 Good evening. Thank you all so much for being here today. This is a great turnout for the West Side, and we really appreciate everyone coming out and taking some time out of your busy schedules to be with us today. Before we get started, I wanted to just make a little announcement. I know some of you all have signed up, but si algunas personas necesitan servicios de traducción, por favor consulte con Tía. Tía, está aquí y ella puede ayudarnos. Gracias. So, thank you all again for being here at tonight's open house. This is the fourth one that the City of San Antonio has hosted this year to discuss the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget. And your feedback really matters, and we're going to get into all the details about the budget, but before we do that, we wanted to share a quick video with you that gives some highlights of that budget. San Antonio, you spoke up and we listened. More than 5,000 of you told us what you wanted in this year's budget. First off, this budget has no city property tax increase, and our public safety spending stays at less than 66% of our budget. You told us streets, sidewalks, and drainage were your top priority, and we delivered. This year's budget features $79 million for street improvements and sidewalks. You told us neighborhood services were really important, so we made some cool things happen. This year's budget features $900,000 more for animal care services and $900,000 more to care for our city parks. You also told us public safety was important, so this budget features 32 new police officers, 9 new parks officers, and 42 more employees to answer your 911 calls. Fire and EMS will also receive new equipment and gear for 1200 firefighters. There's so much more included in this year's budget, and you can learn all about it at saspeakup.com. Now it's time for you to again fill out the survey today. Let's introduce our first one, Councilwoman Shirley Gonzalez, who will give you some highlights of the budget, and we'll get started. Thank you. Can you all hear me? Okay? Okay, good. Thank you everyone. Thank you all for coming this evening to be with us here as we continue to talk about some of our budget priorities. So I live on Sarsimora and Commerce, and so on my way here this evening, I left myself plenty of time to be here by 5.30, and I got stuck by a train. Did anybody get stuck by the train on the way over here? Everybody came from the west side? All the time. And so not in our regular budget, but in the 2017 bond package, we do have an additional $10 million for a bridge over Frio City Road in Sarsimora. Now this has been, yes. Thank you. This has been talked about for a long time. $10 million is not going to be sufficient, but we hope that we'll get other sources, money from the MPO region, which is our Metropolitan Planning Organization, to kick in what could potentially be a $45 million project. So I hope that next year when the time comes, we all support that bond package because that's one of the very important things that we are going to be voting on here shortly. And here as we talk about our annual budget, you saw that there was an additional $900,000 for animal care services. And a couple of days ago, I wondered if maybe we haven't gone too far in spending for animal care. But as soon as I said it, I said it out loud on the dais, as soon as I said it, the next day I went for a run in my neighborhood, there were no less than 10 loose dogs running around. And today, when I went for my run, in fact, I was going to tell the ACS people. Where's my ACS folks? Over here, I see Shannon Sims and another gentleman back here. So today on my run, a big wilder looking dog came after me and bit my dog. Although she was okay, this continues. And so as we talk about what some of our greatest concerns are and what some of our priorities are, hopefully we'll hear a little bit about what you all think about that additional $900,000 for animal care services. And so in addition to the things that we know that we really need in this neighborhood, of course as I was doing my run, I saw lots of failed streets. I saw lots of streets without sidewalks. We know that we need an enforcement in our police department, which hopefully is going to come through here. I got to meet some of our trail stewards who are taking care of our newly expanded west side creeks. So those of you who have not had an opportunity to experience our west side creeks, I hope you will do so. They're beautiful and they're fabulous. And they connect all the way from Elmendorf Park, they'll eventually connect to Rosedale, but all the way from Elmendorf to the end of Mission Concepcion. It's about 20 kilometers roundtrip. So I made the trip last Sunday on my bicycle with my children and it was fabulous. So thank you all for being here and continuing to talk about these issues that we know are so important to you, especially our streets, our sidewalks, our police officers. We have our 42 new employees to our 9-1-1 call center, which I know is very important. I am often calling 9-1-1, responding to issues in our neighborhood. And so we know that that was a problem. We heard a lot of complaints of people saying that they were taking too long to respond to the 9-1-1 calls. And I had called the other day and it wasn't a true emergency, but I knew I needed to call 9-1-1. My hands were kind of full, so I called the 9-1-1 and then realized I couldn't put my phone to my hand. So I hung up and by the time I got back and put my stuff down, they had returned the call seeing, you know, if I was okay and if I needed anything. And that's the kind of responses that we expect from our city. It's the kind of responses