 Good evening, everyone. I want to thank you all for coming out to our first community budget hearing after the budget has been presented by our city manager, and so you all being here just shows how much input you want to give, but also how important this is for our community. There are so many people to thank. First, I want to thank all the city staff that is here. They are out in full force here tonight, which is good for all of us, because if you have a question, any question, I am sure that we have the staff member here to answer that question for you. So please do not be shy. I know my district residents will not be shy to ask that question, so please do. Again, my name is Rebecca Villagran. I am the councilwoman here in District 3, and I would like to thank city staff for putting this all together here at St. Margaret Mary's. Thank you for St. Margaret Mary's for opening up this location. I would like to thank our city manager, Cheryl Scully, for being here, and all of the directors, Chief McManus, who is here, Maria Villagomez, our budget director who is here, and one of my council colleagues, Ron Nuremberg, who is here as well, thank you for being here, Ron. Commissioner and District 3 resident, Tommy Ackerson. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate it. Now, first, before I go on, I also want to mention my staff, my city council staff, and I think many of you know them. First, I have my chief of staff, Ruben Lizalde, who is right there, please wave, Ruben. He's right over there, and then I have Chris Villa, constituent services director right over there. Many of you all know and love Chris over there. And then we have in the back Angela Cardona and Salvador Valdez. He's back there, so they are here to help and assist you in any way that you all need, so please, if you haven't met them, please do. Please go and meet them as well. And of course, I will be here, so come up and we can exchange cards, or I can give you my card. We can exchange information to just start building our relationship together. So again, thank you for this coming to our community budget hearing, fiscal year 2014-2015. And you know, San Antonio, we are just a growing city. You all know that. This is no surprise to us. And right now, we're very excited that we just got our triple A bond rating renewed again. This, but two weeks ago, I think it was very important for us as we move forward. Congratulations to the city staff and to all of us together. And on May 27th, the city council got together with our goal setting session. And in there, we identified some priorities that we heard constantly and with frequency in our offices. Now, those priorities that came, that rose to the top, that all of us had common ground on, all of us, were, that we made priorities was street maintenance and drainage. I think we all feel that and see that every single day in every part of town. Another priority was neighborhood integrity and revitalization. What does that mean? That's like code compliance, animal care services, street lighting, sidewalks, and then public safety. Also, we want to make sure that our neighborhoods that we invest so much in are secure and safe. We wanted to make sure with that. And of course, quality of life issues, our libraries, our parks, that those are made priorities in the city budget. And what our city manager presented to us last week at city council on Thursday was something that she and her staff and her directors of all her departments came out and said, this is how we can move forward. Now, I'm very pleased to say that there are no layoffs at all in this budget. And what you will see here is that is about $1.05 billion. So this is a very big budget. And we wanted to make sure that our priorities stayed on track with those really top four, the street maintenance, the drainage, the neighborhoods, public safety, and quality of life. So tonight, we're going to have the participation. You all are going to be able to see a video, go through what's going on, what the layout the city manager has, but then also for you all to give your input. And we're going to have either the city manager say a few remarks right now and then also go through the process of how we will be interacting with each other and then with the whole group later on today. I do want to say thank you all very much for taking time out of your very busy schedules after a long day of work. You're here because you care about your community and you care about San Antonio. And I appreciate that. And it's my honor to serve you. So with that city manager, Cheryl Scully, thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. I'm Cheryl Scully. And thank you for coming tonight. We have a very short video. And this year it's even more abbreviated. It's about five minutes. But it gives you an overview of the proposed budget, which is balanced and represents the spending policy plan for the city for the upcoming budget year. Before we begin, I'm going to ask each of the staff members. We have someone at each table so that they can take notes and talk with you and answer questions. And several of us will also roam around the room. So if you have something specific from one of our major departments, we'll be happy to answer those questions. So staff and some of you are standing around the room. So just wait. Would you just stand and be recognized and identify yourselves? We have a lot of staff here tonight. And they'll be working with you to answer your questions. Thank you all for being here. Let's start with the video. Then