 Is this working? Oh, there it is. Good morning, everybody. It's my privilege to welcome you here today to the Hatton W. Stummer 2016 Careers and Politics Conference. Thanks to all of you for being here on a Saturday. This is a great group, and I think we have an exciting day ahead for you. We're happy to be here at UTSA at the College of Public Policy. It's the first time the Annette Strauss Institute has hosted an event in San Antonio. And from what I can tell by this room we'll be doing more of them in the future. We're excited to be here in the Alamo City and to be able to join with you. I want to tell you a little bit about the Annette Strauss Institute and about this program and give a few thoughts about what I hope you are going to be able to take away from it today. The Annette Strauss Institute is an organized research unit at the University of Texas at Austin. We envision a democracy where all citizens are engaged in their communities. And they exercise their right to vote, and they actively participate in making their communities better. The reason we do what we do and continue to do it is because we've got a lot that we can improve on. Texas consistently ranks low in voter turnout and in citizens who state that they're actively involved in their democratic life and in their communities. Annette Strauss, who bears the institute's name, was the embodiment of these values in Dallas. She spent 40 years of her life as a philanthropist and civic leader in Dallas and served on the Dallas City Council and as the Dallas mayor from 87 to 91. So her legacy sort of guides our work. If we could all create more Annette Strausses of this world would be a much better place. The New Politics Forum is the program that we get to use to put on events like this for you today. As candidates in the tone of our conversation in public life becomes more divided and more polarized, the New Politics Forum goes to great lengths to maintain programming that is strictly nonpartisan. It's focused on youth and it's taught by active political professionals and people doing the work. So why would we put on a conference like this today? Careers and politics. I personally believe we do this because I think there's no other more, there's no more rewarding career path than public service in being engaged in public life. Most people come to this work because they wanna make a difference and what you realize when you're doing it, I've spent my career in it as well so I come at this from a little bit of a biased and personal perspective. Working in public service allows you to connect with people and use leadership to set priorities for your community and to bring about change to make things better. So today's theme is collaboration and impact, making a difference in public service. And I hope you see and will hear from people who have made the choices they've made in their lives because that's what they seek to do. I have to thank a few people for having put this together today. Of course the Hatton W. Sumner Foundation, their generous financial support for the new politics forum is what allows us to do things like this. I'd like to thank several folks from UTSA, Dr. Rahelio Sines, Dr. Francine Romero and Michelle Skidmore. Thank you for your help in having this event come together today and for partnering with us. We've already talked about how we wanna partner more together in the future. I'd also like to thank the elected officials who've taken time out of their day to join us. I don't know if they're here yet, but they'll be arriving soon. Representative Mike Villarreal and Councilman Ray Saldana will be here to talk to you today, among others. And I now get the distinct honor of introducing you to the UTSA president, Dr. Ricardo Romo. Dr. Romo, I'll pick my favorite one then. Led the world record for running a mile in less than four minutes and you held that for 41 years. That's impressive. That's amazing. Well, that is more than I can imagine ever being accomplished for in my life, but in addition to that, he's been an outstanding leader of UTSA since 1999 and has really put it on the map in so many ways as an emerging tier one research university in the University of Texas and expanded their programs. The growth that has been here during his time is probably like none other in around the country. So thank you for your leadership and what you do. Thanks so much. Okay. Well, I did get promoted. I was in fact the first Texan to run the mile under four minutes. I got promoted to a world record race, which I did not have a world record, but I was in a world record race once and I ran with the best in the world. So I got up because I want to be sure I get to connect with everyone. And from where I was, I couldn't see everyone. I would have missed Zach Dunn, our former student government leader, president and off to great things. Thank you all for coming. This is the easiest job I've ever been assigned. Get, talk to students about getting engaged. This generation, your group, is the most engaged group of people since the 1960s. In the last 50 years, no group under 25 has been more engaged. So all you got to do is just go with the flow. You already, you already engage. Now the question is, you already engage, will you make good use of your energy, your good minds, your networking? That's really what it's about. It's what we make the best use of it. And it's hard. Where should you be today? Here? What do we have a caucus today? Where's the caucus today? I know they're meeting somewhere. Nebraska, Louisiana. Should you be here? Or should you be in Louisiana, working with the caucus group? Well, those are good, I mean, those are important decisions. By the way, never feel like you should have been there and then you have a test on Monday and you go over there and you miss your test on Monday. Take care of business and find the ways by which you can get involved. I was a very involved young student my graduate days. Not involved as an undergraduate because I was running track. But I got the good fortune of meeting some very good organizers. One of the very first organizers I met was Cesar Chavez. And the second great organizer I met was the top organizer, Dolores Huerta, who did two of them help organize something that never been done in the world. Farm workers, nowhere in the world where farm workers have collective bargaining. You just worked in the fields, you couldn't join a union, there were no unions. So they had the most despicable working conditions you can imagine. And I had a chance to bring Dolores Huerta. I have a friendship of, see I brought Dolores Huerta to my campus when I was teaching at UC San Diego pre-1980s, pre-1980s. So then I brought her here last year. She's still going strong. She's in her 80s and she's just going strong still talking about many of the things that you're hearing politically in some of those camps right now. So I applaud you for coming out on a Saturday morning coming out and thinking, am I doing enough? Can I do more? And do I have my network all closed out? Can I meet any more people? Can I get any more ideas? Can I get involved civically anymore? The answer is yes to all, you can. So you just gotta be strategic, whatever you do. I have a good fortune of being at a campus that's very active. Zach, Zach Dunn, did I know you Zach? Stand up a second. Zach Dunn was our student government leader. I just want you to know that I'm gonna get this wrong. But we were number one or number two in America in signing up new people to be voters. Right, two years ago, Zach, more or less? Number one in 2014, in all of America. This is not a school with 50,000 students like Michigan or UT Austin. We had 28,000 students and we were number one in signing up individuals, students to register to vote. Despite the fact that we had this phenomenal record, the county of the city said, you do not get an early voting location. Students don't vote, they don't care. They're apathetic, they're apolitical. We said, no, no, no, you got that wrong. Do not call our students apolitical, apathetic. They care a lot. And so we lobbied, lobbied, lobbied and got our voting site. And thousands of students voted on our campus. Not because I said so, because our students said so. So, by the way, they helped a lot of people. They helped a lot of people in the community. They helped the people across the street in Valero who came over and voted early, early voting, which was good. So this is not just for themselves. It was for the community. And I think those are some of the things that if you're lucky, you'll learn early. How do we tell I got to graduate school to learn anything? And at that point, it was a good time to learn a few things. Be against the war, I was against the war. Be against the draft, I was against the draft. Be for farm workers, be for something. I was for farm workers. Be for student rights, I was for that. So, going, I learned a lot of things. I just want to thank you all for inviting me here to, Susan, thank you for what you're doing. Ness Straus, very famous name in Texas history. And Austin, great place for it. I just wanted to just congratulate you on your interests and your motivation. And I hope that you come back and one way or another connect with UTSA. And if you haven't, I don't know how many of you are from our campus, but you're from other places, I'm assuming, from all the folks. How many from UTSA, darling? Okay, the rest of you, if you're not from UTSA, that means you gotta meet these folks. Because from my perspective, they're phenomenal. Thank you, Susan. Thank you. I would be remiss if I did not recognize Drew Galloway and Emily Einstein from the Annette Straus Institute for their hard work getting this together today. So I think I left you off my first thank you, and I wanted to correct that, so thank you. Thanks for those words. And with that, I'm handing it over to Drew. Is that correct? Thank you so much. My name is Drew Galloway, I'm the program coordinator for the New Politics Forum at the Annette Straus Institute for Civic Life. So quickly, we've been really fortunate to have US Senator John Cornyn give us a message to the audience today. So we just wanted to take a second and hear from Senator Cornyn. Hi, I'm Texas Senator John Cornyn. Welcome to the 2016 Careers and Politics Conference. Thank you, Director Knowled and President Romo for hosting this event. I'm thrilled there are so many young people who are passionate about serving their communities. My own civic engagement started right here, serving as a judge in Bear County. Since then, I've served on the Texas Supreme Court as Texas Attorney General and now as a United States Senator. At each step along the way, working for the people of Texas has been deeply rewarding and I encourage each of you to pursue a path that involves serving your own community. Thank you for your dedication and