 Good evening all. Thank you for joining us. My name is, for the guests, my name is Tom Menwood, President of St. Mary's University and I welcome you all to this semester's community conversation. I want first to thank my colleague President Emeritus Charlie Petrell for organizing and hosting another very interesting to like to welcome our two honored guests. First Rick Casey, one of St. Mary's finest and most distinguished graduates. Second I extend a warm welcome, a St. Mary's welcome to Mayor Ron Nirenberg upon your second visit to St. Mary's this fall, the first visit being our NAFTA conference in late September. In late September as part of that conference Mayor Nirenberg shared his thoughts and his vision about the importance of NAFTA to San Antonio in this region. We're privileged to welcome you back Mayor. As we watch you lead our city I know I'm joined by so many others in San Antonio who see a leader with courage to take bold and necessary steps to improve our city and to advance the common good. I also see a leader who looks for and has a character and integrity to reach across the aisle to find the common ground that is so necessary if we're going to improve our city our state and our country and address the many social and economic issues that face us. Tonight we look forward Mayor Nirenberg to sharing with us your vision for visit vision for San Antonio. Tonight though is also a somber moment as we reflect and trailer over the horrible events in Sutherland Springs this past weekend. Too often now too many times we read or hear about senseless events, the taking of lives of innocent men and women of young boys and girls. On Sunday was our neighbors who were struck down. For many at St. Mary's and even more at San Antonio was friends who were taken and for some even family and so I invite you to join me as we begin all gatherings at St. Mary's with prayer. Good and loving God in these troubling tragic days we pray for your heavenly light. The so on us the wisdom and compassion a charity of heart. Help us to come together to find the common ground that will enable us to people of God to minimize if not end senseless violent acts like those this past weekend in Sutherland Springs and we ask in prayer your blessings your grace on these victims our neighbors our their families and friends and to this we say amen. And I would invite the president of America to introduce Mayor Nirenberg. Thank you President Mingler. It's wonderful to have you here tonight with us and to have all of you with us as well. Newly conversations addresses what the toxic world we live in is not. It addresses the belief in reason. It addresses a belief in civility. It addresses a belief in deep listening. It addresses a belief in faith. And it addresses, as President Mingler said, the seeking of the common good. All of this is in a conversational setting that is we can listen to. We can question. We can agree with and sometimes disagree with and do so civilly. That's how community conversation came to be. It came out of the purposes and it came out of the terrorism of St. Mary's University family by the way. Let me introduce very briefly our folks here tonight. Mayor Nirenberg's full biography you can find in your program. However, you know that he was here a year and a half ago on the question of elections, although he was a council member then, serving from 2013 to 2017. He was elected mayor of Wyoming in June 2017. He hit the ground on him. He began immediately working on articulating and implementing his vision. You see that he went to Trinity University, graduated from University of Pennsylvania, and maybe the experience that really helped him. In what he's now doing, he directed the Senate, Republic Policy, and the Annenberg School. The Annenberg School for those who may not have heard of it is really famed in the United States for its public policy analysis and its communication capabilities. And he sat in motion civic engagement activities in a number of cities in the United States. Winning awards for that, but also gaining experience which brings the Senate on you. Finally, I think tonight we're going to hear a holistic, wholesome view of the city. We're going to hear about infrastructure. We're going to hear about equity. We're going to hear about inequality. We're going to hear about environmental quality. We're going to hear about faith and trust in civic engagement because he has a vision that includes all of these things and more. So I ask you to join me in giving a welcome to our mayor again. We have Ron Nirenberg and I'm going to introduce him in a moment. I know our moderator well. He graduated St. George University in Turbunton, Texas. He was a real leader when he was here. Actually following his journalist career early. He was the rat ledger. I mentioned to President Mengele that these were times of Vietnam civil rights protests. The rise of the Chicano movement here on campus and in the region. And he covered it all. Exciting days to read the rat ledger again to see how many were peace and how many were hot articles of social media during those days. He has a distinguished career as a journalist. And if you read and you see that he has done freelance work, publishing in New York. He's the Washington Post. The Baltimore Sun. He's worked with the National Catholic Reporter. He's worked for two major days. One in Houston, one in San Antonio. And most recently Rick was the host for Texas Week with Rick Casey, the PBS program. He did that until September. Rick is a, never stops. He's very busy with his wife. I live here in San Antonio and he's writing a book that basically looks at the transitions of San Antonio from a town to a major city. Join me in welcoming your moderator, Rick Casey. So we begin now. All right. I'm going to need a little help. One of you keeps the time for questions. So who can I count to tell me when it's time? How much time do you have? Well, I was. It's just not going to be as I think about it. It was 50 years ago when I was editor-in-chief right now. It was fall semester. And we did have one incident that's worth bringing to our attention because it has something to do with drop monitor. It was an issue that was, I came back from Austin and I was there for some reason. We came back on Sunday night and I got a call from staff. All the newspapers were gone from the racks. And I thought it was a pretty good issue, but we had never come close to having all of them gone from the racks. I had to do some investigation. I found out that it was a member of the faculty, a history professor who apparently was offended by it. And I never learned exactly what there was here. I think they had one interviewing, John Kenneth Gilbert, who was here to give a lecture. He was in charge of the Vietnam War, whether it was one of the stories we did on civil rights movement. I suspect that it was a story by the big sports columnist suggesting that had we played Trinity University up here in the basketball community for the one time. Not a very similar story. I was editor of the Trinitonia about 20 years ago. And the only time we had all of our issues stolen off the racks was when we had an unflattering article about one of the fraternities. A little different. I'm going to just talk a lot about policy tonight, because I think one of the things that's really interesting to get across, remember as an in-person, not really understanding what cities did. I want to start a little bit of a political dynamic. When you were up until a few months ago, when you became mayor, you were city councilman, and it seemed like a regular occurrence when you were voting either by yourself or with only one or two other people. And as a matter of fact, there was an attempt to make it a campaign against the issue against you, that you were an outlier, that you didn't play well with others, and that you couldn't be a leader if you couldn't get a vote. I want to talk about this a little bit later. In one case, you had chaired the committee, developing our first city master plan. Very important thing to develop. It was a long process, in decades, and there were some changes made, and you voted to restore it. I don't think you have a second on that one. Did you meet me? Maybe you have a second? I think this is all part of the conversation. Okay, so now you're mayor, and I don't even recall. You've done some kind of controversial. Your predecessor, first thing she did was close down a project with a streetcar downtown. You very quickly took on the Confederate monument in Travis Park. I can't think of an issue where you had more than two people on the other side. I wonder if I can actually talk about it. Was that a political thing? Was it one thing where people see you wouldn't be mayor? Some of them think they'd be mayor too. What do you think was going on? Well, I think there's a lot of things, and I can talk about some of them. First, I don't know necessarily that a lot of the votes that I took as a council member, even in the final days of being a councilman, were me against the world. There were some high-profile votes for sure. One in particular, where I was the lone vote, several where I had two or three members of council with me. But the vast majority of what local governments do, and this is part of the issue with civic campaigns, but the vast majority of what local