 Okay, so those of you in the back need to have some chairs in front of you. We have some chairs up front if you want to come up for any of them. I moved to everything I was doing. So if you want to just sit down and play, you can just call me over there and pass this game to me. Alright, we're going to get ready to start the airplane, so just keep it down a little bit. Take your seats. Hi, how's everybody doing today? Thanks for coming out. My name is Rudy Lopez. I am the President of the Thompson-Babin Association, and I welcome you all to this historic moment for the West Side, because I don't think we've had this much representation to the West Side in what it's like to have kudos to people like this. So remember that day when we went up which neighborhood associations are here today? We have Los Adines. We have the Thompson-Babin Association. We have the historic West Side. West what square? The stand. We've got beauty workers. If you understand the rest of those, if you understand the rest of those, if you understand the rest of those, if you understand the rest of those, that'd be really good. Let me continue. We've got beauty workers. We've got Loma Vista. We've got Loma Park. We've got Morio. Morio Action Art. Loma Park. And we've got the Nike. I will make the lines. I will make the lines. Excuse me, we have tier one group. Tier one group? Absolutely. We've also got the tier one group here with us. West Side Preservation Alliance. West Side Preservation Alliance, okay. What do you guys have today? Pugna. Let me do my introduction to the officials here. We have the honorable Mayor Ron Nairberg. Councilman Charles Gonzalez with this department, Roberto Trevino and Senator Menendez who's not able to make it today. But we do have his representatives here. That is, we have the staff members for Congressman Joaquin Castro and Representative Diego Bernan. I mentioned that we have the superintendent and new superintendent for the Edwardsville District. Go Edwardsville! Let me just kind of explain something here. We're going to stick to agenda. We have an agenda we need to stick to. The first half of this, we're going to have three speakers. One of them is me. Heather is Velma, Venya, and the other person is Venya Rodriguez. And the topic for tonight is the Essay Tomorrow land usage plan. So let's try to stay on topic. You have any questions? There will be a session for that in the agenda. That will be number five, the time for question and answers. And we're asking you to keep your questions for three minutes or your answers for three minutes because of the time that we have to do this. So we move on with the agenda. Give me just a second. So the first part of the agenda, and I am the first person to speak tonight, as a president of the Townsend Neighborhood Association, I've been hearing stories about the Essay Tomorrow planning group to take that north of us on Joe McMullan for the Westwood Neighborhood Association. Hasn't affected us yet because we haven't been, we haven't been here until September with getting our committees together. But some of the things I've been hearing from the other neighborhood associations is concerning. And the one thing that I can't say is, our name, the Townsend Neighborhood Association, that plan was made years and years ago. So looking at those plans and knowing the folks who made those plans and the history of those plans and the people who took time to create those plans years ago, I would ask that when we do get to that point, when we start doing the Essay Tomorrow for my neighborhood, that we kind of respect those plans and make sure that we don't just completely do away with them. Okay, Delma? Sure. I have a lot to share with you. Stan? No. I took this one. I'll just have one. Thank you. I know you all are welcome. Thank you again for telling me, this is very important for us to be able to tell you our concerns, concerning the Essay Tomorrow planning. So I just wrote something that I would like to share with you. In the midst of interest of our community, neighborhoods, community neighborhoods, we are advocating for this particular cause, allowing us the constituents, neighborhood leaders to voice and address our concerns regarding the near-West Side Community Plan. There are five regional center plans, one near the West Side Community Plan, and that would be us. We're the first. And this is not what the West Side Coalition considers a neighborhood plan. After attending meetings for one year with Essay Tomorrow, we are left with more questions and answers. We, the West Side leaders, want to be given an opportunity to be part of the process that can help us create a better neighborhood plan and have it included in the community plan. And its land uses as well to be honored. But in the long run, our community will be poorly impacted being the giddy pigs in a bad experiment. And for the last 300 years, West Side and communities have been disrespected and ignored, and this feels like more of the same. And I will close with this. We are supposed to leave our children and grandchildren better off than we are. We want to help decide their future, and we want the next 300 years to be better than the last. Please give us the neighborhoods that we use. And that's all I want to tell you about. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next person coming up is Daniel Rodriguez. I'm from the Lomabista Neighborhood Association, and I'm in trouble because of our role in the West Side. I can't remember the story. The reason I'm here is because I was involved with San Antonio and State Tomorrow when it first began, Franklin and Hart Burger, and began this thing. It was wonderful for each group because it was separated into different sections. You had park, you had this, you had street, you had that. But what people don't realize even before that, if you had been involved in city issues, you would realize that all these things are interconnected. Everything is interconnected. So when that happened, what I noticed the plan was being used, like let's say people love parks, people love this, but they say they want to do some huge housing project, just as an example. Well, they'll say, well, the park's like it, they like it, so the whole plant likes it. No, each section likes their own things. Okay. Today we're something called the Land Use Plan. What is a Land Use Plan? Some of us know, some of us