I'll have a few other comments about some of the hot topics that we're talking about in the budget presentation for this year. And then we'll move into our table discussions and report out at the end of the meeting what you identify as those things that are most important as residents of the community. So let's start with the video. Increases the street maintenance budget significantly and strikes a balance among the community's many priorities. Does not include layoffs for uniform or civilian employees. These are priorities that you shared with us during the five community budget meetings held in May. More than 400 people attended and worked in small groups to identify the cuts that they would make as well as to add funding to an existing service. Following these community meetings the city council held a day long goal setting session and together agreed on the following budget priorities. To increase funding for streets and drainage develop a multi-year plan to improve and acquire more parks. Enhance the city's investment in education including more library services and adult literacy programs. Maintain and strengthen public safety without crowding out other services like streets, libraries, parks and human services. Enhance animal care, code enforcement and other programs to improve neighborhoods. Keep the economic development toolbox equipped to attract new companies and jobs to San Antonio. Fund and complete a comprehensive plan for the city including policies related to transportation, water, air quality and public spaces. Public safety is by far the largest expense in the city's budget. Two out of every three general fund tax dollars are spent on fire and police protection. The fastest growing driver of public safety costs is the health care benefits the city provides for uniformed employees. Health care for uniformed employees costs the city nearly double what it costs for civilian employees. In the city's recent community survey conducted by an outside pollster 70% of respondents said they want to see uniformed health care benefits brought more in alignment with civilian health care benefits. The fiscal year 2015 proposed budget makes changes to health care benefits for firefighters and police officers saving the city millions of dollars while still continuing to cover 100% of on-the-job injuries and offering better health care benefits than those provided to city civilian employees and better than those offered in other Texas cities. This follows the council's direction to ensure that public safety does not exceed more than 66% of the city's general fund budget. By maintaining affordable public safety costs the city can invest in other priorities. The proposed budget adds an additional $21.8 million for neighborhood street maintenance and drainage projects to the current $52 million in the infrastructure management program that is used for the continuous maintenance of San Antonio infrastructure. It will grow the infrastructure maintenance program by nearly 30% which will significantly increase the number of roads fixed this year. It adds funding for the maintenance and operation of a new library, two new senior centers, and new parks projects approved by voters in the 2012 bond program. It funds the hiring of two city veterinarians to conduct spay-neuter surgeries to keep the city's live release rate of stray animals at 80%. It provides resources for a new program to regulate vacant buildings throughout our city and finally it funds a code enforcement case management system to close cases faster and more transparently. The fiscal year 2015 proposed budget does not include an increased stormwater fee. Instead the city will review a new stormwater rate method and make recommendations to the city council and the community in the 2015 calendar year. The budget also does not include any funding for VIA's streetcar project. There are a few fee increases including an increase in the fee for being transported by EMS and a $1 increase in solid waste fees for garbage collection. So there you have it. The fiscal year 2015 proposed budget balanced no tax rate increase addresses the community's top priorities by keeping public safety costs affordable and does not include any layoffs for uniform or civilian employees. The city budget is the most important policy document the city council will consider in any given year and before the council considers adopting it on September 18th we want to hear from you. There will be five community budget meetings held across the city and two public hearings at the city council chambers. You can learn more at the city's website www.sanantonio.gov. A couple of things about the budget to highlight. The proposed budget does include increases in our street maintenance budget. So this year we're spending about $52 million for what we call our infrastructure management program and that's to repair streets and build sidewalks to repair drainage and to make improvements of an infrastructure nature in the community. This proposed budget includes increased street spending of about $15 million and another $7 million to increase our flood control protection and make drainage improvements throughout the community. And as we have looked at our community survey and talked with you all in the budget meetings that we hosted in May the number one issue that we heard about was more infrastructure management is make sure that we're increasing our street maintenance as well as improving our sidewalks and drainage throughout San Antonio. As a city we maintain 4,000 