governments do is pretty, you know, unexcited. You know, it's infrastructure, it's services, it's park maintenance, it's libraries, and that doesn't get a whole lot of attention, but it does require council to be a student and do his homework and vote. The most part of the council function on those issues, but the high-profile ones, I was often alone or with minority. I can remember in particular a vote that went through via bus service in the south, the west side of the town, that I think it was a 7-4 vote, I was in the minority. Which would require money from city funds? Yeah, out in city funds, which would have, I can explain this in more detail, but it would have had zero fiscal impact on the city budget, but it was going in argument via service. Votes like that, high-profile, some controversial, I was often in the minority, especially towards the end. I think there was some political games and shit. It's very hard to go against an incumbent mayor. You know, it was a different council. I think this, a couple of things. One, you know, we've talked about the fact that I thought, you know, we can talk about my motivations for running for office. For mayor, I didn't do myself as having a choice, because I think that this city is going places. We have an opportunity to capture the potential of building a city that's equitable, that's forward-looking, that is progressive on a number of issues. We weren't doing that, and the difference was we weren't articulating the vision or setting an agenda to move us forward. So I ran for office on this agenda. I happen to believe that you've seen great change in the council in terms of the issues that we're working on. The vision is being articulated, the agenda that we're carrying forward, because that's who we put together. That's who the voters chose to move our city forward. And so I find myself on a council having run for mayor, having one seat, because what we were talking about during the campaign was what the city of San Antonio wanted, what we needed. The fact that I am now sitting in the center seat is a reflection of the change that's occurred throughout the council. But there were two, in particular, in my correct name. There was District 7, where Anasandevall, who was very progressive, won even in compensation, had been kind of frankly wishy-washy on the issues. In other words, Joe Pyer, former head of the Chamber of Commerce, conservative, for example, District 9, was beaten by a fellow who's run as a Democrat and a member of the Legislation's kind of courage. So that's two out of ten, that's pretty significant. Yes, but if you look at where the change occurred, I've known for a long time as a former member, a former resident of District 9. The politics at council doesn't always reflect the populace, and that district has changed, demographic has changed. It's a great reflection of the city of San Antonio, and when you have a representative of the district who speaks to the issues that those residents care about, you get the kind of councilman that I think that you're seeing out of courage. Who's taking stands that I think are people who are in the rest of San Antonio not used to seeing a district 9 council member talk about public education, libraries, environmental concerns, growth management. The same thing is here with District 7, which is one of the swing districts in San Antonio. I want to make a sound of all this very forward. She's a public health expert. She's a climate scientist. She's bringing in a very forceful vision about the environment to council. Those are things that have changed the dynamic almost overnight, especially when you have, in my case, in the mayor seat, someone who's setting an agenda on all of those things, on equity on the environment. There may be a significant number of people in the audience who are not familiar with it, but she just has such an extraordinary wisdom at this point playing out. She was a classmate of the Castro twins at Jefferson High School. She went from there, I was a teacher, to Harvard, I mean to MIT, to study electrical engineering. Did a foot-byte fellowship in Mexico City, studied international and business, came back, worked for a while and decided to get a degree in environmental engineering. She thought Stanford would be a good place for that, and did it. Having picked up that master's thought, you know, there was a public health department to this, and so went to Harvard to get a master's in public health, and then came back, started doing politics on another level and so on. You look at the senior members of the council, which happened to be on the left side of the diet's physical level. When it comes to intercity, urban communities, District 1, District 2, District 3, you know, Councilman Shaw from District 2 is representing a very nuanced and progressive and economic development-focused mission for the east side, which frankly has been begging for that kind of leadership for a long time. And so I'm very excited, and I guess the change in the dynamic is a reflection of the vision that has been articulated through this last election. The council, I believe, still has a majority of who have a master's degree, including you, which is not something that is a long-standing tradition in San Antonio. And now you're paid, which is a good thing. But I'd like to focus on a couple of issues in which you were in the minority. And I was responsible for dealing with them. You were, very much in a very isolated minority, raising questions about Mr. Rich. Make me sound very lonely, Rich. I don't feel sorry for you. He is married to one of the most wonderful women in the city, so I'm not worried about you being lonely. She is the president-elect, a still-elect, or is she president yet? Well, we're in February. She's the Spanish jubber of commerce, and she's really good. I teased after his kickoff rally that he had made a really bad mistake. He said, what do you mean? I said, I wouldn't let anybody have me follow your wife. She was right. So you were a skeptic on Mr. Rich. I'm not sure if you ever took any votes against it, but you were raising some uncomfortable issues. Now that you're married and has married a voting member in the sauce door, what are those issues, or are they remaining, and what are you doing to address them? So, you said I'm a skeptic. I would say I'm a skeptic at all. I've always been a critic, and I think we have to be a critic on a project like that. You know, there are people in our community. I'm not one who just say, philosophically, we cannot move water from one basin to another and say, Texas, and that's the way the law used to work. There's some uncomfortable realities we have to grapple with worldwide, not just in Texas. I think we need to do a basic explanation of what Mr. Rich is. Okay. So, Mr. Rich, the project is a pipeline that's going to be placed in between San Antonio and the community in Burleson County, which is in that area northeast of Austin, sparsely populated, more rural area, abundant in water resources. San Antonio, you know, home. It's about 140 miles away. The project is a 30-year agreement with renewal period of 30 years in which we will be receiving 50,000 acre feet of water annually, beginning in 2020 when the contract period begins. So, there are a number of complicating factors. There's a number of realities we have to discuss. One is, for the first time in humankind, the world is living in urban areas, more than rural ones, meaning that the whole globe has a challenge of making sure that there are water resources in places where people are, which isn't necessarily where the water is. So, what you're seeing across the world is people are trying to figure it out through technology, through moving water, through, you know, catchment systems and so forth. The same is true in Texas, even more so where we're seeing the urbanization of Boston, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and so forth. We have water resources here in San Antonio that we've been blessed with on the Escozac River. We've been using that water for 400 years. In order for us to be good stewards of that water, we have to not pump too much of it because it will affect ecosystems downstream. It's a very elegant solution. We know, however, that our population is going to double in the next 35 years. One thing we can't get wrong is underestimating the need for water. So, as we look out at our population and we look and we reject our needs for water, we know that if we just maintain our level of pumping from Edwards and being responsible stewards of that water and we use the available water that we have in the rest of the portfolio, we're going to run out of water based on the projections. Now we can conserve better, and that's something I have demanded as a part of our process of dealing with the water issue. And we're going to continue to get good at it. And we're going to get even better at it and actually be calculating our projections. But we can't underestimate the fact that we're going to need more water. We need the best available alternative. Vista Ridge, in addition to the other resources, are that alternative? I am a critic, and I have to play the role of a skeptic when the questions aren't being raised. Thankfully now I'm on the Board of Sauses who has mayor. I'm now going to be able to, and I haven't even today, ask