don't. The only reason I know a little bit better is because I was in a zoning solution. What do you have? Most of you are probably aware of zoning. You have residential zone, and you have R4, R5, R6, depending on the size of the lots, and then it goes to Office 1, Office 2. Even that right there means Office 1 means that you can go and see clients. Office 2, clients can come and see you. Then you have business. What's the word? If that's your word? Commercial. Commercial. C1, C2, C3, the higher the number, the greater the impact on the community. So, and then you have, before that you have multifamily now. So they have all the residential multifamily, and multifamily can be duplexes, triflexes, complexes. So, when you come across that, I mean they know all this stuff, what are you talking about? Try to bring them up to part. When you hear like they say complexes, and they say we're going to have four units, well, if you look into the details, it comes up sometimes, not complexes, but let's say, yeah, we have multifamily. What do you think? Duplex. Okay. So they're going to have four duplexes. No. If they say they're going to have four units, it means it can be eight duplexes. I mean eight units, I mean, my brain is fried and broke from the medical scenario. Okay. So let's say they're going to have four units per acre. What is a unit you think will some four houses, four cars, or whatever. But you have to be careful because if it's four duplexes, it's actually eight units. If it's four complexes, it's actually four times four, 16 units. So it might sound like it's not too intrusive, but it is. Right now, they're also going into the process of, I don't know if they already know about the multifamily use. They might have, I'm not sure, the city center. So anyway, so here comes the land use plan. Right now, things are zoned, at least commercial, respectively. But the land use plan is hovering above all this. Okay. So what they do, or the proper way it was done in the old days, they were called neighborhood community plans. A neighborhood community plan sometimes took two to three years to create. And then back then, and he was very, he was very blessed in that he actually had a massively recognized planner directing that issue. That neighborhood community plan. A neighborhood community plan is very precise. You have the whole community knows how the company works. They know where the problems are. They know where PD is needed. They know where the traffic is at. They know all these things. And guess what? Back then, they were given studies of traffic impact studies. They were given studies of the income levels of the community so that when you build things, it doesn't kick them out of the area. They were given more precise information to use so that they could create an equal deal. Avenida Guadalupe is the only one in our area that has a community plan on this side of Highway 9. That's the only one. This section that we are planning is 7,700 acres. So we're victim. We really don't know what's going on. To me, it's too big. We have to go and do it the right way. With neighborhood community plans in which you have the directly impacted community involved. This is a great idea, but it seems more like it's for somebody else, not for us. I mean, that's the way it is. I know that's not what it means. Now, some people say it's not zoning. Well, having been in zoning, depending on who the attorney is, representing the developer, it's like a done deal. Because let's say we're going to build a commercial here in those houses and since it's a commercial street, well, when they do that 9 years plan, they pretty much go with the 9 years plan. You have to have very good speakers or some issue that's there in order to go against the 9 years plan. It's a key to open the door. So, what's sad is, what is zoning? Zoning is sometimes the first place regular citizens ever go before their city. The first time. You see in there, it's an OK in the street, kind of 6,000 years open in public. They're trying to protect their property because somebody's going to do something they're in agreement with. Well, let's say a bar, an extreme. You're going to build a bar next to my house. So, people panic. So, they go to zoning. That's the first time you're people this week. It's really close to their safety. But what happens if you have a 9 years plan? Let's say the 9 years plan allows for a bar. But those four people go and speak before us and we in good faith with the zoning commissioners listen to those for the planning commission. The planning commission will say that it fits the plan. Then they give a recommendation that approval goes to the zoning. Zoning's already well. The planning commission says it's OK. It depends how many people show up. Who speaks, who has a better ear, who has a better speaker reason. So, we'll have more evidence. So, the community that's there doesn't have a voice. And that's my concern. So, we have a 9 years plan. It's like we're taking away the voice of the impact of the community. Because somebody else, which is going to be us but we're all in it. And I did request, and I wrote a letter to Chris. I said, Chris, if there's no sort of a way it is please tell him. And he knew already. So, I'm always the name of it. I gave him my license number and everything out. But it's not an agreement. We have to keep it open. Why he's concerned is because he does have a community plan. We need to have a community plan. But the 9 years plan is already going over. It's what that trumps a community plan that took two or three years to make. And that's not fair to those from that year. I mean, it's the people thing. But since you're all only dedicated to this technology, now, they're dedicated to CPS all of them. So, there's so many things going on that in truth it's hard to, you know, there's so many things. But there's levels in it. And I'm trying to bring that forward to you guys. The experts in the community are all the people that have been there. The experts we have experts in the city. Why not bring those experts together? And we come back with a community plan. If you look at this, it's awesome. It doesn't really intrude in that community. It's great. We need to look at it. It's up to par. Where's our tier one? Anywhere from tier one? They have community plans. And they serve their community in an exceptional way. So let's get the experts that are