 Hi, I'm Charlotte Ann Lucas with Nowcast SA and we are coming to you live from the Trevino Senior Center in District 6 in San Antonio and we also have council people here from District 6 and District 7, Ray Lopez and Chris Medina and we have an open house going on here behind me where people are coming in to do the SA speak up and add their two cents about the fiscal 2016 San Antonio City budget. Right now let's take a break and look at the video about the budget. Hello, I'm City Manager Cheryl Scully. The fiscal year 2016 proposed budget is $2.5 billion and reflects policy direction from the Mayor and City Council and valuable input from residents on the community's priorities. The proposed budget reduces the city's property tax rate, increases our investment in streets, sidewalks and drainage, and maintains the public safety budget within 66 percent of the general fund. Over the next few weeks with valuable input from the community the City Council will carefully consider the proposed budget before its adoption on September 10. We appreciate your interest in the fiscal year 2016 budget and for your shared commitment to making San Antonio a diverse dynamic and healthy community for you and your family. We asked you to speak up San Antonio and you did. In meetups and online you told us what was important to you. I love that I don't have to wait forever at a stoplight. I really appreciate the Marina Sapo Library Service because it meets my direct needs. Truly both. Coders fortunate because it applies. I love knowing that the plants and the trees that we plant are going to be well for generations to come. The City of San Antonio's fiscal year 2016 proposed budget reflects a community that prioritizes lower property tax rates, better streets and sidewalks, and an affordable balance between public safety and other priorities such as parks, libraries, animal care and human services. The proposed budget makes a big investment in your streets. As our population continues to grow we will have to be able to move a larger population from point A to point B. 23 million is added for street maintenance increasing the streets budget from 41 million to 64 million. 10 million more is added for sidewalk improvements and additional 12 million is proposed in new drainage improvements to reduce flooding across San Antonio. The proposed budget includes funding for the operation of two new senior centers, two new libraries and a new spay and neuter surgery clinic to help reduce the number of stray animals in the city and increase adoption. Animal care services helps pets find homes. Funding for the maintenance and security of new greenways and parks completed through the 2012 bond program is also included. We see kids and adults outplaying together all the time. All of this is proposed while also reducing the city's property tax rate saving taxpayers 6.1 million next year. By far the biggest portion of the general fund budget is public safety. The proposed budget keeps the public safety spending below 66 percent of the general fund. Funds are added for new public safety. Oh it works. Offended technology and equipment for police officers and firefighters and several dozen new firefighters and police officers will be hired to serve the area formerly known as city south. Before the budget goes to the city council for approval on September 10th we want to hear from you. Please join us for one of our five open house nights and let us know what you think. And for the first time if you can't actually make it to the open house you can stop in virtually through your computer or smartphone. Visit www.saspeakup.com or join the social conversation with hashtag saspeakup. San Antonio thank you for speaking up. Are we good. Hi everybody. Are we all doing good. Well obviously the rest of you the rest of the folks that are on their way may be stuck in traffic somewhere but we're not stuck in traffic and that's a good thing. Thank you very much for being here this evening. My name is Ray Lopez. I'm the city councilman here in district six. Although this is a district six and a district seven joint budget hearing where we're going to ask for your commentary. We want to listen in here and take action on those things that are important to you and chances are if they're important to you they're important to us. But let me just take a point of personal privileges if I can councilman. How many of you have never been in this building before. Oh a few I thought I figured everybody had been in here before. This building is a little bit over four years old. It was one of those budget items when I first got on council in 2009 that the community said very loud and clear we needed to spend more money on senior services. This clearly is an outcome of that commitment that we made to seniors back in 2009. We built this hopefully hoping that we would get about 300 members that would come in here in the first six months and we could build it up to about 300 members. We figured that'll be success right. That'll be good enough. It's a pretty big facility and it'll be money well spent. Well I can tell you where's Dean. Have we broken 7000 yet Dean. All I know is that we are this this July we were here celebrating our fourth year in existence and we were at about 7500. 