 Take your seats, it's like herding cats, okay, I'm trying to stay somewhat on schedule so if you want to take your seats, get started here, the flow of the discussion, that's a member of work, here you go, all right, I'm going to make a recommendation for the flow of the discussion, if you will. The gathering today is really to find that consensus, that sweet spot if you will, around the level of support and advocacy for the areas that have been covered so far in the staff presentations. So I'm going to recommend that we go, not necessarily in that order outside of the first few, but focus on those areas first, try to find that consensus. From that, once that's wrapped up, I'm not exactly sure when because there's going to be some ebb and flow to that even, is to move on to the second segment, what I would recommend, those three top key priority areas that came out of those community meetings, because that's not exactly, especially that streets was not an item on the agenda that was presented, yet it was the most common topic that you all shared with me in our during our one-on-one meetings, and I think that definitely lends itself, you know, it needs a discussion around, around it, do you want to increase funding, what just all around that, so those three key areas that came out of the community meetings on the budget process. Then the third item, I would say that's the time, and most likely that'll be this afternoon, those items that are not on the agenda, that are not those three key areas, topics that you want to discuss. Some of those may have those staff reports within the packet that you have, they may not be, but trying to give you an opportunity to address what do you want to see are some key priority areas. Several of you shared those with me that are not on the agenda, and we want to make sure that they have an opportunity to be heard by your colleagues to find out what level of support, and, and processing it, and trying to understand that. There's a lot of moving parts to these topics, a lot to process. So being able to chance to, to work out that way, I hope that will work for the group, sort of segmenting it, just to stay focused and not, not, does that sound acceptable? Okay, great. Thank you. All right, I appreciate that. So the first few items, we want to see if they're, the support, the items that the city manager presented this morning, and I'm just going to use the flip chart pad as sort of a talking point document, if you will, was the city property tax rate. The collective bargaining agreement stance by the council, and the bond timeline. So wanted to see where the, the council is on these three items. Some of this is just to reaffirm that the current position needs to be essentially validated. The, the one item that may require a little bit more discussion just based on, on the flow is the bond timeline. As Cheryl mentioned, some of you had spoken with her that there might be a desire to move that forward. And is there an appetite among council to move that forward? And then the impact from that. So thoughts about the city property tax rate, right, moving in this, in the right direction. More discussion. Some, I don't want to equate these to sort of the consent agenda, if you will. We want to give you the opportunity to discuss this, ask a question of the city manager, but I don't want to necessarily, you know, poke at things that don't need additional discussion. Property tax rate. Yep, mayor. I'll just briefly say that I'm comfortable with what was presented in the presentation. I think it's important for us to try and provide some relief. Though I recognize that, you know, we're only less than a quarter of the citizen of the, you know, property tax bill. But to the extent that we can provide relief considering how much the values have skyrocketed, if we're able to do that, I'd like for us to do so. That's my position. Thanks, mayor. And I'm going to try to call. Do you want me to try to call? That'd be okay. Just because I can see it. Councilman Saldana? Sure. Thank you. And really just second the same sentiment, which is the fact that I think we were all a little taken off foot when we heard from the Bayer appraisal district that they were coming out with their new appraisals. And so a lot of us got calls, probably some misdirected calls to say that this is something we'd like you all to do something about. And this might be the lever for us to provide that sense of relief. My only question will be, maybe I'll get some input from the city manager here, because we're looking at two plots of an equation, one of which being the existing assessed valuation and the other being for new construction. If we were to set this tax rate at a point at which is being recommended, would we at least recoup the revenue of what we had last year, for example, to maintain existing services at the same level? We wouldn't take less revenue we'd be foregoing new revenue. Is that the case? My recommendation would be that we not reduce the rate so far as to reduce the revenue collected last year. So we're saying collect more, but not as much. Reduce the rate so that we're not collecting quite as much. I think there's a way to do this, which is responsible. And I think that's what you've hit at, which is that you still need to be able to collect enough for new construction and the expansion of population and new services and demands on those services. So I would agree with the mayor and we appreciate that we're having the opportunity to talk about it. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Did you have your hand up? Did I see? Okay. Councilman Wart. Thank you. I just don't see how we can reduce property taxes. We have over 526 citizens in our neighborhood association meetings and community meetings that mentioned things about streets and sidewalks. Why don't we just use the money, the extra monies that we get towards streets and sidewalks instead of moving that back to a level that we had last year. Whatever additional revenues that we collect, we can add to streets and sidewalks. I didn't hear one thing in our neighborhood association meetings, community meetings, about property taxes on the city side. I heard issues when everything came out, but they understand. I think most of our citizens understand and I don't think it was brought up during our District 2 community budget meeting anything about property taxes. It was all streets and sidewalks and stray dogs and lighting. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Council Member Nirenberg. Thank you. The conversations I've heard about the appraisals had to do more with fairness and the appraisal process of which we don't have a whole lot to do with. While I always agree and I don't think anyone would disagree with the fact that it is always preferable to reduce the burden on a homeowner, especially in an environment where extremely high volatility in our economy and wages have stagnated for years, we should be looking at ways to reduce the burden on taxpayers. I just want to be very careful though because last year, this body, we were contemplating a one cent tax increase. The year before that, we did the same thing. In lieu of that, we tacked on a dollar CPS environmental fee that has paid for things that generally we would pay for with property taxes. I want to be very careful that we go to this process of setting a property tax rate that doesn't put us in a position next year or the year after where we're going to have to potentially raise revenues in areas that are going to be much more difficult to do in a way that's much less transparent. What I would like to do is keep everything on the table, Mayor, but also make sure that we get some very firm numbers back from the appraisal district in later July. Again, re-emphasizing if we can afford to do this and not defer additional things that would be burdens on us later, I will be all for that, but we have to be very cautious about what we do to the future under that scenario. Thank you. Councilman Trevini, I think you had your hand. Go ahead. Yes, thank you. I think with regard to property taxes, as