here. And let's do the expertise of our community. Because we've got this in the world. We've got great staff. But if we rush it, we're going to fail. And we don't want to do that. I mean, this represents a community. That's all we're asking for. Thank you. Thank you. So we know the agenda is this time for questions and answers. It's time for you all to answer some of the things that you're going to hear tonight. So who wants to go first? I'm going to go first. So, although I probably shouldn't go first, I'm going to go first. I'm going to go first. You'll appreciate it. They don't have to hear from me. Well, first of all, I'll say thank you to all the neighborhoods who have gathered tonight to be part of this meeting. Our role here, I think, most importantly is to listen to your concerns and make sure that they're active upon as we go into our council meetings and we go into the committee meetings. I will say, just to step back for a minute on the whole essay tomorrow process, the intent here is that amidst all of this incredible growth that we're having, and we all feel differently about that growth because it's impacting us differently depending on where you are in the city, amidst all of this growth that's occurring that you and your families who are already here in San Antonio can enjoy your community and not be adversely impacted by that growth. Essay tomorrow began with that recognition, Eugenio, about the fact that we can't just do land use in a box in an isolation, but everything is connected to everything else whether it's water use or land use or energy or the way we plan our parks and so forth. Everything is connected. If we're going to have a quality community, we have to plan comprehensively. I'm hearing a few things tonight. One is that you and the neighborhoods, all of us together, we all live in homes and neighborhoods in some respect, want to have a voice in the process. Essay tomorrow, when it began, was not so much about a plan that was being put together and being placed into a document. It was about a process that was intended to bring people together to plan our community. It was supposed to be, and it is supposed to be and I would argue that it is a table that we sit at to plan what our community will look like in the future. The second thing I'm hearing is that there are a number of us who have worked very hard over the last several decades, 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 years at a time to create neighborhood plans and you are concerned that those neighborhood plans are going to get trucked, subsumed, run roughshot over by these land use plans. I'm here to tell you that that is not the intent and if that is occurring at the community level, whether it is a zoning meeting or a neighborhood association meeting then that is not being implemented the way we intended. The way of use plans that you are talking about which are 7000 plus acres large are intended to use the neighborhood plans as a building block so that we have a more coordinated land use strategy a more coordinated land use plan so that as more development comes in that are going to be close to your neighborhood Cynthia or that more commercial activities coming in that are going to be uploading right next to your house and your green belt that you expected to have for the rest of your life that were limiting the adverse impacts that were having land use patterns that are not only respectful of the neighborhood plans that have been built years ago but they are also coordinating with the adjacent land around it. Obviously there's a lot of details involved with establishing those land use plans and we can't do it at this level in one meeting but there is a lot of work ahead and you need to be part of it and so that's what this meeting for me is going to be about is making sure that we understand the initial concerns going into the implementation of the west side plan but that when it's done you don't feel like a getting pig but you feel like you've got it done first before all this growth really starts to impact the community and I'm so happy that we are taking the implementation seriously because it is what you are going to experience your city life over the next however many generations and we are focused on this as a city council together Shirley Gonzalez who is our district 5 city councilman is the chair of the comprehensive planning committee who is a first stop to all of these concerns nothing is actually approved not even at the zoning commission not even at the planning commission not even at Shirley's committee until they see it all and they say it's ready to go so there's a lot of stock gaps in place to make sure that we don't get this wrong and that you have a voice in the process so I'll end it now so thank you Mayor that's why I sort of jumped to speak first because I chair the committee but actually it's of course in the mayor's direction that I chair that committee councilman also sits on that committee with me and when mayor asked me to chair this committee about a year ago of course they got briefed on it and I got briefed again and then I repeatedly kept asking for more briefings because it's very complicated so I don't think that as the neighborhood associations should feel any problem with repeatedly asking for more meetings more delays, more community action because even I that chair the committee and get sometimes as many as two briefings before it goes to my committee that often have questions and I ask the staff, show me your presentation because if I don't understand it my colleagues are not going to understand it and certainly the community is not going to understand it so I'm very grateful for you all for organizing us today so we could talk a little bit about this because the other thing that we all know and I think I may the two state representatives I think are not involved with the say tomorrow process but of course we're very concerned with the activity they can't answer the questions they haven't been digging really deep into the say tomorrow plan but we as our our have been discussing in our comprehensive planning committee meetings and over the years, in fact before I chaired when Mayor Taylor was the mayor and she was also working once again it's been a couple of years now in the making but what we all know as elected officials is that really what matters the most is not the committees we chair