 Mike from the appraisal district is still going to be speaking with people and he's welcome to do that in the corner if you still have questions but we're gonna get started with our next panel so I'd like you to give everybody at this table your full attention. Okay so this is the panel that I was actually most excited for today because it's what I consider developing news at the moment that the city had decided after years of working on these plans hey we're gonna dump these neighborhood plans and because of the people sitting at the table they convinced the city no we're not gonna dump years of work we're gonna keep going for the value of oh I'm so glad everybody's listening now because this is the panel I was the most excited for today these are the people who helped save the neighborhood plans which is tremendous work for everybody in this room we have Cynthia Spielman we have Chris Ryerson their tier one neighborhood leaders we're gonna begin today with Chris who will tell you a little bit about himself all right thank you I'm gonna attempt to use this microphone today a lot of you who have heard me speak know that I generally have a voice that projects and I don't use microphones but I think today it's warranted because we have such a great large crowd here so if I happen to drop it and you're not hearing me just just wave and I'll try to be better about it I am actually with the city of San Antonio's planning department alongside me is Cynthia Spielman who is with the tier one neighborhood coalition and unfortunately her colleague Kosama wasn't able to make it today so Cynthia's gonna handle both parts of their presentation so and I guess I should go back my role at the planning department is to oversee implementation of SA tomorrow which we're gonna talk about today and in particular the subarea plans that some of you have started to hear about and that we're actively working on so before I get started how many have heard about SA tomorrow or know what the comprehensive plan is okay good so for some of you this may be a repeat hopefully you'll learn something new and for those who haven't heard about it hopefully this gives you a really good foundation into what the planning department is working on how we think you can help us in that work and then Cynthia's gonna give a lot more detail about how neighborhoods can most effectively engage in the process so how many of you have seen this graphic or this statistic this is one of the driving factors behind the work of SA tomorrow so when the comprehensive plan process was started in 2013 2014 the projection was made that between 2010 and 2040 the population of Bear County not just San Antonio but a Bear County is going to increase by 1.1 million people so going from a population of about 1.7 up to 2.8 million so it's a huge increase and of all the speakers today have said it's not something we can necessarily just stop but it is something that we need to think about and carefully plan for if we're gonna benefit from it and try to maintain the quality of city that we all want going along with that population increase which by the way is not just a mean a million people are moving here what you know in recent years what that's meant is about half of the growth has been people moving here and half of the growth is just natural population growth within the city but what that also means is potentially a half million more cars on our roads if we continue at current trends and we don't work on different transportation solutions like Councilman Sandoval talked about it means we need to come up with another 500,000 jobs and potentially 500,000 more housing units to accommodate this type of growth in the city so it's a big challenge and to meet that challenge the city developed the SA tomorrow plans which are three plans that were developed concurrently the city's comprehensive plan up here on the left that was the responsibility of the planning department we also developed a multimodal transportation plan and the city's first citywide sustainability plan which has a couple representatives over here at that table the comprehensive plan is the city's overarching policy document that looks out 20 25 years it has a 2040 time horizon and it's really a policy document it looks at the goals of the city and the different objectives and the action items for achieving those goals it also laid out a framework for how we might grow in the future and accommodate this growth and create and maintain the kind of places that we all want to live so this is the vision for this we're not going to read it off it's up there for you and it's available on the websites that I'll show you at the end of the slide show but it talks about you can see neighborhoods are in the very first line a city with dynamic neighborhoods and that's going to mean new neighborhoods existing neighborhoods but great neighborhoods great places to live well connected preserving our military and cultural history protecting our environment all of these kind of things I think most of us would agree on is part of the vision of the comprehensive plan and it's our work as a department and a lot of the other city departments and partners throughout the city to try and implement that vision for the city so one of the ways the comprehensive plan is organized is through what are called plan elements these are basically just the big topics of the plan and a lot of them that you see up there are the ones that you would expect and that are found in comprehensive plans all over the country so issues like housing transportation the environment jobs and economic competitiveness things that you would expect we also added an elements on the military and on cultural preservation and cultural heritage because those are more unique to San Antonio and we wanted to make sure that they were addressed within the comprehensive plan so another big part of the comprehensive plan is what you could refer to as the planning framework basically this is just the building blocks like how do we in a simple way think about how our city is built and how it grows so the first of those of course is neighborhoods and that's why we're all here today almost everybody in the room identifies by the neighborhood they live in the neighborhood they grew up in the neighborhood where their kids live so they really are the backbone of the city there's going to be neighborhoods in