have a wonderful conference. So as we get started today, I just wanted to kind of touch base and say thank you so much for coming out this morning and this afternoon and spending a whole Saturday with us. We're really excited to be here at UTSA. This is my alma mater, so Go Road Runners. We're very happy to be here because of the College of Public Policy, because of what UTSA is doing in areas like urban management, public administration, political science, and so we're happy to be down here at the downtown campus and with you here today. So really quickly, the New Politics Forum was started in 2003 at the Annette Strauss Institute. What we focus on is nonpartisan youth-focused programs that ultimately link political professionals to youth so that you guys learn directly from the source. And so this is probably one of our biggest programs that kind of exemplifies that because all day today, you're gonna hear from political professionals, elected officials, people that are consultants, students that are doing great stuff. So I think that you're gonna be really impressed with the lineup that we have today and we're really, really excited about our speakers. A couple programs that we have coming up that we wanna kind of put on your radar if you're interested in our other programming, we have a program called Campaign Boot Camp. It happens in May or June of this year, and if you're really interested in working in elections and campaigns, this is something you should think about. It's held at UT Austin's College of Moody, the Moody College of Communication. And ultimately, we bring together about 60 students from across the state and we teach everybody about campaigns, anything from volunteer management to campaign math to campaign strategy and how to deal with elected officials, and then we run a mock campaign at the same time. And so we kind of pit teams together that might not share the same political ideology, but ultimately you work together to kind of push your candidate forward and it teaches you just a ton of great skills. So if you're interested in political campaigns, keep an eye out for that, that's gonna come up in the spring. Also, we have a brand new program that's starting this year called the Texas Civic Ambassadors Program. If you're in college, you love civic engagement and you wanna be a leader on your campus, definitely think about applying for this in the spring. It's gonna start in the fall, but we're going to choose select individuals across the state of Texas, and those individuals are gonna be campus leaders and ambassadors for civic engagement on their campus. It's a great leadership program, we're gonna give you lots of great skills and classes that you can go to. We're also going to give you the opportunity to meet elected officials and meet political professionals in your community and across Texas. And then we're gonna give you the opportunity also to do some sort of research and writing and that kind of thing. So it's gonna be a really, really fun program and it's gonna be starting this fall. So we would love to see you apply for that as well. So today a little bit of items for the conference today. Live streaming, we are live streaming today via Nowcast SA. So we're really thankful to have the Nowcast SA team here, but please visit our website, all the links are live now. So if you go to the newpoliticsforum.org website, you can find the Hatton Summoners website here and you'll be able to look at this after the event or if you wanted to revisit one of the panels today when you get home tonight, you're able to do that, they'll be up and live now. So definitely check that out. So a couple of housekeeping items before we get started with our first panel. Coffee service and water will be provided throughout the day so please feel free to go over and grab some refreshments and that kind of thing. The Wi-Fi login is air rowdy underscore a guest. So if you haven't connected your cell phones, please do that. You might have to log in multiple times throughout the day just due to security reasons, but we have free Wi-Fi here so we're really happy about that. Additionally, rest stations are out the hallway here and to the left, so you can find the rest stations there. Networking is one of the most important skills here in political life. So we're here to kind of help build those skill sets throughout the day. If you look behind your name tag, if you haven't noticed it, you have 10 business cards there. We printed individual business cards for everybody and we have the business card challenge today. So your job today is to meet 10 new students that you didn't know and introduce yourself and trade business cards with them and ultimately, you know, gather 10 new business cards and meet new people and keep up with them after the conference. After you're done today, or whenever you're finished, come see myself or Emily Einzone or Madison Cassell who checked you in at the registration table. We're gonna take your name and then ultimately we will, next week we will pull one of the names for who completed the business card challenge for a free ticket to our campaign boot camp in May. So let's see here. Next item, we have a networking event this evening. So please join us. We're gonna be at Pico de Gallo which is walking distance from here. If you're not familiar with it, you will just walk straight across the plaza. But Pico de Gallo is a great Mexican place and famous here in San Antonio. We will be providing appetizers and it's a great way to get to know your conference fellow conference goers. Some of the speakers might come for the afternoon panels and the Strauss Institute staff will be there as well. So we'd love to see you and visit with you and learn more about what you're doing on your campus. Twitter, we are tweeting live today throughout the day so please follow us. We're at New Politics Forum or at New Politics Forum and it's spelled, the politics section is spelled P-O-L-I-T-I-X so no C-S. And then the hashtag that we're using is hashtag C-I-P-16. So please tweet from your seats, like we want you to have your cell phones out, we want you to be engaged digitally and here in the audience. But please tell your friends about what you're doing today and why it's important and that kind of thing. Also check out our Facebook page. Our Facebook page is New Politics Forum and there we have lots of great like articles on civic engagement and that kind of thing. And finally, by attending this event you are now a New Politics Forum alumni. So please join our LinkedIn alumni page. That's where we post jobs from across the state of Texas and politics and civic engagement and ultimately that's a great place for you to find opportunities that might be interesting to you. So with that, if you can silence your cell phones, please keep them out for Twitter and Facebook but if you can silence them, we're going to go ahead and call up the first panelist. We'll take five minutes and then we'll start the first panel. If you wanna grab any water or coffee, you can go ahead and do that. Okay everybody, thank you so much for your patience. We are gonna go ahead and start our first panel which is entitled State and Local Policy Making. I wanna introduce our moderator and then our moderator is gonna introduce our guest today. Dr. Francine Romero is Associate Dean for the College of Public Policy here at UTSA. She's also an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Administration. She earned her in MA and PhD in Political Science at the University of California at Riverside. She currently serves on the city of San Antonio, the city of San Antonio as Zoning Commissioner for District 8 and Chair of the city of San Antonio's Conservation Advisory Board, which has saved over 100,000 acres of central Texas, Bear County land for water conservation. So please give us a warm welcome for Francine Romero and our panelists today. Thank you Drew and how's my mic doing? Welcome everybody, thank you. This is a great turnout and how many of you again are from UTSA? Okay, and wow, this is amazing. So thank you again and you're in for a real treat today with the Councilman and I just wanna give you a little bit of an introduction. I don't wanna take up the whole time cause I could with this introduction and there is more in your program. And I'm going to start with high school although there is a really cute picture of you graduating from kindergarten on the internet. So, it's my first official political photo. Yes, in your cap and gown. So Councilman Saldana is a graduate of South Sound High School and when he was there, one project he was involved in is the successful Books in the Barrio to bring a bookstore to the south side for the first time. Back when we still had bookstores and you brought that in. He was a Gates Millennium Scholar and he went to Stanford University where he earned a BA in political science and communications. He also, while he was there, earned his master's degree in education policy. Upon returning to San Antonio, among many other things, he was elected a city council member for district four in May of 2011, so five years ago while he was still in his mid-20s, barely, even in his mid-20s. He has been an adjunct professor at several local universities. He actually worked here and the Councilman was a really important part of our successful application for the Carnegie Community Engagement designation, which is something we're very proud of. We got it on our first try, which is very unusual and I believe that A&M may have failed in their first try. I'm not sure, but we're very proud of that. It's sauce-fired. And he continues on, of course, in his council role. So please welcome Councilman Ray Saldana. Want to divide up our discussion a little bit because I think you have, I know you have a lot to offer in terms of your ideas on government and what you're doing, but also just as a role model, so we want to get to know a little bit about you and your background. But one thing I wanted to start with, so I think students are somewhat aware of this, but I want to make sure everybody knows how much work is involved in being an elected official. So could you run through for us a little bit of a typical day in your life, maybe not a day when you're actually in session in council or you could talk about that as well, but a typical day where you're at the office dealing with constituents, dealing with your staff, how does that go? Sure, well, first of all, good morning, everybody. I'm glad to be here with you all. This is, for me, it's great to get to walk into a room that isn't surrounded with folks who still remember the first walk on the moon. Typically, I'm in the council chambers and there are folks much older, and Zach knows this, Zach is the former president of UTSA. There are folks who are much older than I am who are the elected officials making