 And I understand your position because of the past that maybe has been a problem and maybe those 17 men have to all be white, but there are white people that are wanting to resolve this problem. And I say this with ultimate respect. And I listen to you with great respect every time, almost every time. I do this, this comes up. I did it on the radio station, that came up. I wrote it in the newspaper that came up. And it affects us all. The thing is that I'm going to keep on saying it. Right. Unless we deal, unless we deal, by the serious fundamental issues right in our society. And I know that there are a lot of, you know, what happens sometimes is misinformation. And this is my first experience here. And as a white woman that has heard this rhetoric, I may never have become, until my brother-in-law encouraged me to come. And I've heard things I may never have heard because of that kind of talk, because it excludes certain people. So that's just my position. Okay. And I appreciate it. I'm not going to notify at all. Because I understand that every time I say this, I know that this is going to happen. Okay. Next. That there are disparities by race, ethnicity, and class. So you can say that this is an opinion, this is historical, but it is data. It is fact. If you look at housing, if you look at education, if you look at health, if you look at, you know, advancement, if you look at wealth, there are disparities across the board. We live in a very deeply divided society. And that is data, and that is reality. So until everyone is really able to live with an open mind and an open heart, we will not vote. Okay. We can't speak on top of each other. So you've spoken now, instead of going back and forth. Right. Okay. Who has their hands up, and who hasn't spoken yet? First priority. Sorry. I haven't heard you speak. Because we are a mixed group here, there's about the, if this reflects the more or less, the demographics of San Antonio, and there's only three African Americans here. Excuse me. There are at least two names that have me. I can't hear you all the way. Right here. Okay. Thank you. I can't project my voice very loudly, but I'd like to address your issue. There's an academic in Robin D'Angelo. She's white. She's on something called white fragility. And if you look her up on YouTube or video, she's great. And she speaks to the discourse of power and groups and a feeling of maybe alienation of allies, but she speaks to it in a way that maybe would help this group in the dynamics. Because as people of color, when we raise our issues, sometimes it can feel very hurtful or alienating to white people. We don't mean to do that. We're simply speaking our truth. And so I would recommend Robin D'Angelo on white fragility. Thank you. When I look across the room as we're talking about this issue, what I see as human beings, that's all. Some are women. Some are men. Some are young. Some are old. Some have different shades of color. But what I see as human beings, and I fight this battle. You know, I realize I'm black women. I'm fighting this battle. I'm not fighting as a black man. I'm a human being. All human beings deserve equal for just treatment. And until we can look across this room and see nothing about human beings, we will quit dividing ourselves by the sentimentality of our individual issues. Because these things are affecting all of us directly or indirectly. And until we can stand up and see nothing about human beings, the problem is within us. Congratulations. And again, we were focused there that we got on the tangent, which is an important issue. I'm not going to deny it, but I also want to make sure we get to a place where we know our next steps, because then people are going to just leave. We're going to leave. So my question kind of changes this subject. But it's something that impacts all of us. And my question is to you. So the city has a bond issue. A hundred million or more bond issues is perioded by Robert Roberto Trabino for urban renewal. I think that's even what he's calling it. I can't remember. But that's what it's for, what urban renewal. Tommy Calvert has a committee. And Roberto Trabino's committee is primarily developed. Tommy Calvert has the neighborhood reinvestment fund. Another hundred to 200 million next year a bond issue for reinvestment in neighborhoods. Another buzzword for gentrification. More survival sloths. That's one of the examples it's given in that group. So if this 200 to 400 million dollars comes into the city, do any neighborhoods really stand a chance? I think before we get to that point, we need to see what the bond issue is going to be and analyze it and see how it's going to benefit by it. That's very important. That the people have a way to impact it. And by the people, the average citizen. Because it's going to involve housing. It's going to involve development. It's going to involve farms. And right now that's what the discussions are. So we just need to know what's happening. And then we make sure that the people have an input and we need to know who decides it. Then we can talk to others. And more people in this room need to be involved. In both of those efforts. In form. Okay. We're not doing back and forth. Amy, Meredith, and Kat. And then we have to stop because we need to know next steps. I just wanted to throw into the conversation about race and the United States. I want to give you a phrase that I really love and admire. That is when we talk about being left out as in the economic inequality. Another way to think about that is that the poor are not the people being left behind or left out. They're the people being robbed. They're never