was stated before, I sit on the bear appraisal board of directors and have learned quite a bit about the process that we go through on a yearly basis. In this case, this was sort of an implementation statewide. A lot of people were experiencing this statewide, and the assessments were calculated by the State Comptroller's office and have recently been addressed in court by the bear appraisal district in which the bear appraisal district won all their court cases. I think it's important to know, like Councilman Nuremberg says, we want to keep everything on the table because there are still some movement here. I want to recognize that there's a lot of information that we still don't know. The property tax rates in San Antonio and Bear County are some of the lowest in the state. We want to make sure that we find something that is providing some relief for our citizens here in San Antonio and Bear County. But at the same time, find that sweet spot. We can't be chasing the tiger's tail here. So I just want to offer the position that I have with the bear appraisal district as a point of information to help work with Council, work with the City Manager to help, and the Mayor of course, to help further inform and get information in real time as it's happening because I think that's going to be very important as we address this particular issue. Thank you, Councilman. I think, yeah, Councilman Lopez. Yeah, thanks. I think on the effective tax rate, you know, just my comment on that is a discussion we've had several years running. We probably, from a policy point of view, define, you know, what I always refer to, what's generally referred to as an effective tax rate, right? What is it today that you have to do to match yesterday's dollar? That, I view it as the effective tax rate, and we always want to get at least what we got last year, right? By policy, we do that. But I think what we need to do is go one step further and set a policy that says to City Manager over the course of the next five years as you build out of the five-year budget, always assume that it will be the effective tax rate plus or minus some reasonable deviation. We will never lower it more than this and we will never increase it more than that in certain circumstances when we have a tremendous increase in property values. Everybody kind of goes, wow, it's a windfall. Well, it's not really a windfall, but it is an opportunity to get more dollars. When we have, and we have had in the past, decreases in those property values, then we say, oh my God, we've got to raise taxes. And I think what we ought to do by policy is simply give direction that says, we will always have an effective tax rate. That means we will get a dollar today that we got yesterday or last year with no more than a plus or minus x percent of deviation. That gives the manager a five-year window or a multiple-year window to say, this is how I'm going to do my forecast. Now if future councils want to increase that, by policy, they could do that. But the way to build, I think, the long-term budget is to set it on some sort of a premise that says, effective tax rate going forward will always be the rule plus or minus some small deviation will increase it by a little or drop it by a little, but never more than that. If we want to do more than that, then we need to have a whole-body discussion about it, maybe even hit public hearings and the like. And that would be, I think, a good approach to tagging. That would be my guidance on it. Thank you. But let me, we're going to go... We're staying on property tax. Stay on property tax. Yes. And I'm done with property tax. Thank you, Councilor. All right. Councilman Crier. Thank you. I, with all due respect to Councilman Trevino, for whom I have great respect and affection, I have gotten a couple of hundred complaints from residents about the appraisal process this year, most of whom would be thrilled to death to have had a 9.25 percent increase in their appraisal. For most of them, or many of them, it's been 25 and 30 and 30 plus percent. I am of the opinion, after having watched it for well over a decade, that the bare appraisal district is poorly run and poorly led. Mike Azmosqueda was invited to a meeting of the Homeowners Associations in District 9. His answer to every question was, it's the fault of business. You know, if business didn't manipulate the process, we could make up tons and tons of money and not do anything with residents. So, none of it is his fault. All of it is business fault. And I have heard that from him year after year after year to the point that I am frankly sick of it. I have suggested to the manager, and I've suggested to Councilman Trevino, we need to get that district over to visit with us at a B or other session where we can all talk to him about what the heck is going on here. I mean, to say an average 9.25 percent, I challenge you to find me some residents in District 10 or District 9 or District 8 who got a 9.25 percent or less increase. So, A, B, the logical question that we've been discussing is, what do we do with the windfall if there is a windfall? And I think Councilman Lopez has very thoughtfully and articulately laid out the policy questions that are involved in that. I support the Mayor on the view that we should look at a budget that reduces that rate. The question is, of course, how much is it reduced? You know, and at the end of the day, it may be more symbolic than significant, but symbols have importance. And I would hope we would do that because the message that I get from constituent after constituent after constituent and some of the rest of you have, too, is you all are getting a big windfall out of this. Don't just take the whole windfall and whistle as you go down the road. So, there's an education aspect to this. Lastly, and we're going to get to this in a minute, the item that makes this whole difficult is until we know the price of a police and fire agreement, it's very hard to decide what rate is needed to support it. And so, we'll get to that discussion later. But I'm strongly in favor of reducing the rate to some extent and hope that the manager will be bringing us a proposed budget that gives us some options to do that. And the decision on those options, as you've pointed out, is a policy question in and of itself. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilman. I think Councilman Gallagher had something. Yeah, thank you very much, Patrick. I'll tell you, I have to agree with those comments, Joe. I think that's really important. One of the parts of it, though, in Roberto, this is all your fault, is really this appeals process. We don't know what's coming out of that. And until we really do, you know, it's hard for any of us to sit here and try to make a decision on it. And so, I think that's something that we've got to keep a very, very close eye on. And then, of course, as Councilman Crier just brought up, we do have the problem of the contract negotiations and making that decision as well. Yes, I support any kind of tax reduction we can get. However, we don't have the facts before us right now to make that decision. Thank you. Councilman Warke, I think you had something. Yes, chiming on Councilman Nuremberg's point of the $1 Environmental Services fee that we added on, but we also just saw a presentation on the stormwater fee going up and the variable rate pricing on the trash collection going up. So we also have to look at those things as well. Maybe we could deflect some of those additional costs moving forward as a, and I know that's not as easy to sell on the campaign trail as opposed to I lowered your taxes, but it is possibly more beneficial to the people of San Antonio because we're adding fees in all these other places and yet their taxes are going down so that maybe they're happy about that, but they may be more economically impacted by what's going on with these other fees. Councilwoman Vigra. Thank you, Patrick. Yes, I'm looking forward to having the City Manager bring us something with a reduced property tax rate. I think this within the scope of what we have as well and to make