 Boys and girls, I feel like we are so, so honored to have our city councilman, Mr. Ron Nurenberg. He is your city councilman because you live in District 8 and he represents District 8. So when they call me and ask if he could come and do a kid's town meeting at McDermott Elementary, well for sure I was elated because I wanted him to know how proud we are of our fifth grade students. So today you're going to be sharing some of your concerns because his job I guess so to speak is to help people in our District 8 community and I know he has an emphasis on environment, correct? And keeping our city clean as all the city councilmen do. And I know I saw, read something about you are especially passionate about water safety and that kind of thing. He graduated right here in San Antonio from the University, Trinity University, but he has a higher degree called a master's from the University of Pennsylvania. He was just elected in July, so this is your first term, sir? Yes, sir. All right, so he's excited. We are the pilot school, meaning we're the first ones to really get to do this with all of the press that's involved. We are, we are very excited about that, right? Yes. Yes, so Mr. Councilman Nurenberg, thank you for coming to McDermott today and I hope you have a great experience because we certainly are looking forward to your message. Thank you very much, Principal Tatum. You guys have a great principal, don't you? Yes. Well, good morning, Falcons. Good morning. I hope you're doing well. How many of you know what city council is? Raise your hand. No? That's okay. That's what we're here to learn about, right? Well, I appreciate you all being here. I'm your District 8 city councilman and for those of you who don't know, city council works downtown and throughout the city to help do the basic things in our city. Keep it safe, make sure there's police on the street, make sure your streets are paved, things like that. All the things that we sort of take for granted as we go out in the community, we do that at city council, make sure there's money available to pay for it all. There are 10 different districts in the city of San Antonio. I'm District 8, so we number them from clockwise and you start in the middle. District 1 is downtown, 2 is on the east side and we go 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 is northwest. So there's 10 of us downtown plus the mayor. Anybody know the mayor's name? Julian Castro, you heard of him? He's our mayor. He's the 11th member of city council. And between all of us, we work on many different issues from water to streets to fire departments, all these different things that you have concerned about. And I think it's a tremendous privilege to be here in front of you today because how many of you can vote? You can? Maybe in your student council election? How old do you have to be to vote? 18. That's right. Who here is looking forward to being able to do that? All right. That's good. What do you think it takes to vote in San Antonio besides being 18? Yes, sir. Once you stand up and say your name and then give me your answer. Enrique? Enrique? What's the answer? Responsibility. Absolutely right. I wasn't thinking about that, but that's a good point. Yes, ma'am. Abby? To some extent. Yes. Don't be in jail. You can't vote when you're in jail. Technically. There's some nuance to that, but yes, sir. I'm sorry? The sense of learning. Yeah, so learning about the issues and the candidates that are in the election? Yeah. Well, all these are good answers, but we're missing one ingredient. You have to register to vote, right? You have to, when you turn 18 or when you're 17 and a half and you're getting ready to turn 18, you can fill out the card or by the time you're there, maybe we can do it online, but you've got to register to vote. Anybody know how many people are in San Antonio? A lot. I won't bore you, but it's about 1.4 million people in the city of San Antonio, and if you go outside of the city, another 600,000 or so, so there's about 2 million people in this county region. Guess how many registered voters there are? Should there be 2 million? No. Nope. Because not everybody's 18, right? That lives in this area. There's about 900,000 voters. That's right. So I've got a little experiment. How many classes are here? Two classes? Six? Four classes. So how many students are here? You don't know? We don't know. All right, let's take a wild guess here. All right, everybody quiet. Quiet down. All right, I want to make a little point. In the city of San Antonio city council elections, we're having a little trouble because people are getting real distracted. They're not wanting to take time to go out and vote, even though we give them two weeks to go do it. They're finding other things to do. How many of you are excited about voting again? Good. Good. All right, I want all the rows behind the first one. Keep your hands raised. Everybody, even the front row. Okay, behind the first row, put your hands down. Keep them raised on the front row. Put them down out there. You're not allowed to speak anymore. All right, I want all of you to put your hands down. You're getting lazy, okay? Keep them up. All right. All right, here down, you put them down. You four stand up please and turn around. How would you like it if these three young men and this young lady were from the rest of this period forward, make all the decisions for you, in terms of what you're going to eat for lunch, when we're going to stop the class, when you're going to... You guys would like it, wouldn't you? Yeah? Okay, you can sit down now. We better make sure that you guys are friends with these folks, right? Well, I do that. So really, if you didn't know them, would you like them to do that for you, make all your decisions for you? Well, I will tell you that every year in San Antonio, we do that. We talked about how many registered voters there are in the area. We talked about the elections and all the things that we have to do. But guess how many people out of 100 take time to go vote in a city election where we elect those 11 people and each of us represent about one point or 140,000 of your neighbors? Yes, ma'am. Go ahead. 