the future that don't exist today so you know we need to create a city of complete neighborhoods of lots of different types we hope that they're complete meaning that people can get to the things they want to do easily not always by having to jump in a car but that they you know their daily errands their jobs their education opportunities where they want to go out to eat where they want to meet friends for recreation ideally complete neighborhoods will have or have access to all of those things so the next one is a little more of a wonky term but we refer to him as urban centers and a lot of you can probably picture these these are kind of more compact mixed use places they often serve as a catalyst for community development basically they have a mix of housing businesses restaurants your local dry cleaner perhaps your tax accountants office it could be any number of things but the idea is that they serve as sort of a center of you know maybe five or ten or fifteen neighborhoods they're not necessarily drawing people from all over the city they're not regional destinations but they do provide that little note of great services and activity that can serve a bunch of different neighborhoods and then we have the regional centers which I'll talk about in a little more detail in a moment but these are the bigger areas around the city primarily where we found jobs were were located so when we did the comprehensive plan each of the thirteen regional centers that we identified had at least fifteen thousand jobs so they're already employment centers but there are also neighborhoods in these areas and there are places that we want to create where people not only work but they they live there they have recreational opportunities there they can go to school there they again we want them to be complete places and then finally we have our corridors the corridors attach and connect all of these different parts of the city allow us to get around in different ways and hopefully based on the goals of the comp plan and the multimodal transportation plan we provide options for the way that people get around so people are still going to get around by their cars but one of the goals is to create other options as well for those who want or need to get around by transit more effectively or who want to ride their bike or walk we want to make sure that people have options and choices essentially so on to the sub area plans in the sub area plans that's an overarching term for two types of plans that we're working on regional center plans that I just mentioned and then community area plans so these are the thirteen regional centers again they were originally viewed as employment centers but there I think they're meant to be much more if we if we do our work right but you can see they're scattered all throughout the city and it's an important thing and it's a unique asset for San Antonio because most cities really have kind of one regional center they're downtown right and everything flows in and out of downtown it creates lots of problems cities around the country and around the world they're trying to create this type of pattern where you have centers scattered throughout but it's very difficult to create from scratch ours kind of developed organically and it's something we really want to try to take advantage of another important thing shown up here the idea behind the comprehensive plan is to try and direct a significant amount of the population growth and the employment growth that we expect into these regional centers and that's not to say it's going to be spread evenly across an entire regional center it'll always go where it's most appropriate where there's capacity but part of the idea behind that is focusing the growth in these certain areas that have that capacity and insulating the rest of the city that just came in in yellow and orange from having to absorb as much of that growth and the rest of the city that came in in yellow and orange are the the community areas so in total we have 30 sub area plans 13 regional centers and 17 community areas that cover the entire city by the time we're done five six seven years from now so why sub area plans because a lot of you as has been mentioned a lot of you have worked hard over the years on your neighborhood plans you know there's lots of different types of plans throughout the city what we learned over the years I think the first neighborhood plan was done in 1988 but what we learned over the years is that the city just does not have the ability to do neighborhood plans for I think it's now 270 or 300 individual neighborhoods so to do those and also update them regularly so it hasn't been a very equitable way of doing planning across the whole city so part of the goal of the separate plans to make sure that we can plan for the entire city effectively and equitably and not just focus on a couple unique areas by themselves the other reason to do these 30 sub areas is that the city although we're the seventh largest city in the country we don't have a consistent and comprehensive land use map which is a lot of you know drive zoning decisions and plan amendment decisions so it's important that we get a consistent map that encompasses the whole city so everybody is working from the same playing field and understands the same rules so for those who are involved we've started some plans last June these are the first year plans going from UTSA up in the north down to Brooks in the south the four regional centers and then the west side community areas the first community plan we're working on starting in September we'll work on these year two plans here and these maps are available over at our table that has the orange table covering Carlos and shepherd can raise their hands we have those maps if you want to look at that and they're available on our website if you want to know you know which planning area you're going to fall in and when we're likely to get to planning in your area so some of the main topics that we're going to cover sub area plans can't address everything we don't really have the ability within the framework that we work in to address crime and safety which I know is a key concern for a lot of you we can touch on it and we can mention it but we don't have any purview over the police department for instance sub area plans by themselves are not going to be able to fix those big issues the councilman