sure that we do have the same revenue as connected. I will chime in. Councilman Crier, you're not the only one who has heard the same thing about the leadership at Vera Praisel District. I've also heard it in my district in my area because of the vacant large property of lands that we have in the district still to see that increase in property appraisals has been shocking that that was shared. And also as we look at it, I think we do need to make sure that we have some sort of relief for our constituents because knowing the development and everything that's happening in the long District 3 and the river and the redevelopment that is happening, we need to make sure that our property owners do have some sort of relief that is there. So I'm looking forward to what the City Manager will bring. Thank you. Yes, Councilman Medina. Thank you. I think Councilman Crier brought up some really good points and as well as Councilman Villacudon. But I heard loud and clear from my folks over the past few months that I think there's an expectation for us to have an option to provide some property tax relief. And I look forward to seeing what the manager and her team can give us as options. I know and we all know that we have a lot of needs out there, but I think that it came up loud and clear that there's an expectation for it. So thank you. Councilman Lopez. Just a real quick comment. As we start to develop that policy and you would probably automatically bring this but I just want to verbalize it. One of those could be as easy as creating some sort of an exemption of X amount of dollars within the property levels. I think there's a lot of people that have this concern, certainly I do, that it's not a proportionate amount. However, we can offer as we have at the state level and even at the city level, after you hit a certain age at 65 you get a $5,000 to $10,000 exemption. And that may be an easier, better way to ease the burden on some that are most vulnerable yet still being able to do the kinds of things. We have an opportunity to raise dollars. We want to raise dollars to improve the quality of life in our community, but we don't want to do it on the backs of those that can least afford it and maybe that's an option. I'm suggesting we should do that other than we should give it a lot of I think deliberative analysis and that should be something we should consider. That's all I had to add. Thank you. And I have clients all over and that is starting to be more of a trend where they're looking at a targeted audience for property tax relief. And it's typically an age-based issue. Other comments from Council? Cheryl, do you have direction? Good. Okay. All right. Next one is the collective bargaining agreement. Discussion around that just affirmed that the city stands maintaining the percentage of general fund 66%. Everybody good with that? Good. Oh, I'm sorry. Councilman Nuremberg? I don't want to get too far into other items here, but you know, obviously there's no secret to anyone. This is the negotiations. The lack of a resolution is a choke point for all of our discussions. A lot of things that have been brought up today, specifically the civilian pay increase, I think need to be taken wholeheartedly. We need to look at that and look at the analysis and consider that. But I think it needs to hinge on a resolution because, you know, we're talking about workforce wages and benefits. I mean, we need to look at that holistically. So I would like to see us either a formal policy or not, but make sure that we have that discussion, but make it hinge on a resolution to our collective bargaining agreement. We all need to be working together. And I think that's a way we can ensure that we are. In addition to that, I do want to articulate, we set the 66% policy for Councilman, and I fully support that. We also said no retroactivity, I believe, during this session last year. And I think that's also a policy that needs to be reaffirmed. Okay. Thank you. Councilman Sardanya? Thank you, Patrick. And really just to reaffirm that this is our position. And the same folks that are to my left and right of the folks that were there really calling for this position before the election and now after the election. A few things I'll point out about the three guidelines or the three guideposts that we have is correct. 66% is one of our policies, so is that around the AAA bond rating. One of them that I wanted to read out here is one that actually changes to the benefit of the police and fire, which is that uniform employees contribute to their cost of health care by paying monthly premiums. That's a big sticking point for us, but we've actually offered in the March 20th proposal one in which the uniform would not pay a premium. So there are ways in which we've actually got away from this and we've offered that the uniform we would not have to pay premiums, but dependents would. And that that is the March 20th proposal. So that is a serious thing that we want to reaffirm through that case. And I think a lot of us are really, I hope, in agreement about trying to resolve this really soon. Thank you, Councilman. Any other comments or questions? Councilman Carrar? If I'm not brief, I will owe Councilman Gallagher a dollar, which is our standing agreement. So I will be, I will be brief as I said yesterday at a really splendid inaugural ceremony. I agree with the thoughtful comments that have been made by my colleagues in support of the position we adopted last year. I strongly support the mayor's position, which she made explicitly clear in 50 candidate forums over the last six months. And I support the position of the city manager as the lead of our negotiating team in achieving that agreement based on these conditions, which we all agreed on a year ago and I agree on today. Thank you. And Mike, I hope I don't owe you an dollar. Okay. Other comments? Yes, Councilman Lopez? Just a real brief comment that's going to echo what the sentiment is when we've agreed that there should be a line in the sand that 66% was what we've defined. And I think that that's, that is, I think should be the direction that we give to the negotiating team. Just I think it needs to be said because I think we all understand that the letter, the the latitude is in the hands of the negotiating team and that's led by, by our city manager. We want to get a deal done that you feel comfortable in. If there were a number other than 66%, there should be discussion and we do that by virtue of discussions in the next session. I don't know that we should be even getting real granular out here in public about what those contract negotiations are. I think those have to happen with the leadership team that we have. And if there's any deviation to that, we should strategically discuss them in exact session as we have in the past. I mean, it's important that we have a good structure for both our, the public for which they have to fund as then the other side of the public, the service that they request and they require because it's all about the public and what they pay for and what service they get. And I, I mean, I believe I think we're, we're heading the right direction. I'm anxious to see what, what comes out of the, the next series of meetings and then we can decide as we go giving you the full attitude to make recommendations to change our position if we need to. Thank you. Yes. Just a comment before I move on, you know, in local government, government just in general, but in local government in particular, there's so much interdependency between services. When you talk to a resident, they don't really segment it by department. They just look at their whole experience of living in a community. And I think it's healthy as a governing body to recognize that interdependence between both revenue sources, which you all just discussed about property, the impacts, as well as service delivery, that you're trying to deliver this service and that service and you're trying to find, as I say, every community has the same ingredients, you're trying to find the right recipe. And I think that recipe is always being subject to