miles of streets. That's a lot. And so we have lots of choices in terms of where to spend the dollars and it is about priorities. And it's tough for the city council members to make choices because there are so many needs for street improvements throughout the city. But this budget does include increased funding to help us with those things that are most important. And we're opening more library services. I see Gene Brady here tonight who chairs our library board. So as we improve the educational opportunities and our library services that the residents want we need to make sure that we have adequate funding for that. Likewise with our parks. And I think Xavier is here. I see him our parks director. We're adding 123 acres this year alone. So as we open more linear parkways we want to make sure that we are having a quality of life for everyone throughout the community and able to maintain, properly maintain our parks throughout the community. We're also looking at animal care services. Kathy Davis is here. She has one of the toughest jobs in the city because she manages the stray pet population and also works on the live release rate which some of you recall 10 years ago and I see Sally's here as well who chaired our Animal Care Services Board for many years and serves on that board. We were less than 10% on our live release rate and now we have that up to 80%. And there would you agree there are still too many stray animals in the community? Yes, I see you shaking your head. So we're continuing to invest in that area because that affects the quality of life as well. So I want to spend just a couple of minutes before we get into the table discussion to maybe talk about the elephant in the room. That is our public safety costs and why we're studying what we are studying over the past year. So if, are the slides up? Am I pointing this here? Here? Okay, maybe I'll ask you to advance it. So public safety, when we had our May goal setting session with the city council, as you heard in the video, our police and fire departments represent two thirds of the general fund budget. And the general fund is that portion of the budget that's supported by sales tax, property tax, our CPS revenues. Since the city residents are owners of CPS, as residents and owners, we're entitled to a return on investment. And if it were a private company, they'd be paying taxes. So the payment CPS makes to the city is a return on investment. And Marion G is sitting here. He's the utilities director. And he works with CPS on their rates and their debt financings and oversees both SAWS and CPS from a rate perspective. So the council serves as somewhat the public utilities commission. They make those kinds of decisions and then in return both SAWS and CPS make a payment to the city. Those are the revenue sources in the general fund and they support what you'd consider basic city services, police and fire, parks and recreation, street maintenance, animal care services, the municipal courts, our health department, social services throughout the city, and the general administration of the city, human resources, finance, accounting, those very basic support services that allow the operating departments to do their job. In the general fund, our total city budget is 2.4 billion. And it includes three areas. First, the general fund. That part that I was talking about supported by taxes and our CPS revenues, 1 billion. And then the other two parts of the budget are restricted funds as well as that would be, for example, garbage collection. So our solid waste department, the fees that we pay as single family residential residents in the community, those fees pay for garbage collection. And those fees can't be used to support general fund activities, or the airport. Revenues that are generated at the airport by the airlines and by those who use the airport, those revenues stay with the airport. And then the other one-third of our budget is our capital construction. The voter-approved bond program as well as capital improvements for the convention center or at the airport, the consolidated car rental facility. And, of course, that debt service is supported by the airport. In the general fund, 1 billion of the 2.4 billion budget, 2-thirds of that is for our public safety. And that is, of course, a core service of the city. 2-thirds of the budget. So what the council said at the goal setting session was, let's make sure that we stay under that 66 percent. Let's stay within that and not let it grow at an amount above that 66 percent because when that happens, then that means we have to cut street maintenance, we have to cut parks, we have to cut libraries, we have to cut the human services. And the expenses of those two departments has grown faster than our revenue growth over the past five years. In fact, public safety is now consuming 66 percent of the budget and it's grown as a percentage of the budget by 10 percent over the past five years and our expenses are growing at a faster rate. So the council said keep those costs at 66 percent. We're not recommending any reductions. In fact, over the past eight years we have increased the number of personnel in our police and fire departments by almost 500 staff. We've added almost 500 police officers and firefighters over the past eight years. We've reduced our civilian personnel by 1200 staff. All through attrition, no layoffs, but we've reduced our civilian workforce and we're trying to constantly look at ways that we can work smarter, provide better service delivery, be better about