7500 seniors. We thought 300 was going to be good. That and that means and that includes the the the extension that we did. We realized real quickly that we were running out of space so we we got a few thousand square feet in that direction and then most of you know and I won't steal councilman Dean's thunder but I'm sure he'll talk a little bit about his senior center that's not far from here. So the the growth that we're experiencing here a lot of people say there's a lot of growth in San Antonio and it's a lot of new people coming to San Antonio. A lot of young people come to San Antonio. Not necessarily true. There's a lot of us that are young at heart as well coming to San Antonio but it's a great place to be. So with that our hope tonight most of you that have gone to these before you saw big tables we sit around we'd all write down a list of things that we liked and then we'd have a discussion around them. We did it a little bit differently this time the theme being speak up go to any table let them know what it is that you specifically want. All of these are different departments go online or grab me by the year like many of you have done on many many occasions grab me by the year and tell me what is it's important to you we will then turn around and make that come to fruition via the budget. So with no further ado councilman Medina if you'd like to come up and say a few words. Yeah absolutely thank you councilman Lopez. I'm district seven city councilman Chris Medina and it certainly is my privilege to help co-host tonight's speak up budget event here at the Lopez Center. Councilman Lopez is exactly right in fact this center was the model and the idea for us to go and have one built in district seven over at the Doris Griffin Center and I know a lot of folks have visited there as well and and really just a model facility to allow and to have for our seniors to enjoy and to really to make use of and just really testament to your leadership councilman Lopez and the vision that you have for your seniors and your entire community but councilman Lopez is right tonight's event is about hearing from you all the folks in our community whether you're from district six district seven or points across the city we want to make sure that we have the input received from you all and as well as city staff that's here tonight and I know we're in full force tonight I see so many city department heads and I want to thank them for being out here because it shows their commitment and care to making sure that we we do listen to our constituents and our residents that provide us the input and feedback that we all need so that we construct and have a budget that reflects your values and reflects all our values so with that I'd like to hand it over to our chief finance chief financial officer who kind of gives us the okay and blessing to make sure that we can get some of the things done that we want to see in our budget and that's Ben Gorsel thank you so much Ben well good evening first just want to say thank you for coming out this evening as both council members I think have summed up very well what we're really looking for is to get your feedback and your input on our FY 2016 proposed budget I do want to take a minute to also thank all of the departmental representatives here you've got booths all around the room here representing all of the major departments if you've done this in the past you know that typically as the councilman said we would have tables and it would be more of a formal presentation we wanted to do something different this year do more of an open house format really get into more of a dialogue with you all so I really encourage you to go around the room visit with the department heads and their representatives ask questions give us your feedback that's probably the most important thing for us is really walk away from today I'm really hearing from you all in terms of what is important what you like that you've seen in the proposed budget maybe you maybe something you'd like us to change something you'd like us to consider so please take the time to do that to go around the room and provide us your input you can do that in several different formats you can talk to the staff directly there are I believe iPads in the back of the room here that you can utilize computers or paper forms if you want to do it that way but certainly we really want to get your feedback in addition to that we have one more open house tomorrow at harbour park at 6 p.m. as well and then we have one public hearing the city council chambers municipal plaza downtown on september 2nd at 6 p.m. as well so if you know anyone else that wasn't able to make it tonight they can certainly go to either one of those events and give us their feedback and then lastly I'll mention if they can't do that there's another opportunity this year we are doing where you can give your input virtually you can go to saspeakup.com from a smartphone or computer and they can provide their input there as well so again thank you for being here really look forward to receiving your feedback so thank you again and let me turn it back over to councilman Lopez well again I think we got the instructions on how we're going to do this and specificity is important to say I want to park is a great thing we want to hear that but if you have a location or a specific area tell us about it if you have any work that needs to be done on a specific road then you say road improvement specifically wet road let us know specifically what you want us to do because we want to be able to take action on those things that are important in our community so with that I'll close it I'm going to stick around I know the councilman is as well if you have any questions don't hesitate many of you have already done it I'll grab you by the arm pull me off to the side and give me that two or three things that are very specifically important to you so with that welcome thank you for being here and please participate thank you staff will library service because it meets my direct needs I need to use the internet a lot to learn how to make a resume and how to do applications for job and stuff so they really help me because I know that there are people here that can help me if I get stuck with something I know that when I have a question of anything and I can see that they're making a difference in people's lives we're back again and I have someone with me from one of the most important departments in the city I'm Anthony Chukudulwai and your department