a lot of the decisions, and so I'm glad to actually be a somewhat, I mean, the upper echelons of my cohort, I think, in this room, but it's still good to see some folks who are interested and young and on their way to do some great things. So I want to start by maybe describing yesterday, maybe as a good example. So when you're on the city council, there are a number of different things that are happening all at once. So yesterday I woke up and I wished that my alarm clock woke me up more than my phone calls did. So I get a call from a constituent who, I love local politics. I'm one of the folks who actually enjoys getting calls early in the morning about a constituent who is having problems with his neighbors. And so actually if all of my neighbors got along, I would get zero calls and I'd have nothing to do for most of my work on the city council, but I get a call from one of my neighbors who says I really need to get out to his house because his neighbors got these dogs that are running around, they're getting into his yard, all the types of things that I'm thinking to myself, and it's funny because yesterday I was, I have to admit I keep a journal every once in a while and so when I'm good, I do it every so often, one in two days apart. And I talk about how much, how surprised I was getting into this work the first day. I was looking back to 2011 when I was first elected and to think about the fact that I'm still getting the same type of call from the same individuals is really exciting. But I start with a constituent call and so I go visit him on the South side of San Antonio and of course my time I get there, Animal Care Services is picking up these poor dogs, taking them to the shelter, which they're small puppies and we're hoping to get them adopted. But from there I actually transitioned to a meeting with folks from the editorial board at the Express News. There's this big case happening here in San Antonio that's not dissimilar from other big cities, which is we're talking about excessive use of force between our police department and our community members. And we are just about to roll out in San Antonio one of the largest deployment of body cameras. And so sat down with a writer from the Express News who wants to really hear about what implications it's gonna have for community and policing relations. So transitioned from that meeting to a meeting with my chief of staff who is discussing with me a broader term strategy for how bad the bus system is in San Antonio. For those folks who know San Antonio well, we're trying to come up with a way to create equitable funding for our bus system. And it was shocking to me to find out that for the last several decades in San Antonio we've been completely utterly underfunding and failing the folks who are reliant on public transportation in San Antonio. So we're trying to come up with a broad strategy to find more funding for our bus system here. So it's really from theme to theme, you're jumping back from issues that are on the ground with constituents to big policy objectives like policing and then to things that are more long-term like fixing a public transportation system. All of these things get rolled into a day. Sometimes they are, you're more reaction. You're in a position of reacting to more things and you'd like to be thinking proactively because when you come into this job you certainly understand the level of constituent work that you're gonna get from community members. But you also come in with an agenda of what you think is going to be helpful to lead and move the city forward. So it's really a balance between reacting and trying to find some space to do some things that you really, really care about. So that's sort of a typical day that happened yesterday and I think I actually missed lunch. Yesterday, so every once in a while you've got to figure out what are priorities and sometimes things get really busy but it's been for me the last five years it's been an incredible journey and just understanding the way local governments work and how sometimes the way that we build our cities and the way that cities exist today is not by accident but there are folks in my seat who have been guiding the growth of the city either in a good or a bad direction. And I've got plenty of ideas about whether San Antonio has been on a good or bad trajectory for a long time. Do you ever have a day where you can be completely unplugged, no calls, no texts, no nothing? You know, it's really tough. I actually, I've tried that and my wife gets mad at me because we tried to take a vacation and we did so and I was in a different country so my phone was off but of course I had to find the closest Wi-Fi to check the messages that I've had. So if you're doing this job well and you love what you're doing it isn't a burden to you to check back in and be as responsive as you can to a certain issue but it probably is not good for your work-life balance. Okay. I wanted to talk about your background a little bit and also about maybe your first political experiences where you first knew that this is what you wanted to do and I know you might wanna address the books and the barrio experience but you also, I read some interviews with you where you talked about when you went to Stanford what a different experience that was that you had really never been out of San Antonio that you were afraid that when you got there they were going to tell you this was a mistake, we never meant to send you that acceptance letter and it's interesting because when I was reading about Representative Villarreal's background which is really similar to yours but he talked about how he never really became aware of his cultural background until he went to Texas A&M and people said, why aren't you more like Hispanic? And so he had a very different experience and with yours, the other thing when you got the acceptance to Stanford and your mom said, well, but Palo Alto would be nice too. So how that was, I mean you had some political experience but going out into the world being from kind of an insular part of San Antonio and then what was it like? What really sparked that idea in you that you wanted to then come back and get into politics here? Sure, so if you allow me a second, I want to be as candidate and direct with folks about what was it that actually drew me to government what drew me to elected office or the public service? So I'm a first generation American and growing up I actually was always afraid to admit that I felt like friends would make fun of me I'd be ostracized for it but being a first generation American means my father was a Mexican undocumented immigrant for much of his life and somebody asked me the question like what was it that got you interested in government specifically? And I point to two things when I think about that. So when I was about six or seven years old my father was studying to become an American citizen and it's so odd that we, you might know this but we asked some of our newest Americans to come in and take some congratulations. We asked some of our newest Americans some very difficult questions but they have to understand local, state and national government better than probably some of our top students in the class here today or in the room here today. So as a six or seven year old I was studying with my dad and prepping him with test questions and I would ask him how many representatives in the House of Representatives who said give me liberty or give me death named the 13 original colonies of the United States and I remember getting to know these things that three judicial branches of the government I hope you all are taking away at this by the way does anybody know who gave who says give me liberty or give me death? Patrick Henry, we've got some good solid Americans in here. And so early on I remember just being so in awe of the fact that there was this sense of a bigger system that was all working and I'm one of the individuals who is a first generation American who really does believe that government can work for you. And so I have felt throughout my entire life that I've owed a burden to this country I owed a burden to my government because it allowed my father and allowed my family opportunities. We were the sort of the poster child for or I was at least the poster child for all of the things that government says should we invest in this? What is the real return on early childhood education? What is the real return on bilingual education? What is the real return on paying for summer programs? I was a UTSA summer prep program student here. So I really, my family was taking advantage of anything and everything that was free. It wasn't just the WIC program. It was the educational programs that I got to take advantage of. So the one experience that I had was sort of working with my father getting to see government work for him, realizing that there are policy decisions made all over the country, all over the state that actually have real effects on people and they had real effects on my family. And then the second experience was with with a program that I was a part of in high school. It was called Books in the Bodyo and I had this great government teacher. He was great, he was a far left liberal and he would, he's probably, he actually, I still see him around. He's a government teacher. He rallies outside of City Hall in his retirement but he said to us then, I was a junior, he said, look for something in the community you think needs fixing and I want you all to do something about it. He said too often we point to something and say somebody should fix that and he told us very directly, he said you all are that somebody. And so in high school I was, we decided on the fact that there were many more liquor stores and pawn shops and things that weren't productive in the community but there wasn't a bookstore. And so as a junior, we decided, as a junior in high school I decided that myself and a few other members of our committee at that time would want to start a group called Books in the Bodyo. And here's the learning moment from that. We tried for a year and a half putting posters up, having rallies, really kind of an activist string in me to get out there and start a rallying for this and none of it was working until we actually got the attention of our city councilman at that time. And so we got the attention of our city councilman and he said, you know what, I'm sympathetic to the idea, I want to help you all with this program. And it was as if we turned a light switch on that when he decided to take the mantle of our initiative that we actually made progress and soon enough a year and a half later we were able to bring a bookstore to the mall down on the south side of San Antonio. And so all of these seeds I think were being planted in terms of what I wanted to do eventually when I got to a place like