50 out of 100? That'd be great. We do that almost in a little presidential election, but here locally in the city of San Antonio where we get to fix your streets, we get to figure out how many police need to be on the street. 10? Getting close. Who said five? You're right. Five people. So basically about this many people for all of you who chose to stay home or got lazy or didn't really feel like it was an important thing. So how many of you are excited to vote again? How many of you want these folks to make the decisions for you? All right. Well, you get my point. Voting is a very, very important thing and that's where it all starts when you're 18. You can go do that. But the point is, even if you're not 18 you live in the city too, right? It's very important that you have things to say. So I want to thank all of you who took the challenge our office sent out a request for you to think about all the things that are important to you in our city all the things that maybe you don't think aren't so good or don't think are very good you want to fix and got some responses ready. And this is the first of many, many of these events that we hope to have throughout the city. We're calling it our Kids Town Hall and if you have any better ideas about better names and want to create a logo or something there's another challenge for you. Be happy to have your help. But it's very important. You guys are 25% of our population. Of all the 1.4 million people in the San Antonio area, it's actually more than that. One quarter of them, 25% are not yet old enough to vote. But guess what happens when these folks stand up, these four folks, you can sit down. You all of a sudden start to like them, right? And tell them, we like pizza for lunch or whatever. Make sure you have pizza. Well, what happens is when these are the only folks that are making the decisions, everybody gravitates towards them and wants to know what they're thinking. They end up calling all the shots. What's important for us to do is start talking to our neighbors because everybody lives here together. Even if you're 18 or you're not 18 you've got something important to say about your community, right? You have to walk to school maybe. You want to make sure your streets are safe. You want to make sure your parks are clean. Well, you have a very important role in that process. And so I want to thank you for being here today to ask questions. And I want to thank you for thinking about your community and your city. You should start talking to your parents about that. Letting them know. Because they can vote. They can vote for your family to represent your family and about things that are important to them. And having these conversations is important for us as a community and make it better. And I will tell you that we are very lucky in San Antonio because despite 5% of the folks still calling the shots at the voting booth you have 11 people, men and women who are very concerned and care a lot about you guys and about how we leave our city for you when you become the leaders. So real quick before we get started on the question and answers I want to thank a few folks that made this possible. All of the teachers at McDermott you guys are inspirations to myself and my team. I do want to introduce my team. Karen Vega who is our newest colleague. She is actually still a student at St. Mary's University. Harjo who just graduated from Trinity University. Kota is somewhere. Kota is here as well. And we've got another part of the team that's working for you every day and every night. We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. You can call us. We want to hear about your concerns and we certainly want you to participate in these things. So thank you again. I also want to thank Stagg restaurants. Ned and Fabiola if you are here really appreciate you underwriting this and now cast SA which is you guys are on TV. All right. This is being streamed all across the city and across the world. So and we'll be able to have a link for you. We'll send it to your teacher so you can replay this you can replay the this forum to them and you can go back and see whatever I answered your question in two months or three months or a year from now if I actually did what I said I was going to do because that's important very important part of the process too. So let's go ahead and get started with question and answer and who's going to be my first who's got the first challenge question that they would like to address. And please stand up and say your first name and what your question is. My name's Helen and we don't have enough after school recreational facilities available for no charge for latch kids keys to involvement activities. There are a lot of kids there are a lot of kids needing something to do after school. Thank you for your question. Well first of all I'll say that I didn't know you guys used the phrase latch key kids anymore because I'm I was a latch key kid and the latch is ready and everybody know what a latch key kids. Okay. Somebody who has to go home your parents probably still at work. You got to turn the key get yourself in and figure out something to do for a few hours. Well, that's a great question. We have what's called it in San Antonio the Department of Human Services and these are things that we aren't part of the streets and public safety. These are other things that we do that improve quality of life and if you know if you read our city charter if you really would like to fall asleep fast you can read our city charter I'll send you a link to it but that's all the rules of the road that we have to live by and a mission for San Antonio and for our representative council is to look out for the welfare the quality of life of our citizens. So not only is it about streets and public safety and parks and libraries it's also about things that help improve our quality of life. So that's what you're talking about. How do we make it enjoyable to live here in San Antonio? We're doing a number of different things we have programs for after school for youth throughout the school districts we partner with NISD and AISD on some of these and we also have a thing that called fitness in the parks you all look like you're full of energy so I would recommend that you talk to your parents about the program called fitness in the parks and