and not the work that we do at the committee level what people really want to know is how is this going to impact me how is this decision going to impact me and that matters at every level whether you're the council representative or the state representative, certainly the mayor and every step along the way and so I think this is why it's so important that we are discussing some of these issues and I do like we need to we need to have city staff to answer more technical questions about the plan but I think they just want to reiterate what the mayor said about meeting our community input so one thing that SA Tomorrow plan is not zoning and that's really important to know zoning will always be separate and apart this is a plan that we hope to implement in our neighborhood because we're a neighborhood we're not growing and this is different from what's happening in other parts of the city where we are seeing a lot of rapid growth I need to say rapid but we're seeing growth there's this projected idea that we're a hundred that a million people are coming to our neighborhoods that's primarily outside the county and it's also primarily internal growth so I think that's really important to recognize is that there are not droves of people coming all over the country moving into San Antonio it's Latino families like ours having more children and staying here and so that makes our land use different it makes our housing different I think and it makes it really important to all of us in the way that we design our city so I didn't have a specific question to address we can answer very specific questions I'm very well briefed Councilman Fabinho also sits on the committee so he's very well briefed on the essay tomorrow but we have been taking your input very seriously we asked for multiple delays Councilman Fabinho has asked multiple times to delay some things because people didn't feel satisfied we have pulled one item that was supposed to go to council actually on the dais because it was a million plus dollar consulting contract for consultants to do a bunch of different things on the plan and it took a long time for us to really understand what are those million dollars going to it was supposed to be for marketing a lot of it and so we need to continue to work with our staff to make sure that people are getting informed correctly about exactly what's happening but I could go into details about the 13 regional centers and the delivery plans but one of the reasons that we have a west side plan is because I noticed as we were going through this process that the west side really from downtown all the way almost to 16 or 4 there was nothing there was nothing for us on the plan we don't have a regional center we don't have a large employer we do have one at the port that was considered a regional center but on the west side there was nothing there's no growth centers that means there's no major employers there was no activity there was going to be no plans so we added a couple of different layers of community neighborhood plans and that's why we have this enormous west side neighborhood plan that really should be broken down into probably six different plans and many of you have them already so how old is your plan Brady? That's right, all the dates all the way back to 1998 Okay so too old Yeah and that was done in 2010 2010 even questionable like is that recently enough some of them were quite old we had some that were as recently as 2012 for the Longstreet neighborhood so we need to find a way to implement those plans but I also think we need to think of ourselves a little differently when we are in areas that in fact are not growing we know that in our census tracts on the west side at least in my district district 5 we've had a declining population since the 1950s or so so how do we bring people back into our neighborhoods having public spaces desirable how do we grow small businesses how do we continue to grow jobs at the port I think many of y'all look around the room and I think many of y'all know here that in Kelley's heyday there were about 25,000 employees at Kelley right now there's about 12,000 so we'll remember it would be not that we'll matter but it is a long time before we get back to the growth and the jobs that we had in this neighborhood back before the 1980s and even previously before then so as we go asking specific questions about the SAEA tomorrow plan I'm happy to answer them and I think I'll turn it over to my councilman my colleague councilman could be able to talk a little bit about what he's hearing from his neighborhood associations for the SAEA Morris plan thank you councilwoman and I would just touch on what you said and I really caught onto that is how people are intimidated with the process almost every city process can have this level of intimidation and we want to make sure that we're clearing some of that out and I want to point something out we also want to make sure that people know that we offer serious Spanish translation at all these meetings and so if you feel that there's some lack of translation services in our city we have somebody in charge of that Carlos Valenzuela write that name down if there's a lack of Spanish translation services and any meetings that you are at call the office we'll put you in touch with Carlos Valenzuela this is a very serious thing because as you pointed out imagine going to a meeting and you're being explained all kinds of complex data and information about your property but you don't necessarily fully understand English so we want to make sure that people fully understand what's impacting them of course and on top of that now we're talking about the different land use categories and what all that means that it's really complex and it's not English it's something else and so what we're asking is for people to understand that this needs to be much clearer so we're not going to be shy about asking for delays we're not going to be shy about asking for more meetings clarity this next month I've asked the American Institute of Architects the AIA located on South Lotus to host a series of meetings to help with maybe some of that kind of translation you know instead of having the planning staff continually talking about some of the categories maybe the AIA can help with some of that and my staff, Chrissy and Kay will be assisting with that as well so just know we're trying everything