 Okay, so I am here with Councilwoman Rebecca Villagran from City Council District 3. Yes. And tell me what's going on here tonight and let's see. Budget, proposed budget, regional open here represented this meet one-on-one with residents and answer those questions so it's very exciting what to have conversations so it's good. It's a time where we can have meet face to face with the city staff and our residents. And it is. It's really kind of fun to see people walking straight up to the police chief, walking straight up to the head of solid waste, walking straight up to these department heads and saying I need to talk to you. Yes, exactly. It's a terrific opportunity and this is new this year. This is new. This is the first time we're trying this so we'll see how it works out. And I think in one part we're going to be having people talk and see what's going on. And I do like the energy because I think that they always want to know, people want to always know who is the person behind the phone and now is the opportunity to have that. And it's important to let people know that this SA Speak Out campaign has been going on since June or late May and in a few weeks ago they tallied people's responses and overwhelmingly people were saying what's very, very important to them is public safety but when by public safety they mean sidewalks, street and drainage. And so what was the city's response? So that is why we invested the most amount of money in our proposed budget for our streets, sidewalks and drainage in our budget. We're increasing it. What the city manager has proposed is to increase that budget as well as increasing the budget for our sidewalks as well. We're looking at putting more money into animal care services because that's also a public safety issue to make sure that we have pet owner responsibility but then we also can pick up our stray animals if we need to but then spay and neuter and microchip the animals as well to get them back to their owners. And they're over there right now and people can't? Yes. And they're busy. They're over there and they're busy right now talking to plenty of people. And so is our TCI department. Our transportation and capital improvements, they're very busy tonight too. So the main issues that the residents speak up about, that's what they're here and that's where they're lined up to talk to. And the process is not over? No. No, not at all. We still have some more open house meetings like this but we also have a public hearing at the city council chambers. Last night we had a public hearing at the council chambers. We're going to be having another one on a Wednesday evening and then we have some more open house scheduled for the rest of this week and some next week. And of course you can always let SA speak up at the day of the vote in September, September 10th on Thursday. Right. And that's when we adopt our budget. And I have seen things in past years change at this point in the game too. Oh, absolutely. You know, and at this point too we're also talking about we, the council members, are in the middle of our budget work sessions. For example, yesterday we had a presentation on the code compliance, code enforcement department and I requested, you know, it'd be great to have more code enforcement officers because we have an increase in citations and increase of calls but not an increase in staff. So do we have anywhere that we can look and see in our budget amendments? So that's very important. Another issue that I brought up to the city manager is, you know, we have our world heritage designation now and we need to make sure that we plan accordingly in and around throughout all of our missions to the south. So let's see about doing a city-wide symposium, maybe a master plan for this area and we want to see where we can pull from our budget in order to do that too. Wow. So we're working on that as well. The ground is moving. The ground is moving constantly, yes. Okay. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and for encouraging people to come out to these really interesting events. Well, I thank you and now Cast S.A. for being here and being available for our citizens too. So thank you. Yes. Yes, definitely. Thank you. Thank you. This is good. I'm Thea Sutterbow, Public Information Officer with the City's Government and Public Affairs Department and I'm here with Dale McNeil, Assistant Director of the library. Now, Dale, thank you for being with us tonight. We're here at the city's Public Budget Open House Community Meeting. And one of the questions that our viewers have is how is the library evolving in its service to the community and how will that be reflected in the two new branches opening in 2016? Thanks. It's a real pleasure to be here. The library is evolving all the time. Libraries have been evolving since the beginning of the public library movement. I think the big focus right now is on technology, that we have e-books, e-music, e-audiobooks, all those things, while at the same time having all the things people expect from the library, a place to go and study, books to read, lively programs, including many that you can see on Nowcast SA. How we're changing with our two new libraries that are opening, one in Council District II and one in Council District VI, is first we really listen to the community. We have public meetings. We hear what the community has to say. And mostly what we hear is that people want a library that they recognize as a library. So we're evolving, but at the same time when you come to visit these new libraries, when you come in you're going to know you're in a library. There will be books and librarians and comfortable furniture and a place to study and computers to use. But at the same time, there will be new technology, things you can maybe use to work from the library or have a business meeting at our new library called Encino Branch. We have a small room that you can have a business meeting in. These two libraries aren't going to have exactly that, but they're going to have similar kind of new technology. I think they'll be a lot of fun. And then we build a library to be flexible so that it can change over time. And just exactly how it opens is how it has to stay for the whole life of the building. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you, Dale. I know that libraries is one of my favorite parts about the city's budget. And for fiscal year 2016, I'm really looking forward to those two new branch libraries. My favorites are the Landa Library and Central Library. Right. So it'll be great to have those in District II and District VI. Absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you. So again, if you're just tuning in with us, please make sure to share your budget priorities with us at saspeakup.com. And if you're on Twitter, tweet your questions to us at saspeakup or using the hashtag saspeakup. Thank you. Okay. So I'm here with Sister Susan Mika and Sister Mika, you came out to this event tonight and because of the campaign that said Speak Up, what did you come here to speak up about? Yes, I came representing my mother who lives in this district, and I wanted to just find out what was going on with drainage, with potholes, with maintenance, code compliance. I had a whole list of things that I was going to the different booths to talk to people about. Wow. Okay. So this is the first time we've had this format where it's an open house format and you can walk around the room and walk right up to department heads or, you know, assistant department heads of various departments. So tell me what your experience has been. It's been very good. I didn't know exactly which department worked on what. Someone directed me to that particular table. And besides all my complaints, I wanted to thank 311 because oftentimes I report lights that are out and, you know, traffic situations that they need to know about. And I wanted to thank them for doing that, and of course I'm a pet owner, so I wanted to talk to animal care services too. So as you see, I had a big agenda. That's absolutely terrific. So part of this whole process is to try to give the city some indication of what people care about and what areas of the budget they might change. So did you feel like, you know, your input matters? Yes, several people took my name down and they wrote down the area that I had concerns about what particular part, what street or what avenue or road and that type of thing. And then they also took my phone number so they can call me back if they're going to do something about it. And then I think it's just our civic duty because we live in this area, I travel here almost every day and I see a lot of things and I think that somebody needs to speak up and if no one speaks up, then the city doesn't know what's really going on on the ground. Just like today we had a little bit of rain, there's a lot of issues around drainage even when we just have a little bit of rain. That's terrific. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your taking the time. Oh, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate you being at all these events too. It means a lot, I think, to all of us, so take care, all right. Good evening. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Thank you. And thank you for all coming out. Again, I'm Alan Warwick. I'm the city councilman for District 2 and thank you for coming out to our second budget hearing. We wanted to get the community's input again. We were at Second Baptist a little while ago and we got your input the first time and we listened. So we added more money to streets, more money to sidewalks, more money to streetlights. And now we're checking to see if we did the right thing, if we added in the right areas. And we brought out all of our friends with us. So we have all the city departments that mean something to you. So if you have an issue with 311, you have 311 call service here. If you have an issue with streets and roads, you have TCI here. If you have an issue with animal control services or animal care services, stray dogs, which are a problem in the district, I know, they're here so you can bring your issues directly to the people that make that impact for you and the city. I appreciate all the lively conversations. I definitely want to get a chance to talk to all of you this evening if you want to talk to me. I'm going to be fairly brief this evening and I just want to thank all of the city staff for coming out and being a part of this in District 2. I saw Chief Hood here earlier, the fire chief. There's Chief... Don't... Can't sneak out, Chief. But again, thank the Delcrest community, Hunley Place, the neighborhoods that boarded this great Copernicus Park right here. And we also have our guests from District 3. We have Councilwoman Rebecca Vigran. I'm going to let her say a couple of words and greet some of the people from our district. How many District 3 residents do we have in here? Okay, we got a couple of y'all. Now, I did the same thing on Monday. So I went to a District 10 deal because, you