additional discussion, subject to change, but trying to find that recipe for success, at least for the foreseeable future, trying to find that right blend. So I just offer a comment about that. So, okay. Next one is the bond timeline. Again, there was discussion about a few of you that wanted us to possibly accelerate that to the previous year. Councilman Gallagher. Thank you very much, Patrick. As far as I'm concerned, I'd like us to stick with the timeline that we have right now. I think that's very important that we don't rush this at all, that we keep in mind what that road map is. I could see some huge problems if we do try to rush it, one of them being our AAA bond rating. We've got to be very careful that we clearly map out what that timeline should be. And so as far as I'm concerned, even though we've got some very pressing issues, I'd like to keep it as it is. Okay. Councilman Medine, I think had to stand up then. Thank you. I can definitely understand Councilman Gallagher's concerns and I think those are well articulated. I would certainly be open to the idea of moving forward, or at least exploring the idea of moving forward to a November 2016 timeline, just because of the fact that of the drainage issues that I have in my community. And right now we're right in the midst actually of a ceiling channel phases one and two. And my concern is that if we wait too long, that can really have an impact in the flooding and the drainage concerns that we have in that community. So I'm open to the idea. I don't think it would be a huge stretch for us to at least not explore it. So thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, then Nairn Burke. Yeah, thanks Patrick. Again, on the the timing of it, we have to be very strategic about that and make sure that it gives us the best opportunity to pass it, whether it's November or May. I mean and what would doom the or make it very difficult to pass this and it's several things. One is if we haven't finished what we started with 2012. I think it's really important that when we're out there talking about the next bond issue, we say thank you very much for giving us the money you did. We did what you told us to do and here is the plan of our substantially completed directive that you gave us authority to build to bond to, right? So that's going to be the critical point. If we've got a lot of or the vast majority substantially completed projects, then we want to consider in November perhaps that would make it make it doable. The second thing I think is going to be that would doom it if if we rush it and don't get the level of of input from the community that is broad-based because that broad-based support is what's going to make us successful. And I would you know while I think I feel pretty confident that the that the public feels good about what we've done with the money they've given us before. We are really putting the cart before the horse and assuming that they're going to give us that concurrence. Again we really need to assemble that committee. We have to be thoughtful about who we appoint and then wait for what direction they give us and if they think a November deal is the right thing to do and the timing is right then we ought to take their their lead on it because quite honestly those are the folks that are going to help us pass it. Those are the ones that are going to help us craft it and quite honestly those are the ones you know help us define what it is that we want after it's all said and done. They're going to decide how many I mean we probably have two billion dollars worth of need out there and we're only going to get a quarter of that and they're going to tell us which ones we're going to go out and do so. I'd like to see us try to get to a November date if we could sooner would be better but I don't think we want to rush it to the point of saying we haven't finished the 2012 and we didn't get the extensive amount of input from the community and therefore November would be out of the question then we wait till May but I think beyond May certainly is not an acceptable timetable because as several people have mentioned and I'm sure everybody agrees we've got projects out there just can't wait so that would be my input on it. I'd love to move it up if we think we can you know negotiate it but no later than May for sure. Thank you. Thank you Councilman. Councilman Nairberg. Well thank you. I agree with everything Councilman Lopez said up until the point where he said we should consider moving it up. I am strongly opposed to that for a lot of reasons. One of them is the precision by which we we account for for the bonding capacity over five years but also we're undertaking a very comprehensive effort to align our capital improvement programs. Some of the most important components of that as I tomorrow the comprehensive plan are going to be coming online later later in the year in 2016 we certainly want to make sure that we are aligning those priorities. I think the comprehensive planning process will tell us a lot about what generally the public input has been during the bond sessions anyways which are what are our priorities for the city but I certainly oppose moving it up in date and I hope what we can get all of our planning done before May to get to get the bond programs completed properly. Thank you. Councilman work did you have something? Yes I think we do have to think about SA tomorrow and think about our comprehensive plan but I do have a slight concern because we have over 500,000 voters that show up in our November elections versus the 90 to 100,000 or so. So I think we we get a little bit more of a consensus from really what the community wants if and we're talking about having people more engaged so this could possibly engage more people in the city process and talk to more voters. I venture to say that at least two-thirds of that 520,000 are San Antonio residents. Councilman Trevino then Councilmember. Thank you. Well I I too am opposed to speeding the timeline up. I think we've invested a lot already with the SA tomorrow and the comprehensive plan. I think it's important that that we continue that momentum. We continue that purposeful thinking that we have set in place. I think when we're thinking of timelines speeding timelines up we want to be careful to not create a situation where we're leaving input out of the system or out of the process and so in this case and the timing of this is just not right. I can see potentially looking at a different timeline sometime in the future but the timing of this may may not be right for for changing when we actually do do this bond. So I'm opposed to this. So you're comfortable with the proposed timeline. Yes I'm comfortable with 2017. Councilmember. Thank you. Just to go on the record I'm comfortable with the proposed timeline right now. I think it is the current timeline. It's prudent and it also speaks to the points that Councilman Lopez did to make sure that we had community input and also I know one thing that we have talked about for several months was about a housing bond and we want to make sure that if that's able to be a part of this there are a lot of pieces that need to be a part of that conversation and we would love to have something of a housing bond even in the 2017 but we're not even sure if that's going to be we're going to be able to do that. So that's why I think moving forward with this timeline is prudent and helps us. Thank you. Okay mayor. Thank you at the risk of being redundant. I'll just reiterate a couple of the points. I am most comfortable with us continuing on the path to 2017 though certainly I can understand this idea about you know more people coming out to vote in a November election and as I think Councilman Trevino just said maybe for the future maybe we need to look at reworking the timeline to try and line up with that for the future but since we've been on this path I just think there are too many pieces we need to put in place in order to get to 2016 at the top of the list of course for me is the the planning process that we're undergoing and I just want to take the