being part of it. I think it's important to think about the valuable assets that communities, particularly communities of color in this city have. And how they are being taken away for the purpose of making money. Okay. Who did I call, Meredith? I think it impacted. I'll just mention this very quickly. But one of the things that I encourage everybody to do is to take a look at the Sierra Club, the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club's new website. We have an issue on there called water management. And we are mounting more and more parts of it. But the thing that I would like you especially to look at is how the city of Melbourne dealt with the drought that it had. It had a 13-year-long drought. Major, major disaster. They were down to less than a quarter of the water that they should have in their reservoir. They barely made it through. But the interesting thing was that they all got in and everybody made a point of reducing the amount of water they were using and working together. And that was pretty much their attitude. I have a feeling that San Antonio, given what we saw in paper recently about how many rich people were using far more water during the last drought, we'd have a hard time persuading this city that we're all in this together. But we could be all in this together. In other words, I think that about something like water, we really could and should work toward that. I encourage you all to take a look at the website. But I would also encourage you to call on Jim at some point because he has not checked the water. And there's a white Prius blocking a gold Prius down in the parking lot, so she's been trying to leave. Instead, what you needed to do. I'm the gold Prius and I'm trying to leave. So there's a white Prius. I don't want to belabor this, but I want to go back to the race issue. What I want to say to that is I think it's very important. A lot of the ills in society have been done by people like me, men. And I should be offended every time they bring up men. You have to understand that I'm not being attacked personally, but I know that the group that I belong to has been responsible for many of the ills. And even though it may offend me personally, I know it's not addressed at me. And so I have to kind of like swaddle that because I have to work myself out of it. And so again, white, it's not you. You're here. You're helping. We appreciate that. Many people are white. But just like men, I happen to be part of that group of men. And I think women have been very upset about what men have done. So they're going to have men as men. I happen to be one. So I'm just saying that so we can kind of like get a glimpse of the context. And not to take it personal. Just to clarify, my point is that if you get the white community on board as a solution as part of the group, then you come together. That's my point. Not one of a kind. You and you. Sorry. Yes. This is a totally different topic, but it's related to the money. I've heard it talked about the current city budget, and I forget the term. But the net of it is, yes, we will have a bond issue for $750 million or something like that. So we get to vote. But also there are bonds that are put on the market on the city every year that we don't get to vote on. And those have been shrinking over the last 10 years. And the plan is to increase them so that we will have another $750 million in city debt, over which we have, if the person I heard is right, over which we have no say whatsoever. Like the baseball team? Yes. I just want to make a suggestion to you because semastics are very important. And I know what you're trying to say, and the lady over there with the statistics, too. It's important to make designations, but Hispanics are complication. What we say here, what we say here is anglo. Anglo means a certain ethnicity, and we are Hispanic, but also white. But you're not, you know, you're making a designation so that you can talk about issues, but you're not excluding us from a group you belong to. We've been online over the decades. There's this big court, we have a guest at CF. The one that's a big petition on that, which is the right one. It's convenient for the Anglo community, and we're colored, or whatever you want to call it, but it's not convenient. We are white, we are complication. We are Hispanic, and we are anglo. And then we're going to stop. We're going to stop. We get solutions, and now we get triggered again. And it is true, we're all going to work together. Oh, you had your hand up before you took care of me, but... Can I ask a question about the bond? Before I announce it to somebody later? Okay, all right then. Because I am also able to ask, we're going to get there too, so you can just speak after us. So I have been looking for information about the bond, and I have called. I get in a telephone booth where I call one city department, and then they say, oh, I'm going to call this person. And then I call that person, and then it's like eight different people, and I can't find any information. And it's internal. And so I'm just curious, where is it, or does anyone know? Right now the committees are forming, so if you have priorities in terms of housing, sidewalks and streets, parks, and facilities, and drainage, you need to get those to your council people, because they're forming the committees right now that are going to start writing the actual bond. And the county one... There are two billion dollars that the city has already priced out of projects. So the council people now are looking for people to be on those bond committees. But, and then, like in district one, Trevino's every Monday night