any of those questions. My concern is without getting too wonky for folks because it's a very complicated topic. Is it important to understand that city politics have a lot of long to? Yes, absolutely. So, in order for us to actually pull the water, we have to have an agreement in place that allows us to purchase the water. We have those in place, and we're contracting through a third party to do that. In order to actually transport the water here, we need to have transport permits instead of, from that groundwater district to do so. A lot of my criticism of this project has been we need to have certainty in those permits. They have not been able to prove that up. Part of it is a legislative issue because the state doesn't, has not allowed us to extend those permits unilaterally. We have to work politically, so to speak, with the groundwater districts to give us permission to do so. So my question for Sauses has been make sure that if we're planning our water supply, our water portfolio, for the next 30 to 60 years, and we're going to put our eggs into the Vista-Riz basket, then we can actually guarantee our rate payers that we're going to have that water. Because the risk that we run of not investing in a water portfolio is that we end up purchasing water, or planning to purchase water that never arrives here, when we should have been investing in something else. What I told Sauses is to spend some water, make sure that before we ask rate payers to support that water that we're showing that we've been investing class and conservation, we've done that. Make sure that we're asking. Let me ask you, one of the issues raised by some environmental folks here is the nature of the economics of a water company, which is what Sauses is, is that they make money on selling us water. Now, Sauses has actually been a leader in conservation. We've done better than most other cities related. That's not to say that we can't do even better. But once that water, we just have to start paying for it, and it's the most expensive source of water that we have, isn't there a conflict within Sauses and the economics of Sauses between pushing us to use less water while we have to pay for that? Yes, there is. And that, again, for the wonky folks who like to watch these sessions in the middle of the Wednesday afternoon on TV, this was one of the shining moments of debate on council when our councilman prior, then the district councilman prior, and I debated the mission of Sauses. Sauses, as it was putting together this project, I became a skeptic because I kept hearing the words, Sauses is in the business of selling water. It's not. Sauses is in the business of providing water to San Antonio residents and the San Antonio water system community. The difference is, and it's new ones, but the difference is that our business was just to sell water when we buying up as much as we could and selling it as a highest dollar as possible. We are municipally owned water utilities. We have a public reserve. We have many low income public reserves. Our mission is to make sure that we have adequate water supplies for the future. Therein lies the problem. We run the risk of underestimating if we're too judicious with our projections. So what I try to do is make sure that we have this strong conservation program and that we are evaluating and being skeptical about these regional water projects to the best of our ability so we don't end up having too much water. We will end up with too much water, no matter what we do because we want to always open project just enough so we don't end up with a large one. And that's the situation we find ourselves with just the risk, is a take and take project. We have whites that have water, 50,000 acre feet. They're going to send us all of it and we've got to take care of all of it. We know we're going to have excess in the near term years, but in 2050 and 2016 and 2017 when we actually need that water that we're going to be waiting for Superman if we haven't done our plan. I wish we had a phase in approach. Water, unfortunately, because the state of Texas, and I will say this, so the cows come home, the state of Texas has not done its job to manage our water. If we do not have a safe water plan, one that manages groundwater the same way we manage surface water. In light of that, local communities have to look out for their own. If I was king for a day, I would have the state put together a water plan that says that managing groundwater isn't just about the square feet of land because if I have a square foot of land and you have a square foot of land, I had a water straw and you had a shorter straw. That means I can take all the water out of that aquifer even though we're safe right next to it. That doesn't make any sense, but that's the way safe water law works today. There's a lot of water to cover. It was on a water panel, entirely about water yesterday as William was in. It was a good panel. But let's talk about another area that is probably politics. Water in Texas is always part of politics. And that is, we're talking about a million more people coming. We have to plan to grow. Almost everybody agrees with that. I think, frankly, my feeling is that one of the tragedies of the last 50 years of San Antonio has been the power of the developers and suburban developers. There were until recently very few downtown urban city developers. And they were so powerful, I'll give you an example that involves a gentleman who was sitting right next to Charlie there. Alex Bersendi, when he was city manager, argued that in new subdivisions, we should require sidewalks being poorly aligned. And I was there and I remember always remembering this, Alex. And he made a family value argument for that. He said, if you ever tried walking with your right hand in hand on a three-foot sidewalk, and then your ambulance, you've got mailbox cuts into the sidewalk, it's pretty obvious he got creamed on the city council. Because the developers got to say, well, people build affordable housing, and we're just, frankly, homeless. But if somebody who knows the economics of home building explained to me, it's not that simple. It's not a dollar through power. But where you were, pretty close to alumni, on when the master plan came through, which had some carrots and some sticks for dealing with issues like smart growth and having sustainable growth and trying to work on sprawl and something called impervious coverage of any of you out of any of the coverage of Houston floods, you understand? The more concrete and roofs were put down, the more water come up. It's not going to be earthquake, so it's downhill. After you spent almost two years working with people around the community to build the plan, if they must, after your committee voted it out, you went to the Planning Commission, which is heavily the majority of the people representing the development interest. And they kept doing the carrots, but they took out the sticks. And then when it went to city council, you made a motion to put the sticks back in. You made a motion to return it to what it was two weeks earlier. When the public had been deliberating about it for me. Exactly. And the response, one after another of your colleagues, the mayor, and several others said, well, Ron's brought us this last minute change. Yeah, we're just not prepared to deal with it. That wasn't the last minute change. What the Planning Commission did was the last minute change. But that's what went through. Not that you're the mayor. And it's one of the things you talk about at the water conference. You and Suzanne Scott of the Cincinnati River put are talking about how, just in terms of watching for it, indeed it'd be much more careful about how we develop or else we're going to have more expenses and deal with it. How politically do you get that done? How do you do it? In the face of the power that you've seen over the last 15 years? Well, I mean, I think that, so there are no enemies in this conversation. I mean, really, when you talk to the average home builder, developer, suburban or otherwise, they're just trying to make money. And so part of the challenge that we have, and we have to recognize is the fact that, because the market has not figured out how to make money, we have now a deficit of affordable homes of about 140,000 in our homes in our city. We have to figure out a way that generates the kind of home building that is sustainable, the kind that Alex would have liked to have seen. And so that's what we're focused on. How do we create a mix of characteristics that allows the market to find the things that we want to see? But as far as how we approach this conversation, you know, with the planning commission and defanning, what I call defanning of, let's say, a morrow plan, we have to recognize the role of the people. There was an outcry about this. I was comfortable being alone on the boat because I know it was now alone and out of my neighborhood. As a result of all this, the council rightly has called for an examination of how we actually appoint people to the planning commission. And I continue to say, my staff reported to me that where we usually get about 15 or 20 applications to planning commission when there's a vacancy, we got 58 people from varying walks of life knowing that we want to reshape and kind of make the public better