Stanford that it was challenging in nature but I also realized that places like San Francisco or places like LA, I did more traveling in the first year in college and I did my entire life. I grew up on the south side of San Antonio and I had a three mile radius. If we were going somewhere far in my mind we were going to Fiesta, Texas on the north side of San Antonio. So I got to see all these different cities whether it was, so I also played baseball while I was at Stanford and I got lucky enough to travel with the team and we would go to places like UCLA, USC and Oregon and Washington and I would see all these great cities doing amazing things and I just realized like why is San Antonio so far behind with respect to transportation, so far behind with respect to educational rates so that I sort of found out that my, the vision in my mind was that I wanted to be back in San Antonio, that that was my purpose and that all of the experiences that I had to that point I felt like I owed something to good policymaking that allowed me opportunity and that's why I ended up at 23. Somebody had this crazy idea that I should run for office and it usually always starts as a crazy idea that somebody says in jest as a joke that you think you might actually be able to do and so somebody said there's an open seat down in your district on the city council why don't you think about running for it and so that's what I did in 2010 and I was 23 at that time. It was quite a frightening and nerve wrecking experience. I told you I was journaling, I actually opened it up because I was thinking about this talk today and I said two things that I was incredibly nervous about the fact that the next few months of my life was going to be dedicated to something I was completely unsure of which was running a campaign and it was my first job out of graduate school which was teaching at Trinity for a semester so I was just completely nervous about the entire experience and I'll tell you just one quick story, I'm sorry I'm being so long-winded on this question but the very first door that I knocked on I was 23, it was December and I wanted to really get out five months before the election and knock on as many doors as possible it's the very first door I knocked on and I walk up the driveway, Ms. Rodriguez because I've got like every good candidate I've got a list of all of the voters I've got how old you are, your address and so I know that Ms. Rodriguez is 73 and she comes to the front door Ms. Rodriguez, sorry to bother you I know it's a Saturday morning I wanted to come by and introduce myself my name is Ray Saldaña, I'm running for city council I'm from the community I was born and raised here went off to Stanford, came back I want to be your leader I want to be your city councilman and then she stopped and looked at me and she said, you say you're running for the city council or you're running for the student council because I cannot believe that you would be running for the city council and really this was my first door so I had 3,000 more doors to knock on and I figured if they're all going to be like this I'm in for a long, long several months Well I think that's an important backdrop to my next two questions and we will open this up for questions from all of you a little bit I think one of the things that you're really known for is that people see you out in the community people see you out running or biking I know you were out there with some of our students going door to door for animal care services and responsible pet ownership you rode the bus for a month and it wasn't a publicity stunt you did it for real and I think maybe with other elected officials people don't see them unless they go to council or maybe they see them at the head table at a luncheon where they probably wouldn't be invited to anyway so is that... I'm assuming that's a big part of your philosophy of government of just being out there just doing regular stuff but also just seeing what everybody else is doing and being a part of your community does that help you understand your constituents more? Sure I would absolutely advocate on behalf of... it is great to be anonymous in some ways that if you're an elected official it would be tougher for John Cornyn for example to walk around and experience the same things that I'm getting to do as a city councilman but it is absolutely the best way to put yourself in a position to make a good policy decision and I sometimes joke with some of my colleagues on the city council because it's the experiment that I did where I said you know what I'm leaving my keys at home I'm going to see for an entire month how difficult it is to navigate and traverse this city without a vehicle because it's not just one or two people that are dealing with this there are thousands of St. Antonio residents who experience life going to and from work and back without a car it helps to get a sense of empathy for the situation but it helps you speak in a much more commanding position when you're in these conversations and you realize that folks at the other side of the table who are advocating against an idea perhaps of investing more into something that you think is worthy that you really understand that they're not getting it but they don't necessarily see the human element to a lot of the policymaking because when you are a decision maker what makes sense are numbers what makes sense is the dollar prices attached to things and I'm not saying that we should waste money or throw money away in programs we don't believe in I want to be sure that I believe in the program and so whether it is riding the bus for a month or riding with our animal care officers who are doing a herculean job trying to manage a city that has one of the largest or the longest histories of being the largest pet unfriendly city in the country it's important to me to do that especially as well we talked about police at the outside of the discussion doing ride-alongs with police officers and really understanding that their job is one in which there's so much gray area between what we like to hold up as the playbook on how to react to every situation and what it's like when you're actually behind the driver's seat or at a situation that is just new to you and no level of training could prepare you for every single position that you're in on the city council that allows you that flexibility you can go in and become unnoticed especially if you're young nobody believes that you're the city councilman so I can go into our animal care services or into our parks department or into the police substation and they'll first give me a hard time because they won't believe that I'm their city councilman and I should be able to walk around and do a few things just kind of take a quick audit of the situation it has been a help for me to be able to do those things and to speak to them from some real positions of I think the human element whether it is the human element of being a police officer the human element of being somebody in the city who is not coming from means You know also getting back to the story you know a lot of people get into council races because they're kind of handpicked maybe they're the council aide and then when that councilman's leaving it's like okay well this is the person that's sort of anointed and they don't really have to start from the bottom and you did I mean you just plunged in there and I think maybe something that's challenging for students something you said about when students want to get involved and they have an issue area and maybe they know there's a public meeting and they walk in and I even experience this and I do remember the moon landing but I can still walk in a room and everybody's older than me and they've known each other for 50 years and they speak in shorthand and you go in and they're kind of like why are you here you're not the group we've been the group for a long time and we don't really want you here and they probably don't mean that but you get that feeling sometimes so what advice do you have as students are interested in starting to maybe apply for a commission position or just go to a meeting and want to start getting involved how do they start to get traction being young and not having that connection with the network yet so you point to a real tension that exists between folks who are inside the loop already versus those who are trying to make their way in and the best advice I would give is that you have to embrace a little bit of that awkwardness because there's always going to be a jump between the time that you're not elected official or you're just a student who is looking to be educated or be part of an office here's what I would say for me it was incredibly difficult for me to understand these two different messages that I was getting growing up and doing well like I'm sure a lot of students here get you remember maybe an elected official coming to speak to your class and saying to you something like get good grades, go to college do well, then come back maybe one day you're gonna run for president or run for city council there's a point in which the message actually shifts 180 when they actually realize that you might actually do it and so for me I was coming out of San Antonio I was doing well, I had gone to a good school I said all right great I've done everything people have asked me to do I think this is the position you'll be in like I've done everything people have asked me to do I've got my degree, I've put my volunteer hours in I've interned now I think it's my shot now I think I'm ready to do it you will get the counter advice which is well maybe you're not ready maybe you've got to put in a few more years doing this or that you know at some point you're just gonna have to make a decision that you're gonna go with the first piece of advice they gave you which is you can do whatever your heart set your mind to and so it is it was interesting for me to get to see a lot of that in a real way here in San Antonio and you'll see it in any city whether it's Austin or San Marcos or Houston or Dallas you're gonna have to crack your way through a system in which people kind of gotten used to the filier faces and the names and you're an unknown you're an unpredictable you're not the status quo and so it was it was difficult for for me but it's going to be difficult for anybody to put themselves in the position just realize that if you've put yourself in a position to take advantage of an opportunity to be successful whether you're gonna run for office or you're gonna be appointed to a position on the city board that you should expect a little resistance and if you don't get any resistance and you're doing something wrong if you're not getting resistance then perhaps somebody feels like they are picking you and you are going to do what they want them to do what they want you