send of all brought up like gentrification and like affordability and displacement we can help with that and we can take lessons from organizations like the mayor's housing policy task force and try to make sure that we're implementing those but again sub area plans just can't fix those problems on their own what we can address are the things listed up here we can definitely look at land use as the foundational aspect and then we can layer on top of that things like transportation and where do we want our parks and our trails and recreation opportunities what types of housing and economic development strategy is do we want to incorporate are there certain focus areas where we think new development or redevelopment makes a lot of sense and we want to encourage that because it'll benefit the neighborhood or the city so these are a lot of the chat of the topics that will work on throughout the sub area plans. So a couple of things that sub area plans don't change or affect I know based on where a lot of you live that I recognize they don't change whether you have a historic district designation or not or the design standards that go along with that and they don't change or affect whether you have a neighborhood conservation district and what those guidelines are they do not touch that those are separate zoning overlays and whether we do a separate plan in your neighborhood yours is going to stay the same as it was before. So one of the big tricky issues with this process and a lot of you have heard about it lately is how to take those neighborhood plans that so many people have put so much work into and make sure that we're integrating that work into the work of our sub area plans because a lot of these sub areas encompass anywhere from five to like where I'm working on the west side 11 different neighborhood associations. So the process so first of all neighborhoods have been invited to be on our planning teams which are basically like our steering committees from the very beginning they've been involved in the process all along. One of our very first steps when we start a planning process is to look at those old plans try to extract out the most important things that haven't been implemented yet celebrate those things that have been accomplished so that work has already been done in the plans that we're working on but we're trying to take an even deeper dive so a couple ways that we're doing that is making sure that these plans are going to be e-plans they're going to be websites so when you click you know for instance on the Beacon Hill tab that chapter the first thing you'll see is a link to that neighborhood plan if it exists so Beacon Hill neighborhood plan what will also be up there and and so what we have to recognize is there's a lot of neighborhoods that don't have a plan so we need some other way of accounting for those neighborhoods that don't already have a plan that's contributed information into the sub area planning process so the other way we're going to do that is what we're calling neighborhood profiles and priorities and these are sections where we come and work with you in your neighborhood association on multiple occasions and talk about what makes your neighborhood great what's its history who lives here why is it a great place what are the main strengths and opportunities that you see in your neighborhood and then what are the biggest challenges that you think should be worked on so same kind of process you go through a neighborhood plans we just have to do it at a little bit smaller scale to be able to do it equitably across all neighborhoods but this way every neighborhood that has a registered association is going to have a profile in these plans moving forward something that they can refer to use when they approach city council members to say hey this is something that we want to advocate for this is something we said is important to us I think I'm using up a lot of my time so I'm going to move fast so Cynthia is going to talk about this more but there are really important ways that you as neighborhood associations and representatives can engage in the process and one of those is making sure that you select one or two people from your neighborhood that can be good two-way communicators of information so we need to hear from you what your neighborhood is thinking but we also really need for you to take back to your neighborhood the information you're hearing at planning team meetings and other information otherwise we end up in meetings like this where a lot of people are in the dark when they don't need to be so that two-way communication is super important and then also helping us host those neighborhood workshops to work on the profiles and priorities and to extract the right lessons from your existing neighborhood plans and make sure those are integrated there's a lot of roles that the neighborhoods can play that we really need to rely on you to help us with so these are just some other examples of how we get out there it's not just about neighborhood association meetings we do broader community meetings we do intercept events we have the website we try to have focus groups on specific topics there's lots of other ways that we're trying to get out there and get input from the community yep I'm just on time so these are a few great resources for those of you who have not visited these pages before so essay tomorrow dot com again is the overarching website that'll take you to all of these different plans essaycomplan.com is a re relaunched version of the comprehensive plan website so rather than just being a 300 page pdf that got thrown up on on the website it's actually very interactive it scrolls like a normal webpage lots of interactive features that you can look at you can learn a lot from going to that website we also worked on the essay corridors program and then most importantly if you go to our department's website a city planning website sanantonio.gov slash planning there are basically three quick clicks that you need to make to find a neighborhood or community plan that you're interested in to educate yourself about your plan if you haven't seen it before or if you need to refresh yourself on what's in there and what you think is important you go to our website in the left menu you'll see there's a little tab for adopted city plans you click on that and then it'll bring up what you see on