we expect with your tax dollars and all these important issues that we're going to discuss today. So thank you all for being here so very much. We really want to hear from you all. And Cheryl Scully, our city manager, is going to make some remarks about how the budget works. And then we're going to give about 10 minutes for question and answer. So I think this has not been done in some of the other sessions, but I appreciate the flexibility of the city staff and all of the budget people and all of the people here today to give us an opportunity to ask a few questions. So we will limit that time to just about 10 minutes because we know that there are so many concerns we couldn't get to them in just amount of time. But that's why we have all the people here to answer your questions very specifically. If you do have a concern about animal care issue like I experienced this morning. So thank you all for being here today. I'm going to turn it over to Cheryl Scully, our city manager, to talk to you all about how the budget works and how you all can be vocal and participate in this very important city budget. Thank you, Cheryl. Thank you, Councilwoman. Well, thank you all for being here tonight. Is that too loud? You guys will adjust. Do I need to stand in a different spot? Is it good? Sounds like it's echoing to me. Maybe it's because we're in a gymnasium. I promise not to try to shoot free throws. Not my expertise, but we're glad you're here. Thank you for coming tonight and we're surrounded by city staff and all of our city departments. And so if you, after we do this brief presentation, if you have questions about our libraries, our code enforcement, animal care services, police fire, any of our city departments, they're here at the tables. And so you can go around the room and then talk with them about your questions. So we have a little presentation. It's a big budget, but I'll try to do that and summarize briefly for you. And then as the Councilwoman said, we'll take a couple of questions from you. So this budget is balanced. We're required by law to maintain a balanced budget. So our budget is balanced today. It's balanced when I present it to the Council. And of course, it's balanced when the Council adopts the budget. It begins the implementation of the recently Council Adopted SA Tomorrow Plan, which is the Comprehensive Growth and Development Plan for San Antonio. As most of you know, our community will grow by more than 1 million people over the next 25 years. And so we have to plan for that growth. And under Mayor Taylor's direction and that of the Council, we worked with the community and we had dozens of meetings and hundreds of people participated in the public engagement process to talk about transportation needs for the future, a sustainability plan, how will we grow within our environment and be sustainable in terms of our job growth and development. We're also, as was mentioned in the video and by the Councilwoman, I'm recommending adding more police officers as part of this budget and I'll talk in detail about that. I'm hearing feedback, you guys. Do we have a problem or you're working at it? Okay. And we're preparing for the 2017 bond program. So Theom alone, which is under construction and I know it's horrible right now, but when it's done, it will be great. That is from the 2012 program. So we'll talk a little bit about getting ready for the 2017 capital improvements and this budget does not include a property tax rate increase. So the city has not increased the property tax rate, the city property tax rate for 24 years. And in fact, over the past 10 years, we have recommended staff and council has approved lowering the city property tax rate four times. And we're just one quarter of that total property tax bill, as you know. Okay. On the next slide, community priorities. So we began the process to ask the community, what do you want to see within the budget? And these are the priorities that we've received feedback on. And so we try, we change up our meeting process. You know, before 10 years ago, we didn't take the budget out on the road. And when I was appointed city manager in 2005, I recommended to the council, we go out into the council districts and host meetings with the community to talk about the budget, to answer questions, to have staff attend. And you see our police chief who just stepped out in the hallways here tonight. We have several department directors and assistant directors here to answer your questions because we want you to learn about the budgeting process. And so we change it up every couple of years because everyone gets to know the process and sometimes groups then monopolize the various meetings. And so we try to change it a little bit each year so that everybody has a chance to participate. And this year, we did some survey work at the beginning of the budget process. And this year have had three times as many residents participate and give us input into the overall priorities. And more now with the meetings we've been conducting, almost 6,000 people have given us input. And this is how the priorities have come out. Street maintenance, no surprise. You know that we maintain more than 4,000 miles of streets. And so we all have our favorite list of those things and streets that need the greatest repair. And I know that in this district, we have a number of neighborhoods that have never even had sidewalks. So we have still a lot more construction to do. And in this proposed bond program for 2017, the mayor and council has asked that we dedicate a substantial amount of money to not only streets, which we do in each bond program, but also for a sidewalk program