having a bond get together at his field office. But they've already priced out the staff, they call it level two, they've already priced out two billion dollars in bond projects. Perfect, I'm sorry, can you repeat that? We're actually going to write... Sorry, not there. I'm sorry, no, I'm sorry. They're not talking about the bond, but that's also... I kind of want to draw from here, from the timeline, thinking about what, if we do not do anything about the development push, what will our future look like? People are talking about 20, 40, about 1 billion people moving to San Antonio. What would that look like? If we don't do anything, it continues, what will that look like? Step two, think about a future that you want. If you do not want that future. And then that kind of starts us thinking about what we want to do about it. How much, you know, if you're just like, okay, my commitment is going to be coming to these meetings that are going to be happening monthly, my commitment to changing that future is going to be this other thing, this other thing, but just you kind of start thinking about what that looks like to you. So some of the next steps, I have all the informed and involved. These are just some of them. So if you have extra, you're going to start writing it. And so if you could actually repeat, Barbara, the date and the time for the meeting you're talking about, so we can write that down about the bond. Well, the district one, right now, all the city council people are looking, there's an application process to be on the bond committee. And where do they find that application? With their councilman's person's office. They have it. But some council members seem not to know that, right? So that's the concern we're having. I don't know about other districts. All I know is that district one is right now gathering applications that they're handing out at meetings. And then they're having meetings every Monday night at the Vance Jackson and Tin office and old fire station at seven o'clock for district one. Every Monday night. District one. Right, for district one. Which is downtown and, well, south town to North Star Mall area. Right. Thank you. And so some other, so we're talking about the bond, a lot of you are talking about the bond. So a subsection of the bond is the housing bond. Right. And so even, but it's actually made a video that we can send to you all if you have an email so you can see it. But that explains the housing bond some more, but pretty much there's some drama going on with the housing bond where originally the housing commission that's been working on this bond for a few months came up with this bond. It's a package idea that includes money for affordable housing, money for emergency repairs for houses, and then what was the other one? Gap funding for multi-developers. Okay. I need for developers. So it's going to be like four affordable housing, but it would be two, four incentives for developers. But the only one that could happen, they said all of these you can't do. The only way that you can get incentives to developers for affordable housing is if we make another urban renewal project. Right. And then give that money to that project. Right. And buying up land and displaced people. An imminent domain. Patty. I'm in the domain. You need to listen to this. What's happening with the bond issue about the housing bond issue right now is going straight into Winston Martin's old urban renewal agency that the city took in and they're going to put that money in that city department now and use it for imminent domain and using the urban renewal model. And since you talked about that, I wanted you to be made aware of it. Can I just say one thing that feeds right into it. The city hired a whole lot of COPE compliance officers. They have new categories. They're cruising around town and they're marking down houses that they might think they might be vacant. I spoke with one director. I said how about if it's vacant because there is no renter in it right now. We're doing oh well then we're going to charge you a fine. They are out for blood and they can eliminate affordable low income housing and small operators. You need to be really aware. They're like Walchers out there. If you engage them they will even admit oh yeah. We're a new group of 10 and we're doing a neighborhood street. And districts 5, 1 and 2 are the ones where most COPE compliance officers are at. And there's another bond issue. A neighborhood reinvestment fund bond proposal issued through the county. It was originally got to be a city, county, co-project. They split part of that off. So there are all of these city development bond issues that happen every year kind of thing. There's also this big one that's now the city and another one for the county. And the neighborhood reinvestment fund is the one out of the county through Tommy Calvert's office. He's heading the committee. And the urban development line that where the city split from the county to do their own is being headed up by the Director of Indian. And both of those have to do with exactly what we're talking about. So what I wanted to say about the housing bond they're having the housing commission is going to be voting on the package that they want to present to council. August 2nd. It's out of Tuesday at 4 p.m. They moved it to Mission Branch Public Library. It is open to the community and you can sign up to speak. I've been there a few times and some other folks have been there. And usually when we do speak it is to commissioners and most of them they are either community members or developers. But a lot of them mean well. And so when we do speak