the right here and you can click on community and neighborhood plans and it brings up an alphabetical listing of the 44 or so plans that exists for different neighborhoods and communities around the city so with that and I can put this back up later this is my contact information if you want to reach out to me about specific questions but for now I'm going to turn it over to Cynthia for her section of the program. Good morning I'm Cynthia Spillman and close when I was supposed to present together but she couldn't make it and I was very nervous about doing it alone but I look around and I see people who care about their neighborhoods I see other neighborhood association members and I feel at home so thank you. I'm here to talk today about the role and future of community and neighborhood plans I'm from the tier one neighborhood coalition well I need the clicker. Tier one is a downtown inter 410 loop of organization consisting of over 40 neighborhoods and also other alliances and organizations you can see what our our mission statement is but it's mostly to promote communication cooperation education and support among neighborhoods for today's presentation or more detailed information on this presentation please contact the steering committee at t1nc.sat.gmail.com there are handouts on your table that have that information neighborhoods and comp plans so after the final draft of the comprehensive plan was made public in 2016 we worked very hard to include neighborhood protections inclusion of our neighborhood plans and to be included in the implementation implementation stage of the sub area plans changes were made to subsequent drafts because of neighborhood intervention until the comp plan was adopted august 11th 2016 as amended by councilman Trevino who was instrumental in helping neighborhoods be protected in these plans our neighborhood plans were included so our neighborhood plans were included but after that we realized that they weren't being acted upon in may 2018 two years later neighborhood plans are guaranteed inclusion in the sub area plans after advocacy by many neighborhood associations and organizations with the assistance of council members Roberto Trevino Shirley Gonzales Ana Sandoval who was here earlier and John Courage however neighborhood land use plans will be subordinate to the new the land use plans will be subordinate to the new sub area plans that you'll be working on when the planning department begins an area planning your area they will come to your neighborhood association and they will ask you for someone to represent and an alternative your your neighborhood on that plan these people should have um familiarity with the existing neighborhood plan the SA tomorrow comp plan land use and zoning designations you know when we put together this presentation Kosem I talked to city staff we talked to neighborhood leaders that had already that are going through this right now we talked to neighbors but and and our own experience and our own experience tells us that knowledge is power you don't ever want to start to work for your neighborhood unless you understand the documents involved this person should be committed to attending all the planning team meetings they should be assertive but they also should be willing to open to ideas and input of other planning team members and willing willing to work with others for the common good they also should be knowledgeable such things as the areas history attitudes goals and culture and be willing to advocate using this local knowledge when I say advocate I mean push back sometimes it's important that you you understand and you're you're the people that in your neighborhood understand your neighborhood best and you know what what you are willing to give up and what you're not I can't stress to you how important neighborhood communication is during this process an additional person you should find that person who's dedicated to communicating back to the board and to the neighborhood to keep membership informed of the planning process meeting dates public input opportunities and events you can use e-blast you can use you know newsletters facebook next door but if you are you know Beacon Hill is a neighborhood association I belong to we everyone within our boundaries renter home owners no dues everyone's included in the association but I know that's not true of all neighborhood neighborhoods so if yours is a by-paid membership only consider ways to include non-paying residents and businesses in the conversation and decision-making because you're representing a neighborhood not just your neighborhood association and it's important to have the planning coordinator at your neighborhood meetings which from what I understand from what the like the midtown plan that's already a common practice by city planners so you know in our battle to have our neighborhood plans as part of the comp plan councilman Trevino from the dais just this last month had this language to say and we put it on the handout we gave you and it's worth reading because this is your guide he says each existing neighborhood plan that is to say areas with existing plans will sit down with the planning department staff to review and update their neighborhood plan these plans will be included in the in the udc this process will include discussions with previous planning teams the current neighborhood and residents members of the neighborhood community for areas without an existing plan a new document will be created using the same process some plans are too old or do not have access to the templates documents for their existing plans in these instances a new digital document will be created keeping the neighborhood plan and updating where neighborhoods would like updates or revisions there will be one large land use plan map for the whole area which will be created through a long public process where fluidity among boundaries can be ensured and discussed with each neighborhood during their sub eric sub plan discussions the larger area plan document will also include a bigger picture discussions like infrastructure and transit which cross many neighborhood boundaries that's really your your guide to thinking about your neighborhood plan within this within this these conversations so things that you can do to prepare take advantage when the planning team um office when the planning department offers to meet with you