represented on the planning commission have applied to be on the planning commission, which helps us determine the developing codes that you see, houses being built. I think we push forward. And we do so knowing that we're not trying to create any enemies. We're trying to make a market recognize that the role of the people has changed. We're trying to make it so that private developers can also make money building sustainable communities. Those that recognize that the businesses there are more forward-looking will find that to be of benefit to them. But as far as me as a policymaker, as a leader of the public, we don't have a choice. Forget the politics and forget necessarily that the public is calling for this. We see what happens if we don't do it. We know that, you know, climate change or otherwise our extreme weather events are occurring. We are blood-prone areas to begin with. We have lower-income residents who are increasingly living in more flood-prone areas. If we don't take care of what is causing increased floodwater, i.e. extraordinary amounts of impervious cover and overbuilding in certain parts of our city, then we will be suffering the consequences and all of us will have to pay for it. And that's not much. Let's shift to transit. That was a very popular decision by Mirage and Taylor to hold the streetcar. And we did have one vote on my rail. It's been almost 20 years. It was 2001, 2001 there. And it was pretty heavy against. Your very mention of favor of it. How do you lay the ground to work? Because we passed a charter amendment requiring that the citizens get to vote on any city involved and receive money going to any kind of rail pass transit. Which I know I'm not concerned about. In fact, that was one of the reasons why streetcar failed. I was not in favor of streetcar because it was really, it was not addressing the transportation concerns that are totally out of the community. And when you don't do that, you run a valve as the public will on something as important as transportation. I kind of had the feeling in a way rail does become almost theological. You either forward or you're convinced. The reality is that it's really wonderful where it makes sense. And it's really expensive and a waste of money for it doesn't. And I was worried that people thought well they're going to love the streetcar and that would make them want other things. You know, a lot of people are saying to me and I think it's a small group of folks that say we already voted for this. When we voted down streetcar, we didn't vote on streetcar, but what we did was we recognized there was extreme amount of pushback because the plan wasn't ready for first time. We had a number of different pop-ups leading up to that actually being discussed. And then it was simply a east-west corridor that was going to be on the existing street right away through downtown. That is not addressing the real transit concerns that are in the vast majority of residential communities in San Antonio. I'm finding that it's not a theological issue. It's actually, well, it might be, but most people are agnostic. When I talk, I'm pro transportation, pro transit. When I talk to people out in the community about streetcar in the north side, they hate it, but they also hate it sitting in traffic. When I talk to folks, and I've been talking about transportation and transit solutions for five years as an elected official, we recognize that the last time we actually had a vote on this was 3-9-11. You remember what the world looked like then. Gas was under a dollar gallon. 16-04 was a speedway. You had to wait at the light to get from 4-10 to 81. The world was much different. If we do exactly what we're doing now, as bad as traffic has gotten in some areas, those bottlenecks that get us all angry, they're going to be up 900% in terms of wait times. Average traffic transit times are going to be up 75%. We're adding 150 vehicles to area roads every single day. Doing nothing is not an option. What people want is a transportation solution that actually speeds up their transit or helps them make sure that we're keeping a dam work congestion. We're doing groundwork now. We have a forward study that is part of the SA tomorrow plan that is identified where the major density is occurring. We don't have just one downtown in San Antonio. We have 13 of them. We're at City Base or San Antonio. UTSA in the medical center area. Rolling Oaks. Downtown Central Business District. The Forum. These are all areas where people are living. There's a lot of jobs and there's a lot of economic retail activity happening. Therefore, by the studies that we've done, we know where people's points A and points B are. That's the map that we need to be working with. We don't need to guess where trains and cows need to go. We just simply need to connect areas of density where people are traveling from and traveling to. That's the genesis of where we're going with this. And hopefully, within the next few years, we'll have some options to look at about. I will suggest to you that there's no way any politician should dare in any community that's been living on one motor transportation for so long to put something in front and start building without asking the public where they are. There's no better way to do that than to talk about it. Are we getting close to the time where we go, Oh, no, no, no. I want to try to get to some of the other things. Because I want to go back to housing. Part of it is land development issues and previous cover of the kind of environmental things. And of course, the more we sprawl the worse for the environment. And for us it's particularly consensuously because of the natural resources but I'm going to go deeper into the issue of affordable housing. And there's one economic line of clock that the reason it's one of the major reasons Texas is doing so well economically is that people can come here and buy a 4,000 square foot house in the suburbs sometimes well in the suburbs for 225,000 dollars which in today's hours for housing is not much. You can't do that in King William anymore if you're familiar with that. You can't do it in Portland, Oregon which does have a lot of kind of regulation on the region but that's a real impulse in terms of what cost thousands of dollars to talk about affordable housing that's what they're talking about. So there's some concern about payment but in reality we have an awful lot of people who can't afford that and they're living in older neighborhoods and housing is under this deterioration. What can be done and I'm kind of curious I've watched a whole lot of city sub, ex-substates go to housing that does not do what a lot of cities do and that is if you're going to go to sub-state you've got to provide a portion of the housing to be for a workforce housing for people who have a good job maybe one example I found in court and that was why the school secretary and the neighbors rose up because there was 65,000 dollar house bill in the sub-15 region under the sub-state stock but why do we not is it the numbers or why do we not push for low income housing for given substantial tax cuts to housing developers? Well we do when we can I would say we don't do enough and I'm the first to admit I don't have all the answers on housing affordability but I will say that San Antonio has an opportunity and an advantage because our affordability has not grown out of proportion nearly to the degree that you've seen in Austin or Dallas or Fort Worth so I think I've assembled the people that do have answers and I'm here housing task force that is charged with identifying this very issue giving us options so we can show our housing affordability number one on the supply side because we lack around 140,000 plus homes that are affordable to make the populations better now but also help us to develop policies that may get more reasonable to build affordable homes in the urban world quality affordable homes what I expect is that they will come back with incentives and other policies that will help us generate more rebuild and rehabilitation we'll also figure out ways that we can encourage people to stay in their homes when the other areas of their community are being improved making sure that gentrification doesn't always leave displacement isn't gentrification actually two words it's a good problem to have and that's a problem that's exactly why I said it that way gentrification is associated with redevelopment, revitalization the downside of that is that because property taxes rise and many times these are in older areas with fixed income residents you force people out of their homes because they simply can't pay the property taxes we don't want to see that so we have our task force members working with, it's very soon the leading consultants nationally on this to figure out ways that we can reduce or hold the property tax burden on legacy homeowners in older areas of town the challenge really that I keep hearing though at least in terms of building the built environment is that we continue to sprawl outward and those areas that are sprawled aren't connected to the services we're trying to build in the urban community which is one of the reasons why housing affordability and equity in the city relies so heavily on fixing our transportation system ensuring that if you are working a service job in