opportunity to frame that for my colleagues that the whole purpose of us going through this extensive exercise is not just to come up with a pretty document at the end but for us to have essentially a community-wide policy statement about how we want to invest in order to achieve the collective vision that's articulated through that plan and so the 2017 bond would be the first and best opportunity for us to make investments in alignment with the with the plan and as Councilman Lopez just stated you know he I think it was a conservative estimate where you said there's two billion dollars in need you know it's probably more than probably more than that so we know that we won't have enough money to address all the needs so why forgo the opportunity to actually use the planning process the community process of everyone coming together to guide you know how we use the resources that we have since it will only be a fraction of you know what the need is so I think it's best for us to be very strategic about how we invest those dollars and stay away from the peanut butter approach which you know where you just spread it around we get some good projects but do those things help us advance towards you know you know whatever our goals are related to growth and development and land use here in in our city so that would be my concern I you know and when you even when you back up if you start backing up from November 2016 you got to leave in at least probably two months for the marketing so that means you'd have to have the program pretty solid even prior to that and it's a pretty short timeline as as councilwoman's uh via grand stated if we want to do this housing thing too there are a lot of pieces that still have to be worked out and we'll need more time in order to ensure that we have all our eyes dotted and teased crossed before we actually go to the voters with the proposal okay thank you mayor councilman Lopez yeah I just want to you know underscore and echo what the mayor just said and I think more than anything I guess the question would be have what did we do last time when we charged the committee we certainly charge them to review all the the scope of all the work that's needed uh define what our priorities are get those five or six hundred a million dollars which we probably will have capacity for debt on and we give them all that do we also ask them to give us guidance on when the election should be no we have not done that in the past but it could be part of the conversation on the future of the council's done it around saying may uh it certainly makes sense but uh moving it to november may be something that it would be considered I would like to make sure that somehow or another there isn't the concern that was raised I forgot who raised it maybe councilman work uh november's a seems to be a better demographic for being able to you know to have favorable bond turnout and that it winds up being the following november or some other later date I think the urgency of our infrastructure says no later than may should be the case and I just didn't remember whether we charged the committee with that as well because I know other bond initiatives in the city certainly the school ones they they do charge the committee with making a recommendation and then of course it's up to the council or their boards to decide how to accept but they also charge them with that the practicality of uh but since we don't do that I would just just underscore let's make sure that whatever we do has certain level of urgency to it and not be any later than may that would be my only concern so thank you councilmember councilman saldanya had something thank you patrick I don't mean to be a contrarian on this issue but I do think it's worth mentioning that there are a lot of things if you have been in this office enough time where you know the issues that you've been describing to people saying look we will get that done but we need to get through to 2017 because we can't afford it with any other funds and having watched this movie before uh we passed the 2012 bond and there is just now a project starting in my district this summer that will be done in a year and a half so presumably it'd be done by 2017 so that could mean that we pass it in 2017 in the project that I want done that I've been telling folks we're going to get done for several years is not going to get done until 2020 so there's a sense of immediacy that I think our public wants from us that councilman Medina and councilman Lopez have talked about which is that you know there are some things that we'd like to get done as quickly as possible and and uh quite frankly there are things that I don't even think the the comprehensive plan will surface because they're surfaced in my neighborhood associations where I have told them we cannot get to that particular street because it's over 15 million dollars but we will get to it during the bond and and those are coming from our conversations in our own districts we could tell you right now where they are before we even publish the comprehensive plan so that would be my push in saying that we shouldn't automatically say 2017 may is is where we should go and the other reason because I did bring this up to the city manager was that you would like to have it in a November election for points that councilman Ward brought up you want to get permission from more people rather than a smaller slice of the city and that just tends to happen in November because there's more push to get people out and as we see we've seen just several weeks ago that the voter turnout in may is just not what it is and that's a separate question about maybe aligning these elections but I think we don't rule that off we don't put it off the table and then my question to the city manager is that how long did this process take for us in 2012 and 2017 because if we started now that would give us a year and it would be it would be may it would be July of 2016 so we'd have an entire year to sort of talk about a lot of these things that I think need to come together we spent over a year working on the last two bond programs so we we need to do some preliminary engineering there are projects that could not be funded in the last bond program and remember the way the funding works it's not as if we have 550 million on day one it's about 100 million each of the five years and some denomination of that so because we don't raise the rate we have to plan on the growth and we schedule the projects in this program we have 140 projects and they're scheduled to be designed and built during the course of the five years but it takes over a year because we do some preliminary scoping so that we have the best estimates possible we take there are so many needs as you all know there are usually three or four times the amount of projects in value as compared to the amount of money available and so the committees deliberate and decide what they want to recommend to the city council and with your input you appoint the members to each of the bond committees i there are a lot of opinions i one i'm get getting from this conversation is that you'd like to discuss it again and perhaps right after we finish this operating budget conversation and in conjunction with the comprehensive plan development on the progress so if we were to do something in november of 16 we would need to get going on that this fall otherwise this proposed budget contemplates are beginning the scoping for the projects and developing those lists with you this winter and then coming to you to discuss the appointment of a committee next summer so they could work in the fall of 17 so we need to start pretty shortly in short order if we were to consider a november of 16 election but we could we still have some time in september to talk about that before we'd have to make the decision doesn't have to be today but because several of you have brought this up i appreciate the dialogue today say if i could just round out my comments so all all that to say that it probably makes a lot more sense throwing in a sort of curveball in here that we stick to the