they will be reaching out to you take advantage of every time they want to meet please meet with them and come informed you know don't don't waste their time by teaching you the only way you can have control is to teach yourself first consider forming a committee that can help the planning team member prepare i wouldn't say consider you absolutely have to have a committee or a group of people that are committed to this process starting the year before one individual or two individuals cannot possibly do this alone revisit your neighborhood plan our plan was done in 2001 there's a lot of things that are outdated about it things that we've accomplished or just don't pertain anymore you know 18 years later so look at your plan look at your goals and your priorities what are things that you could do without what are things that are important to you enough that they represent your neighborhood and you're willing to go to the map for understand how your neighborhood plan intersects with the essay tomorrow comp plan how is it what does it have in common what elements are the same what things are different and and those things that are different what is what are things that they they don't really matter they're either outdated or just not a priority and which things do differ or what do matter and those are things you want to focus on that are important to your neighborhood look at your one plans to see the level in scope i would start if you're level three if you're lucky enough to be level three start attending those meetings for the the plans that are going on this coming year and they're going on right now to get a sense of how this works and how you can play a part if you if you are next year start talking to people that have gone through the process and are going through the process now talk to the other neighborhood associations within your plan area our neighborhood plan is out the east end beacon hill these are going to have four or five more neighborhoods we should be talking and we're year three we'll spend the next year talking about what's what we have in common and how we can support each other in the process look to see if there's public investment projects planned for your area that may affect land use in unexpected ways and be prepared for bigger picture conversations you have to look at transportation affordable housing sustainability there are a lot of things that you need to consider about your neighborhood as part of a bigger picture so often you need to think about the whole city and what's needed and how your neighborhood can play a part that doesn't mean you don't advocate and work very hard for things that are important to your neighborhood but you also understand that this is part of a bigger picture and be prepared to offer solutions someone who just complains will will be shut out of out of quickly out of the conversation you have to be willing to at least if you don't have solutions explore solutions with others thank you for being here today um please contact us if you want further information or have any questions thank you and we will take questions for Cynthia and Chris okay good morning um I guess this morning is before 12 I live in the on the west side I call it the immediate west side because it's right on the other side of downtown Calabra, Zazemar, up to popular and up to 24th and um I believe that our district probably wasted some money on that creek they said they spent millions and millions of dollars which I don't believe and all they put up was some water fountains and some sidewalks I thought it was going to look like the river center because I went to a planning meeting when they were talking about I thought it was going to be beautiful but I also want to know why does the east side over there about Wheatley it used to be Wheatley high school and Wheatley middle school they are building up beautiful homes and beautiful areas and the west side has nothing so I'm my thing is let's make the west side look beautiful like that also they were saying well we're going to put these jogging trails through the creek through well it's Alizon Creek and all that who's going to jog through that snake field area with crimes all all over what they need to do is put a substation right in there in the in the Lincoln courts and beautify the Lincoln courts like they beautified the east side thank you so I wish kosima wasn't ill and could be here because she's on the creek's um uh commission and we'd be able to answer some of your questions um if you would like to contact the tier one contact she will she will yeah she will answer you back and and talk to you about this and I don't know chris may have something to add to that yeah I can just add in response to a couple of those things um we do have representatives of the river authority on our planning teams which we're working on the west side right now and I'm not sure which neighborhood you're in but a lot of the neighborhoods over there are active in that but I know both Sarah and the city's parks department are working to continue improving those trails to continue designing uh the ones that have already been put in and continue improving those based on funding um as to your question about the development on the east side versus the west side um the um housing authority does have an application in with the federal government uh for a similar project on the west side but I think they're still in the process I don't know the exact dates of waiting to understand if funding is going to be available to do a revitalization project similar to what you described on the east side so there are things in motion to address some of the things that you were concerned about yeah I'm not sure about that but I think we're going to try to get to yeah go ahead sir okay I'm Alan Townsend I'm president of the Palm Heights neighborhood association um we came we were formed uh our plan was formed in 2000 the year 2000 we were so happy that the planning department thought of the neighborhoods as I do as the beating heart of the city now along came a planning director named Dugan who said no neighborhoods don't mean anything well they're just an impediment now you all seem to be taking the middle ground between those two ideas and saying well we've got these subregions uh I attended I first of all we went to the planning department and talked to no less than five times to people and