how we're going about our business of servicing the residents of the community and do the very best that we can. As a part of examining public safety, we looked at what the cost are within that department and healthcare is a huge part of that. The expenses for public safety personnel have grown tremendously. Over the past three years, we've seen an average increase annually of our claims expense of 20 percent. Whereas in the civilian side of the budget, the percentage increases much, much less. And they have a different healthcare plan than our civilian personnel. And so about a year ago the mayor and council appointed a task force to examine pension and healthcare costs. And what we're doing in San Antonio is really no different than what's being looked at and studied by cities across the country. In fact, this weekend, the Dallas city budget was presented and made public and they're actually looking at reducing the number of public safety personnel this year so that they don't have to cut libraries and parks and animal care services. We are not in that position, but we need to make changes. And so my proposed budget does include changes to the healthcare coverage. Now, we're not talking about any injuries on the job or anyone who's injured in the line of duty. What we're talking about is general family healthcare. And we're asking our public safety personnel to participate in the cost of healthcare, which we think is reasonable. So we had a task force. There were 13 members. There was labor representation. There were also representatives from the community who work in this field and are experts on healthcare and pension. And they had a number of meetings met for a total of over 30 hours discussing in great detail healthcare costs. And it's complicated material. Very complicated. Next slide. And so you see here is the budget where we spend 66% on public safety, and infrastructure, parks and recreation. Then all these other departments are in that one third. So if public safety grows to be a greater and greater percentage of the general fund, you see what happens. It squeezes out or crowds out those other services that you all think are important. I spoke with several of you before the meeting started and you were asking about sidewalk construction or animal care services or ensuring that our libraries and our parks are well maintained because that's a part of quality of life as well. So those are all the other services and you can see all those colors of the other city activities. Okay? Here's the percentage of healthcare costs paid by employees just nationally so you can take a look at these numbers. On a national average employees contribute about 43% of the total cost of healthcare. Our civilians contribute about 30% of the total cost. That's your premiums, your out-of-pockets, your deductibles and our own uniform employees pay about 9% of that total cost. Now, in other major cities in Texas, the civilian and uniform healthcare are identical. Now, you might say, well, maybe there should be a little bit different. Maybe it should be a little bit more. And on the next slide you can see number of dependents. Now what this means is how many people are covered under per employee. The national average here is about 1.2 dependents. Peer cities is 1.1. You can see in Dallas, San Antonio is 1.2 for our civilian employees, but we have twice as many city of San Antonio uniform dependents. And so when you sit down perhaps once a year with your family and say, okay, how do we want to go about healthcare for the year? We both are employed. Who has the better healthcare plan? You can see it's an easy answer for our uniform personnel because the city covers such a high percentage of the cost. On the next slide you'll see that here's how much we spend per civilian at the top of the page. The city is spending per civilian employee about $7,000 a year. This was 2013 costs and for our uniform personnel we're paying nearly $13,000 per uniform for active healthcare. And then you can see the other cities in Texas in how much we're spending, how much they are spending, and you can see that ours is so much higher. So this whole effort in conversation is about how do we manage our costs? How do we ask and encourage our employees to participate in the cost of healthcare? Next slide. Here's total compensation so you can see where our employees fit as compared to other cities. Austin being on the far left on the second bar here, San Antonio, total compensation, and then the other cities in Texas. So from a salary, special pay perspective, as well as benefits, we're up there at the top. This is for police and this one happens to be police. Okay. And on the next slide and here's our fire. So you can see we're up there at the top on both of these in terms of total compensation. On the next slide we good? One more? Or that's it. Okay. So what we're working at is something that is fair. We highly regard the work of our public safety personnel in their chosen field. This is what they do and they should be compensated well. They are. What we're asking for is their participation in the cost of healthcare. And I think we all know that everyone is there a person in the room that doesn't contribute toward the cost of healthcare for their family. Everyone does and we want them to participate in that cost. It's a major cost driver and what we're talking about in terms of this proposed budget is if we get their participation at a level that's better than our civilian employees but not where it's at today we're estimating