these are free fitness classes that we conduct in different parks around our community and certainly there are a number of them in district 8 I don't know if there's one within walking distance of McNermot but these are things that you could do either on a weekend or after school if they're available and I will say that we don't always have the answers so we're looking to you also for creative ideas so if you have new ideas for new programs we want to hear them and I mentioned who's on social media who does Facebook? You guys are probably too young to do Facebook right? No? Let me actually let me ask you a different question because I want to know how many of you have cell phones? That's amazing I want you to know that I wasn't until 25 that I had my first cell phone so you consider yourselves lucky Well we are on the reason why I ask that we are on Facebook we're on Twitter we have obviously our phones email addresses any way that you can get in touch with your city council member and we all have all of these things you should take advantage of that because we'll take complaints we'll take suggestions we'll take ideas but anyway you can communicate with your public officials you should use that use that method so good question thank you who's got the next question? Yes sir we have a mic for you you guys are so well organized and behaved I do want to give you that compliment Cars often speed on USA Boulevard in front of our school and you're not slow down this makes it unsafe it is difficult for our school to get across and go from the city how can the city council help? we can try so you're talking about speeding in front of your school so which is one of the reasons why we have these school zones is so we keep people slowing keep people from speeding in front of your school so I'm a little dismayed to hear that that's still happening there's several things that we can do we have the San Antonio police department which is one of the best police departments in the country incredibly efficient we work with them all the time in a program called San Antonio fear free environment it's called SAFE S-A-F-F-E and these are different police officers who respond to issues like this and we communicate with them daily about different pockets of activity that are happening so we can direct them to you know put some resources into school zones that are having trouble if you're having a lot of speeders we can let them know that this is a problem area we rely on that communication though so we're not everywhere in the district my staff we're at number seven so we rely on you to tell us where those issues are but we can direct the attention of the SAFE officers and S-A-P-D to those particular areas there are other things that we do within a department called transportation and capital improvements if you think about the the beneath your feet all the things that we do beneath your feet in the city the roads, the sidewalks things like that that's called transportation and capital improvements that's the department that handles it but we can do different things on the street itself to help slow people down like speed bumps which actually don't really work that well putting new signs street speed limit signs we can adjust the speed limit sometimes with cooperation from our state representatives but the first step would be to have S-A-P-D come out and observe that and maybe catch a few speeders scare people in the slowing down alright good question next question out of questions yes ma'am I'm making Karen work there is a lot of congestion on Huebner and Fredericksburg roads in the morning and afternoons what can be done to make sure students are safe getting to and from school Huebner and Fredericksburg road so this is one of the the big challenges that we have with building our city we've got I'm sure you've seen all across our district we've got a number of different holes in the ground that we've put there on purpose because we're trying to build better streets and the city of Huebner and Fredericksburg has a lot of work on it can you repeat your question again there is a lot of congestion on Huebner and Fredericksburg roads in the mornings and afternoons what can be done to make sure students are safe getting to and from school well we need to address pedestrian safety throughout our community and we started to do that do any of your parents work in the medical center a lot of you wow okay well you've probably heard them talk about how dangerous it is sometimes to walk throughout the medical center and we've had some very unfortunate accidents happen out there recently but again we rely on our citizens like you to let us know where there's particular issues particular challenges so we can go and address those pedestrian safety issues one of the things that we're trying to do you've all seen you know you walk along the sidewalks they're right up against the street on the curb and you have cars zooming by you we're trying to move those out away from the road so that there's some space between the roadway and the sidewalk so there's you know there's less interaction between pedestrians and cars we're also upgrading our traffic signals in some areas we've gone from radar technology now to better visual actually the other way around visual camera technology to radar technology that can better better determine when a car is at an intersection so we have better pedestrian you know what a pedestrian is? okay walking on the crosswalks we have better crosswalks some that are audible you can hear they're counting down for you so all these different things are in the process of making our our community better and safer to walk around in I will say again I didn't mention 3-1-1 everyone knows what 9-1-1 is right you don't want to call that unless it's an absolute emergency we also have a non-emergency number that goes to our city people that are working you know all the time on issues like this you can call 3-1-1 from any phone and you can ask questions all kinds of questions like this and direct us to particular areas of concern so 3-1-1 is another one and I'm sure most of you who raise your hand on the cell phone question probably have smart phones of some kind but we also have an app a mobile app called San Antonio 3-1-1 