said we really should be in the same organizing in the same uh tier as the Collins garden association come when the meeting happened they said no we've decided you're not in the same tier you go home next year we'll we'll bring you in what this tells me I'm not miffed about that particular decision as much as I am that the whole idea of neighborhoods is kind of passe and that we are expected to kowtow to you to come with to you with our great uh uh wisdom about the common people the hentai and you're going to make decisions that will affect us my thought is the neighborhoods are what where it's at neighborhood associations are where it's at and folks we're on our own this is a a layer of planning that we may or may not decide to deal with but it's up to us and if we do deal with it it's like ambassadors from a small province coming to see that we that our our province is not squashed but we are the beating heart of the city and I hope you guys will instead of telling us how to how to plan for your great organization we'd like to tell you how to plan for dealing with us thank you so I'll just try to respond quickly and there was a lot packed into that um I don't I'm not sure what the sentiment was that was expressed when uh John Dugan was the planning director um I can tell you now it's not that neighborhoods are an impediment as I said from the very very beginning of our process the very first people invited to be a part of the planning teams and help advise us in these plans were the neighborhood associations um I won't have them raise their hand but there are a number of people in this audience who have been a part of the planning teams and and gone to those meetings and I think realize that we really are trying to make sure that we understand neighborhood needs neighborhood concerns neighborhood priorities with that said just to be honest part of our job is also to think about those citywide issues as as Cynthia said you know and Councilman Sandoval said earlier a lot of the issues that the city is grappling with aren't just about one neighborhood and aren't going to be solved at a single neighborhood level they can be solved by thinking more globally whether it's at a sub area or across the whole city and so part of our job is to and it's a hard job honestly uh is to balance the desires of the neighborhoods and what the neighborhoods really want to see and what's important with them with those overarching important things that people across the city have said are important as part of the comprehensive plan we're going to take three more questions before the breakout session my name's Frank Fonseca I'm with the president of Maverick neighborhood association um as far as the neighborhood associations that kind of go along with mr. Townsend I don't think they're they hold any weight anywhere except when the voting comes around that's when you see the neighborhood associations playing a vital role I mean I've lived in my neighborhood for over 40 years and it's still the same thing we've had associations and we go to meetings and all that it's still the same thing we still have the same issues number two on that tier one you said 40 neighborhoods so that means the other neighborhood associations are near but aren't being heard or you know that's that's uh I think the tier one uh association thing or group that y'all formed I think you're going against that's what we have city councilmen for that's what we pay pay these people now to do what y'all are trying to do so I think uh is just the next layer of bureaucracy as far as the tier one is concerned as far as I'm concerned thank you sure I can I can understand how you feel that way but what we found is if we want to advocate for our neighborhoods that neighborhood coalitions are really effective to do that otherwise how will our council members know what is important to us and so we're not a top-down organization we don't even have bylaws or a board we are a group of of horizontally aligned neighborhoods that advocate and help educate each other and mostly it's about a way of organizing and giving voice to neighborhood concerns and I would disagree if five years ago if you'd have told me that neighborhoods would have had the voice that they have now and are able to impact city strategies the way they have now I would have said oh no never and sometimes when we're going through it I think oh this is just like beating your head against the wall and then suddenly you realize that neighborhood voices are being heard I think wherever your area is I mean we focused on downtown neighborhoods because we have so many things in common but we also have a lot of common and suburban neighborhoods and it's just important that coming together and talking about what's important to you is part of the democratic process right so you come together and that's how you advocate to your city council and mayor what's important to people living in neighborhoods okay before things get too personal I'm going to be respectful to these people online okay we're I know we're short of time but two quick rebuttals number one on san pedro creek the city got a beautiful bonus in taking care of a bad flooding situation that was more than a century in existence so yeah we've got what looks like a a small real or puddle but it is a beauty and it is ensuring safety as far as the neighborhoods I'm only one member of Highland Park a Highland Hills neighborhood association but I think we're getting the attention attention of the city of san Antonio our councilwoman and we're seeing some things getting done thank you dusty for that rebuttal Trish one more question yes question first oh you guys talk about them over here uh my my question is uh in 2009 the city council adopted our uh comprehensive plan the eastern triangle uh community plan not an association a community plan which comprises 16 neighborhood associations and what we did is we formed a domestic non-profit corporation so uh we have a legal standing and anybody that wants to mess with our plan and to override our our future land use and all of that is going to meet with some legal uh problems because we are going to protect our plan and if I have to run for city council to protect our plan I will do that and we're going to be respectful of Trish she was in line so thank you Dan I think your comment is really good and I think actually what the eastern triangle kind