transportation and capital improvements transportation and capital improvements and that covers everything from the covers everything from streets drainage transportation infrastructure so we handle both all maintenance for the city of San Antonio as it relates to infrastructure okay all right so this is the person who's ultimately going to be responsible as you're out here walking around and you'd like to really become a rock star tonight come on over here in front of the camera get an opportunity to write down what it is that you would that your priorities are in English or in Spanish and get an opportunity to be on on Facebook and all those great media outlets that we have available so come on up and share share your ideas please thank you so I have a really interesting question for you you know and we know that San Antonio is is trying to be a fit city and there is actually such a thing as a fit city index which shows you like the Dow Jones industrial index that we don't want to talk about today but the fit city index that talks about how high or how low we are on on these things so how does the San Antonio's budget address that fit city index so the the American fit city index is based on several categories that include health behavior chronic chronic health problems recreational facilities as well as the built environment the 2016 budget as proposed includes major investments in sidewalk infrastructure the budget includes 50 million dollars for new sidewalks improvements across the city we're already working across our community looking at the needs that we have in the community especially in those areas that are close to elementary schools in San Antonio so basically you're talking about the sidewalks helping people actually walk making the city more walkable and when a city is more walkable it has a higher higher rating on the fit index right absolutely because we want to have a more walkable community that encourages walkability and also for people to get out out of their homes because we have a higher rate of obesity in San Antonio so this will help us have a more walkable community and so next year we have like I said we're investing over 50 million dollars which is over 70 percent more than we had this year so it's a big it's a very big investment 70 percent more that's that's getting close to double absolutely that's amazing that's amazing um and all of those will go toward that's that huge new sidewalks terrific and part of what we saw in the beginning of the essay speak up campaign was people coming out and saying the most important thing to them was public safety and they meant sidewalks streets and drainage so this is a response so the budget that's developed the proposed budget reflects the input that we've gotten from the community over this time period and so the city's council and the city manager are making this investment in recognition of what people have told us that is important to them okay okay so we're going to raise our fit index and hopefully we'll raise our own fitness okay thank you so much for taking the time okay truly both code enforcement and code compliance it really is important that we have enforcement those things because it's actually what actually makes a neighborhood a pure attractiveness i'm here with max max you're a resident of what district district seven district seven and um you came to this open house to talk about what um i believe it's important for the safety of the children that they have adequate sidewalks the drainage has been addressed in our area very well and it's been a great endeavor by chris medina to beautify the wood and gateway district but there's still some areas that do need some attention um the lighting has been improved it's been really wonderful work that he's been doing the past few years since he's been in office but we do need some additional sidewalks in some key areas and that's what i came to address this evening when when the essay speak up campaign began this year um a lot of people actually said they really felt like the number one priority was the public safety of children seniors everybody on sidewalks streets and drainage and and in fact um i i don't know if you you heard them say earlier that they have increased the funding um from its the original proposal for for dramatically uh increasing the funding over last year for sidewalks and for streets yes i spoke to anthony for a little while and he was very instrumental in letting me know and how everything was and um how they how they put together the departments to get things moving forward in a bigger direction for all the neighborhoods around the city and it was very comforting to hear that so it was beautiful so i appreciate being here and and you feel like um they're listening yes i do for for a change yes i do i do there's a while where i felt like we were ignored and um but the people also they have to step up and come out and come to these events you know you can't do this sitting at home from your armchair and complaining on the on facebook well you must come out and be a part of the the situation so that's what i was going to say um talk to your neighbors from here you're talking speak to them yes uh westwood lawn avenue i'm right over in the area i've got a little box out front where you can get get a book and take a book and give one back my name is max westwood lawn um 36 come out if you ever need to speak to me um i'm available anytime max edman and i will give you information if you need it so thank you so much thank you so i'm here with chief hood from the san antonio fire department and um this is your what fourth open house the open house that we've done uh quite a few seems like at least four or five yes and so you're i just want to say that anybody who comes to these open houses they can walk up to the the fire department table and actually talk to you and raise questions directly