proposed plan because of the fact that i think not just that we need to think about having a housing bond we need to have a housing bond as a component of this 2017 bond proposal and that's going to require a little more time a little more insight with respect to the housing commission and their work so because we need to have a serious conversation about the housing bond as a component of this i think the proposed plan is what gives us the time to do that so thank you for the the opportunity to talk about thank you councilman carer and then councilman wart thank you i uh remember a bond issue that was so poorly put together that the mayor came out publicly and opposed it and it failed which underscores councilman lopez frequent comment that at the end of the day you got to have a bond campaign that the voters will pass uh and and that was a long that that was a long time ago yes so for some of you who may remember lila kakawa was a former mayor uh but but the the point i'd underscore which some have touched on sooner is always better than later as long as the points raised by you may are new councilman urnberg as long as it's very thoughtfully put together and it is consistent with the other big picture goals we have for planning and other things but you have to factor into it that it does take when you start looking at the calendar more than a couple of months to put together a coalition of people who will go out and raise a hundred thousand dollars or so to mount a campaign to educate voters and to build a constituency to pass it so you can't just put this on the ballot and then a month later hold the election you've got to back everything up so that we have a reasonable level of confidence that it's that it's going to pass so as long as you can fold that into the timeline um sooner is always better than later but it needs to be consistent with those with those goals thank you councilman work yes and i just didn't want to allow my colleagues to forget that the county is working on a housing bond commissioner calvert is really pushing that issue and they've already started work on that for november 2016 so if we can maybe tack on some of our researchers or see where they are in the process there that may assist us in i'm not saying that november 2016 is is definite but it may assist us in making this decision thank you just to comment i think to the mayor's point about the comp plan you know governments love to do planning lots of plans all sorts of plans the challenge is how do you integrate those plans and in some respects they're sequencing it some communities have needs then they figure out how to pay for them other communities have money and then they figure out what the needs are right there's that's not right or wrong it's just different with with your street maintenance issues here with your that you've all shared with me that you're talking about today and trying to look at that bond issue i think it's trying to segment to say which ones are the most pressing and then which really are bonded right you're always trying to kind of segment the dollar allocations for the major ones that probably require a lot more lead time for engineering and design as well as the other ones where people are looking at essentially out their window and saying when's that going to happen things that are on the smaller scale so it's kind of a tiering of your pardon me of your capital improvements and trying to figure out again to what the mayor had shared how do you integrate all these needs it's a good thing that people share with you their their desires the challenge is how you manage those expectations right you all know that much better than i do so it sounds like the proposed bond timeline is supported is that fair am i characterizing that well just want to make sure yes okay all right good moving on i would suggest now we we move on to the items from the staff presentations that were where we covered this morning um Cheryl perhaps if the council wants to do this it's 1145 but we could tackle police technology because we have several items that are that eric very thoughtfully presented summarize this morning if the council wants to talk about these whether or not to expedite cams we have a plan today but do we want to to expedite that how that is connected to our in car video system and then thirdly whether or not the council wants to proceed with shot spotter as a pilot program we know that the radio issue will go back to the public safety committee i don't think we need to belabor that here today because that will get more discussion and eric summarize that today but the body cams the in car video systems and shot spotter the cops did you want to talk about that the funding the grant funding for additional officers or uh yes we can it doesn't fall in the technology area but if we have time before lunch but yes certainly after lunch if we don't get to it before lunch time it's councilman warren as far as body cams and shot spotter i think it shouldn't be either or a situation um we can all hopefully if we can't i'll meet with you can all understand that um there are neighborhoods that are safer than other neighborhoods in our city and if you're living in one of those safer neighborhoods um i don't i don't see a reason why every person should shouldn't be afforded that opportunity um we had a violent shooting last week about a project that i had a meeting about on wednesday where someone walked out of a gas station was shot and ended up dying in the middle of new brunfels street i get a call or my district two office gets a call from 80 year old uh senior uh estella salazar who lives two blocks away who heard the gunshots but didn't call anything in because she didn't know where they were occurring this is a woman that's heard gunshots numerous times because this is the the hot spot of violence for the promised um zone promised choice neighborhoods and yet she didn't call it in a responsible citizen um didn't call it in and that reduced in response time reduced in um potentially saving this person's life and then um a lot of the times if somebody's not dead in the middle of the street the police don't show up because nobody calls so how do we build public trust how do we get people to vote how do we get people to be more engaged in what's happening down at city council and at city hall is by giving them services that they need in the community and i think body camps would add to that trust as well so that when the police do show up the the citizens can trust and understand that there is an additional accountability other than uh the police officers showing up there but um again i don't think it should be either or i'm recalling that um the 400 000 uh was more or less for both sides i i'm definitely adamant about the district two project if if the other council people that um it represents in prospect hill aren't for it over there um that's fine we don't need two areas for a pilot it's just a pilot project but i'm definitely adamant about uh protecting the people of district two which had the the highest number of gunshots but i'm also um looking at better ways to do the data recording because because our police substations aren't on the same track as our council districts i believe i have three police substations but i only really get the east side data as district two data but there are police uh three police substations that serve my district so i may potentially have a brunt of those other gunshot occurrences in my districts going to other stations as well so that that may be something to consider as far as data recording thank you thank you councilman councilman narenberg thank you um mayor when you were councilman district two um you brought together that east side summit and i think that um we talked about district two being in a bit of a renaissance and the economic benefit to the entire city is pretty clear based on that on that work that you did and much of that work was based on public safety so i'm i'm very supportive of of learning to leverage new technologies i think the body cams are now proven and they're being adopted and i