we can to get that information out there because it is complex but the bottom line is we need to make it something that is relatable that's understandable and also really is what's asked of us for a long time already is to make sure that the neighborhood plans are incorporated are a part of all of this reference not a tab or an index in the overall plan but part of it and I believe that that is a a good ask and I think that that is the way you plan a city that's the way you get more eyes on the kind of things that you're doing to help improve communities and neighborhoods like ours so just know that we know that it is a very complex issue this Thursday in my field office we're hosting District 1 constituents to come out and we're going to do our own a quick little run through of the different land uses and what planning is proposing we're also it's also kind of in concert with some of the CCRs that we've put out there we've got a wide area of rezoning and why do we have a wide area of rezoning because a lot of the issues you've talked about are occurring translation errors zoning that is occurring in different neighborhoods that are impacting them in ways they can't seem to understand and nobody understands either so they can't explain it you can drop a very unique zoning category in the middle of the block makes no sense and the land use pattern actually helps to address what you're talking about so please know that we're here with you that's why we're here today to listen to some more about what we can do to facilitate more meetings facilitate more clarity about what this means to our city we want a beautiful city a growing city a city by design and not something that is just an accident or that's faultless and we've seen many meetings like this and just want to say thank you for organizing this and this is something that needs to happen more often throughout the city we have a microphone right here for questions from the audience out here if you don't have questions you can go to the microphone here are the rules though you have three minutes we've also watched this downtown so today's subject is the strategy for the essay tomorrow however if you have other questions if you want to ask your representatives right on the back of your agenda I'll make sure that you get to your representatives all right name some of the names of the neighborhood association name some of the names of the neighborhood association I'm going to start with the neighborhood association we're back this morning where is this an Antonio I went away to college and came back and it seemed like we were still in this same place my father was in the military but my mother gave a lot to this community and we seem to when we come to these meetings with the essay comprehension it seems so distant we can't seem to catch up with it being so far behind in the historical sense about where we are how are we going to fix those in coming to essay tomorrow when a 7-Eleven when I was in historic is very emotional for me because there comes a 7-Eleven things that already exist in there that's a big deal you got the money gas you know what you say this no respect it's just no respect we're behind all our lives my dad we built everything that we wanted to do what the city comes to understand everything we wanted to do we thought we were almost behind that's why thank you so thank you for organizing yourselves for the west historic west side and last year I offered the equity budget that was based on street maintenance I was very proud to have done that work with my staff took us about a year and a half to compile all the data for PCI score and I don't want to get too side tracked with that because I know that we're here to talk about land use but what if the PCI score had to do with the Payton Condition Index and that means the quality of our streets and we found that there were six districts I'm sorry there were five districts in the city that had a less than 7 PCI score and that was districts one two, three, five and ten so when we did our city budget last year we added an additional $35 million to streets that were less than 7 PCI and this year again we added another $35 million to streets that were less than 70 PCI and we included another $11 million for streets that are within 410 some of our oldest streets I'm very proud to have done that because it means we've gotten an additional $70 million for our street maintenance and I think that's really significant for us in districts one and districts five but in sidewalks we included our city budget which they had not previously been so this is the first time we've done sidewalks as part of our INP which is our infrastructure maintenance program but I had a meeting today with another people in the city because we know that while we need infrastructure, we need streets, we need sidewalks drainage is still an issue that we have not been able to address and one thing there is no score for drainage it's easier to do with streets because there's a score sidewalks you can do gaps but how do you account for drainage and so what we came up with very simply and not technical is that and what the city staffer told me was that the reality is our oldest districts have worse drainage because of the way our city was was designed regardless of income so whether you live in King William, whether you live in Illinois whether you live here on the west side you have really bad drainage and so we need to redirect our funds our stormwater maintenance program to the oldest areas and that can be done just simply by saying within 410 we're going to invest all of our drainage dollars within this area to help correct not necessarily historically underserved areas but just the fact that we have an old city 300 years old so as we continue to address this issue of just simple things that we know that we all deserve we've been paying taxes on these years the simple things that everybody say they want public safety, street maintenance sidewalks, drainage, that's what people want so let's redirect the majority of our budget to those things and let's consider drainage based on the oldest parts of the city and that will help us make our areas a little bit more desirable and give us a better quality of life if you allow me real quick check out what you see inside the program we are under construction for almost a whole year on streets just from where I it's up we