to do and that was that was the great thing about coming in and not feeling like I had a lot of help coming in I didn't feel like I owed anything to anyone and that's a really powerful thing as an elected official if you can come in and have the sense that look we did this because we wore out our our our shoes and we knocked on three thousand doors and so be so I would say be very careful about the the type of approach you take to a new position knowing that it's going to be awkward knowing that folks are going to want to say well we didn't think you'd be ready this fast so maybe you'll take a few more years but I've embraced the awkwardness at this point okay yeah you know it reminded me of when I first start started getting involved in things and somebody said the councilman Bonnie Connor wanted to meet me and she was going to a neighborhood night out event in my neighborhood and I was really nervous and I just thought okay and I was a college professor but I thought alright I'll go meet her and it was a pool party in my neighborhood and and I don't swim I don't have kids and I'm a vegetarian and I walked in and it's a pool party with a million kids and everybody's eating hot dogs and I was like oh I was so sticking out here it was very awkward so you really do you have to just sort of grit your teeth and get through some of those really awful meetings where you just think I don't want to be here but you have to think some day I'll look back on this and laugh you know what I will say as I see that representative Vigral is coming in there's this great story that I've got from the first campaign that I ever ran because I was in your shoes once and I was doing a lot of great academic research on how to run a good campaign how to put proper messaging together how to understand and predict what's going to happen next and so I'm coming in with some academic papers on how to put my campaign together none of it used none of it at the end of the day I found myself obsessing with my campaign team about people who are stealing and tearing down my campaign signs like that was the thing that I was worried about like what is this all about how do we study all of this and then get to the point that we're taking out my cut up campaign signs from the bottom of a ditch so it's it's really interesting you'll you'll you'll be well-prepared for a lot of great things once you get to the policy side campaign stuff sometimes is really unpredictable but it is probably the most fun and got the best stories about that well thank you and and we'd like to uh... welcome from a representative Mike Fiori-El thank you for joining us and glad to be here I will I will do your brief bio here again starting with high school Mike is a graduate of Central Catholic anybody else here graduate of Central Catholic to small school yeah it's unusual all boys I'd be really surprised if some of the ladies raised their hand uh... he he has a bachelor's degree in economics from A&M he has the masters in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School uh... he was president of his Beacon Hill Neighborhood Association we were we're talking about how we first get started uh... in public service elected to the state legislature on nineteen ninety nine in his twenties by belief by one vote so very interesting if you think why should I vote one vote can matter he served eight terms in the state legislature and then he resigned and ran for mayor of San Antonio and that was the last time I saw you I think was when we were doing the debate and a very strong showing in in that race Mike has worked as an adjunct at St. Mary's University and directs the San Antonio office of public financial management to get to the next question a little bit because let's go back to one I just asked the councilman because I brought up his example of him riding the bus and I found that something I didn't know about you that you live in a trailer in McKinney Falls State Park uh... while the legislature was considering funding for state parks and you discovered there that we actually rely on volunteers many of whom are not even Texas residents uh... to maintain our parks and use that to great advantage and and you also are are a great presence in the neighborhoods uh... you know you are not an out-of-touch politician uh... you're not you are part of the neighborhood you recently appeared at the uh... historic design review commission uh... with the issue of solar panels in your house so can you address that a little bit about your philosophy of just being part of the community and that how that helps you you know while in elected office out of elected office to really be tuned into what what the people well first of all sorry for running late this is what happens when you retire from politics you sort of kick back to a different level and wake up when you want to wake up and make breakfast for the family and then you realize oh my phone is off oh I have appointments this morning uh... so thank you Ray for being here uh... so I'm really happy to be here whenever there's an audience of students you guys have the most open minds and are forward-looking you have your whole future ahead of you and it's an honor just to be here to share some wisdom if any uh... but to offer kind of some insights from my own experiences uh... so getting back to your question yeah this is where you get your ideas when you're living in community and you're bumping into people and hearing oh you know I'm I'm a parent at the school and I'm having this problem with you know the the school administration in this way or in the case that that you gave you know that I I chose to live at the state park now if you're imagining me in like a under a blanket under a tree with leaves over me sleeping homeless in a state park now that was not the but what I did I uh uh... fell in love with this teardrop trailer and it was we're leading up to the legislative session I knew we're going to be doing state park re re re re re re re re authorizing our state park legislation and I just sort of creatively connected to dots hey I could buy this trailer and then I could live in the state park I was in Austin I would solve my housing needs and that would be kind of cool and you know I'd have a campfire whenever I wanted to well we ended up having one of the coldest winters ever and I remember one day having to chip away the ice on the lock just to get into the trailer the whole thing was kind of encased in a block of ice it was so cold that winter and the bathrooms were outdoor bathrooms like they there were there was there's somewhat sheltered but there were no windows and there's no hot water oh my god it was it was so tough I did that the whole legislative session but what I got from it was time with the people who run the park and I'd come in late and there's a policy of locking the entry gate not letting anybody in after a certain time and so I would always come in late from the legislature but there would be a volunteer who I would call and they would meet me at the gate driving in their little golf cart that the gentleman was probably in his late seventies but he was so helpful and he would always tell me his stories about what he did during the day and he of course we sort of exchange stories but what I learned is that he and his wife who were from like Idaho would come down because the weather was more mild on average not that year but they would come down and would run the park and he had welding skills and so whenever anything broke he would you know weld it together and and they would recruit others who had skills to basically be handyman what I what I learned is that the state of texas had been raising millions of dollars and still does raise millions of dollars for our state parks but it doesn't give all that money to them we have a tax on all sporting good equipment so if you go to academy or or any sort of sporting goods store and you buy something you pay an extra tax that dedicated tax is intended to support our state parks but the state legislature does not release all the money to them it it holds back about half and so that legislative session I was able to open up the the funds some not entirely by bringing human stories that the stories of these volunteers the stories that they would share with me to the legislature and I think ultimately that's really the power in politics when it's a storytelling is so important numbers data analysis important to but people understand things their human story and by living in community and being active in your own community and and collecting the stories of the people you you're you're in a unique position to then translate that into public policy okay I wanted to talk to both of you a little bit about maybe the challenges and you know when you see students here and they they have these great young faces and they're they're so nice and kind and then sometimes I feel a little bad when I know they're going into politics and it can get a little tough out there I think Mike you I read a story you talked about when you were at A&M and you you organized a boycott in conjunction with with the migrant workers movement and and some of the students there would go into the cafeteria and buy grapes which were being boycotted and stand there and eat them in front of you and just you know there there is some meanness there is there is some difficult some dark side of politics and not that political parties are necessarily part of that but I think you know I think you've both spoken about are you kidding me I've been watching the presidential election oh my gosh oh wow what I mean this is like better than worldwide wrestling yes or worse I think you've both talked about you know even running in nonpartisan races for council there or for mayor it's always what you've got to be what party are you we know what party you are so what advice would you have to students to you know be aware that that's happening but but not be overwhelmed by by the by the nastiness that does seem to be sort of at a peak right now and and how they stay out of that Mike are you thinking about your best story well I so I the legislature was a wonderful experience I spent over fifteen years there and the way I approached it was uh... it was an exercise in collaboration now I had other colleagues who approached it in a different way they saw it totally through the lens of conflict us versus them and they had some successes but I always felt like I was able to accomplish more by thinking I'm trying to solve a problem that's a group problem and I need to understand my colleagues so I can communicate more effectively to them and if I have a solution I need to take it to them early and and see how they react and then either you know take their critique and either adjust the policy proposal substantively or adjust my language and how I sell it and how I explain