of like what the planning department is doing now with the community level plans the bigger plans and trying to hit a lot of different issues my question for is it just kind of sensitive oh okay I'll let it go um is to expand a little bit on the implementation aspects because what I'm hearing is that there's a lot of emphasis on um getting efficiency of land use categories getting maybe efficiency eventually of zoning of uh hitting a broader part of uh the whole San Antonio community which is also what the sector plans attempted to do and did cover everywhere except for I think the east side with land use and I think those are good things I think the big uh change since everyone's neighborhood plans was created also is thinking about population growth which the city had never done and I do think that that's very important the growth centers are very important I do think we went through a period we were so focused on growth that the neighborhood plans were perhaps not as emphasized as much as people wanted them to be and I think that that's that's being equalized but my question is with the respect of the neighborhood plans a lot of the issues are still the same and what have you guys learned in terms of what has worked with the neighborhood plans um because it seems to me that one of the big inefficiencies not just the bureaucracy in the system but it's how are they actually being effective and where's the implementation I could I can see that in a lot of cases the ncd standards have created some really great things when they're actually enforced and and and the intent of them is is is adhered to but there are some parks can get done but with the planning department you know on a kind of a fast pace to create all these plans what is the plan for implementation because the just having a plan or having an updated plan is is good but it doesn't really mean anything with in that the planning department doesn't actually have the tools to to to solve the issues then it's relying on all the other departments or nonprofits or other entities to actually bring the resources to bear so how is that process improving sure so um again there's a lot in that one and we've thought about implementation very carefully because we know we know it's important and probably a lot of you in the audience who have your neighborhood plans are in our proud of them probably also have the frustration that you feel like a lot of things didn't get done um and this is not to you know to disparage our predecessors in the department but one of the things we're trying to do a little bit differently with the sub area plans is to say that we really do have to prioritize so uh you know the city accomplished I think it was 44 neighborhood or community plans and again that covers only a fraction of the city so only a fraction of the city had representation by a document like this um but yeah but they didn't go to that level of detail of you know what neighborhoods are really wanting and I think where the challenge comes in is if you have a neighborhood plan or any document that has you know in total 100 150 200 things you want to see get done and no real nod or thought to who's going to pay for it and which things are the biggest priorities a lot of those things aren't going to get done because nobody knows where to start nobody knows what to do with it so in these sub area plans we really are trying to think at a little bit higher level about those things that we think we can affect uh working with departments that can help us like transportation capital improvements like the parks department like our partners at via and other agencies um and maybe these plans won't have 150 or 200 recommendations maybe and I don't know the exact number we're still working out the exact recommendations of the first plans but maybe it's 50 or 60 things that collectively everybody can say yes over the next 10 years which is the general horizon of these plans these are the most important things that we should focus on and this group are the ones that we should focus on first because they're going to build a support and a foundation for these other ones along with that we're also really trying to make sure that we give some thought to how they might get paid for as Trish mentioned the plan department doesn't have the resources to go build streets or to improve parks we have to rely on other funding sources and other departments but what we're trying to do is say well working with tci do we know that such and such street or intersection improvements or sidewalk improvements could be integrated into a certain round of of of their their workflow or collectively over the next five or six years can we identify a certain number of these projects across the sub areas that would make sense to roll into a bond in 2022 so that every neighborhood every community around the city would be invested and get something out of a bond like that these are just ideas this is no you know guaranteed thing looking where there are tax increment reinvestment zones things like that different layers of financing to make sure that out of those priorities that we identify some of them if not all of them can actually get accomplished over the ensuing 10 years so I don't know if that helps answer your question thank you Cynthia thank you Chris for that lively informative discussion we appreciate your time I know there are people who still have questions they will still be here to to meet with you one-on-one in the meantime we've got to move to our breakout sessions they are going to be upstairs on that balcony those rooms up there you're going to go out the exit and up the stairs there's some wonderful volunteers from san Antonio college here to help you in room 312 a meeting about code compliance in room 305 a meeting about animal care services and in room 321 cps energy thank you just wanted to step up here and salute our dear friend Emily Balkum she's been so very gracious and kind and patience because patience is not just a virtue it's kind of how the world works so Emily we thank you you have a wonderful family after the privilege of her dad Michael Balkum who's a local at 20 and Emily we're just real proud of you thank you I wanted to acknowledge Joe Gonzalez Joe are you still here Joe is running for DA and we all know that the DA the DA has an integral role in what goes on so thank you Joe thank you for being here