with you absolutely it's a wonderful time for us to get out and meet the community and answer some of those questions or concerns that they may have well i have a question for you um and it's something that i don't know the answer to what is the mobile integrated healthcare program and how does it help people uh mobile integrated health care is basically a form of community care medicine uh we have patients or citizens here that call us sometimes 10 to 12 times a year on average and what that does it ties up responses so um these patients or people that we've identified we identified about 200 of them they were calling 911 about 4 000 times so that slows the response times down for everyone else in the system there may be a better way for us to to navigate them through the healthcare system instead of taking them to the hospital every time we call so what we have done we've taken paramedics taking them from the field train them in community paramedicine and they are assigned these customers that continue to call us to help them navigate whether it's doctor's appointments medications meals on wheels things that they were calling 911 for than aren't traditional for us to take care of so by us doing that we reduce those calls about 75 percent to the police department and about 65 percent when they call a fire department so it's making us more efficient making us uh be available for actual emergencies and making the quality of care for these customers that we have making their experiences better with the 911 system and the medical interventions with the system so that's why it's integrated between the hospitals the fire department and the community partners to make sure that our citizens have the best possible outcomes when they do have to call 911 that's that's absolutely fascinating program how how old is this it's a pilot that we've done for six months we're actually going for full funding in october so we'll be adding positions so we will be able to do this on a full-term basis that's uh that's just a terrific use of resources and in fact right now your much of the fire department's time is is not spent fighting fires it's spent on on medical emergency well we're a fire-based emergency medical system about 81 of our calls and we run about 350 000 you know responses a year uh the majority of those are medical emergency calls car wrecks heart attacks that's what we do so the fires are not as frequent as they used to be years ago but that is a trend for most metropolitan fire departments in the country that the bulk of our work is in emergency medical services so this is a way for us to be more efficient with the resources that we have and take advantage of those resources that you do have and put them put them to work in the community wow that sounds like a terrific program thank you so much for taking the time i'm really take care i love my job because not only my okay so yeah i'm back live now with councilman ray Lopez um and councilman talk to me a little bit about the process here this is um the fourth or fifth night of open house but it's not over right no it isn't over as a matter of fact oh this is my i believe my seventh city budget and every year we seem to do it a little bit differently but every year there's always that i didn't get a chance to really get my very very specific question concern or issue this process is really allowing individuals to speak up and talk specifically about what they want either on their street in their neighborhood or in their very immediate area and it's working out quite well for us so we're real anxious to continue this process especially because it's been working well and in the beginning of this this process this year in june um according to the tallies that essay speak up was was tallying the responses that people had and and people overwhelmingly said um public safety was important to them and when they say public safety they were talking about streets sidewalks and drainage and and the council responded absolutely and that came directly from the speak up uh campaign we listened to what they had to say and it was overwhelming uh the amount of folks who were talking to us about the specifics of what they wanted infrastructure in particular uh ways to be able to get out of their neighborhood onto the streets uh sidewalks complete streets all of the things that are incredibly important uh to the quality of life in our city was exactly what was resonating out of that first speak up rollout and we modified the budget to reflect it i suspect that over the course of this last week and this coming week as we get more things we'll we'll get a little bit more definitive on where we're going to spend our money and i think we're going to have really a great budget that addresses the very specific needs of our community right which is which is much it's a very different process than in the past where we where we talked about big goals but not specific well that's right i mean we we've gone through the big goal setting things back in uh 2010 when we're talking about uh the essay 2020 process we clearly identified there were a couple of issues that very important to the community transportation and education but you can get into those two discussions and discussion forever and ever and ever and really never come up with a work list this process i think ultimately is the best process that we could possibly put in place to be able to have actionable items actionable in our in our in our budget and then put it to work in our streets okay okay well i want to get you in front of in front of this with your priority in a few in a minute and we'll talk to councilman madina very good thank you so much keep up the good work all right we provide services to the seniors of the san antonio community there's the comprehensive senior centers and this one in particular is the doors griffin senior center we're providing