it and and how I explain what it means to them in their value system and and that was something that I felt empowering that that gave me a sense of okay well I can figure this out you know this is really just a problem-solving process and so I actually think there's a wonderful space in public policy to solve problems in a collaborative way in a pragmatic way uh... certainly there's there's conflict and but you can choose to look at it and experience it in a different way and I think end up getting much more effective results now I'm giving you an example of once you're in office and you're trying to solve a problem it is that the chemistry is different when you're on the campaign trail uh... but it's not that different you still have the the problem that you're trying to solve of understanding who your audience is understanding what their value system is what they do how they believe the world should be organized and trying to communicate your policy goals in a way that connect with them and and I think that's a really creative problem to try to be a part of solving and it's a crucial one ultimately this is the essence of democracy how do we as a people find strength in our numbers how do we as a people take on problems that are bigger than any one person and how do we solve them in the best way possible that creates the greatest good that's... there's no recipe but I think there is a practice of trying to take this on and I believe the spirit of collaboration and problem-solving and not going to war with one another is ultimately the most long-term sustainable path to be on and you'll live a happier life truly alright thank you councilor sure so I'll say this there is something to there is something to the fact that you have to work with somebody and have to actually see them all the time you have to interact with them, you know whether they have children, whether they have vacation where I've got this there's this great line there's a gentleman who wrote a book on the future of this country you should be optimistic about the future of this country by looking at what's going on in cities he said if you want to be optimistic about the future of the US stand on your head and see it from the bottom up because in cities there are places where you still can't ignore having to govern because if somebody's trash is not picked up or somebody's street is not clean people will notice it so you have to interact, you have to make government work there obviously you get a little further away at the state level, a little further away certainly at the federal level and as he was making this point he was describing the sort of negativity that happens when people stop interacting with one another so that they're in Congress now are two separate doors for a Republican entrance versus a Democratic entrance and so you don't actually have to see or interact with folks in the same way that you would at the local level so I've seen a real, I've had a real optimism for both the political, well actually an optimism more for the policy making side within the city uh... name your city in the country I think because there are so much more that we have to agree on fixing the street or improving the park or working on a policy that needs to get fixed within this cycle, you can't go one year without passing a balanced budget, you have to agree on something so you'll agree on eight or nine things and then the two things that you disagree will really start to spring out that partisanship, that ideological philosophical difference between a colleague and yours but at the end of the day you don't hate them and I think that happens well at the city council level that it just doesn't translate in other places like whether you're running for congress or certainly what we're seeing today in the presidential race there's this sense of of what motivates people and I think there's elected officials who think about the next election and there's elected officials who think about the next generation and there are a lot of politicians who think about the next election and use this sense of fear because fear is a great motivator, if I were talking about how to get people excited and getting out to vote who've never voted before I would make them as afraid as possible so negativity works, I mean it's just, it's a fact unfortunately and so you see that play out a lot at the national level but it is much harder to exercise that type of tactic of the local level because I've got to see the councilman from district nine or district eight and we see each other every single day, we vote on budgets to fill potholes and so those things you know what, I've built a bridge between myself and that of the person and so the negativity is harder to find at the local level because I just generally think you get to see the other person, you get to know them much more than you do when you are from Oregon versus Massachusetts and so those types of things I think is what's led to a lot of what you see at the national level but please be optimistic, I try to be and if you want to be just stand on your head and watch any city pass its budget, balance every single year and I think you'll see less of that negativity and I think you get sometimes progressively worse as you go up because folks are thinking about the next election versus what would be the next generation of policy and before we go to student questions I want to put you on the spot a little bit giving advice to young people who are considering career public service or politics what do you think is maybe the most cutting edge or maybe even an old issue that would be most advantageous for them to really focus on is there a particular policy issue or a particular sort of communication skill that you would say you know if you're twenty years old today you need to learn about this and you're gonna be golden in ten years that's a good question you need to follow your passion you don't want to do something that you have no interest in whether the issue that I have that I believe this is important and that I've spent a lot of time on in the legislature and now I'm at a point where I'm trying to transition more into and that's education policy I believe that this is sort of the the root of our future you know how well we nurture and educate our young people and how well we continue to do that as our people age and into the workforce and change jobs that ability of ours to create a system that continues to nurture and educate our people is crucial and we're falling behind many other countries and so I'm very interested in this issue have been for some time I decided to go back to school in 2011 and finishing a PhD in public policy with a focus on higher education policy the the and so that's the issue that I believe is crucial to the future of this country and the world the skill set that if you could figure this out you would be a part of of uh... a well sought after group and that is if you could be able to both analyze data and then effectively communicate and share your insights to a group of people that shapes their ability to make group decisions better that would be a really key skill set to have I and in a we talk about politics politics is basically group decision-making in a in a different set of institution in a different kind of institutional setting I think our greatest challenges in changing policy isn't at the highest levels in congress the U.S. Congress over the state legislature it's actually the the policies that our students interact with the most in the classroom when they open up the course schedule and see a thousand different you know majors uh... their ability to access financial aid support and other supports during their college experience inside of each of these experiences are a million different rules that have been created within a bureaucracy or just within a culture of this is how we do it these are standard operating procedures and we don't really question them and so if you're gonna improve student outcomes let's say take the state of texas where only half of the students who start college graduate if we're gonna change that then we're gonna have to not just change laws in the state legislature but really our institutions beginning with our faculty and the frontline administrators need to be a part of stepping back not just operating within the existing lines but stepping back and as a group saying how can we redraw these lines because we're not getting the results that we want we're losing more than half of our students at most universities in texas a majority of students never finish and they leave with debt we're part of the system how can we change it well we need to have access to data that really gives us an understanding of what's going on and we need to have the group capacity to change the way we do our work and i know this sounds very abstract if you're into public policy public administration politics this ability to be a game changer who can bridge data and facilitate group discussions and influence group decision-making so you can have a cross-section of faculty actually decide to change the way they do their work or a cross-section of administrators change the way they interact with students to make it easier for them to get through that's hugely valuable and that's a skill set that can translate up and down the government ladder great advice thank you councilman sure i mean so this is that's a really well put together uh... answer the representative put together for us i'll try to get as specific as i think i can speak to uh... based on my own personal experience and my own observation of what i really see as a problem leading into the next generation of policy-making uh... but i'll give you one fun one if you want to really try to put yourself in a position of a niche opportunity you gotta figure out how to regulate self-driving cars so if you want to really focus on something that's an interesting policy web itself but here's something that i i felt really obviously from the first day that i decided to run for office and it'll continue up until i'm sure we figure this out but there's a real strong problem with the influence of money and politics and policy making even at the local level uh... when you i told you i had to knock on three thousand doors well the other thing you have to do is you have to raise a lot of money just to get in the door to be a candidate and unfortunately those three thousand doors that i mentioned this is this is the problem that we have we talk about how there's no voter apathy that it is the fault of the voters that are not getting out and doing the work that they're supposed to be doing uh... consultants because you're gonna run for office one day and you're gonna raise your hand the next step somebody's gonna pivot to you is alright well who are you gonna who you're gonna hire your political