know, we border each other, so we have a friendly situation. So there are about three or four District 2 people in the District 10 meeting and just like they're three or four District 3 people in the District 2 meeting. But again, here's Councilwoman Viagran and welcome. Thank you, Councilman Warwick. Thank you for your hospitality here and thank you for SA Parks and Rec for your hospitality here opening up Copernicus Community Center. Bienvenidos. Thank you very much for being here. My name is Rebecca Viagran and I have the distinct honor of representing District 3 on the San Antonio City Council. And one of also the distinct pleasures that I have is I know that District 2 and District 3, every 10 years it seems like one section goes from District 3 to District 2 and then from District 2 back to District 3. And it's primarily the Eastern Triangle area and the Jupy Manor area. So we want to make sure that all of our areas are represented and that's why it was important for us to partner together and have this regional community budget hearing. And this is kind of our first time we're doing an open house like this. So because we want to be sure to have, for you all, to have those one-on-one conversations with the directors of the departments. And for them to hear directly from our residents because it's extremely important because they hear from us every Thursday and every day. And they're like, yeah, yeah, Councilwoman, I hear you, I hear you. But then they get to hear from you as well. And so that they know that it's just not our voices but our voices are truly your voices as well. So thank you very much for being here, for taking the time out to be here. As you saw that we have a 56% increase in street maintenance that's proposed in our budget. Very important, because we did want to hear from you. And a $12 million, I believe, is that right, let me see. And if you haven't picked up one of these brochures, please do. We have a $12 million for drainage improvements. And I know in this area, we need drainage improvements off of Irene, off of Roland, and off of all of these areas. We need to really focus on our drainage improvements. So I'm glad we're having that focus here today too. If you can have the chance, please walk around. We've set up so many things to really help empower you with the information you need and answer the questions that you have. So I really want to encourage you to go meet with everyone. Everyone is very nice and they will talk with you. So please go and talk with them. And then we also want to encourage you to come up and visit this area, because we want to make sure that we can tell all of San Antonio what the residents of District 2 and District 3 what our focus is. So if you want to say your budget priority is animal care, or drainage, or street maintenance, you come up to this booth, you sign in, we'll take a picture, and we'll make sure all of San Antonio knows where District 2 and District 3 residents lie. So again, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. I want to thank all the city staff that's out here as well. And again, Councilman Warwick, thank you for your hospitality. Thank you again, Councilwoman. And now we have Xavier Routia, Assistant City Manager. Assistant City Manager is his assistant. And then there's Deputy Xavier's Assistant City Manager representing Cheryl Scully. He's going to detail what's going to happen this evening. Thank you, Councilman. Thank you, Councilwoman, for your leadership. And thank you all, the public, for coming out tonight. It's really incredible when you see citizens who have come out or engaged and are taking stock in what we at the city try to provide on a daily basis to everyone in San Antonio across all districts. So as the Council members mentioned, we have an open house format. I want to thank all the city staff. And just so you know, you have the top people who can make decisions here tonight. You have police chiefs, you have fire chiefs, you have directors, assistant directors from all your major departments. You know, you talk about it from streets, drainage, from parks, from libraries. They are here tonight because they want to talk to you. They want to hear what you're interested in, what questions you may have, clarify maybe some confusion that might be out there regarding the budget and what's in, what's not in, what's important, what's not important, what's a priority or what's a lower priority. But at the end of the day, the priority for us is to hear from you all. We're thankful that you're here tonight. And if there's anything we can do or any questions we can answer, please let us know. We have informational booths all around. We have 311. We can help navigate you through this. We're willing to do that. So again, we appreciate you coming out tonight and we appreciate everyone who is willing to speak up and add to the conversation of what our budget should look like for the next year. So again, I want to thank the Council members for their leadership and getting everyone out tonight. And we look forward to a great night. We'll be here as long as you need us to be here. So we're here for you tonight. Thank you. So now we're going to open up the floor similar to what you guys were doing before. If there's someone that you haven't talked to yet or a department that you haven't talked to yet, please be sure to go out and talk to them. Let them know your issues. Those issues are going to come back to the various District 2 and District 3 offices so that we know what your