northwest San Antonio you can either get to and from work in a reasonable and cost effective way or you have affordable homes that you can live in closer to where you work what we're finding now is that the exact opposite is true you see higher income communities with service jobs that are so disconnected from areas where the people who work there can live and live I want to talk about you've got the impression a whole lot of what he does is this wonky, mustn't go city I can talk it comes across but I want to talk about a hot-fuckin' issue because that's part of urban politics too and you've weighted into that with the removal of the memorial with the Confederate memorial in Travis Park there was a letter to the editor today about it just play it on and on there are as many letters as there are about population that was one finding there was a bunch more I expect that your perception on that whole issue obviously you already had quite a strong sense about where you were on the issue but you just got back from the visit to Germany and how that relates what you did in Germany and how that relates to well one of the first things actually the first resolution I signed as mayor was the charter of compassion that we would build our city and do all of our policymaking on this fundamental principle of being compassionate of it so I had a two-pronged mission that has economic development return for the city of San Antonio and job creation opportunities for the city of San Antonio a two-pronged mission to Israel and to Germany my last day in Israel we spent at Jeppe Shem which if anyone knows or doesn't know is the world's memorials of the holocaust to survivors and victims of the holocaust we got on the flight that day and the first thing I did with the mayor of Darnstadt Germany was to our new sister city we just signed a couple weeks ago was I still in the corner once a ceremony of laying up the Stolperstein which is a gold block of that big that they lay it's called a stumbling stone in the pavement to recognize where people were taken from their homes people who didn't have the right skating color or who were Jews or simply didn't sympathize with the the rise of the bureau that was moving I come from my father's side Jewish family but it was a great example of how one city in the middle of Germany becomes progressive and reconciles with its very sordid past I guess what I hear about that some young Germans came to San Antonio and expressed their surprise if you take a look at the Holocaust which was a moral just unconscionable thing if you look at Chattel's slavery how far away does that in the Holocaust as a moral people that people get to own people kill them if they want rape them if they want you know it's not a huge step and yet over there you run into a monument that would be the equivalent if we had monuments here that basically got across the message that we need to deal with the fact that this is what we have and it's a part of our founding DNA and it's a process and it's a reconciliation process for Germany laying up these stones and again it's a recognition of one thing the Holocaust didn't happen in some ancient time this was modern industrial and it happened because there were enough people throughout Europe who simply didn't want to look didn't ask questions just didn't want to have to deal with that as you know in some cases neighbors were being sent to ghettos and sent to be exterminated this tells me it can happen anywhere in fact it does you can go look on the world news section of CNN you can see genocide happening every single day across the world what it does for me as a local official obviously personally moving but it says that we do have to deal with issues that come to us the Confederacy and the racial tension in America won't go away we simply refuse to deal with it don't put it on the agenda what I wanted to do is respect the process make sure that we had a public process which we did and ensure that we did so in a very safe way you saw what was happening in the rest of the country my goal was when this I knew where my colleagues were I knew where I was there was a very big difference between having monuments and museums in which we can learn from and having monuments anonymously in the middle of the parks where we both glorify the causes of the war big difference I wanted to make sure that we didn't remove this monument we placed it so we can learn from it and I knew where my colleagues were they wanted this to happen they put a CCR in front of me in front of the council a consideration request a request for legislation a request for resolution and so I wanted to make sure that we did this in a way that kept the peace knowing that the the fury was really rising if we did not deal with this so we did we had public hearings we've been having public hearings for two years we had public hearings for a week and for several weeks prior to the vote but I wanted to make sure that when we had the vote and it was decided we got the statue moved without anyone getting hurt or getting killed I understand it's hard to explain for some folks but I can tell you that we respected a public process we dealt with a very difficult issue and nobody got hurt with San Antonio I'm very proud of that was it your concern that if you have it more in public that it would give people from the other parts of the country that as we saw having the trials it was time to come in I wanted San Antonio to deal with this San Antonio issue and we had already had the press from council members we all were received the press and it became very clear that San Antonio was next to be on the center of attention I wanted to make sure that San Antonio had an opportunity to deal with this issue together and that's what we did we're in the middle of serious change in one area not exactly where I would be able to stay in but in the last legislative session we faced a number of issues in which the state was taking power within cities and a number of issues where they wanted to pass the law telling our police chief that if you don't deal with immigration issues the way we want you to you can go to jail and city managers and council members council managers and possibly council members of the library board if they speak out say the wrong thing under this law it could be interpreted that they could so there were a number of other points that didn't happen because of Joe Strauss and a speaker of the house Joe is not going to be a speaker of the house the next time how do you see this playing out a lot of things are playing out but how do you see it playing out what we see is the Republican legislator some of them are admitting that we got to control the cities because they're run by Democrats Dan Patrick who said things along the other line I spent a considerable amount of time with mayors in Texas and other mayors as well if there's anything like I understand them and the way I've described is they're all listening to the will of the people too the vast majority of Texan families in cities are actually the majority of Texas lives in cities we are following the will of the people on dealing with issues that are very serious in regard to education, transportation, health and we're doing so sometimes because the state is not the way I see this playing out is I expect again a very polarized legislature without the moderating force of someone like Joe Strauss and I have to say every time I say his name thank God for Joe Strauss I hope he's not run with public service I see this getting fairly polarized but where I see this going is that the polarization and the increased I should say denigration urban communities where this is leading is an acceleration of the change that many legislators are trying to prevent in Texas how does it work because clearly the state as a whole is still breving through the public and it's been pushed because of the nature of the primaries the Republican primary like Stan Patrick the governor is worried that Dan Patrick might take an ox there's a special session with the number one it's not Democrat or Republican in my mind this is not about red or blue what I see this is more of an urban rural issue Republicans and Democrats agree on issues of environment they agree on issues of education they agree on issues of overdevelopment of being prepared for storms that were seen increasing on the coast those of the issues I'm concerned about locally with regard to local authority we see the legislature forget forget the hot button issues we saw authority being stripped on managing our tree cannabis on annexing properties so that we can protect military installations we saw many opportunities to fix our public education system go by the boards once again those of the issues that are polarizing Texas and as legislators continue to throw the gauntlet at cities I think the people of cities are going to start throwing the gauntlet at those legislators you may be right in the Republican primary cities have an advantage in a sense and that they're not elected by parties at least in most of the south including here I think we've seen a political dynamic though where the business community in San Antonio recognized beginning with Henry Cisneros in every sense that the mayor that works best for them is a progressive who's also pro-business and social issues that's not what