consultant that political consultant is gonna give you the same information the same advice that he gave gave every other person for the last ten years and gonna continue to give every person for the next ten years do not waste any of your money on any of the areas that don't vote focus on uh... older voters focus on voters who have come out and have proven themselves so then we ask ourselves why didn't that other huge swath of the community come out and vote well because nobody asked them and nobody spent money on sending them a mailer because the consultant told them don't do so that's the campaign side so there's a slew of issues there because you obviously have communities that uh... when i'm in elected office if i were trying to get reelected every time and i had a million dollars to put into a park i guess which park i'm gonna put it into, it's not gonna be in the community where i got no votes out of which i have no incentive to support it's gonna be in the community where i know i've got two hundred three hundred people that i'm gonna need to prove to them hey look what i got for you in the last election cycle and so that is a terrible incentive structure to set up for elected officials so that is just the campaign side once you're an elected official you're gonna get calls on your cell phone you're gonna get people who want to visit you who want to talk about a particular issue that is about investment believe me the access to your door wasn't easy they probably hired somebody who was a lobbyist at the council of the state legislature or the feds the federal level who got you into that door who you paid a lot of money to keep on retainer to do so and you're coming in to talk about an issue that the last elected official was already starting work on so you get the same issue the same level of investment in the same areas all pushing forward because there is a lot of influence in politics and a lot of influence uh... that money has in policy making so when we figure out so i'll give you the simple advice start on the campaign side if you're gonna focus on something in the future to try to shift this this dynamic let's start trying to figure out maybe you spend a dollar or two on that voter between that because you can go knock on doors and you realize you're knocking on one door and you're skipping twelve and you're knocking on the 13th door you're doing the same thing all over we need to figure out a way to try to engage these folks but it's not as hard as you might think because the bar has been set so low we just literally have not been asked for it we haven't spent money on them i think that'll trickle its way to creating a broader electorate if you will a broader voice in those communities whether you're talking about income inequality or gaps in opportunity those things are created by really the structure that we've set up to incentivize to have and to have not to the people who get the investment who don't get the investment is built on the structure that's the way we elect our folks well thank you those two answers were a wonderful masterclass in politics they were great and so now we will open it up for questions from our audience uh... well thank you representative Villarreal for coming out and someone from Saldana, did I say it correctly? Saldana, yes, Saldana, okay um well I actually have a question for both of you guys you're currently in office representative Villarreal, you've been in office how do you strike that uh... work-life balance and uh... once you're in office, do you ever regret being so public, you want to go back to the private? uh... wow, great question well I suppose losing the mayor's race was sort of a way of balancing you but it has given me so much more time and it's been great actually uh... my I get to have dinner with my family I cook dinner every night I take the kids to school regularly I show up late to meetings like this, sorry about that again and so I politics will suck everything out of you if you let it it will there's no end to it it's around the clock and I suppose I never really appreciated how much I gave uh... until I stepped out of it and what I'm hoping to do to have more of a balance is continue to be involved in politics but not as an elected official in this new chapter in my life I'm interested in finding a leadership role within higher education to help improve policy within an administrative structure you know that group decision-making that I talked about and and in this way uh... still give and be a part of solving these this big public challenge that's bigger than any one person and that is educating in a more effective way in a better way in a more equitable way are people uh... but but outside of the elected office and so in this next chapter that's sort of my solution to trying to strike a balance uh... my my kids are school age i have an eleven-year-old and uh... soon thirteen-year-old uh... he's already acting like a teenager and uh... and so I I think you know that this is they're soon they're going to be out of the house and I want to be closer to them during this final period while we still have them uh... but it's it's a hard balance to strike it's and it's it's the question that you can't ever answer in one way it's it's sort of more like a life practice and every uh... pointing your life for the new stage and you have to answer it in a different way so that's that's a really good question and for some of us who've been doing this for a few years now it's get to the point where you just get used to the pace and in a way that you if you looked at it when you were outside of it you said i'd never be able to do whatever the long hours or the long meetings but i will say this the first year or two is probably the air years in which you are terrible terribly failing at the work-life balance because you're trying to get to know the ins and outs who are the people that you need to work on to make things happen uh... it's so first year two are tougher on the work-life balance i mean i'll tell you very clearly it you know i I came into this job and the city council didn't pay for the first four years and so i had to take on it whether it was a teaching job or uh... position and i had to uh... I had uh... my wife at the time we were trying to figure out what's our life gonna look like if you're working a non-paid job it's full time because when you get into public office people who are your community members whether this is a good thing or bad thing they get a sense that they own you uh... that you need to call them back and that you need to be responsive because if not you're not doing your job and you you get that you get the strongest sense of that obligation the first year or two uh... because you want to be responsive and you want to be everywhere if somebody's having a hundredth birthday you want to be there if somebody is having an event at a community center you feel like you need to be there and i think the first year or two you're literally everywhere and you're doing a terrible job of balancing that out uh... and sometimes difficult for your own planning of your own life you know i don't have kids yet and i had planned to have kids by now i know that i'm i would be terrible at balancing it wouldn't want to do that now you'll rise to the occasion i think you're right and so and it'll change everything and i know that it'll change everything and i can't be as selfish as i have been with my time uh... but it's a bit of a sacrifice uh... in the first year or two are probably the toughest and you just have to know that going into the situation i live with my i joke and they hit me about this one during the campaign but i live with my parents until i was twenty-eight and i make that sound like it was a long time ago it was last year uh... because i was on the city council i wasn't paying and i was below the poverty line i said this is this is great i called them my roommates and folks like my roommates but so sometimes the work life of sacrifice is very real depending on the position but uh... i wouldn't i wouldn't take it back i don't regret anything i remember you told my class you couldn't afford an engagement ring for your fiancee and you're putting off getting married yeah the rule is three months of salary and i paid forty dollars a month alright i think we had a lot of hands up sure so that's a really great initiative and uh... the plastic band the policy behind it is that we oftentimes are first you can't recycle these things so they're terrible for the environment plus they're also strewn all over the city when folks are just letting them run wild this was an interesting one that came to us in 2012 that uh... you know folks whether they were the industry partners saying like hey when you all pass this ban we get all the blame because we have to tell them hey it was your city council not hdb or wal-mart or whatever it might be that ban these things so technology actually probably came in in a good way and helped us uh... substitute a policy solution it used to be that you couldn't recycle uh... these plastic bags and our solid waste we put it we put a big task in front of them we said see if there's any technology in the market right now that can figure out what a way for us to be able to recycle these uh... and so you have to figure out what type of system will do that well now there's a system where if you're bundling them up the size of a soccer ball or basketball you can put them in the blue container you can recycle them uh... i think that's attacking a bit of the problem the other is maybe we do an all-out ban or maybe a a center to tax uh... at the point of purchase but that's a type of policy initiative that uh... is great because you can balance some technological innovation but uh... the advice for me would be to make sure that we are actually working with whoever industry whatever industry it might be whether it's the dollar general they should be they feel like they have a stake in it because they're going to be the ones feeling the brunt of the pressure from the community so i'm sympathetic to that but uh... the bigger policy objective is what's going to be best for the community and the environment and so working with those big partners sometimes is a necessary conversation uh... i'll be really quick because i know there are a lot of questions uh... i like the idea of uh... trying to incentivize behavior instead of banning it and so having a a one-cent you know cost added or you know some level of trying to equate the uh... externality costs of loose bags with the decision point of choosing to take a plastic bag versus bring your own uh... would be uh... a direction i would david had his hand up pretty early okay and we'll come to him next good morning uh... my name is John Carter from uh... duty and i wanted to ask uh... what beyond the realms of formal education