and you can do all of it from your your smartphone without actually talking to anybody good question thank you you guys are making me nervous yes ma'am my name is Haley and we are willing to help improve our community but what can we do we do not know what we can do as a young citizen to help make improvements what can we do to help well that's a that's a profound question I will say there's nothing you can't do that 95% of your neighbors aren't already doing too the only thing that you really can't do that other people may be doing and just these four people is vote you can be involved I think the best thing anyone can do in this city to make it better is to talk with their neighbors about the things that they like better conversations what ends up happening is that there's always a few issues that draw a lot of attention that's all anyone wants to talk about well 98% of what's going on the city is stuff like what your classmate asked about which is the sidewalks in the streets getting to school those are really going to impact you tomorrow so I think being involved in your school whether it's city council or coming to forums like this talking to your friends talking to your family I know going to school on a school bus you probably don't want to talk about city politics and streets and police and things like that but you're probably talking about what you saw on TV last night but I will tell you that these are really cool and fun conversations to have and they're important conversations to have if you really want to make a difference in your community you have to be involved in your community and there are things that you can do right now just like what you're doing today to be involved and to ramp that up just a little bit more we have a program in my office called district 8 community academy we have involved young people from high school to college to as young as 8 to be involved in my office to help figure out things that their community that their colleagues their classmates are interested in I would love to involve any of you who are interested in volunteering one of the challenges is your issues that you care about are not always the same as people who are 30 or 40 or 50 years older than you but we need to be addressing them all so help us by telling us what those issues are which is a lot of what today is about Hi, my name is Paige many adults in our area complain that they're not finding jobs as well so do you see any new businesses being put in that area that will provide new jobs? Yes and that's a great question too you know our economy is built on the availability of jobs often and our entire country has been through a recession San Antonio has been much better off than most but we're starting to see more economic development this is an issue of focus for everybody on council is bringing new businesses in the area so yes that is happening we're working on policies to make it easier for people to do business and in areas of town where we're having challenges keeping businesses open because there's construction or because there's just some history of lack of opportunity we're working on those things as well so we can have jobs available for people but I will tell you that the secret of San Antonio is getting out people want to move here so there's 1.4 million people in this city today in 20 to 30 years when you're in my place there'll be double that just about that's hard to imagine but imagine this place having twice as many people in it when you're up here so people are moving here we're working on making sure that businesses are attracted here and I will add one more thing which is the most important thing that you can do to make sure that you are occupying one of those jobs is to be exactly where you are now I'm not going to give you the same speech that you've heard a thousand times but I will tell you that the future that you want the nice car and the nice house and the job depends on you staying exactly where you are doing the best you can in school and having the conversations that we're having now on the other side of that we do have programs again through that department that I've been telling you about Department of Human Services we have some jobs training programs that we partner with we have some education programs we even have literacy programs for adults who are having challenges reading we have all those as part of the mix of services that different partners throughout San Antonio offer to help find those jobs we'll get to you I promise we have seen gang competing we've heard as well in our school what can be done to assist businesses in cleaning up on one graffiti quickly gang graffiti graffiti in general is a big nuisance, it's a big problem everyone I'm sure is familiar with graffiti the challenge of graffiti is that it appears that if you don't take care of it instantly there's a gravity that sucks in more graffiti over time just to clean it up as fast as possible it also requires reporting it so I mentioned 311 there's also an actual graffiti app so another smartphone app called no graffiti SA you can put it on your cell phone if you find graffiti somewhere you can snap a picture of it and the app will tell SAPD and I'm sorry it'll tell code compliance it'll tell you exactly where it is because they take a snapshot of your GPS location it's really cool so you take a picture of it, send it on and we'll get it cleaned up all else fails, you're not getting a response you can call us you can also tell your friends because I'm sure none of you do this I'm sure you probably know someone who does graffiti and if you don't know they are doing it they might actually be doing it without you knowing it tell them it's not cool it takes a lot of money to get rid of that stuff it brings the property value of your home down there's better ways that we can be spending our time on more productive things one of our colleagues actually graffiti of some kinds is art so he's designated certain areas to go and do graffiti in an artistic way we don't want to encourage graffiti that's defacing certain buildings or other things around town but if it's art, we have a place for art in San Antonio and we can help with that finally my name is Tarun, crime seems to be increasing in our