they do hear us and a lot of them get confused and they're like oh no I don't know how to vote now. So if we can do that we can show up and speak your mind about the. Well and I just wanted to about the housing bond though the last meeting that happened in June because they were done in July again they did the switcheroo again where we were actually asking for funds for you know the inner city folks especially people over 65 and low income. And it was a good thing. But they said that the attorney general wouldn't support it. And so they always go back to the legal stuff but instead of having our city staff say this is what the community wants. They kind of throw it back at the state attorney general office and say we have nothing to do so whatever the state attorney general says is what we have to do. Right and that's what you caught. Go ahead and hire outside council that is a corporate law firm working with developers who then negotiate with the attorney general and come up with a decision that we can't fund low income housing. Or actually to me I'm sorry I should be. We can't yes we can't fund rehabilitation of owner occupied low income housing. Betty. Yes but this should go back to the bonds a very important thing. Be sure you see the budget. Be sure you ask the city how much revenue. Let them balance the budget for goodness sake. When we do these bonds this isn't just money that's given to us. This is money that we're borrowing. We're not only borrowing it but we're paying interest on it. And it's all going to develop it. Guess where the money comes from when we get through. On your tax bill on your CPS bill on your water bill on everything this city generates money on. They've already figured it out. So just bear in mind bonds are not always good. And they're never who's going to watch. We go down there and we say we want this done. Just going to be watching that project. I can tell you five of them right now in the past month from 1999 they've been moved. We voted on them. The city voted on them. We borrowed the money but guess what. It got moved to some council pet project for some developer that somebody gave them the money for whatever. And that is what is wrong. When we borrow that money just think about it. We're borrowing money that's going to go on your tax bill. My taxes have gone up. I pay hospital taxes almost as high as my school taxes now. Isn't that strange? Yet we have Obamacare. Nobody goes to any hospital free. I shouldn't be paying university for all of the counties in Texas. We're the only counties that pays taxes. Hospitals like this. Other counties don't pay hospitals like this. Excuse me. But they use that hospital and we pay for it in Bear County. So just bear that all in mind as you go to these bond things. And the other thing about the bond is they're being very selective on who gets put on the bond committees. I've been asking oh excuse me. We might find a place for you. We might. So what are we doing? We're picking out who's going to be on those bond committees to pick out what these developers want. You want to sell your city to the developers? Go right ahead. Brackenbridge Park Master Plan has the door shut on modifying that plan. I'm being very hopeful based on what I have learned from this. So what we have to do is we have to show up at the meeting on August 15th. We're trying to change it. It's usually at 2 p.m. We're trying to change it so it'll be a little later. And that's where five council members, Tremino, Medina, Lopez, Warwick, and Saldana is the quality of life committee they're going to meet. And they're going to, they will have already reviewed the input from the six public hearings where people didn't like it. Now we're waiting to see what they're going to do. So we have a question mark right now. And we have to show up and make sure that they heard us and what we want. We want them to stop it and start from scratch being more inclusive on what they did because the FARC does need help. But you also need community support. Can I just take a minute to mention something? He's the one that's facilitating that. Because now the timeline relates to what you've been doing. I didn't see the tri-party transportation project downtown, just a major event, hugely controversial, took years and years. But one of the things that was a focal point of that, and I found out after the fact, back years later from some planner friends, that one of their objectives was to remove the minority kids from Houston Street. A lot of it was a subterfuge. This is where they modified our streets, broadened sidewalks, narrowed others, put up blocks of street for children. Some of you might know that in San Antonio we've had historically this promenade down Houston Street, particularly after school, you would have mostly minority kids, mostly blacks from Wheatley and Sam Houston and Latinos from Box Tech and blacks and Latinos from Bracket Ridge. They would transfer buses along Houston Street and you had this kind of promenade, very much like what existed along Zocalo's in Mexico. It was that sale. Well, and it worked. They took the buses off Houston Street that some of the kids went over to Rivers Center Mall. Why that is relevant to Bracket Ridge Park is that I went five years ago, was invited by a planner friend to a meeting that was an organizational meeting for the Bracket Ridge Park Conservancy and one of the things I mentioned that got me disinvited was to... I suggested they shouldn't make the mistake that they made on Houston Street in Bracket Ridge Park because we have a paseo that is very culturally specific in cars around Bracket Ridge Park on Sunday afternoons. The