concerns are and so we know what we need to focus on before we adopt the budget on September 10th. So again, thank you for your time tonight. Be sure to talk to all the departments and talk to myself and Councilwoman Villagran so that you let us know what you're saying and don't forget to speak up San Antonio. I'm here with Rod Sanchez, Director of the Development Services Department and he's here to tell us about the goals of code enforcement. Absolutely. Thank you for having us out here. Code enforcement is what it sounds like. You know, we're here to enforce our codes to make sure we keep our city nice and clean and safe for the residents of San Antonio. What we'd like to see is what someone calls us and we find a code violation. We'd like to go out and work with that property owner and actually have them fix the problem themselves. Unfortunately, it's always not that easy. Sometimes folks don't have the means to do it or for whatever reason they don't do it. So then we have to take it to the next level. We find ourselves maybe before a board or a judge where the board of the judge actually orders to make the repairs or clean up their property. But our goal is compliance at the end of the day because we want to keep our city nice and clean for our residents. So if I'm on a sidewalk and somebody has a bunch of tree limbs in the road or on the sidewalk blocking my way, is that something that I could report to code enforcement? Absolutely. Call 311 and like I said, we'll get out there. We'll work with the property owner to get that cleaned up. We hope that they would do it themselves and if they don't do it, we will do what we need to to get that situation cleaned up and keep the city safe for our residents. Wonderful. And I know that 311 also has a mobile app where you can report those kinds of things. So the city tries to make it very helpful to report that, those situations. And so talking about more development services, I understand that we have a new software that the city is working with on this build essay. Correct. Very excited about that. You know, we feel we have a very strong department but I've said it, one of our weaknesses is our computer system. Because we have some 20 computer systems, some of them very old, some of them are new, but today they just don't talk to each other. So we have our code enforcement officers out there on their system. They come out to a residence, they see somebody working out there and they're like, do they have a permit? Well, that code enforcement system doesn't have permit information on there. So they got to close that system down, open up the permit system. They find out there's not a permit there. So if we close that system now then we go back to my code system and issue them a violation notice. So the beauty of this computer system is it's gonna have everything that we do in one system. So we'll be able to type in that address, see everything from zoning to plating to board of adjustment issues to code issues. So we're very excited to have that. We're investing $17.5 million in this system and we're gonna implement it over the next 30 months. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I mean, it's wonderful to hear how the city is working for its residents and the great things coming on with the fiscal year 2016 budget. So thank you so much, Rod. Thank you. So I'm here with Dorothy Wilkins. And Dorothy, what is the name of the homeowners association that you're involved with? My neighborhood association is South East Side Community Organization. Okay. And you came out here tonight because you needed to talk to somebody about our streets. Eight streets and Latimer Street. They came out in July and passed up the streets. I thought they was coming to fix them, but they left them lumpy bumpy and didn't smooth it out. And the streets and left them dirty. They left them dirty. The black marks are still there in the streets for you to see if you would come out and take them. So one of the reasons that the budget hearings are turning into open houses is so people can actually walk up to department heads and say, hey, I want to talk to you about this issue. So did you find a department head here who was in charge? Yes, I did. I talked to Councilman Ward. Oh, well, yes. I talked to him personally. And I would like to get together and sit up a meeting with him for the community. And so everyone can hear what he has to say about our street. But since I came to the meet, they said we have an increase in our budget. So that's a good point right there. Absolutely. It's a big increase on streets and sidewalks and drainage. Yes, yes it is. And we appreciate that, but we want some work done in our neighborhood. And we thank y'all very much for that, for the increase. And I'm looking forward to see y'all coming out. Thank you, Councilpeople, because they were the ones in the city manager who figured out a way to do that. Yeah, yeah. Okay, all right then. But it sounds like you think coming out here tonight is worthwhile because you get to actually walk up to somebody and talk with him. And speak with him. Yes, speak up, speak up. But for our neighborhood, association, thank you. So you're encouraging your neighbors and your friends in the city? Yes, yes. To come to one of these? Yes, I always encourage them. I encourage them to come to our meeting, our monthly meetings, so that they can hear what's going on in our city and keep up with what's going on in the city, in our community. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Okay. Welcome back to our viewers at home. I'm here with Chief Mead from the San Antonio Fire Department. Thank you so much for joining us, Chief. Absolutely. Can you tell us why it's important to inspect high-rise residential structures and what inspectors look for? Well, it's important because with the fire department, our number one priority is safety. And so that all comes down to where the people are and how to make sure that they keep them safe. That's the highest concentration of people that we're gonna have is in these high-rise buildings, whether it's apartments or whether it's commercial. And so we have to make sure that we're keeping those people safe, that they can get in and they can get out and that the structure itself is gonna be safe to work in. Wonderful. And one of the main things we look at is egress. Are they able to get out of their safety? Are the exits marked properly? Are the doors locking appropriately and available to everybody to get out always? Keep the stairwells closed so that they don't fill up with smoke and make sure that the sprinkler systems are right. So those are the main things we look at among the hundreds of things on our list that we'll go through for all of those buildings. So how do inspectors train for something like that? It's a combination of things. All of our inspectors are San Antonio firefighters. So they've already had years of experience actually fighting fires out in the field and a number of them are actually officers, lieutenants and captains. And so they typically have 10 to 20 years experience fighting fire before they even get into fire prevention. In addition to that, we send them to extensive classes and certifications. And then there's OJT, the on-the-job training that they actually have with more experienced inspectors before they go out on their own. So when you're talking about high-rise structures, how many floors does that typically mean? Technically a high-rise structure is seven floors or greater. So we will include some other high-risk things in there but typically it's seven floors and greater that we're talking about on a high-rise structure. Great, thank you so much Chief Mead. We appreciate you being with us tonight. Anytime. And if you have any questions or priorities for the fiscal year 2016 budget, if it relates to fire or some other department at the city, please tell us at saspeakup.com or using the hashtag saspeakup. Thank you. I'm Thea Sederbo, public information officer with the city's government and public affairs department. And I'm here with Vincent Medley, assistant director with the city's animal care services department. Thank you so much for joining us. You're welcome, I'm glad to be here. Wonderful, so we're talking about the priorities for the fiscal year 2016 budget. And one of the questions that our residents at home had is, what can residents do to help control the stray animal population and how can I get my pet fixed? So there's a couple of things and you already touched on it with your second question. The number one thing is to make sure that your animal is sterilized. We look at this as a great benefit in the event. We have a lot of roaming animals in the city of San Antonio and a sterilized animal will not be able to reproduce. In order to get an animal sterilized, your local vet can do it. But also the city in about 22 zip codes, fund, freeze services is not income-based, it is area-based for residents who have dog or cats to get that done free. There is a limited supply, but it generally lasts eight or nine months out of the fiscal year. And that's a real great program to take advantage of that all have your animal fixed, vaccinated. We also have microchips available for them as well. So I think that combination of making sure your animal stays on your property and is not roaming and also getting your animal sterilized is a great way to control the animal population. I adopted my little critter with ACS. I have a cat named Kevin Spacey. I adopted him a year ago. So I know how important it is to adopt an animal rather than if you go to, you know, what are some other places that people get pets and why is ACS a better option for adoption? Yeah, because one of the major things is people, I don't think they realize the cost that we're maximum $81. Whereas a lot of, number one, a lot of times people get animals from their neighbor. That's an unvaccinated animal. It's an unsterilized animal. You get a vaccinated and sterilized animal from Animal Care Services for $81. And that includes all of the shots, the shot records, and a health check from the vet. But then also we have a lot of people that are selling animals, whether it's in the newspaper, whether it's online for two, three, $400, no matter what the breed of animal we have or dog that we have, we still only sell it for that maximum of $81. And we always have discounts, specials, sometimes even as low a cost as you can imagine, $20 to $30. But, and what's important is that our animals are required to be seen by a vet and also to be sterilized. And all of that is rolled into a package that far exceeds what the average organization is giving to or the average person adopting an animal out is giving to their customers. So say that my neighbor does have a litter of puppies and he's trying to adopt them, if you will, to me. What do I tell him? What are some options that he has if his dog just has a litter of puppies and he doesn't know what to do with them? He can purchase a litter permit from the city of San Antonio that