throughout the community. So this is the order of what we've heard from the community so far as to priorities. Of course, more personnel and supporting economic development and our parks and recreation. So our total city budget is 2.5 billion. That's actually slightly less than the current 2016 budget, 2 tenths of 1%. And that is because our capital construction is slightly less this year because we're finishing up the 2012 bond program. So we peaked last year with construction and spending for the 2012 bond program. And now we're finishing that up and so the capital budget is slightly less. These are the three categories of our total city budget. So the general fund representing the biggest portion, 45%, is what you commonly think about in terms of the city budget. Police, fire, streets, parks and recreation, libraries, social services, health department, animal care, code enforcement. Those kinds of activities. In the restricted funds, those are departments where the fees for service cover the cost of the department. And we're legally unable to take funds from those departments and use them for police, fire, streets, libraries, those kinds of activities. An example of a restricted or enterprise fund would be garbage collection. So as single family residential homeowners or renters here in the community, we have garbage collection and you pay a monthly fee and that supports the cost of that service. That garbage collection is not supported by property taxes or sales taxes. Likewise, the airport, that's considered a restricted enterprise fund. The fees that the airlines pay that we pay as users, the restaurants, the car rental, those activities on the airport pay for the cost of the airport. And by law, by federal law, we cannot use those funds to support other city services. And then the third category representing our capital budget. Not just our bond program, but also the capital improvements in those enterprise departments like at the airport where the consolidated car rental facility at $170 million is under construction and will be completed in November of 2017. So within the general fund, that largest portion of the budget, here's how we spend the money in the center of the circle. Two-thirds of the budget is spent on the police and fire departments. And council policy has directed staff to keep that spending at less than 66 percent. And the proposed budget for 2017 is at 65.9 percent. So we're just under that 66 percent policy directive. The second largest category there is street maintenance. You can see here on the chart, parks and recreation, the next largest piece of the budget. And all the rest reflect all those other activities of the city. The libraries, human services, code enforcement, animal care, health, historic preservation, planning, 311 operations, the municipal detention center and general administration of the city, accounting, human resources, purchasing those activities. So that's in that other small portion of the budget. Hi, Mr. Brown. So on the, wait, go back to that just for a second. On the outside, you see the sources of funds or our revenue. So the largest piece being CPS revenue, 30 percent of our general fund revenue. So CPS energy, because the city of San Antonio, we the residents of the community, own CPS energy. And in lieu of paying taxes, because if they were a private energy company, they'd pay taxes to the city and there would be a shareholder return. The people who own the company or own stock in the company would have a return on investment because we as a community are the owners of the system. We're entitled to a return on investment and they pay 14 percent of their gross revenue to the city. So that's 30 percent of our revenue. The next largest category being property tax, that's 28 percent. Sales tax at 24 and then other resources where we charge fees for running pavilions at a park or some of our library fines or EMS, our emergency medical services, transport fees. That would be in that other category. So on the outer edge of the circle, sources of funds inside the circle, how we spend the dollars. And every dollar is accounted for. Okay. So the 2017 budget, as I said, supports SA Tomorrow, our Comprehensive Growth and Development Plan. And the mayor and council have asked us to focus in on neighborhood improvements. That is now the next step in implementing that plan will be to work with our neighborhoods to ensure that we preserve their character and make improvements so that we have safe and decent housing, that we do a better job with infrastructure, that is streets and sidewalks and neighborhood parks. In the area of fire service, because we have not completed negotiations, in fact we haven't even started negotiations with the fire department, the fire union has refused to negotiate. Their contract expired two years ago. So we've assumed Evergreen, which means their old contract is continuing. It has a clause within it that says the terms and conditions of the old contract continue for 10 years. So two years have transpired. We're in Evergreen. We've assumed that old contract. But we are hopeful and we still invite them to come and negotiate so that we can resolve those contract issues. It also fully funds the 51 firefighters we added in this year's budget to improve service throughout the community. It adds two more classes to fill vacancies as they come up during the course of the year and we're retrofitting our fire stations for an exhaust removal system. So when fire engines and ladders come back from service or they're going out for service, all that exhaust from those pieces of equipment gets into the sleeping area. So we're installing an exhaust