only place in Texas I've ever seen anything like that is Rivershaw Park in Dallas, near Little Mexico and Dallas. But this is part of San Antonio culture. You're destroying San Antonio culture if you make the same mistake that you did on Houston Street. Well, as we know, they want to close Bracket Ridge Park to cars, which is a total renunciation of what Bracket Ridge Park is all about. And I think that's hugely important. They got away with it on Houston Street. We can't even have our parades on Houston Street anymore because they narrowed it, all trying to get rid of the kids. They're trying to get rid of the culture of Bracket Ridge Park as well. It's a major issue we need to deal with. You're absolutely right. If I could just real very quickly. I'm just going to say, hold on to your wallets and your verses even higher because there's a municipal bond. There's the viscerage and the housing bond. Here comes another one. It is the animal colleges bond coming up. It makes here $450 million. We're just going to pay for it. They've got the plans set up. They look beautiful. The Citizens Advisory Committee has done a bit of setup. So, some of you already came up with the plans. It's going to put possibly another campus on the north side, so three south side, one. Exactly, west side zero. So, again, no citizens input or hardly any. Again, another bond that's going to be like just how much money are we going to be spending in the future with the billions now? Two or three billion dollars. So, just put that on your radar because that's a little bad. And I don't want at least the Esperanza. We're not just anti-taxers. I pay taxes and I want my taxes to be used to support the infrastructure, to support housing, to take the social service, the schools, especially the arts. All of the things that make our lives better, that educate our young people, that give us a reason to live. So, I don't want this to be to see that we're a whole bunch of team partners. I'm not and I, you know, we're not here. And if you're a team partner, I'm sorry, but, you know, but what we do want is to be able to say this is where we want our money and that we don't need to just continue to tax because I remember the west side, they tore down all the elementary, junior high and high schools in the west side. Beautiful schools, but it was again for the developers to make their money off of new schools that we didn't need. If you love Jefferson, all those schools look like Jefferson. And that one survived, you know, father's tag linear, they were beautiful. They were gems, you know. So, you know, most of that money, again, continues to go to developers just to buy, to make cheaply made houses or huge, you know, developments with, you know, multi, I mean, you can see it, the only thing that got torn down in the housing that's going to cost a lot of money to live in is cheaply made. So, but it's going to cost a lot to live there and that's where we don't want those millions and billions of dollars to just go to line the pockets of these folks that don't even live here. They send their money somewhere else. It's not coming back here. So, Gianna. I just want to get through some other meetings and I know there's some more meetings that probably aren't on here and so we're running out of time but we can also add them on here if you know there's any other community meetings for Bracket Manage, for any other parks for anything that you think community members should go through. People just couldn't go up and down. Yeah, just go up and write down. And we will take all those notes and give them to you all. Yeah, so we'll give them to you and going back if whoever has a sign-in sheet you can please from signing that we can contact you if you're interested for the next meeting for notes, stuff like that. So, also going back, I mentioned SA Tomorrow, how that's the plan. We've been looking at it a lot of the interest in working on it this summer. How it's very developed and phased, how they want to make like, regional, they call them regional centers but all it is is that if you look at the map of their proposed regional centers they're mostly on the north side and there's like two on the south side but what they want is bond money and budget money to go. So, again, it's the same thing on the north side instead of areas that actually need to be fixed that need new infrastructure that need money for the school stuff like that. So, there's a B-Session meeting at SA Tomorrow on August 3rd they're going to be voting on it mid-August August 11th and so there are going to be there's going to be citizens to be heard opportunities there's going to be times that you can call up your city council person you can write to them and tell them, hey this is what I want to be part of SA Tomorrow this is what I don't want whatever but you should at least go through this it's going to be briefing so the briefing you can speak at but you can listen to what they're proposing and make your own mind up on August 3rd, later that day at 5pm United is organizing a rally in front of City Hall and then at 6pm there is that citizens to be heard part so we're just trying to get as many people who are upset about the giveaways city council giving away tax dollars and parts and all that to go and speak at this event so I'll pass it on to the end but I would encourage you all to go and speak if you're interested I'd just like to say all these I want to keep up with this stuff could you put it on your Facebook so I've got a calendar I can go to and say oh I can go to do it thanks so again today was just the beginning it's not a beginning because we come with history but