out there so if you're thinking that maybe somebody is doing something that's against standards but NCD can pull it up and look at it and then you still have questions and call out more and even if you think you don't really know just go ahead and call and that's about it what else would y'all like to see we're here so send us volunteers we also need volunteers so we have block captains so the process you want to tell us the process of the newsletters that you've been doing we need help groups yeah thank you we have we distribute over 700 newsletters every month and we are one of the strengths of the neighborhood is through our block captains and so rather than mailing newsletters which a lot of neighborhoods do and of course a lot of neighborhoods as well as organizations now I'm just giving up on newsletters newsletters there aren't any newsletters going out but a good organization as consistently said there are lots of people in the neighborhood that we believe will be cut off if one we raise the price so that all newsletters have to be mailed or two we'll only do a digital newsletter and so one of the things the neighborhood association board has always said is we'll continue with a monthly newsletter and there are a number of people in this room and people have moved but for since 19, I think it's October 1978 Manki Park Neighbor Association has published a monthly newsletter every month since October 1978 which is pretty amazing and those newsletters are distributed by hand by block captains and when we pick up the newsletters at Kinko's, FedEx we distribute those to three area captains if you will geographically broken into the neighborhood we have one of those area captain positions that's vacant right now so we're looking for one person essentially to break out 150-200 newsletters and brought those to five or six block captains so that's what we're looking for right now somebody has 25 minutes a month and can do that every month is willing for us when we pick the newsletters at Kinko's to drop those at your house if you do that we'd appreciate it very much that's the area the area is Funston to Ohio are there block captains also needed? we have one that we're looking for on Elmhur you don't have to live on Elmhur to distribute but so it's really the area captain and block captains any volunteers I went to church once when I was in college and the minister gave a list of the people the members of the church that were in the hospital and he said six people who will volunteer to go visit Jim who will volunteer to go visit Jim and they stayed there and didn't move on somebody stood up and said I'll visit Jim who volunteers to visit Jim two of the next 12 months supported Jennifer Estrada is underwriting February's newsletter Alex as well and good time Charlie is standing July they always underwrite in July so an area captain 23, 24 minutes a month if Francille is one of our area captains Francille you're not selling it or efficient than Francille how many blocks does that area captain do to the block captains how many block captains are I think it's because I've been doing it for the last six months I think it's seven it might be six so it's just taking a newsletter sleeve or a newspaper sleeve or maybe Francille and then dropping those and then dropping those all it's either an apple house or slipping them through this is anarchy so since the organization from 1970 so if you'd like to volunteer please email us if you have a group you'd like to come to these meetings we're open to that and the email list too we have different issues like I said the board meets we're meeting on Monday we discuss rezoning we discuss different issues so if you have things that you would like to discuss with us please send us an email anybody anything else before we adjourn it's like we're going to have the fastest meetings in the west in the west help us move the chairs thank you