removal system so that it doesn't contaminate the air that they breathe. Where we've built and replaced stations, we've put in new exhaust systems. So this allows us to retrofit the old ones where that hasn't been done. And then a second set of bunker gear, which may not be that exciting to you, but the equipment that the firefighters wear when they fight the fires, the chief has recommended that we acquire a second set. So while one set's being cleaned, then they have another set to use. Okay, in the police department, it does assume the mediated settlement of the collective bargaining agreement. As you know, we've been negotiating for the past two years, more than two years. And we reached a mediated settlement in June, and that's going to city council for their consideration on Thursday of this week. So this budget assumes that mediated settlement. We're adding, I'm recommending 32 additional police officers. 25 of those are for community-based policing and in the community in our neighborhoods. And seven of those are to service areas that we are annexing to the city of San Antonio. Nine additional parks police to service the growing park system. So as our bond program has developed more parkland in our linear creeks, we are adding park police to be able to ensure that our community is safe as they use our park facilities. 42 additional civilians. These are call takers in our 911 system. We've had some challenges with the growing number of calls for service that are approaching 1.5 million 911 calls annually. And so as we have more calls for service, we have to add more call takers so that people are not put on hold or that we don't have dropped calls when they call in need of an emergency situation. And then the continuation of our body camera implementation. So we have approximately 2,400 police officer positions. We are equipping each of our patrol officers with body cameras. We've implemented the system with about 700 over 700 police officers so far. And this continues the implementation of the body camera program. Lastly, a pilot program on gang violence intervention. Looking at creative ways, looking at other cities, how they're dealing with gang violence. No one has the market on the solution, but we're constantly looking at ways and different strategies on how we intervene with gang violence and try to reduce the violence in our neighborhoods. Street maintenance, as I said, was the next biggest category, recommendation in the budget. And last year we were able to increase our street funding. And again this year, $64 million for street maintenance. You can see in previous years it was a lower amount. And because it has in recent years been the top priority for improvements, we've increased the funding level for street maintenance. Our transportation and capital improvements department, where are we tonight? Over in the corner, oh my gosh. Our city engineers here tonight too, Mike Frisbee. So all your street questions, right over there. And you can see we've increased the funding and the competition obviously as immense. The city council considers our five-year infrastructure program on an annual basis. So what we try to do is plan out for the next five years those streets where we will be doing preventative maintenance as well as reconstruction. Like we're seeing on Theom alone, right Mike? So that happens to be a bond project, but where streets get to the place where they're just so in disrepair we have to totally reconstruct the street. And those are the projects we usually put into and recommend in the bond program. This is for annual maintenance, trying to do more preventative maintenance so we can extend the life of our streets that are in pretty good condition. And Mike Frisbee, if you want to see where your neighborhood streets fall on our rating scale, we have an A through F rating for every mile of our 4,000 miles of streets in the community so that we know its condition and that helps guide us as to which projects we recommend to the mayor and council each year for consideration. And as you can imagine, there's never enough money for all of the streets but we're making progress in trying to get our streets into a better place. And then our sidewalk funding. You can see that in the past the dollar amounts have been rather low and last year and this year we were able to recommend 15 million dollars toward sidewalk improvements in the community and we try to focus in the neighborhoods leading to schools so that children have a safe place to walk on their way to elementary school, middle school, and then also to bus routes so that transit dependent populations have a chance to use our public transit system. This is not all of the street projects in District 5 but we wanted to list just a few of them so you can see what's included in the proposed budget for 2017. Here are some of the sidewalks that are recommended in District 5 as well. This is not the total list, not exhaustive, but gives you an idea as to what is included. Street lights, you know that at the urging of Councilwoman Gonzalez we've been able to add more street lights in some of the neighborhoods and I know you, those of you who have more street lights I see some thumbs up here surely so they're happy with your urging of the funding for our neighborhoods especially our center city neighborhoods that are older need more lights and so we're able to do that and we have included another one million dollars for additional neighborhood street lighting in this budget and I have a feeling that Councilmembers are going to say we need more than that in the budget it's not enough and we'll have that conversation as to how we might move