community like breaking into apartments or houses what can be done to help our policemen better serve and participate in our community yeah well that's our number one job is to keep you and your family safe and we take that very seriously as our police chief in San Antonio is a great public servant and in fact, over the course of his tenure since he's been here in San Antonio, our crime is way down we've seen spikes in certain times of different things some violent crimes, some property crimes District 8 the problem crime in District 8 is property crime just like you mentioned house home break-ins car break-ins, thefts that kind we are working with the police department the same way we are with code compliance and with the safe officers to identify the areas we've worked with businesses up and down the I-10 corridor to establish a communication group they had this long before we got there but we're helping spread that communication network farther so when a crime occurs other people know about it and we can help with catching the criminals and we're also working with SAPD Chief McManus and his team have done a great job focusing resources on particular problem areas of crime they call them pop units problem-oriented policing focusing resources in areas of high need particularly with violent crime but also with property crime so we're working on identifying the particular areas that are having issues at the moment to work to address that and focus resources in that area this is a challenge for all of us though fighting and stopping crime is not as simple as placing police resources placing police at the scene it's about educating our community it's about lifting up the economy it's about making sure that people have jobs and have money to send their to put food on the table school things like that all the things that we do to make our community a better place like you talking to your friends will have an impact on making it safer so that's what we're trying to do as well in the end though if there's ever a problem and you're not getting your help you can call us these are great questions guys any more questions okay well let's open it up do you have any other questions yes ma'am hi I'm Jacqueline I wanted to say some few words because like you're never too old to make a change and try something new and just do you and try your best to make a change in our community because after all we live in it we live here and don't don't let nobody knock you down and tell you that you can't do it because you can and after all we live here and we have to survive and provide for us so just try your best and uplift our community can I get an amen well said Jacqueline very well said yes sir my name is Tavia and there's a lot of people smoking and doing bad stuff and I was wondering how we could help stop that yeah well yeah there's a lot of that happening it's educating people about what's good for their health and what's good for their community in terms of smoking San Antonio in 2010 actually back in 2004 passed a smoking ban a partial smoking ban to keep smoking away from particular establishments in 2010 they updated it again to restrict it even further so we have a smoking ban in place that essentially bans smoking from all indoor places and all outdoor public places it took effect two years ago if you see somebody smoking in front of their house or something like that it's a question of individual choice we have we're confronted with those choices every day do I do something that's good for me or bad for me because there's a lot of options out there but I'm glad that you identified that that's an important thing so we do have a rule of law in place with regard to smoking but there are many other things that will rely on educating people about what those good choices are okay thank you we're next yes what's coming some apartments don't pick up after themselves like the trash or the dumpster we're getting a we're getting a 101 on 311 a lot of these issues are solved by contacting us either through my office or calling 311 or code compliance directly but we do have ordinances regarding littering and so we can follow with that and make sure that they're picking up after themselves a lot of times though I know we're talking you may be familiar with these plastic bag plastic bag ordinances that were plastic bag policies and eliminating littering from plastic bags love to know what your thoughts are on that but a lot of the trash flies off to another place so we have trouble picking it all up my office we do have through that community academy we do organize volunteer groups to go out and clean up particular problem areas we do that with graffiti and with littering and so if anyone wants to spend a Saturday afternoon or want something else to do besides play video games we'd love to have you my name is Karthik and in the streets they're stealing wallets and electronic devices and what can we do to help and stop stealing electronic devices or wallets in the streets like where like Fredericksburg and just when you're walking down the sidewalk yes other kids or adults like they're like adults and they just go like hey give me the money yes so what you're describing is an actual robbery which is a major crime if that happens to you you need to call 9-1-1 you guys are still very young you're obviously very articulate and there's not many people smarter than these fifth graders I can tell you but you should walk with people obviously when you're going to and from school you do not walk alone if you have cell phones, those cell phones I'm sure your parents gave you because they want to know where you are so if you're walking in between your house and school you need to let them know that you are but if you're a victim of a crime like robbery, theft if someone threatens you you need to let the police know and that's an emergency so you do dial 9-1-1 and then after that's all done and the police report is filed and we want to talk about it from what we can do as a city to stop these things from happening then you come talk to us that's very concerning that they would be harassing young people like you and I'm I completely understand your frustration about that but we are on your side everybody in the city and everybody in