think we should press forward uh as quickly as possible i'm not totally clear on how that works with the with the dashboard cam and the body cams and how that plays out but i think we need to this city should make as strong an investment in technology whether it's public safety or otherwise where we can and i think on body cams for sure uh and i'm also supportive of the pilot uh for for the shot spotter i know we had the dialogue at the mid-year budget uh we sort of committed to taking this up um or at least talking about it during the the fiscal year process so i'm supportive of that there was a question there about lease versus own um i think because technology is changing so rapidly uh and you know i think the return on investment on such a new technology for us it may be widely adopted uh we hope that it would be but the return on investment is as much in the learning from that process as it is on on the uh cost avoidance of owning a system that's nascent technology i would be supportive more of the the lease option so thank you thank you councilman other councilman gallagher thank you patrick uh no i i do support your position and it's ironic ron that bringing up the idea about how technology is changing so rapidly i think that's really what's driven us with the decision to look at radios again when that we're trying to figure that out because i think that that's just hanging over us as a decision that we've got to get made however we do have to take all of those sorts of changes into consideration when we're making that decision but i think we need to all look back at slide 19 that shows that the emergency response time something to be quite proud of that san Antonio does really is as well it is doing right now i am however supportive of any of these ideas like the uh shot detection technology to take a look at that as a test and see if that is something that would work so as far as i'm concerned what has been presented today is something that i think all of us really are supportive of i just regret the fact that the public safety radio issue is one that we still have to uh decide on thank you councilman councilman travenia thank you uh i am i'm very supportive of utilizing technology as a tool and one of we certainly want to give all the best available tools to our police officers uh because you know uh for them to in order for them to do their job we want to make sure that they were providing some of the best tools some of the best technology so that uh the responsibility isn't sort of left out left to some somebody that that may or may not have heard a gunshot uh i think that's that's very difficult to to sort of push that responsibility to somebody um i'm i'm supportive of of both technologies in fact as councilman warwick mentioned you know district one is very diverse and one of the other spots that that the public safety identified as a potential pilot is district one and i'm certainly uh i certainly think that in in order to have a good pilot program uh you want to you want to cover a couple areas to to see the the the true effect of a program so i could i can certainly uh uh support having the the the recommended pilot program in both district one and district two to see how how that effect could truly transform those those neighborhoods um but you know we also want to uh bring up to the to the forefront that the fact is uh technology is changing so rapidly uh we we want to address uh that and ride that wave so you know this is really important that we address this right now uh shot spotters is a current technology let's take advantage of it if in the future there's something better then we'll we'll talk about it then i do agree with councilman nirnberg's option of of of the lease uh we would do we prefer going to a lease option because technology changes so rapidly uh we don't want to be married to to one issue as as uh councilman gallagher brought up the radio the radio's issues is that we sort of get stuck in this proprietary system that then locks us in um and sort of disrupts the potential process that we have in place for an rfp or or how we go about procuring uh three tools for for our public safety officers to to do their job so i am very supportive of these technologies and i i do hope to see it in district one okay thank you councilman saldanya and then councilman carer thank you patrick and with regard to the body cameras the wave of the future with respect to police enforcement is is that is is having police officers equipped with body cameras i know that for certain i what i don't know is whether the shot shot spotter is going to be the wave of the future however i would be i would be supportive of us at least testing it to find out and uh councilman warwick brings powerful testimony that it's very real about a piloted area in district two that i think is worth investigating and i wonder if um there might be opportunities because i know that the promise zone is is you know is not more eligible but certainly gets an advantage with respect to grant opportunities if there are if it is a two hundred eighty thousand dollars spend uh if that's something that would be available through funds from the the promise grant okay hold on just a councilman carer um like councilman saldanya i'd like to ride on the wave of the future too and i hope you'll let me borrow his surfboard for that every now and then uh this is a disruptive technology both of these are disruptive technologies and may or not in that regard uber lift is a disruptive technology and i appreciate your efforts in california this weekend and and with the tech block folks on that shot spotter is a disruptive technology and i i agree with councilman travino we don't know yet whether or not it's the wave of the future which is one reason why as my father said to me when i got ready to buy my first car you need to drive before you buy and the nice thing about leasing is that it lets you drive before you buy and the and the second issue of course is once you get into a dramatic technology change every time i've bought into it the cost it takes you to get into it turns out to be a whole lot less than the cost it takes to stay in it over an extended period of time we've got a lot of questions on body cam with regard to data storage data recovery long term so i to be clear i support moving forward on body cams full speed because it's it's it's not only coming it's here and it's here increasingly around the united states um if we can get into the shot spotter issue on a on a lease basis versus a buy basis it seems to me that that may be a more thoughtful way to do it until we find out whether or not the the return on the investment is is worth the cost on a longer term basis thank you councilman work had something uh on the two points that were mentioned there's some burn grant funding that currently would only be able to cover the schools in the area that we are proposing so there's a couple elementary and middle schools we leave middle school being the our community school that that would get some funding alleviated on a city's behalf from the federal government but on the next round of burn we can do something specifically for shot spotter and other cities have done that as far as councilman crier's comments again we are not on the leading edge of this by any means the u.s. government has been using this technology since the iraq war in 2001 it's currently here in a lot of our military bases here in town if you think of the naval yard shooting in washington dc you wonder how they found somebody in a six-story building in less than you know eight minutes this technology is in our federal facilities since early 2000s been in washington dc since 2005 the thing that's new now is that we don't have to purchase the the equipment and have our own staff maintain the equipment change the equipment and monitor the equipment currently the subscription system is monitored in newark new jersey and that this is a huge reduction in cost of entry to the technology this would have been a two or three million dollar proposal two years ago when i believe chief mcmanus saw this