when Republican primaries these days and right now the legislature is basically in both houses now are more than two-thirds or about two-thirds Republican so there's a different audience always has so if you marry in a higher office you don't have to do what you need to do in some of these primaries yeah but what I would say is that you're going to see a more probably in this session or the next but you're going to see a more city-focused progressive mind-setting from the right side of the aisle I hope it did occur to me that obviously the Democrats can't turn Texas purple but maybe Dan Patrick unbound can I think that's exactly what you're saying regardless of the color the issues of urban community are only going to become more critical for the survival of the state you know let's not forget that this the state relies on the taxes we send it that are generated here by jobs in San Antonio in Austin and Houston in Dallas we have to thrive as a community we have to be able to educate our citizens as a community we have to be able to prevent you know flooding as a community the state is going to thrive and when they begin to recognize that and I think many of them do on the whole side of the aisle I think we'll be better off as this legislature and particularly in the Senate continue to get more polarized I think you're going to see that reality comes in the foreground much quicker what I think is really asking today is how in the national politics President Trump elected by painting the nation has dystopian and cities is totally dystopian but the reality is if you go to cities around the country most of them are like San Antonio they are progressing and the people seem to be pretty happy with their local officials you replace an impromptu there was a total revolution we recently voted to quit paying our council members $20 a week which wouldn't have happened thanks Joe and you got a $3,000 bonus sure I don't want to get there between milk and flowers for my wife but the cities seem to be pretty happy getting things done there are a few that have a few to promise first most cities seem to be not dystopian I don't know how much of that is because we don't have local Fox News but the technology model isn't there but I mean I'm curious about your observations does that make your sense well I mean local elected officials mayors and city council members and county senators they live with the people they serve I mean I go home at night and I'll see several of my neighbors who are either happy or got concerns of the mailbox we live with them we go drop our children off the same school we shop in the same grocery store so we live and breathe the consequences of our decisions and I think that's a level of familiarity that you don't get at the higher levels of office it breathes being a local elected official you get immediate feedback and you're able to calibrate your decisions I think it's a great it's a wonderful part of anyone's thinking about doing this I highly encourage you I'm Eric Asians I was writing a comment I would get some of this guy in person suggested I run for mayor and I was told that when I found the city hall my wife would follow the schoolhouse there's so many things to talk about I'm really curious about this issue of annexation and I grew up in St. Louis which by the 1950s could not annex and weren't as close to child for what happens to how a city especially in the 60s when they were in the 70s, 50s, 70s when they went through the suburbs became a hollowed out city so I've always been with that in my DNA really in favor of basically unlimited annexation but the recent legislature said we can't annex people who don't want to be annexed but there's also people in town now particularly in the tech block who have different visions who are opposed to it and I'm curious about where you are on this what they say is in order to become a thriving city we need to attract more high tech companies and to do that we need to have more young people with that kind of education group here and they're not going to move here if they have to live or if they want really good permanent neighborhood where they can or where they can play so you have for ex-faceted leaders doing a whole lot to build actually buy a plan and build that kind of neighborhood in the northwest part of San Antonio and they're opposing annexation because they say how can we build the city we want to build while we're annexing people who are really angry and will not invest in that and in addition to that there is the issue that there are some geographies in San Juan and it becomes too much of a straw so how do you deal with do you see merit to the tech block argument and where are you I do see merit to it I will say I'm not all the way there I'm pragmatic about it I don't buy into the old argument that we have to extend our boundaries just so we can make sure that the jobs that are grown here are in our boundaries it was all about capturing wealth capturing wealth part of the issue for me is that the legislature over the last 30 years has made that model upside down in terms of economies of scale for cities we are having to subsidize the state on infrastructure that they should be paying for I'll give you a great example I think it was about to the tune of about 30 million dollars that we had to subsidize for the state to build the overpass is that 281 and 1604 had we not allocated that money from local funds from our bond program we wouldn't have built those they wouldn't have contributed to build those that's a state road like a little school district in terms of the responsibilities there are many areas where we are simply doing the work of the state because the economy of scale has just gone upside down I do believe that annexation is a good tool it allows us to control our destiny I'm a strong believer in managed growth so when it comes to things like military basis areas of the city where we simply don't want to see a lot of development we have the authority as a city to zone to produce development codes that slow down or encourage development in one place and discourage it in others a good place to do that is the over the average architecture if we had the junction to annex and undeveloped areas that we can control the destiny of those areas either around basis or over sensitive areas we should do it simply grabbing house roof tops because of the tax revenue as a model that I think is out of the 1960s it doesn't work anymore okay one last thing for a good question here's an issue that's asked that you probably weren't thinking about when you were running for mayor you probably thought it was kind of going on smoothly but we are about to have a 300th birthday and it turned out that the people that was doing it they're gone and probably looked at the cost and it's not nearly as far along as we hoped and thought about it was and so you've had to kind of step into it how is that going and also can you get across the sense of what what do we want to do what are we going to do with that landmark do we just want a bit of a party for what work do we want to do well I'll tell you in person it's going well to the credit of the folks that are working in the commission a lot of the stuff is a cake that isn't fully baked yet we're going to be doing work throughout the year and a number of that of those funds and everything that is required are not going to be there right at the start that being said there were some fundraising challenges that we have to sure you've all read about we've had a number of corporations either give let's you know that USA has made a major gift HB has made a major gift New Star has made a major gift we spoke to be announcing some major gifts pretty soon so I'm confident that we're going to do this right but part of the challenge of the tricentennial is that I don't think people knew what it was or what it meant I will describe to you what the tricentennial is it's not a party we have a new university party we have PSA which is a party that can't be topped but tricentennial is an opportunity our moment in time for us in a lifetime to really tell people about our city I'll describe it this way about a month ago I had a woman in my office we were talking she's a friend she was describing how she grew up in Donna, Texas in the 60's anyone know where Donna, Texas is downtown Valley, Texas it's small now imagine them in 60's every weekend her mother would take her and her siblings to the post office to pick up a copy of the San Antonio Express News and they'd read about her about this metropolis this futuristic city that was about to celebrate the World's Fair so in 1968 her mother put all her kids in the van came up to San Antonio and got them out in hemisphere go experience the world taste the world experience San Antonio this futuristic city she aspired from that point to move here to raise her family here to build a business here and she did she was describing the story to me that's the story I call ad nauseam now because that's what the tricentennial is this is our opportunity for us on a world stage to talk about and to celebrate to let people know about our history our story but also the city that we're going to become the city of the future things that we're working on in transportation education and housing and all these other things there's going to be