are broken you can hear my voice you got broken sidewalks construction cars that have been given trees that fell because of construction check out that whole corridor it's we've been behind I think it's going on a year and a half and those are still getting worked on in the SAWS project and it should have been finished in fact the last time I was there it was finished perhaps they didn't do a good job I still have the deck on my car but as we are investing more of our dollars in our streets we're going to see a lot more construction and it's a little bit more damaging for us because our houses are so much closer to the streets so we've got to work with our city staff to make sure that we maintain I just want to add something because this just happened of course hopefully we're going to fight in our budget this year but to your point about streets and sidewalks and when is it going to get done one of the most important things we can do is hold people accountable and we don't have something like that for sidewalks we have a PCS score and as councilwoman Flonzada has mentioned but we don't do that for sidewalks and year after year there's a lot of ads in our city and this year we have budgeted into the this year's fiscal 2019 what's called a pedestrian mobility officer with that I hope to also get a pedestrian mobility committee which would be represented by every different council district to really take a look at this because to your point we need to put a timeline on projects and we need to measure them and see how are they performing why are they taking, why are there delays because certainly it's not just happening on the south of our city and we need to hold a lot of the folks accountable the contractors and the contracts in the way that they're done so that we can encourage and incentivize contractors to finish just on time but maybe ahead of time and save us money okay do we have any more questions okay go ahead no more questions do you have a question oh okay go ahead I'll make a statement make this yes go ahead make a statement my name is Lalo de Villa and I've lived in this neighborhood for over 50 years and nothing changed dramatically since I got here I'd like to point out the statistics that a survey was conducted of different parts of town throughout the city and the commerce partway corridor was rated 0.05 versus the 151 no 21 21 21 they rated 803 percent the bad news about it was that they told us that we would never be able to catch up because the density of this area of town now I have a suggestion that there's a lot of people in this part of town that owns an acre or more but the same way we give developers work something out of them and invest money and of course we have to comply with the zoning and all that but let's say if you have one acre maybe two or three duplexes or whatever it is one of the biggest things that we have right now is the train center one of the best in America and from that you have four more that were instituted throughout the city so that part of partway is actually the anchor to a lot of businesses and I remember when I was going to high school in the books that Houston was made all of their businesses to the universities and I couldn't say that but now I'm seeing that institutes like that bring a lot of things to our community so this thing part of town does not have density and if we want to go to the movies we have to go 15 miles a senior citizen center we don't have it's a chain that our citizens that are senior citizens have to stay indoors someplace in school and they cannot attend a senior citizen center that we have a comprehensive senior citizen center about $23 million thank you let me take this up real quick you might like living on top of people but we're out of here we're out of here we're out of here we're out of here and somehow we've got to represent both of you in this episode over my good evening my name is Lauren and I'm the president of Las Palmas American Association and we're new, we're still forming our bylaws and the whole purpose was to try and get the Las Palmas area somehow a little help I looked around and I'm now older and as you get older you kind of see things from a different point of view you have more time to give so I kind of made my new job now to try to do something for our neighborhood just in my backyard to have some kind of clean day get together have the others in my clothes get together for a little potluck but what I did notice and I lived a third generation here in this neighborhood we lived right next to our grandma but I noticed growing up I grew up on the southeast side I remember over here there was not very many entertainment close by when I grew up there was a bowling alley there was a skating wing you had the movies maybe a few blocks down the parents were picking you up dropping off and picking you up and that is a little lacking in my neighborhood there's a lot of easels banks businesses that we support but we need something of that sort so I'm hoping to get a pot together for our neighborhood and try to get that because it is historic a lot of the homes as a general said are older and the taxes every year seem to weigh on us more and more I'd appreciate you coming into this so I wasn't joking when I said that somehow it got to represent both you and Ray and Laura as well so let me tell you something or let me get you a perspective that I'm hearing from all the room here that the truth of the matter is change is happening as we live the day in San Antonio it is occurring and while Ray may hold on to his acres there are going to be people around you Ray who are going to sell their acres to do exactly what she's saying to do and what we're trying to do is make sure that there's not endless bureaucracy in the process of trying to plan for our community that when somebody does sell their acres that we've already agreed when something's built there is it a hospital or is it a strip center is it a bowling alley or is it a duplex or an apartment complex those are the conversations we're trying to have today so that somehow you and Laura will be as close to satisfied as possible and so will your children the point is though we can't avoid that conversation because that change is happening and that's the whole point of SA Tomorrow and I do agree on what that ultimate neighborhood look like when the growth does occur of course so so thank you and