some money around from lesser priority projects to increased street lighting and then two additional items both of which have been championed by Councilwoman Gonzalez the Vision Zero project and she just did a news conference about that last week with our city engineer Mike Frisbee and the mayor to talk about trying to reach zero fatalities of pedestrians in our neighborhoods so creating safer crosswalks better lighting improving the street marking so that people can safely cross the road with even in some cases something in a median where it's a safe harbor to get halfway across the street especially for those bigger busier streets and then also safety around the schools more flashers, better crossings so that children around schools can safely walk to school Delegate agency funding the Council begins the process and most of you know you may be with agencies that or represent one of the agencies are in a competitive process every two years and this year was that process we fund more than 70 delegate agencies that provide community services more than $21 million of funding for agencies to pay for services and so those this year when the Council began the process they said let's move some of the money into workforce development and so when that happened an unintended consequence was that some money then had to come out of one of the other categories and it was the crisis intervention category it was not intended to cut domestic violence programs but that was an unintended consequence however with savings in some of the other programs for the past two years we've been able to keep funding level that is no cuts for the domestic violence agencies that are funded by the city so it's level funding for next year Parks and Recreation we're adding seven positions and that's to maintain parks expanding our parks system as part of the bond program that we're working towards at Normoil and Roosevelt Parks additional staff for maintenance and security in our capital budget you can see this is how the $585 million gets broken down this is general fund and our restricted enterprise funds streets being the largest portion 32% of the capital budget going for street improvements airport being next and that's primarily driven by our big car rental facility project again funded by aviation revenues not from the general fund and then neighborhood improvements parks and recreation sidewalk improvements drainage and some for information technology to keep that technology backbone for the city in good shape so that we can communicate with the public and we're introducing more different types of technology throughout the city so that we can best serve all of you and a couple of examples on that would include adding some Wi-Fi on a pilot basis to some of our parks our bigger parks also to use community kiosks that is so that residents can access information about programming in parks or libraries or perhaps even know a little bit more about local businesses in the area if someone wants to grab a bite to eat or have a cup of coffee where can I go to a local restaurant that's nearby a park facility so using technology to try to improve our services to the public we're even doing some permitting now online Rod Sanchez our director of development services is working on a new user friendly computerized system for permitting so that developers or even those who are repairing their home don't necessarily have to come down to the one-stop center but rather can apply for their permit online and so that will be moving out into the community as well the status of our bond project 140 projects and these are the projects the voters approved in 2012 we've made a commitment that we substantially complete our projects within the five-year time frame 92% of those completed 8% are in design we expect them to be under construction before May of 17 so with 900 projects in total that is the annual budget as well as the bond program Mike Frisbee and his team are very busy because we don't actually do the capital construction in our bond program but rather through a competitive bid process the private sector bids on that work and of course the low bid is able to do the work I will tell you and we always want your feedback on capital projects how well a contractor may be doing if someone doesn't do a good job for the city or does inferior quality work then we don't allow them to continue to do work for the city so we have an evaluation process for even the private sector contractors that do work for the city these are some of the 2012 bond projects that either have been completed or are under construction the Omalone will is expected to be completed next May of 17 I see portions of it are already done and of course the senior center was completed a year ago you can see here on the list some of them not all of the projects but just wanted to remind you those were projects out of the 2012 bond program and then next steps for the budget and I know that there are some people here tonight to talk about wages for city employees this budget does include a minimum level of $13 per hour for any entry level position to the city I recommended that to city council last year the council approved that they've also asked for some alternatives on what would it take to even increase that minimum amount if not 13 then how do we get to 14 or 15 over time and we have prepared some alternatives with the financial impact on the budget if we were to do that which we will be presenting to the council Maria what date do we have for employee compensation next week September 7th so September 7th at 2pm that is when we are slated to talk about that topic and the council will consider