that we could save $10 to $15 million a year. So these are big numbers in the budget and important so that we don't have to cut those other essential services that you all care a lot about and want to see us do more of. It is complicated. We are in collective bargaining discussions with our police personnel right now. The fire union has not agreed to come to the table and negotiate but we're hopeful and we encourage them to do that that they will do that. So this is what we're working on, identifying those major cost drivers in the budget managing our cost to the best of our abilities and presenting our elected officials, our city council members with the best information and recommendations that we can to manage our costs going forward for the city so that we have a balance in the community that we have a balance of services provided in the best way possible. So tonight what we're asking you to do is help us in this process to learn a little bit more about our budget, what's included, how we go about our budgeting and then to give us feedback about what's most important to you. Maria Villagomas is going to give you a couple of instructions. We'll ask you to work in your table discussions and then once you conclude your work we'll ask you to report out, identify a person at your table that will report out the consensus of your conversation this evening that will give us input. We'll share whatever we receive tonight from you all with not only the council members who are here but with the entire city council so that they'll have a chance to hear more about what you would like to see included in the budget. Maria. Thank you Cheryl. Well now that you learn a little bit about the proposed budget included in the city's proposed 2015 budget what we're going to ask you to do is tell us what you think about this proposal. So at your tables you have a facilitator that is going to help you with this exercise and we're asking you for two questions. The first question is for you to tell us what are those, okay is that better? I'm sorry let me rewind. So now that you learn a little bit about the 2015 we're going to ask you a couple of questions so we know what you think about this proposal. So at your table there's a facilitator city representative that will assist you with this exercise and we're asking you for two questions. The first question is if you can identify up to three programs that you support in the budget that you don't want to see any changes made. So for instance if you're in agreement with the amount of dollars that we have allocated to the street maintenance program then perhaps that's one of the priorities that you want to tell the city council that you don't want to see any changes. So if you can provide us up to three of those. The second part of the exercise is perhaps if there's a program that you were hoping to see increase in the budget or add to the budget that is not currently included in our proposal we also want to know what that is. So since the budget is balanced already presented to the council if for instance you want to add more to parks or to the libraries we're going to ask you to identify an area that we can review so we can continue to keep the budget balanced. So there are handouts at your table like the one that I'm holding on my hand right now that there's more information about the general fund budget. There's also some attachments that will include more detail explanation on some of the areas like the city transfers non-departmental etc. So we're going to give you 30 minutes to do this exercise. We're also asking you to identify a spokesperson for each of your tables that we can go back and hear from them what are the priorities of each of the tables. So we'll start now it's 7.15 and we'll have 30 minutes for this exercise. Thank you. So the tonight's event after our city manager has proposed the city budget she presented it to the city council members us on Thursday and it's a compilation of work that she's been doing with her staff with the department directors but then also we had five community meetings that now cast those apart prior to the budget presentation all of that input and she presented a budget for us on Thursday August 7th and now this is our first post budget presentation and so now our residents today get to see the numbers, get to see where we are and give some more community input today so this is where we are right now. Fantastic. How can people learn more about this and what's the next step after this process? So what people can do to learn more about this is go online to find out what it is that was presented the PowerPoint presentation at San Antonio.gov I'm sure you have a link on now cast and then what you can also do is to participate in one of the community hearings to there about four more that need to take place, that will take place and then we have some public hearings that will take place at the city council chambers so people can come give their voice there at that location at the public hearings or they can call and email their city council members and be there when the city council gets to adopt it in September September 17th is the day that city council will go forward and adopt it but even before then council members will be having budget work sessions where we will really get into the nitty gritty of what's in each department and ask the questions that we need to ask and those start for the council members starting tomorrow actually. So that goes into my next question how people can put input in if they weren't