this room are on your side so we don't want that to happen I'll let Karen choose who she takes the mic to because I'm making her walk around in circles my name is Jesse and there's like gangs and bullies at every school and how can you stop them from coming to our school and picking us gangs from outside of the school okay well that's another that's another police issue and I'm sure your school NISD police department is aware of that we're going to have a meeting I appreciate you letting us know about this you're seeing this you have friends in other schools as well they complain about the same things okay well this is an issue that we'll start talking about with SAIS by being with NISD and with SAPD but that doesn't need to happen our school security resources only go so far same with the city but these are issues of the highest priority if they're threatening our kids you guys yes ma'am Karen you go how can we stop people from just throwing away stuff and giving it to people in need of stuff okay let me make sure I know your question a lot of people throw away things that are useful you know I don't know a good answer to that question does anyone want to take that I'm sorry I won't do that yeah do you have a good answer to your classmates question you could donate it instead of donating is donating okay and donate it instead oh okay well donated is one way we have several organizations we have many organizations in town that take donations so if you see somebody throwing away something that can be used by somebody else let them know about Goodwill Salvation Army the Children's Bereavement Center a lot of different organizations that can take that stuff anybody else want to answer that question and we'll you know if if somebody doesn't know what to do with something call us we'll help who else wants to answer the question before we go on to another question I saw some people watching bad stuff on YouTube like scary games and stuff at school no at home even at their apartments really well there's a whole lot we can do about that I will tell you that also some people keep saying bad words on YouTube because every time they say that it's inappropriate I agree with you we will have to contact YouTube about that though I wish sometimes I wish that city council could do much more for you than we can because this is the level of government that works very very hard for you unfortunately YouTube is not one of the areas that we can they do have standards and policies though they have the terms of use if you see those things and it really concerns you there's an email address at the bottom there you can flag material because it's inappropriate it violates their terms of use so you can do something about it I don't know how well that works though interesting question by the way my name is Jenna I have two questions one of them is about robbery some people are stealing things that are outside because like some of them have like just gates that you can just walk through and they'll just steal something and then my other question is on some rows where the pedestrians walk sometimes they'll say walk and for like about two seconds and then it just starts counting down oh the crosswalks so let me take that question first and you'll have to rephrase the first part of the question because I'll just say yes I agree with you that is a problem we can address it so the second part about the crosswalks that's another area we'll need to let us know about because the timing on those things can often be tweaked when we get feedback when it starts counting down though technically it's still you can walk in it until the stop appears but if it's not enough time for pedestrians to get across that's a big problem but it's one that's really easily addressed so just let us know where those intersections are and the reason why we're such a great team is that we all write things down so just let me know or Karen or Harjo or Kodano where that particular intersection is and we'll make the phone call started today I'm Jermiah and I usually see a lot of people don't have a seatbelt and keeping and putting kids in the front seat oh yeah well that's not good I mean that everybody's heard click it or ticket yeah you can get a ticket for not not wearing your seatbelt and you can get a double ticket for being a for your parents can for not having you wear a seatbelt or being in a car seat that's a big problem if you see that happening remind the person that it's probably worth their 20 seconds to put on a seatbelt as opposed to the several hundred dollars that they'd be paying for a ticket if they got caught I'm Jermiah and in some of our apartments there's a lot of people they see that it says to like throw pick up after your pet and they don't do it and they just leave like their the dogs or their pets on the park where kids are trying to play and some kids are stepping on it yeah nobody likes stepping in it right we can take that literally or figuratively so let me I'll answer that question just a second but I did want to go back to the seatbelt issue we have seen in the last several the last couple of months we have seen young people and we've seen adults die from an auto accident where death could probably be avoided because they didn't take the 20 seconds to put on the seatbelt so this is a I mentioned it hits your your wallet but it also can be a devastating thing for a family to have to go through so remind people about that if you see them not wear a seatbelt it's not worth the time it's a small area between your own home and where you're going it's not far away so even if you think you're going to two minutes near the corner store put your seatbelt on with the droppings we have a phrase there's not really an ordinance against doggie droppings as much as we would like them to be but we have a mantra in my office it's called be a better neighbor this is something that drives our entire effort as district 8 city council office what can we do to be a better neighbor that means that means pick up after your dog it means make sure that we're not we're not doing something to the detriment of another district it means working the best we can for district 8 neighbors and for people all over the community and everything that we do but