some of the alternatives they've asked us to take a look at so that's included in the budget we have five city council work sessions we had one last week we have two this week tomorrow we begin at noon noon until 2.30 or 3 and another one on Wednesday and then two more the following week after Labor Day weekend and then we also have five community open houses three we did last week this is our fourth and then we have one more this week on Thursday and then there are also public hearings at the city council chambers so down at Municipal Plaza and those are in the evening public hearings on the budget you're welcome to attend any and all and then budget adoption is expected on September 15th by charter by city charter we're required to adopt the budget no later than September 27th and so the scheduled adoption is on September 15th our fiscal year begins on October 1 and as I said it must be balanced it is today it will be when the council completes its deliberation on the budget of course we can't fund everything but these sessions are to provide you information about the budget and to answer questions you may have and we can do that through the myriad of departments who are here tonight well we might have you outnumbered but I'm not sure none the less we have enough staff here tonight that can answer your questions about the budget and I know some of you have individual questions where you're interested in perhaps code enforcement and not everything else so we welcome you to talk with any of the staff who are attending tonight thank you again you've been a very patient and quiet audience and I'll turn it over to the councilwoman who will help and if anyone came in late and needs Spanish translation services we have a translator here tonight who I'm sure is doing an excellent job and we have earphones so if you would like that please just raise your hand and we will make that available to you thank you so much councilwoman okay test test okay y'all can hear me good so I want to take a minute to acknowledge my staff and to stand here maybe somewhere here in the middle so we have Sean and Vinnie right here and thank you all and Jennifer who does policy Xavier does constituent services Richard does constituent services thank you Dora does constituent services and a lot of other things and then of course Marty Bell is my executive secretary at city hall so as you all go about asking questions to the other departments I want to make sure that my staff is available here too if you have any questions and of course I'll be here until the end of the evening and we'll open it up for about ten minutes of question and answer and we have a microphone here in case you all want to take the microphone so we can start that portion we're live streaming at home so we'll just come to you with the microphone and we'll start right over here okay good evening my name is Robert Cruz the leader with cops and metro and I want to thank the councilman for allowing me to speak up for over 40 years cops and metro have been fighting to create economic opportunities for all our neighbors for the past two years we have worked hard for our public sector employers to pay the workers a living wage we are proud of that work but we have a lot more work to do we do not want our tax dollars used to keep people in poverty two weeks ago at the city council a session we reminded council members of our commitment to raise wages for the lowest paid workers to $14 an hour this year and $15 next year we reminded them of the commitment to set a wage floor of 950 for outsourced workers we ask council members to make project quest a long-term workforce training program a line item in the city budget at $2.2 million a year we were delighted to hear council members Lopez and Saldana asked the managers to raise wages to $14 an hour this fiscal year and we hear council members Gonzales Viagran, Warwick, Trevino Nirenberg and Medina ask for a path to $15 an hour we are encouraged by the support to make this increase real and it must be included in the city budget the budget presentation tonight we heard the living wages of $13 and only a recommendation of 1% we stand with the city council members in their ambition to make the city of San Antonio an employer of choice which includes adequate family leave benefits but also a living wage of $14 an hour we also ask council members to move the dialogue forward on setting a wage floor for outsourced workers we encourage council members to stand firm on the commitments they made to our community to build a path towards economic opportunities for all our neighbors starting with living wages for the lowest paid workers direct and outsourced investments in effective job training thank you thank you we do want to remind everyone that we want to take questions tonight so if anyone does have a question to ask we're happy to answer those for you just hold on for us to bring the microphone over to you, does anyone else have any questions? we'll come right over here and then we'll come back over oh, okay so how would transforming the San Antonio convention and visitors bureau into an independent nonprofit corporation afford a greater competitive advantage for the city as a destination and what specifically would the new nonprofit corporation be doing, what's its agenda at the direction of the mayor and council we did take a look and study this issue with the hospitality industry and there was a task force that included representatives from the community as well as from the hotel industry and our director of the convention and visitors bureau in San Antonio the CVB convention and visitors bureau is the only place where it is