will allow him to sell those puppies. However, he's gotta get that litter permit and the sellers permit to go with it in order to do that. Also sterilize your animal. That's number one. We don't want the puppies to be born because number one, for those that are just allowing their animals irresponsibly, you're incurring a major cost because puppies are like babies, they are the most expensive, they require the most attention and they also are the most at risk in terms of sickness and also just death because of the mortality rates. And so what I would tell my neighbor is to get your animal sterilized. Let's prevent the animal from being born to begin with and if they do need resources to reach out to reputable rescue groups who will take animals once you have puppies. But after that happens, please get your animal sterilized. Well, thank you so much, Vincent. We appreciate you sharing with us about ACS and let us know what your priorities for the fiscal year 2016 budget are. You can tell us at saspeakup.com, using Twitter at saspeakup and the hashtag saspeakup. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Okay, so we're actually showing now why this format is so much better and in so much of a more rewarding format. I have here some people with the CITES 311. Correct, Paula Stalker with the 311 Call Center. I'm Laura Davis. I'm the manager of the Call Center. My name is Ruben Guerrero. I'm the president of Eastwood Village Neighborhood Association. And Ruben, you came here tonight to see the budget process, but also to talk to them? Yes, in fact, I was surprised that they had the setup the way they did, which makes it easier for everyone to come and talk to the representatives face-to-face, get information right away, and hopefully pass along any concerns so that you can get an answer right away or you can get something done later on. So it was very good to see that. You could just walk right up to the table and speak to them in person, which is pretty cool. And we're different than talking to them on the telephone. But what did you have to tell them? Well, I wanted to let them know that being the president of the Neighborhood Association, I have my members getting into the habit of calling me to make the 3-1-1 calls. Well, just this week I had a call and it was about a pothole situation. And I told the member, go ahead and call 3-1-1 yourself. Let them know what's going on. Get your problem solved. And sure enough, the next day, the pothole was filled in just in time before the rain. So now they see that they can do it themselves and they can get the documentation. So I'm encouraging all our members to do the same so that the more that they call 3-1-1, the more things will get done in the neighborhood. That's a pretty terrific turnaround time. Yes, we're not going to take all the credit for doing the work. We'll take the credit for getting the information and correctly inputting the work order, but the credit for actually doing the pothole needs to be shared with our transportation and capital improvements that pothold the street repair division. But we certainly enjoy having the interactions and we're very glad that people feel comfortable in calling us and making sure that the city is going to address their concerns one way or the other. You know, and the other thing that I want to add is, you know, we actually rely on people like people in the neighborhoods, they're the ones that are actually walking the streets, driving down the streets and really seeing what's out there. And so we want people to call it in or to go online to our website, www.santantantana.gov forward slash 311. You can actually go online and submit your own request. So whether you call us, whether you do it online, let us know about it, we'll help you with it. That's a very, very nice story. Thank you so much for sharing your positive interaction with us. Thank you. Thank you so much for being there. Thank you. Welcome back. I'm here with Chief Bagnales with the San Antonio Police Department and he's here to tell us a little bit about how the police department plans on addressing crime prevention in fiscal year 2016. For FY 2016, the police department plans are rolling out two programs. One of them is the implementation of our new unit called street crimes unit, which is going to be addressing gang enforcement activities throughout the city and also be a mobile field force for hotspot policing for those areas that are, for those crimes that are trending up throughout the community, we can deploy them to try to make them trend down right as we see the trending line going up. The other initiative is we are planning and doing is expanding the footprint of our downtown bike patrol, so that we are also adding resources to our downtown bike patrol so that they can address all the issues that we're experiencing downtown regarding the homelessness, the panhandling and some of the problems that we're experiencing with the synthetic marijuana downtown area being a hotspot to track those individuals that want to engage in synthetic marijuana. Well, I work downtown and I do walk downtown frequently and I live close to downtown as well, so I know when I see those bike patrol cops it does make me feel safer and I do appreciate everything that they do as well. Whether it's raining outside or it's hot or it's freezing, those bike patrol officers are downtown. But when you were talking about the first initiative that we'll be doing differently in 2016, you were talking earlier about some of the substations and