I think Ron of course expressed it well because we know that we need more people in our neighborhoods and I think that the school district can test as well the declining enrollment in our public schools then lead to school closures and that sort of thing so we've got to and my feeling is that not necessarily that we need to bring a lot more people in our neighborhoods we just want to make sure that those of us that are here stay so we have this young man here is this your son? okay you look alike after you go to college and you get educated that you don't feel like you have to leave your neighborhood to have a good quality of life and that's what I wanted to build is a city that you all can stay in because we have a lot of vacancies there's housing available and Mayor also talked about the housing task force and what that's presenting but absolutely we have to incentivize small-scale development that was one of the things that came out of the pilot project that I'm working on in our neighborhood there's a district fire pilot program just for housing and some of that is so that we make it easier for people to build on vacant lots that we make it easier for people to sell their property and add accessories to all the units my mother lives next door to me too and I just rehabbed that house for her it was not a good financial investment because it was so expensive to upgrade any home that it doesn't make sense and most of it had to be paid for in cash because a house was not livable so that is not something that we should burden our young people with we need to be able to get a traditional mortgage just like you would if you were buying his own or any other place where you should be able to live where you want and hopefully we build a community here in our neighborhood that you want to live in and so that's also part of the SA Tomorrow plan but I am really proud of us here in this room so many of our presidents that organized because since I've been on the council we've had four new neighborhood associations and I cannot tell you how proud that makes me feel I have to be with people really care about their neighborhoods and we as council members and the representatives we want to respond to people I mean it gives us no greater pleasure than to sit here before you all today and talk about our city but if we don't have anyone to represent because we don't have neighborhood associations and essentially we're we don't have anyone to work for so I am very grateful for everybody's presence today and in fact here in I know District 5 we only have 11 registered neighborhood associations do you have a district 8 so do you see like we need people and so they have 80 people that would get together 80 presidents we have 11 or 12 so I think we're making a really good solid impact with the few people that we have so thanks everybody for being here again Hi I'm Debbie I do have some questions but I also wanted to make a statement actually what you just said what I'm noticing is in our neighborhoods West Side, South Side, East Side well not so much certain areas but there aren't any places to gather and that keeps a lot of neighborhood associations from forming if we want to form a neighborhood association we have to pay every month and we have all these community centers all over San Antonio and if you want to rent them you've got to pay $250 and then just sit there empty day after day after day I have a lady in my neighborhood that will teach kids how to play the piano for free free but guess what if she wants to do that she's got to go pay for one of those rooms to teach the kids to play piano for free yes they are and I actually went to the city parks and recreation center today because there's a screen of a movie that they want to offer free that would be great about our public schools I can't buy a free place to have it now I'm going to ask some places some people that are here that come here to see if they can have it at one of their locations but if we should have those free places everywhere in San Antonio we wouldn't charge but it's still see that's a thing I have to I have to call somebody with a connection to get it done in a city facility but we should be able to do that and pay free services that's what I'm saying in these neighborhood associations most of them have to pay dues because they can't buy a place to have their meeting and air condition free and it's only an hour so that's something that y'all should maybe think about if you want more community involvement then give us places where we can gather free does that make any sense that was one question okay now this is the other thing that I wanted to ask and this is something that I wrote down and I guess it's the million dollar question what are the other words or actions for many of us in this room or any side can make you see what we're saying and then actually we'll leave here to take action because it hurts us like I have my friend Dina she posted a picture of this wonderful sidewalk I mean you know what made me cry it really did this white white hair mom's house and I'm like what that's your white trail that's not fair you know because I see white trails being built and you know excavating down the sides of the rivers and everything to build these beautiful white trails on the other sides of town and my friend's got this crumbly ugly white trail in front of her mom's house that's sad and so something like that it's like what makes people say well they don't deserve to have a new white trail until it's so ugly walk on it anymore and so those are the kinds of tools I'm hoping that y'all will think about I'm going to respond just because I healed up that one I guess it must be council days but I think first of all Rudy and the group thank you for organizing this many of you may not know but before I was on council I started as a neighborhood association president when I lived right by Jefferson High School and was part of the near northwest community plan formation back then we sat through a couple dozen meetings to get that done so the work is meaningful and I know from your perspective that nothing is more demoralizing when you are not respected as was mentioned or ignored and all that does is lessen your faith in government so I hate to speak for anybody up here but I know we're all here because we care and we want to try and make a difference for you so let me just mention