here tonight. They can email, they can make phone calls to our offices and they can just get in touch with us that way to give that input that they'd like to. What's the most important issue to you? So one the important issues we have a lot of it's a big city and we have a $1.05 billion budget and the important issues for me are to make sure that those main priorities of the residents which I hear every day are part of the top tiers of our budget and that is our street maintenance our drainage our neighborhoods to maintain the integrity of the neighborhoods and also neighborhood revitalization and then quality of life meaning let's look at our parks, our libraries our animal control services and then also public safety to maintain safe neighborhoods a safe city and that's very important for all of us. All of those combined are kind of my top issues here in the city. Thank you for speaking with us today. Absolutely, thank you all for being here. I appreciate it. Yes, thank you. All right, well I would like for you all to start closing up your conversations if you would. I know we have a $1.05 billion budget in 30 minutes to discuss everything right now. We could do this a much longer and believe me city staff has worked an entire month on this budget and longer so we're going to go ahead and have one person reporting out from each table. We ask that you be audible brief and concise and I heard that we have a volunteer already. Table 6 has volunteered to go first. Thank you for being so proactive and please. And I ask that we all let's pay attention and respect what they're sharing. Thank you very much. I represent Table 6. Hello. And we volunteer just to get it over with. Okay. Here at Table 6 we decided to support and no change on the street maintenance. Sidewalk maintenance. Residential street lighting we feel those are deterrents. Parks libraries and we'd like to extend the hours of the libraries that are current to what they were before before they were cut. We also would like to support domestic violence unit. If it's there we don't want it cut it's something that is needed in our city across the board doesn't matter what district you're in what payback it is needed. Police and fire I don't know what that means. We support them. Add or changes our add or changes would be the library fees and fines. We would like them those fees to stay in the library. So go back into the library that would save some money to our budget. We would also like to resell used equipment when upgrading that goes according to furniture whether it's furniture bleachers etc. Anything computers like code compliance the laptops resell them. Also we have a goal to have 3 million in residential street lighting starting with district 5 and any other districts that really have been neglected. We would also like to add training for domestic violence team across the board also. Our cuts are reduced. We decided we'd like to reduce police dependence on insurance. I didn't decide that so don't look at me. Cut bonuses in city administration and we would once again ask to cap a pay on executive pay for sitting employees. Thank you very much table 6. Okay. Yes table 12. Good evening. Testing testing million. Can you hear me? Good. At our table we decided that what we wanted to keep the same would be anything having to do with library services. We do not want to see any reductions whatsoever in services related to domestic violence. We want that to be left alone and protected. We want our parks everything about our parks to be left alone as well. The changes and additions we proposed at our table are $3 million to be added for residential street lighting to reduce executive pay to increase taxes at one half in property taxes to get commercial properties to their owners to pay their fair share in terms of taxes because so many of them don't pay their fair share they get away with it. They sue the county and nobody can afford the legal fees like corporate people can and so they get away with not having to pay and we need that money coming into our city so they need to pay their fair share from their multi-billion dollar profits. Group supports the city manager's proposal to align uniform benefits with civilian health care benefits and we would like to see more investment in streets and sidewalks at about $15 million to fix our streets and sidewalks because streets are in trouble they have a lot of potholes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Up here, table two. Good evening. Okay. Table two. We had several people that left so it doesn't look like the library took over the table. I have a lot of friends but we agreed that we agreed with the budget as is with the increase in streets and drainage and also we do not want them when they negotiate with the police the domestic violence unit because it's very important in San Antonio and we do want to we did agree with the I can't read his writing I'm sorry we're in line with the police and our benefits would be in line with the civilians we are increasing our funds if there's any many left over we would like because this is a popular thing I went to the other budget hearings and people feel very strongly that maybe their library hours should be extended because a lot of families the only time they can go is in the evening so we would like if any money is available that it go there and if there's any left over well I don't know if there's going to be so I won't even go there but essentially we agree with the streets and drainage the maintaining the making the police