technology proposed and now it's a two hundred thousand dollar technology entry so it's a huge situation again 90 cities across the country we would be the first city in texas so we would be leading the way in public safety which i know that many of you are adamant about and i think it's a no-brainer there's no reason that my streets in district two or or councilman travino streets in district one or councilwoman's gonzalez streets in district five are any safer than you know allama or aren't or uh you know hebner and 1604 areas where you don't see gun violence and i think the people of san atonio deserve the same levels of safety in every part of the city thank you and a pilot does give you an opportunity to sort of figure out how it works right in an isolated district that's the benefit of doing pilots work the bugs out how do you operationalize it how does the police department utilize that as a technology as a tool for response time and dealing with all those issues as opposed to going citywide and then you're sort of everything is out there so so one more come go ahead councilman um just to to move forward i am uh in support of moving forward with the body cameras on the basis that we have right now to keep moving forward um when coming to this pilot program glad to know that there's a least option here with this i think that's very important because i do understand that many of the federal buildings in dc do have these these shot spotters already on there so um that's part of that cost and so what we're looking at is about 280,000 to up to 1.7 million uh eric why is that up to 1.7 million again he's coming up right now primarily councilwoman and and you can take both those numbers and divide them in half it's for the for one proposal the subscription based and cloud storage the 280,000 dollar proposal it's 140,000 per pilot area the primary driver of the increase in cost in the other proposal is that we're actually purchasing the equipment and we're actually going to have we would actually have to provide storage our own data storage locally through our IT services so it's it's it's it's really a comparison of new technology using a subscription based formula where you don't own the equipment and you're paying somebody a set amount per month to hold that data for you in the cloud versus us having to buy the equipment and the servers to maintain all the equipment all the storage okay all right thank you and i think how many pilot programs are we offering up this year in our budget just in general and our different departments that uh let me total that during the lunch hour because we do have a number of pilot programs okay okay so i mean they that's just something that i want to be sure to take a look at when we move forward as well because um i think that's very important so i mean but if we are looking at leasing and it's not going to be 1.7 million i think the pilot is something to pursue because technology is um is moving the way it is so thank you councilman lopez and i would like to just have somebody maybe eric talk to the obviously if we implement this whether it's pilot or permanent or citywide it's going to generate more calls and so what outside the numbers are up there up to up to 1.7 million dollars and what's the manpower requirement uh obviously it's going to generate more calls it's going to generate more more information for us to take take action which is a good thing right because we'll be able to identify it but that means then we need to have more officers and so what are those costs that are associated with it i would imagine we'd be able to find trending information from other cities so when we put this in our call rate went up by x percent therefore we need x or y percent of of more headcount there and that probably would be a good thing to insert into that into that formula because quite honestly it's like anything else i mean we can buy technology and we all agree technology makes life a lot easier but if we don't have the resources to react what technology tells then it's wasted dollars it's much like that uh stationary bike that's in my bedroom that great technology i just don't use it very much and therefore it's pretty well wasted but it is great technology uh but i'd like to see you know so what are the other you know related based on uh data from other cities that have implemented and is that going to track with us uh so i think that'd be good for our pilot program a component of it so if you can talk to that a little bit so that's a great point councilman and i think what we've seen is that in some cities the call load in that area has increased because of folks who um hear something but assume somebody else is going to call the police but that has not been the case in every city part of the recommendation that we made the public safety in april was that if we do the pilot for one year we would report back through public safety and ultimately the council on what has been the impact there may be and that and that's one of the reasons why the police department identified two areas of town with the highest number of gun violence gun violence crimes um we may see an increase in calls in the area we may not we don't know but we wanted to make sure that if we're going to pilot the technology that we do it in the areas of town where we have the highest crime related to guns um and that that'll be part of the the data tracking and reporting back to uh to the council you know that i mentioned earlier we we redraw the the patrol districts we did that in in january 2014 it hasn't been done in 15 years and that's kind of a constant management tool at the police department it could be that we redraw the the patrol lines it could be a manpower result where we need to to take a patrol district and split it in two and add an officer and and and make an area smaller but but that's there's been there's been different results in different cities and we'll have to see how it how it fares out for us councilman work had something and then medina no in washington dc it's really just it tells you where the police need to be before the shots happen and that's one of the the great things that you have with the technology we're never going to have enough police officers to be on every street corner or walk in the beat like they used to when our cities were more urban but uh now you know where to place your resources before the shots occur which nights have the most uh shots occurring so you know that friday night around three uh from three a.m you have to have police right here versus you know sunday morning at nine a.m you maybe you don't need police in that area because shots don't occur so it's able to tell you this kind of data it's able to tell you which day of the week is the the most dangerous as far as gun violence so you may up your levels of police on that day so it's it's very data driven and it's a scientific method as opposed to a political method to really make our streets safer and increase the presence where the presence is needed thank you councilman radina thank you i just also want to echo i think it is important that we uh we do explore the pilot program for shot spotter as i said a couple of weeks back in our mid-year review but with the emphasis that we also look at the west west side as well and and i think that that's going to be important so just wanted to echo that okay thank you sharyl are you clear with what the direction is so okay i'm going to go ahead and suggest that we were running just a little bit behind if that's okay i'm going to suggest we break now for lunch which is in the room next door help yourself over there and then let's reconvene at 105 is that good for everybody mayor we have a a birthday yes i would like to just make two acknowledgements first i wanted to acknowledge that councilwoman gonzalez i understand is watching on now cast so a little shout out to her and the baby at home and then also today is councilwoman via grand birthday so everybody please give her a birthday hug on your way over to lunch and we have some cake to share to celebrate her special day thank you