do you guys uh... would you say uh... your respective elected officers i mean i would just answer that pretty clearly for me growing up poor helped growing up the son of an undocumented immigrant having to ride the bus when i was young help it was the real experiences that's why to the education policy point if we can get some more of these young people from some of these distressed communities educated uh... they can come back with it education not from great institution that they came from but the education having grown up in communities where they experience these things whether it is the interaction with law enforcement or the interaction with the lack of business opportunity those of the type of things they take on passion and reasons that they they feel like they're driven to that sort of non-formal education uh... working on campaigns taught me a lot uh... especially the ones that lost i learned a lot from those campaigns uh... how not to run for office and how to do things differently uh... those are really uh... educational experiences well councilman saldanian already touched on the uh... money in campaigns and i was wondering how do you actually uh... fundraise and give money for a campaign that you're in while also not being obligated to any individual or any cooperation so that you don't have to hide it while you're not great question uh... raised broadly you know if if there's going to be uh... somebody giving you a thousand dollars make sure you have a thousand people giving you a thousand dollars except i i remember in the legislature where there was no campaign limits when you run for mayor there's a a limit of a thousand dollars in the legislature there's no limit one year somebody gave me a check for twenty five thousand and i gave back i took it first came home and told my wife and she said you have to give that back what are you thinking do i well and then i looked at everybody who had given you know who are the biggest donors i already had and the biggest donor was for twenty thousand and it was somebody who cares passionately about education and lives in my district and i thought to myself does this person who gave me twenty five you know resemble this profile and no not not at all actually i really didn't share any common goal with this person and so ultimately i took my wife's advice and i gave the money back and and that was really the right thing to do and so i i think making sure number one you diversify who you fundraise from and number two if you're going to have somebody give you like stand up above the rest in giving and a large amount of money you know make sure you understand why and that they actually have goals that are public goals not personal goals that you share i think that's a really great example uh... so the other way that i think is even a better version of of not having to deal with that is to not have that limit to have limits on contributions to candidates in the first place uh... you know frankly if mike had asked his campaign consultant he would say are you crazy of course we're depositing that check right now as we speak uh... good thing you know mike's got a great moral compass on these things but sometimes some folks don't and and if you put them in that position more likely than not they're going to say well it's going to support the campaign and i'm a good person and as long as i get elected that's what that's what matters uh... the city council did a great thing in two thousand two or three i can't recall but it used to be unlimited you could bankroll an entire council candidates campaign with fifty thousand dollars uh... now the limit is five hundred dollars and so five hundred dollars is good amount of money but it's certainly not going to buy you an oversize influence and i think at least for the council level you have limits on the amount you can give to a candidate it certainly helps you go in and i feel like you're obligated to a particular person nobody's really standing above the rest uh... getting at this other issue of these outside third party uh... packs can go in and all out and so that's that's a different subject altogether but limits on individual candidates incredibly important i've seen i think we have time for one more question two more? okay? uh... i'm a senior from chicago and i want to ask kind of a weird question but as someone who ran from there, i hope someone did run from there to chicago that's awesome i'm just trying to stay away from politics in chicago because it's grounded in the right things and it's actually motivated for people so i kind of got fed up with the reason for that person so i said i don't belong to that person but i don't have to have it well you really contextualize that question so i made it a lot more complicated but um... on one level just get started complete your education are you a undergraduate right now? okay, finish your degree i would say get involved in your community i would also say pursue an advanced degree either in public policy or law uh... i think ultimately an education either of those fields will serve you very well uh... but get involved and it doesn't necessarily mean get involved directly in government it could mean some kind of community-based initiative uh... but your involvement in the community will give you a better sense of who to trust who the players are what are the competing interests and where you wanna kind of stake your claim on an agenda to represent and to be the voice of i think there's nothing like learning by doing that is very important and the sooner you can do that the better finish your education but on some level not only do the advanced degrees train you they are a filter in some ways kind of a check the box for some people well, is this person qualified? oh well, they have these advanced degrees and i'll consider them um... and on some level you're gonna have to be selling yourself and so it gets you in the door to then really get known and become a beloved leader of your city so keep your dream alive that is crucial uh... but start working on it i'll just add right on top of that i'll say very specifically say you're early so save up enough money to have at least two hundred and fifty have enough money to have two hundred and fifty coffees with people uh... so what you need to do is actually when you're going out for the summer you're back there for the winter whatever it might be the goal of the two hundred and fifty coffees you need to set up with these community members is that you need to find the five or ten members that you actually trust within that cabinet that you will create you're gonna meet a lot of people in those two hundred interactions that you know are gonna want to co-op a young and articulate well spoken educated person and say this could be our person but you're gonna know that that's not the person that you want to be as part of your trusted advisor your cabinet if you will but if you've got time to actually go out and have those conversations and when you have the fourth or fifth conversation you'll ask the fourth person about what you think about the first person and then you start connecting this web it's gonna be extremely expansive it's Chicago it was in San Antonio it's on a bit of a smaller scale but you're gonna start to know the community because I've talked to other folks about them I want to count them as one of my five or ten trusted folks that when I decide to run I will come to them when I need support they are going to be folks who can publicly do it that's good advice one more question hello representative Ray Saldana really quick so my question is simple how would you personally representative Mike would you reinvent the education system if you could do it reinvent wow in a short manner I got it common core skills that you mentioned analyze and communicate a problem and then for the council Ray I would like to know specifically how do you think San Antonio as a city can be a leader in that way in general from high school to lower at what point can you be a leader in the level of education so it's interesting so if I to answer that simply I have to take it to kind of a philosophical level and so I would change what our philosophy is in public education the dominant philosophy in US public education and that is one that currently believes that there is a pre-existing set of information that represents knowledge and we just need to figure out a way of getting kids to sit still as we pour it into their head I would move away from that to a philosophy that believes knowledge is generated through experience that we learn best when we're personally engaged in doing, figuring out solving synthesizing, summarizing analyzing and so I would change our education system to be more about project-based learning by doing you asked for a specific way San Antonio and I'll tell you about a specific way that I'm working on education now so I graduated from the school district down on the south side of San Antonio called SouthSan and it's about school board governance and there are a lot of folks we talked about Chicago being corrupt there are some school board members who probably rival the daily administration in Chicago with the level of corruption they do and this is before we start getting into the way that we should actually structure education to benefit a child you've got these adults who are not running these districts properly and so if you one of my goals in 2016 is actually to work on board governance over at some of these smaller districts because it's almost like a small family outfit and there's factions that compete against one another and if you thought running for the school the city council was bad things get very personal, they get very negative and so I'm working on the school board governance initiative that is going to be important for not only SouthSan but for other districts in San Antonio because we struggle a lot and especially in areas that struggle educationally with their graduation rates or dropout rates it's usually because they've got that school board governance problem that don't allow the superintendent to stay long enough and then to do his job when he's there okay thank you thank you so much you know we may never exactly know the consequences of this talk today but I can guarantee there will be some and we're going to be looking for all of you when you make your mark, when you win as mayor of Chicago we'll be seeing you all out there so thank you again so much Ray, Mike thank you for being here go ahead thank you thank you so much councilman thank you representative for being with us here today we really appreciate your time we'll take a quick break we're running just a couple minutes late so we're going to break to 11 o'clock at 11 o'clock you'll hear a chime if you'll please come back, grab your seats we'll start the next panel thank you so much