infrastructure there's going to be artwork there's going to be some parties there's going to be a celebration of military and our international community many of the things that make up San Antonio but the tricentennial is our moment in time the celebration aspired to invest here to move here to stay here to grow a family here that to me is what the tricentennial is and that's why when I talk to people in the business community or even individuals we don't have any options I don't have the luxury of pointing fingers and saying what happened guys we as a community as a city that believes in itself our only option is to make this thing great and that's what we're going to do we're going to take the mics to two people or hold them these don't know you're going to take the mics to anybody who would like to raise their hands to ask a question and I'm sure you all are just absolutely wonderful people who would never do this but on some occasions these kind of forms people want to make a long speech and that's why these guys are going to hold on tonight but we've got later it's time to grab one is it worth it good evening good evening and welcome to St. Mary's as a former student I'm one year at St. Mary's before the trinitation I'm a model I was also a copy editor of the Rattler I enjoyed my experiences there my question is if you didn't talk about your real issues towards the aim especially education and level of income etc how come it is that there is a literacy rate here in St. Antonio is three out of five what are we doing about getting that I've been 25 years ago when I came back to St. Antonio that was the same rate I know the influx of immigrants coming into the city but I think we should have been able to think of a way to be very proactive in solving that problem and the other question I know which is very more or less a rhetorical one is why can't we not limit the people who are coming in in St. Antonio area if you come and visit and you know this is safety here in the U.S. that's been very successful if you come and visit spend their money thank you wow I'm glad I was rhetorical on literacy I agree with you all partly we have to do a better job at literacy both in child youth literacy but also in adult literacy we have an extraordinary problem I will say the city of St. Antonio addresses that challenge for a number of different measures actively involved in literacy organizations our own employees and our own families do it we literacy I will be clear was one of the primary motivations for us involved in getting involved in the pre-k for a state program we're going to see the first cohort go through the third grade to see to the third grade being which we sold this program on it's really being short out by pre-k programs we have to look for additional ways to address the issue of literacy and part of that is working with the legislature getting students ready for early childhood education getting students ready for kindergarten and watching through all means necessary their progression through literacy is a vital a vital importance for the city I'm with you how important is it for you for science because as a early childhood educator I believe that is very important and that keeps the risk of that up to life but with pre-k how do you feel about that for our city actually because you were talking about high quality I saw some of our calendars and I think there's a lot of technology that they can stand here with our children so I just want to be able to evaluate what we know through our workforce studies that STEM is critical science, technology, engineering, math we use to coordinate those off for different industries and science related jobs but STEM careers is in every job it teaches critical thinking skills it teaches us to be problem solvers and so we are actively involved in STEM education programs in the public education system we just declared STEM week as part of the chambers activity next year we'll be piloting a program a mayor's STEM challenge that is hopefully going to unite the different public school districts to really help the attention and focus being given to STEM education as with the other educational literacy we do need to be working collaboratively with our legislature to do things like to make the outputs we were requiring there are a lot of things that we need to do as a local community but also as a state as a nation to do better on STEM STEM is a part of the free game for SA curriculum so as far as universal pre-k that would be wonderful but that's what we're trying to do with pre-k for SA to become a model program that shows and demonstrates best practices for pre-k where are you going from now will you raise your head on that first my question here is I'm majoring in political science and English and one of my political science courses this semester is sustainable human development so when you talk about sustainability with policy development I was wondering what are your other initiatives or stances for sustainability as San Antonio is developing and growing so how are we going to do that in a sustainable manner where we're not negatively impacting our environment yeah well would you repeat that oh sure what are the other ways that we are addressing the issue of sustainability in addition to just the housing development the other first thing that we did as a council was pass a resolution declaring that we would be fully invested in the Paris agreement climate issues, climate preparedness and also sustainability is a general issue is fundamental to how we're building the SA Tomorrow Plan so that will impact the way we handle our energy grid for one we're pushing resiliency and we're we have done more than I think most any municipal power company has done to introduce low carbon sources of energy in doing so we're cleaning up our air we've got we unfortunately are going to be declared on entertainment very soon but we are doing work on early action for cleaning up the air and ensuring we have a sustainable air quality with regard to water supply we did talk about that but ensuring we have a sustainable water supply that drives our balance reducing regional water sources and conservation and so forth so I would say that sustainability is a general value and resiliency are fundamental to everything that we're doing in the city thank you I have a question again regarding the education I know you just had to but I'll try and give you a quick outline so right now I believe it was earlier this month each of us published an update on San Antonio it was titled San Antonio 7th Largest City in the U.S. but more than 100 came out of 93 education it's signed about 4 zip codes here in San Antonio which were a large number on the city's website here at St. Mary's I've had the privilege to study which was to continue their children out of school on the city's website and although I enjoy the idea it's not a solution to go following and it's obviously a lot of issues first-hand with very young children that do not have education they don't have anything to do with them and the gaps that they have in their education specifically on the website so my question is what are we doing that's a great question what are we doing to make sure that particularly on the website we're not leaving our children behind as we see increasing disparity in education on the SMI correct what I would say to that knowing that the city has indirect control and direct impact on the school districts themselves is that we're building our budgets and we're building our system of governance on equity particularly focusing on how we shore up communities to provide services and infrastructure and to build communities where people who have lived in cycles of generational poverty have opportunities to go beyond that I'll also say it's one of the critical reasons why we augmented the via transit budget in the south and west sides of town we know that where people have less choice but more necessity from their public transportation system that is oftentimes the means by which they get home or get to work or get their children to school so by augmenting something simple public transportation ensuring that parents can have the opportunity to get on the bus every 30 minutes as opposed to having to wait an hour or two hours for transfer that's time home early to do homework with kids it's oh actually one of the one of the reasons why the program is so essential is because on the west side a lot of parents are actually glittering so when children get home they don't have access to help with their homework or they can go out to school and actually have help with everyone because once they reach home they're so happy so in illustrating the point then that it is the nuts and bolts of city operations that either contribute to or attract from equity in our communities that contributes to or attracts from generational poverty I'm proud of this that this council is focused in on that issue you've seen it now in multiple areas but most clearly in the fiscal year 18 budget where we decided to use an equity lens to manage budget on transportation where we decided to improve the bus service on those particular times particular parts of town including the west side that don't are not in that equitable service it's also the reason why we now have a chief equity officer of the city of San