I know we lost one person very frustrated because they didn't want to participate in the history because they've been gone and they didn't feel part of it I felt a lot of people appreciated the history otherwise we would have lost most of you and so I think again we'll type all of this up and it's not something that's over so please we'll want you to add more information in here so we have more history to share with everybody we have that little power can I say one thing on the history and I just wanted to put in another plug for Maria's book Maria's Daughter of Immigrants yeah we have a book listing here it's a very important book that's the history that we talk about here it's a fabulous book and I think it's required reading for a lot for all of us thank you you can buy it I think we have some at the Esperanza yes but yeah so that's really important Rudy Rosales has the illusion of inclusion I've already read it and if somebody can afford it come back to me okay well you can do that and then we also were doing that power mapping it's still evolving so I think we were going to be able to share but I think we want to also adjust it so I know some media was taking pictures that's not a final thing I know that Antonia Castaneda left and said please incorporate the economic based tourism culture that's what allows for this major gap in economics division and the bars I mean all we have is bars they cleaned out all the bars out of the west side so was that bad well again if they're from millennia they're cool and if they're Argentina they're bad and the next community meeting we want to continue these conversations if y'all want to continue them we will continue them next month, August 27 we're going to try to keep these to the last week of the month at least through September at least we'll have to switch it because we have peace markets but we can have again other subcommittees but basically it's like piled together as a community of people who believe and work for justice how we're going to come up with these strategies so that we're working better more strategically and not by ourselves because again when we do it by ourselves it's one struggle out of there and we go away because more than likely we're going to lose and if we win the next battle we're going to lose so it's just too much and we just need to be smart about how we do the work go ahead Fred I haven't got a chance to talk yet so on a different subject but it's the same day we're commemorating the use of nuclear weapons in Japan you know what I say anniversary this comes up I think August the 6th was the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945 so we will be at Denman where Denman Park is it's up there off of Fredericksburg a little bit past the 10th station there so Friday August the 5th they've done this in the past and we're going to do it again this year to commemorate that tragedy I have to say that this take back our city is a really good name I really like it because I think it includes a lot of people across section and I think we should call ourselves back yeah good the United States Army take back our city we can ask a number of people in Mozambique the movement are trying to draft an alternative water management plan or SAWS in place of the pro developer plan that they've got we're going to be working on it hard over the next couple of weeks if you're interested in volunteering to work with us on this please give me your contact information I'll try to get back to you soon and Anna along with Miyako Miida as a young person a lot of activism has to do with social media even for like some older folks from on Facebook so I love it so what SAWS has done recently is that they put out this hashtag or this campaign called Waterful SA where they're saying like we have a lot of water it's cool but we still need more water to like bring in all these businesses who are going to in turn waste more water and it's a lot of the people in the communities who are already conserved and a lot of the the measures that they're going to do are going to affect community members what we're trying to do is basically steal their hashtag and we're trying to do that with a voting campaign with community members we have some papers over here that say my SA water future looks like and we're inviting people to just write down how they see their water future in San Antonio whether it's like we don't want all of this new water going towards like the west side or like North Vista Ridge fracking is an issue whatever people come up with and then we're going to post those on social media and just kind of bring awareness to the water issues in San Antonio so before you leave you're needing some folks to help yes I have some papers over here there's some markers we're just asking like people to have like right on there kind of pulled up signs and we'll just post them there's a lot of really good groups that are present that are doing stuff that we need access to those names and contact information so that if we want to get involved with water or whatever other that we can do so unless you don't want your info shared let us know go back to that Liz and Astrig and we won't share it otherwise we'll share the list with everyone yes two things one is the projecting growth of the San Antonio my ability to stop it's not supported by the state demographic population and I will bring that information next month and the second thing is to thank everybody for their patience and please stick with it please come next month I think that we will find as we work together as a wonderfully large group we will be able to be effective in important ways thank you