a city department in all other major cities across the country it's a nonprofit independent organization that is allowed to bring in private sector dollars to leverage the hotel occupancy taxes that support the CVB to do even more marketing of the community San Antonio has been one of the top destinations for travelers within the state of Texas and of course now with our world heritage designation we'll have even more visitors coming to the community so it's a big challenge a big responsibility but a great opportunity to also grow our community and have more people locally learn more about it but also to have visitors from throughout the world come to San Antonio so having the CVB be separate from the city the council has asked that there still be oversight by the council that is the council will still approve their annual budget the council and of course we as a city organization collect those taxes but they're paid for by people who stay in the hotels so that department is supported entirely today by the hotel tax and as you know we have thousands and thousands of hotel rooms in fact we're very fortunate because we have more than 14,000 hotel rooms just in the downtown area which is one of the reasons we're able to host so many conferences and conventions so the purpose of it spinning out is to help it be more nimble to do more marketing by leveraging private sector dollars with the hotel occupancy taxes thank you for that question it is the council has approved going forward with that transition plan 2017 will be a year of transition because we've offered the employees the opportunity to go with the new organization or to stay within the city organization and some of them especially those that are near retirement want to stay inside the city organization we're working with those employees to help make that happen for them I just have a question concerning what you went over about the streets there's a lot of maintenance that's going to happen and so forth in this specific area especially you know it's very old I didn't hear I came in late unfortunately I didn't hear any mention at all about service roads what other people in other parts of the districts call alleyways they don't we don't have any here we have what they call service roads the city of San Antonio says that we're responsible to maintain them cut the grass maintain it however the city doesn't actually own have any responsibility for maintenance of these alleyways service roads the utilities come in sometimes right after a rain like they just did in my immediate area gouged holes ruts deep enough for mosquitoes to have a field day what I would like to know is in all these wonderful planning which I think is very efficient you all have done a wonderful job however has anybody ever even addressed the issue of these service roads that the city says they're not responsible for that the individual services that use it the utilities are responsible for fixing them I spent more than two and a half months last year trying to get someone to fix the service road so my question is road construction road maintenance and all that does that include service roads because that's where it really breaks down for us let me start and answer so in some areas it depends where we pick up the garbage in the service alleys we have done some paving work so that the trucks can get down those alleys front curbside garbage collection then we don't however in that case and this is our city engineer so I want to get the name of your street because we need to we coordinate with CPS Energy and San Antonio water system since the city owns both of those entities they have separate staff and separate boards but we can facilitate getting that corrected behind your house where they leave big tire tracks and create a problem for you so we'll get the name of that street but we do allocate some monies within our budget to do some work within the alleys not as much as we do for the streets but we do do some work on a limited basis did I skip some stuff Mike or you want to add to that? I think that's very accurate so what we can do is help to facilitate that even though we don't own that alley we can work with the utility companies and get out there and take a look with you and then work on regrading or whatever it needs to take place so we can help facilitate that and after the session I can meet with you over in the corner here and we can get the right address and name and contact information so are you asking the city to maintain it or just to make sure that Saaz and CPS takes care of it for the city to take responsibility for the particular public well it's not even public road that only the utility people use what I'm saying is that I have a neighbor right now who is a veteran he's elderly he's hard of hearing his backyard has flooded eight times he told me that the water because of the way the service road is not graded correctly the water goes into our backyards I've only been flooded once in the last three years of course we were in a drought for a while but what I'm saying is that let's know I hear what you're saying okay we're going to work with you on your specific location so that we can help Laura I was trying to find where my district was going to meet and it's I'm in district 7 there's nowhere close this is the closest actually there is a meeting next week on Thursday but there's a district 7 meeting on Thursday evening and how oh yes at the Doris Griffin Senior Center and how were the my whole block was only informed of this one which is the location from our councilman and what she was just saying is very very important because I'm in district 7 my mother's in district 