you can use that mantra do be a better neighbor what does that mean be a better neighbor when you're sitting in math class yes sir not disturb them when they're working great answer one of the teachers clapping their hands on that one correct I mean little things like that be a better neighbor you all have a very important influence in the circle of life that you walk in and if you think about what can I do to be a better neighbor that will help take care of a lot of things including doggy droppings Jenna and Karthik that a lot of robbery takes place and mainly one of them is in my apartments for the past three years they've been saying they're going to fix the gates but they never have and for the past seven years and for this last year more than seven crimes has been taken in our apartment in your apartment community yeah you have so everybody knows what government is right it's just a group of people who have been chosen to make decisions because the rest of us don't really have time to get that involved or we don't want to or whatever reason well apartment communities have the same thing they have management they're not voted in they own the place they're hired to manage it but those are the folks that you need to talk to about issues like that if they're not taking care of the things that they're supposed to because when you move into your apartment community they're going to contract with them they say they're going to do something and you're going to give them money for doing that part of that is taking care of the gates and making sure they mow the grass so make sure they live up to their contract if you have trouble call us we'll call them too what can we do to help the local ecosystems with the pollution and us building buildings all over the place and destroying their ecosystems you're getting an amen from Jacqueline that's a great question that's another great example of why we should ask ourselves how can we be better neighbors you know our community is growing so I told you that we have 1.1 million people moving into the city of San Antonio very soon over the next 20 or 30 years obviously there's going to be we're going to build places for them to stay we're going to have to build places for them to work things like that so there is an element of us having to build in San Antonio we're going to continue to do that but we have a lot of different things that we're doing now to help us do that in a balanced way in a smart way you know Principal Tatum mentioned water this is one of those areas you know when you take a shower make sure that you turn it off you're not wasting water when you're washing your hands or washing the dishes make sure you don't leave the faucet on things like that that you can do makes a little difference but if you can imagine that the entire city is still operating with that frame of mind what can I do we can have a better city with regard to air and land and all those things those are very good questions and those are questions that we don't yet have the answers to but I'm very interested in finding the answers to them because when you're again when you're standing here you realize that we haven't made mistakes that we can't undo so that's very much on my mind thank you for that question and also make sure you talk about those things with your classmates because again we don't have all the answers one more question sorry guys my name is tesla people are tesla people are hurting other animals and they don't care about them they're experiencing a lot of dead animals during the street and they don't stop to care about them and how can we do to help that? yeah you're talking about the animals in the streets there so let the record show that the last question that was asked was asked by someone named tesla very nice name so we have a department in san antonio called animal care services they are in charge of dealing with all these issues about helping us deal with stray animals in a humane way some of them we don't deal with we don't deal with wildlife the state deals with wildlife but domestic animals like feral cats and dogs we do pick them up and we make sure that they're not contributing to a disease problem or they're not overpopulating so we get them spayed and neutered and we have homes for them but the animal care services department is one that 10 years ago in san antonio unfortunately we had no we had kennel space very little kennel space we had animals being put down in mass because we didn't have a really good operation to deal with them today in san antonio we have doubled down we have really focused in on taking care of animals and we've done that we have mayor huley on castro mayor hardburger what's that these mayors have been strong on animal care and so we have made significant progress and today of all the stray animals that we that we see and we take care of and spay and neuter and get them shots 83% of them are released live so I think it's around that amount of changes from month to month am I allowed to take one more question no they're giving me the hook well I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart and from my team how much I appreciate you taking time to visit with us this is again a pilot we plan to do this many many more times across our district and again if you have any questions for me call me email facebook twitter any way you can get a hold of me I'm very serious about the fact that you don't have to be 18 in order to make a difference in this community and you don't have to be 18 to get an answer from your city government I'm not the only one who believes that so make it make make that your choice to be involved in your community and take advantage of the opportunities you have to make our city better so thank you very much for joining our school and by the way did you know you chose the best school and the best fifth graders right we wore a falcon today we also want to thank your staff for working with us we appreciate it and we thank all the media who were able to come out today and join us I think this was a great activity for fifth graders we have class meetings in which they discuss concerns about school and class and this gave them an opportunity to discuss concerns about our community so again we thank you