Antonio to look at all of the different operations in our city through a lens of how we break through these cycles of inequity hello I just thank you for taking your time to come and have this conversation with us at the St. Mary's community what are some things that we aren't doing right now that you'd like our students and the rest of our community to be doing in the tricent fiscal year and the years to be followed wow I hate to I love you guys I'm not talking to you that's not talking to your classmates they're not voting they're not voting in nearly enough numbers to make a difference to the community that we're trying to build and it makes it very difficult for local government leaders to have a forward-looking agenda thankfully we have a courageous council I would say that is able to look beyond the two-year election cycle and look to how we're having an impact on a 20 or 30 year time frame but until we have people who are going to be impacted by that agenda voting in greater numbers it's going to be very difficult and we would learn we risk losing that kind of courage from one election cycle to the next so that's what I would ask with regard to tricentennial go on and say 300.com or .org and get involved in the programs we need everyone in our community to be talking about the fact that this is our 300th year there are things happening in our community that they should be part of, that they should celebrate and if you want to volunteer that's great but I think the most important gift that you could give the city on its tricentennial is to become an active voter thank you it's time to take the speaker I have an idea that is the government of brash with 1968 from St. Mary's and that's the report from Brock Hall and this area historically on Spanish maps was known as and that's called Valle which means uninhabitable that's because it was either flood or drought so my first point is whether or not the city is requiring a plan for developers for more inversion dams to recharge the second point is that we're not sent to have one-way streets and that overpasses and the third point is that this country was founded on honoring our bed and there are a number of souls that are under Santa Rosa Hospital in Mildon Park is the city aware that a lot of those bodies are still there and do they have a plan for reaffirmance that's it thank you for your question and I will have to admit I'm not up to speed on all the details of your last point but my understanding is that the Office of Historic Preservation and the representatives of the indigenous community have been working together for a memorial that actually honors the dead we're being very careful considering that this is the history and legacy and heritage of San Antonio to make sure that we're not simply building on top of very sacred sites I had to divert this for a second when I was in Darmstadt the officers showed me the rubble of their only orthodox temple in the early 2000s the city was getting ready to expand their hospital and the mayor at the time was getting ready to expand their hospital and they got some older resident gentlemen said you can't do that I think I see a block there that might be the site of the old synagogue you don't want to pave over that because that's a very important site they kept going and going as your offices tend to do the mayor at the time said stop and from that moment they started an archeological dig that the town turned into an extraordinary museum in honor of your Jewish community that is now starting to rebuild around that site and everybody ended up happy because they were not able to expand elsewhere for the hospital point being local governments, especially in hearing from residents that have history that know what they're talking about are responsive and certainly at least in this council we have people like that I forgot the first question about diversion dams I don't know any specific plans for diversion dams but the city of San Antonio policy today is not to allow any development in the 100 year flood plain and not any development in the 100 year flood plain fringe while refining especially in light of Sarah that San Antonio River has already did as it relates to Hurricane Harvey that might not be enough we have to do a better job in terms of impervious cover that produces runoff but we also have to examine perhaps building structures in 500 year flood plain I'm not saying that's what we're going but it needs to be examined we know we have 11,000 flood structures in the 100 year flood plain that were built prior to those regulations that we have now and we have done a lot of work with the public over the last 20 years to divert flood water and also to remove structures in some cases from that flood plain I would mention the San Antonio River Authority as well I want to say 17 diversion dams that's really their specialty here in controlling two of our questions Mary remember first thanks for being here again as someone who self identifies as progressive as someone who self identifies as liberal I look at my federal and state governments and let's just say I don't feel represented so on that point it's nice to hear someone at least local level who is making sense to me I appreciate that I don't know how it became one but my question is you already spoke at length about the fact that the state and federal powers you strip power away from you basically power away from your office from local offices you seemed optimistic in that conversation I was wondering if you could share with us your cause for optimism and then as a second part to the question what could someone like me do besides vote to kind of help metaphorically fight back great question so I'm an optimist I you know expect the best that's kind of how I've been in my life you know I had a great faith in people and having worked in civic engagement in 22 different cities from coast to coast since 2000 people want that in many cases people aren't aware of how they can be part of the solution that's why voting is such an easy answer so what I would say in addition to voting is learn how to organize but not just learn how to organize learn how to help yourself and your friends and family and neighbors get informed not everything you read on facebook is factual not everything you hear from your friends is curated everyone here ought to subscribe to a newspaper I mean the fact of the matter is we do have to rely on increasingly connected on demand and on time always on world we have to rely on people to curate views for us when we're increasingly distracted by everything else so that's what I would say learn yourself how to get informed on issues that you know especially those ones that get you up and help your friends and neighbors do that as well and learn how to organize My name is Maria Mancha I'm a political science major here at San Antonio so my question was San Antonio currently is a sanctuary city so with the SB4 law that has passed how would you keep San Antonio a sanctuary city if at all keeping it a sanctuary city well so I'll disagree with your prime minister for a second because no one who is really upset on either side of this issue of sanctuary cities is bothered to give us a definition what I would say to that is that our city and our law enforcement is not in the business of enforcing information we are a welcoming community we're a city of immigrants and we will treat everybody fairly and we won't profile based on the color of someone's opinion or otherwise when it comes to detainer requests from ICE that are legitimate we aren't those that's our obligation to do so but in terms of you know enforcing immigration law and stopping people on a whim because they may appear to be an undocumented immigrant we won't do that we all have a well documented crime issue that we are handling and making inroads on we need all-demand power resources and funds that we have to execute on that mission going towards that not on doing the job of federal immigration and that's what our police chief and police chiefs around the country are telling us and I'd much rather listen to law enforcement professionals on the issue of law enforcement than politicians in Austin or DC consider that off the record I don't want to be sent to jail oh well it's been living in today I apologize for those who had questions and didn't get them asked but we also promised ourselves, promised the mayor and promised Rick Casey that we would conclude the aid or go after the president and member are open with a comment and a prayer on the sugar on the springs and the trash that occurred there you know that eight-thirds this evening at the bell tower there will be a vigil for those victims and for the families and for the losses and trash that they experienced that's eight-thirds this evening at the bell tower we have had this evening we've warned the mayor Rick Casey out I think we've talked a long time we have I think we've gotten many seminars on urban politics tonight and I only wish that we had courses surrounding this particular event for the wonderful evening and we we do appreciate your being here, taking the time to be with us and the conversational tone and Rick Casey's humor and your patience and questions and so on we want to thank you and you have a lot of supporters in the room for the vision for San Antonio Mayor Rodgers