nutrition health wellness exercise lifelong learning opportunities for the members of our community i enjoy hearing the stories of the members who come here every day they're telling us about tai chi class that they are now taking and what a difference in their life it makes and that is very important if you love this service or another city service please let us know we'd love to hear your voice this is your chance at antonio speak up okay so i'm here with councilman chris madina um city council district seven that's right and um uh tell me tell me what you're most concerned with in the city budget well i want to make sure that we address that priorities that uh our constituents give us whether it's infrastructure like streets and sidewalks drainage uh whether it's increased police protection making sure that we have the adequate resources to do that tonight's event and we certainly want to think now cast for being here and streaming this out for for folks that couldn't make it but it's an opportunity to speak up and for folks to let their voices heard to sound off on on what's important to them and and one of my top priorities neighborhood infrastructure making sure that we have all those things in our neighborhoods that are so critical whether it's more stop signs curves sidewalks pedestrian safety now is a time for us to hear those concerns to hear those issues because right now as we formulate the budget we want to make sure that we have all that input in uh so that we can have a budget that reflects our our uh the the wants and needs of the community absolutely and and people also need to understand that you genuinely and sincerely the city council is is and department heads are listening and will change or adapt priorities to what people talk about absolutely we in fact we can't do our job without the input of our community and we want to make sure that uh whether you you're here in person whether you're watching online um there's opportunities to to continue to put in your request uh in this budget um you can do it online you can attend tomorrow's speak up event over at hard burger park tomorrow night same time and just there's there's all kinds of opportunities for for folks to to make sure that their voices are heard absolutely absolutely well thank you very much thank you all thank you very much and did you oh it's they it's gone it's but thank you very much thank you thank you you guys thank you i provide mobile integrated health care what i love about the mobile integrated health care team is it allows me to spend more time with the citizen and really get to know the the citizen of san Antonio in an emergency 911 call you're there for 20 minutes to an hour and with our program we really get to dive in and help them in all aspects of their life if you love this service or another city service please let us know we'd love to hear your voice this is your chance san Antonio speak up okay we're back again and and this is another one of many people's favorite departments and that's code compliance tell me tell me uh your name and i'm john jacks the city of san antonio's development services department code enforcement is one of our divisions within our department so i know in the past i've seen a lot of in my neighborhood and parts of my neighborhood i've seen a lot of code compliance writing tickets for for offenses and now we have a different sort of approach in terms of follow-through right really our focus now is quicker compliance we used to write a lot of code violations and we would turn those over to our municipal courts and but a lot of times we weren't getting compliance people were just getting issued violations we're paying fines but the neighborhoods really want is compliance they don't want to know that we've issued a violation they want to know when is that we need like going to get mowed and so we've really put an emphasis in the last couple of years on on getting compliance and getting it quicker so we've adopted some new techniques to try to reduce that that time for so what do you do i mean in the past it's been sort of the the big stick approach of if you don't if you don't fix this we're going to take you to court and we're going to give you a fine how do you persuade someone and in the instance i i'm familiar with there are plenty of cases where there are absentee landlords who may not even be around who are you know sure how do you do what do you do well specifically for absentee landlords one of the things we've done is is actually created a program for absentee owners where we identify in the past we had trouble identifying those property owners or maybe the property owner didn't live in san antonio and they lived in another city or another state and it was just hard to get a hold of them so what we started to do is when we identify that a property owner lives out of state or out of bear county we have a registration program where they can actually provide us with a local contact so for example if there's a property manager for that property they'll give instead of us notifying the property owner who may live in chicago we'll notify the property manager who lives here in san antonio so we can get quicker compliance a lot of times it's not that they don't want to comply it's just that they don't know they're in violation right right and and you're communicating with somebody who's in a different time zone as opposed to the somebody who's in this time zone who knows what they can do about that that's that sounds terrific um so then on on local property owners what what means are there to without going to court say let's let's fix this up well a couple of things we've done in the in the past couple years is to create an administrative hearing officer which is has the ability to issue fines or cite or enforce citations so we don't have to wait to go to miss court we can do that a lot quicker we also have a