and fire higher benefits equivalent with the other civilians so that's it thank you very much ok now we have table table number one thank you at table number one there were three areas that we very strongly supported one was street maintenance Mrs. Scully mentioned that we had 4,000 miles of streets in San Antonio we need to support those streets we need to take care of that take care of the potholes it's a very strong item number one item number two was the park system we've got 244 parks in San Antonio almost 15,000 park land we need to support what we've got we need to protect and preserve that very strongly the third item was animal care with there are only 36 officers in animal care to look out for our dogs and cats on 4,000 miles of streets we need to take care of that situation as soon as possible it needs to be funded very strongly the change we recommended one of the items that got the most support was residential street lighting and we recommend that perhaps that might be increased by about three million dollars a year and the suggestion was that that fund might come from the city attorney's office the complaint was that we spend too much money in hiring outside highly paid legal consultants instead of using our own staff here so that was our recommendation thank you very much thank you Mr Bartlett alright the next table okay we're going to go for seven and then eight alright we're from table seven our additions three million in street lights improvements in district three and district five and energy efficiency we support solid way services definitely street and sidewalk improvements and pre-k for SA education protect our natural resources definitely I feel like every day we deprive earth of its natural resources and that's what we need to survive here we can't even live on earth we can't have these conversations unless we recycle you know don't use too much water don't be in the shower forever don't water the grass when it's like blazing hot outside okay definitely don't waste food protect everything that we have here forever reductions a million and a half in H park hemisphere park we feel like there doesn't need to be any changes made to the park it's fine the way it is it's beautiful still four million dollars in city attorney office IT overhead upper management a reduction in fleet stop requiring employees to put miles of vehicles and lastly reduce mayor and council budget by 2.1 million dollars and that's it thank you all right table eight please all right well we want to first start off and thank everybody for coming out tonight and putting their input and thanking the city for providing a balanced budget for the citizens of san Antonio and with that being said we're going to look at the programs that we support we really support animal care funding for libraries especially the technological funding parks we really appreciate the fitness programs that are being implemented here in the city of san Antonio economic incentives to attract new businesses the vacant building ordinance we're really excited to see what happens with that in the future recycling of course we really like that and domestic violence unit we definitely want to keep the support for that as well now this is what we would like to see more of we would like to see more spain neuter clinics especially for mixed breeds aggressive breeds we'd like to see city council pay increase we would also see like to have more cyclists support such as bike lanes signage driver education as well as cyclists education and how to pay for this increased funding so we would like more aggressive collection of invoices penalties and fines we would we would also like to see perhaps in the future 1% property tax increase so we asked around and we did the math and so if we were to raise the property tax by 1 cent that would add an extra 7.5 million dollars to the budget and it would only average about an extra 14 dollars per household per year so it's pretty reasonable on something that we can definitely look into in the future as well as higher fees for Bexar County communities that use city solid waste facilities but do not practice recycling so we want to be more stringent with that and definitely reiterate the importance of recycling and creating a better community thank you table 8 next okay over here uh oh table 4 already standing up alright here we go table 4 alright hello everybody so our table of the things we really really wanted to keep was the sidewalks for handicaps and seniors and uh Janie who's behind our sign here was really instrumental in making sure that that was illustrated for our group and also to keep our infrastructure moving forward so folks really like to see that um the second thing would be our the libraries and the adult literacy program in the libraries along with the computers Mary was instrumental in that to make sure that we knew about the computers that are in there and we want to make sure that we know that we have access to that uh at our libraries the third we got kind of an A and B on that first being the code compliance folks with the uh technology upgrades and everything for them to make sure that they can do their job uh effectively in the second we see you over there Kathy animal care as well keeping that budget so let's go ahead and flip one of the things we wanted to add was I want to hit you street lighting street lighting safety the benefit to a decrease in drugs and prostitution and overall crime um we definitely wanted to see that that added to the budget and the pay for it uh