how the issues that each of the substations would address would be specific to that neighborhood, so tell me a little bit more about that. For FY15, we rolled out what we had, what we call our strategic plan, our crime control strategic plan. And that addressed a lot of the quality life issues. Our belief is that we address the quality life issues we try to address crime as well. So FY15, we were addressing panhandling, graffiti, DWI, prostitution and open air drug markets. So for 2016, we're gonna continue those efforts, however we're gonna expand it to include specific problems that are specific to the service areas or for the substations in those areas throughout the community. So each substation commander will be tasked to identify those areas that are specific to this area and we'll apply resources to that. Wonderful, well it sounds like we have a wonderful police force behind us and we're looking forward to the great advancements in 2016 and beyond. So thank you so much, Chief Anialis, we appreciate it. Thank you very much, welcome. Welcome back, I'm here with David Newman, Deputy Director of the Solid Waste Management Department and he's going to tell us a little bit about the organics program in fiscal year 2016. Now, David, organics is not a new program. Some city customers have been subscribing to the organics recycling program for a while so how has the response been and how will this benefit customers? The response on the program as it is now has really been pretty good. It's been a little bit of a challenge because when we asked people if they wanted to subscribe to the organics program, we had to charge them a fee for it but this year, the big change is that that fee is just gonna go away so it's gonna be included in their bill. People really appreciate that, I think people are really gonna like that. So this year, we're going to deliver and it's gonna take about 18 months overall but we'll start delivering to the residents a green cart for their organics and they can put all kinds of stuff in there from leaves and grass clippings, old pizza boxes, shredded paper, organic kind of material and when they do that, we will be able to benefit to San Antonio is that that will help us achieve our recycling goal which is 60%. Right now, about 30% is recycled today which is pretty good, 31% is pretty good but we wanna get to 60% so we got a ways to go. So that green cart gives us another opportunity for that kind of stuff to be recycled and turned into compost. So that's the big benefit, it helps us get to recycling. Along with this program, we're not only giving them this green cart but we're going to change the rate structure so that the actual garbage cart, the price per month will be different if you have a lower cart. It'll actually be less if you have the smaller cart. It'll stay the same if you have the middle of the road size and if you get the larger size, it'll go up a little bit but that's kind of the great thing about it is if you don't produce a lot of garbage, you don't have to pay as much and you can get the smaller cart. If you do produce a lot of garbage, maybe you don't wanna recycle, maybe you don't wanna use the green cart and that's okay but you would probably want the larger cart. So that's the benefit that I think our citizens will see. I think that's great. I've heard a little bit about this program. I think it's called Pay As You Throw and which is a very catchy name, that's very helpful. So how will that roll out if this is approved with the budget on September 10th? How will that pay as you throw a program? What will that look like for residents? Well, today we have several residents that are already on the program. Once it's rolled out, their fee is gonna go away, that extra $3 a month, because that's included and we're going to add onto those existing routes and we're gonna add about 30,000 homes to begin with and then we're gonna evaluate that for six months because we wanna see which cart they go. Are they gonna get the small one? Are they gonna get the middle of the road one? We think we know, but we need this time to make sure so that we order the right carts and then after the sixth month, we roll it out to the rest of the city and we are gonna roll it out to all council districts. But we have to build upon the existing routes. It's the most efficient way for us and it's the fastest way actually. So really, at the end of 18 months, if all goes well there, at the end of 18 months, we will have it to the entire city and for us, that's pretty quick. So what residents will see if they're wondering when they're going to get it, we're going to deliver a flyer to their door. Much like our brush and bulky program, we deliver a flyer that lets them know that we're coming. We're gonna deliver a flyer to their door and that will let them know, hey, we're gonna drop off this green cart and which size cart they want. There'll be instructions on that and how to do it. That's great. It's wonderful that we're turning our solid waste program into more consumer choice and giving residents that option. So it's wonderful. Recycling is a great deal and I think it's wonderful for our city. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, thanks. All right, so if you're listening at home, we're just talking to different departments about what their city priorities are for the proposed budget and what they can offer in 2016. So if you wanna tell us your priorities, visit saspeakup.com, tweet us at saspeakup and use the hashtag saspeakup. Thank you.