building standards board which is a the board can actually we can bring that person for that board and they can actually impose those penalties instead of having to go through this court so we can get we can and we can get there a lot faster and we're going to court i suspect that the court process does not miss those cases either no i mean it's it's been a it's been i think it's a win win for everybody yeah to be able to get to those those properties faster and and um impose those penalties a lot quicker and and i think that's i mean in the end that's what all of us who are neighbors of a property that's not in compliance want is for it to be fixed right exactly and that's really our focus is to get that to get compliance and get it quicker right yeah our goal is not to assess the penalties or the fines we want the we want the the violation remedy or right right absolutely absolutely so when and when that happens when you're able to get properties turned around i mean it is it's similar to what i'd always heard about um graffiti graffiti abatement if the graffiti is cleaned then it can keep a neighborhood from declining and if the graffiti is not addressed then the neighborhood can go into decline i mean it's a it's a real it's a real uh leverage and the same thing i suspect is true with code compliance sure yeah it's the the faster we can get compliance the the um the better things are for the community right for the for the whole community and we're hearing a lot of discussion about um the evolution of neighborhoods whether it's what some people call gentrification or you know other kinds of evolution and this can can stabilize that okay sure yeah definitely um it it really helps to get to get out there in the community and really the community is our partner so we've also started focusing a lot on outreach to the community meeting with the community our supervisors proactively reach out to the community organizations neighborhood leaders to find out what's going on in your neighborhood um you know we made we drive through the neighborhood we may not see something going on or or maybe there's something on a on a property that we can't see from the street but they can see from their their backyard maybe so we really rely on them to bear our eyes and ears uh in the community to let us know what's going on so we can do a better job and and to see the relationship as a partner relationship as opposed to an adversarial adversarial right community is our partner for sure okay and and um you're hearing from folks at these at these open houses yes yeah we've had our I think our table's been pretty popular um yeah as it always is um and they're not you know they're letting us know of concerns in their neighborhood and we're writing those down and we're sending out our supervisors tomorrow to check that one yeah wow okay so so the the um that's the bottom line here we come out speak out um and um and something will happen maybe as soon as tomorrow yeah definitely we'll be out there thank you so much I really appreciate your taking the time okay so we're about ready to wrap it up for tonight but I want to let you know that you have one more night to come out in real in real person just to one of these open houses tomorrow night will be at harberger park and um one of the things I haven't shown off before is what you get if you show up in person this is um one of the cool swag things from animal care services um almost every table here has some really nifty little trinket you can walk away with in addition to walking away with the satisfaction that your voice has been heard and that you can make a difference thank you pro puesto para el año fiscal 2016 de la ciudad de san antonio refleja una comunidad que prioriza rebajas en los impuestos a la propiedad mejores calles y aceras y un equilibrio saludable entre seguridad pública y otras prioridades como parques bibliotecas cuidado animal y servicios humanos el presupuesto propuesto hace una gran inversión en las calles agrega 23 millones al mantenimiento de calles aumentando este presupuesto de 41 millones a 64 millones se agregan 10 millones más para mejoras en las aceras se proponen 12 millones adicionales para nuevas mejoras en el drenaje y así reducir las inundaciones en san antonio el presupuesto propuesto incluye fondos para el funcionamiento de dos nuevos centros para personas de la tercera edad dos nuevas bibliotecas y una nueva clínica de esterilización y castración para ayudar a reducir el número de animales callejeros en la ciudad y aumentar las adopciones también se incluye financiamiento para el mantenimiento y seguridad de nuevas áreas verdes y parques realizado a través del programa de bonos 2012 todo esto es propuesto a la vez que también se reduce la tasa de impuestos sobre la propiedad en la ciudad ahorrándoles a los contribuyentes 6.1 millones el próximo año indiscutiblemente la porción más grande del financiamiento general presupuestado es para la seguridad pública el presupuesto propuesto mantiene el gasto en seguridad pública por debajo del 66 por ciento del financiamiento general el financiamiento será para nuevas cámaras de seguridad que llevan los policías y actualización en la tecnología y equipos para policías y bomberos y la contratación de docenas de bomberos y policías nuevos para servir la zona anteriormente conocida como city south antes de que el presupuesto sea presentado en el concilio de la ciudad para su aprobación este 10 de septiembre queremos conocer su opinión los invitamos a una de nuestras cinco noches de discusión abierta para que nos hagan saber lo que piensan y por primera vez si no pueden asistir a nuestra discusión abierta pueden participar virtualmente a través de su computadora o smartphone visite www.saspeakup.com o una sea nuestra conversación en las redes sociales con el hashtag SA speak up habitantes de san antonio gracias por hacer oír su voz