we talked that we did talk a little bit about the executive pay and a little bit about property tax though what we kind of talked about was the fund balance reserve though to pay for it so that is table four thank you table four we're gonna move on to this table back here uh table five good evening everyone my name is Javier Murillo and I'm here for this group uh I do like your budget it's you know balanced by law that's great um but we have a few suggestions here uh what we like in the budget is um parks and public works um it's an alignment you know we like that uh paid control uh you know pays off the street I mean don't kill them but I know you guys open another center but we need faster response to pick them up you know uh we can be holding on for days for you guys um libraries um it's great what you guys been doing with the libraries uh keep the funding uh the same level um on the only form employees uh for them to pay a little bit more you know maybe a couple of percentage three percentage uh more into it um and the needs um for our city is uh we need more compliance more aggressive co-compliance you know people parking in their yards uh businesses uh not paying over the graffiti making our neighborhoods you know look you know like a crime-ridden area um street maintenance we need uh some streets we need you know badly maintenance uh in lights um the one one of the reasons that we're here my wife and I is uh the challenge fees there used to be free then it went to 250 now it's 400 one day uh we're not going to be able to afford it and there's going to be a lot of kids out there in the street that now have nowhere to go because their parents work until six o'clock and a lot of those people they're young people they don't boat they don't have time to be here but my wife and I now it's $400 so we thank God we have the money to pay but a lot of people don't and our city has a lot of children and they're the future um and uh possible cuts is uh somebody suggested some mansion that's just sitting somewhere in town that we're not doing anything with it uh sell it or lease it or do something with it some properties also are just sitting you know we need to get rid of them or or random lease them make some money with them and maybe a little tax increase to fund core programs that benefit our children I see this growing you know our children are not going anywhere they're staying here thank you next table table three so our table had a lot of discussion and I would say we probably didn't reach consensus on very many things but we had a lot of really great discussion I think our biggest takeaway was that most of the issues that were raised were things that could not really we couldn't solve them in this 30 minute session but some really good discussions and up here are some of the points that we talked about so we want to support um I'm actually going to skip down some members wanted to support a city council increase also supporting code compliance public safety including police and fire um the budgets for parks and libraries and the domestic violence um unit of the police department and then the way that one way that was proposed to pay for some of these things was to be a small tax increase and also an increase in street lights thank you thank you next table alright I think I got it well um table nine had two citizens here Chuck and Betty and the first thing we talked about was they liked about the budget um the most passionate about was public safety don't cut it they don't want to lose any police or fire um as far as the health care they were I don't know if they had enough time to really vet that out but they definitely don't want to lose any police and fire personnel in terms of changes they did want to see more code enforcement more money more staff he was even trying to chuck chopping away money at each of the programs and to the fitness initiatives less for Hemisphere Park redevelopment I think we probably need to give him another 30 or 40 minutes and he'll probably he'll balance it out for us but that was their priorities today so thank you now I believe we have all of the tables reported in I want to thank you all for participating today um we will be here some will be here afterwards to answer any specific questions for you and again all of these all of your comments will be collected and we will have them available for you all too next Wednesday we'll have them available for you all and again on your table there should be other information about the next community hearings as well as the public hearing that will be taking place the city council will be voting on this September 17th I'm sorry September 18th at city council chambers I do want to share just a couple of announcements really quickly first I also want to give district 3 residents in the area some kudos because I was I know one of the things that came out a lot was animal care services and one thing that has happened this fiscal year the start of this 2014 fiscal year through June district 3 has had about 2100 the city that's more than any other in the city which shows two things one the residents you all are getting educated about the issue and two when you make the opportunity available you are taking advantage of it so we're going to continue with that as well so thank you all for making that a priority because we're knocking in on that number here and making it safer here for our neighborhoods with the stray animal population so congratulations have a good night thank you all and we'll see you soon thank you