1 she's 88 she has a displaced a replacement knee and hip and she just fell in April now has a hairline fracture to the the pelvis all on the same side and we're running into the same problem for the past 6-7 years I've been asking that same question because I'm also a senior now and the alleys are old in fact I have a real big concern about a ticking bomb because my alley has gone down this way because it's like my mother's too the back neighbors are higher than our lot so the water comes in this way then comes in this way and over time it is down to the base where the gas lines are and we have to go in there with our weedwacker and I also have been asking who owns this I'm told the utilities and then I'm told but then we're fined by the city over a thousand dollars if we're reported that we don't keep it up and I have to jump over a fence to do that and my mother has to we shouldn't be having to be responsible for that because it's not called a service thank you and we'll take that location work with you as well but we have actually in district 7 paved over the last 10 years but we'll we'll get that location and work with you but you brought up a really good point about impervious cover you hear us talk about that often so when there's good news and bad news with paving so when you pave it makes it easy for the vehicles to use but then it also creates a runway for the water so we have to be careful as we pave and grade these areas and of course we have the ground moves over time as well but we'll work with you on your specific location we have time for one more question and we had someone in line over here but I just wanted to remind everyone that city staff will be available to answer any questions okay alright so her comment was about Time Warner cable sir the question is do you have a time frame for the beginning of the build of the bridge over the bridge okay Mike Frisbee so as the councilwoman said that's a very important project we are we have some funding now that we're studying the best way to get up and over or underneath how do we separate from traffic from the railroad tracks we do expect in the 2017 there's going to be significant dollars associated with it and then we need additional funding it's going to be a big project but we also want to show the community different concepts because you know think about the visibility of an overpass and we need to work with the community on that so it's going to take a while to get the design done and get to construction because it's such a big project it'll take a couple years to get there for sure the councilwoman has been advocating for it and as Mike said we expect that it would be included in the proposed 2017 bond program so it would be initiated for construction during the next five years now they're talking 10 million dollars when it's going to cost 40 I mean look at the cost if you would have done something about it back then no so can I, let me share with you a couple of things so in the past decade when I was hired the council asked me to develop the biggest bond program that I thought we could handle financially so just to give you a point of context prior to 10 years ago the city was undertaking bond programs that were about 100 to maybe the biggest one was 140 million dollars but for a city as big as San Antonio it's just a fraction of what the needs are I can't explain why the community didn't do bigger bond programs before 10 years ago in 07 the voters approved a 550 million dollar bond program and in 2012 the voters approved 600 million and we're proposing for next May of 17 50 million dollars in 70 to 80 percent of our bond programs go into streets and drainage and bridges so we're focused on basic infrastructure you're right if those things had been done before they would have cost less but why the city didn't do them I cannot explain that but we're playing catch up right now we're making some progress but as I said with 4000 miles of streets literally hundreds of bridges there's still a lot of work to do so I recognize what you're saying and we're working toward that and if you haven't volunteered for one of the bond programs the council woman has the opportunity to put 3 representatives from this district on all 5 bond committees so 15 people from the district to serve on the citizen bond committees and they will start meeting in early October November early December and the staff will make recommendations on projects the committees will deliberate and then they will make a recommendation to the council in January because the council must set the election for May of 2017 by the 1st of February so if you'd like to be involved or offer input all of those meetings are also open to the public and we're going to live stream so you don't have to attend every one of the meetings but we're welcoming input into the bond program too but you all have been great we will stay after this discussion and answer questions you have and as I said we have departments all the way around the room if you have a specific question about libraries or animal care services code enforcement we have lots of people here tonight so thank you for your patience councilwoman test okay thank you everyone thank you all for being here we're going to still be here to answer questions I myself have a list going of concerns in fact I have a request for Morales sidewalk over in the near west side so please I'll be here with my staff if you have smaller requests that we know we need regarding sidewalks lighting along those lines please come see us we're all here for you and we'll be here for how long until 7 30 okay thank you everyone thank you all very much for attending