something that you know I think is somewhat state related and you know Ena and I fight the good fight in Austin every two years but something that you may not know that I can't make promises but in terms of coordination of efforts just a quick story two sessions ago I served on appropriations now the last two sessions ago and you will remember this there was an attempt to try and get some money from the state to help with the expansion of Hartberger Park there is money in the state budget for local parks and I remember that Mayor Hartberger at the time came to my office with my colleague Tray Martinez Fisher took him to the speaker's office and Tray and I had a negotiated one sure we'll try and get this money in the budget but we wanted an equal amount for West Side Parks so we ended up getting a million dollars for Woodmont Lake and Monterey so there are ways to that's right so there are ways that we can be helpful again it depends on the budget and I know next session is going to be tough but you know even though it's been I guess seven years or so since I've been on city council we're always thinking globally when Nina and I come back to the neighborhoods we're always thinking about how can we help make quality of life better for our constituents so I just wanted to mention that because again I didn't come tonight just to pay for the pizzas we're here to listen we're here to listen and thank you thank you but we are here to listen because this is important even though we don't know much about the plan certainly we're going to get calls from constituents we're going to work with our colleagues from the city to make sure we get it right so I just wanted to mention that I can't even say something to that because it's important to say that we invited you all because we wanted you all to hear what our concerns were even though you're at a state level we were your constituents and you all need to know what's happening at a local level that was very important so thank you for being here we appreciate that too because we were in terms of policy and if there's anything that we could do on the state level to help facilitate what needs to be done on a local level is what we're here for and a lot of times we encourage our constituents to call us because sometimes there's council council gets busy and we help facilitate whatever request is with any council members for example I've got council members I've got council in Brock House and I've got council in Saldana so we forge relationships I know that you've got council women so it's understandable so we all try to work together now there are times we may not all agree but we try to work in the best interests of our constituents one question after a while I just want to thank y'all again I'm not going to give my name because only one important person in this room is DOD so I don't need to tell you my name first of all I would like to say thank y'all again but I think sometime we're missing the point in some of the things that we're dealing with we do have growth going on in our community already we have Southwest research we have NSA which is national security agents probably one of the largest contributors of cyber security Port San Antonio Port San Antonio is going to bring back those jobs that you talked about that our community had so many years ago we have development that's going on on Acme Road Leonard homes are giving us built homes on Acme Road for under $200,000 you've got habitat that's going on there Port San Antonio is getting ready to open up probably 374 units out there another thing I wanted to share with you that please ensure that you include a sure in this development somebody said ensure you include a sure in children children in this development elementary middle school and high school and college children because I don't know about you I don't think anybody in this room is going to be here 300 years from now we're not going to be here we're not going to be here so we need to ensure that we hear from those children to see what's in their minds so they can help to be involved with what's going to happen in the coming years and the other thing that's going on in our community it's a melting pot also and you guys talked about Hispanics and other races and stuff like that but the main thing that you talked about was Hispanic but over on Acme Road we have some residents that's coming in from Bahrain so that's another culture that's coming into our neighborhoods and we need to take into consideration our children will change the dynamics of the senses because they're going to create another race and you guys they can get a hold of that because you're not going to have any say so in them developing other races because they're going to join with other races and have families so please take that into consideration because those are some major things that we just failed to forget and that's what's going to happen in America and it's always been happening because America is a melting pot so you shouldn't be afraid of changing the the dynamics of your of your community because it's all about growth we're already dealing with the immigration right now so we should be embracing that so I'll go ahead and get off of my sofas but please take that into consideration thank you My name is Silva Bonn My name is Silva Bonn I went to Escobar District High I went to Ayrton High School and then I went to Trinity University and three of those schools are closed There's no way about crying There's no Escobar and there's no Ayrton I came back I came back and I taught in José Carvenas where you know three and four year olds Spanish bilingual teacher and have diabetes high blood pressure they're obese they're ADHD we've got all sorts of health problems and we're talking three and four year olds what are we doing for these children and then we give them cookies and this is our school we're giving them cookies for snacks and orange juice and all the sugar and stuff and then the parents come and pick them up what are they going to go play there's nothing I drive to get on the freeway I get up at night and go home and there's nothing my dad has a house it's $700 built in 56 I come and there's nothing there's no baseball field there's nothing for these children and I think what is it where can these parents take these children without having to drive they don't have any cars they don't have to walk with their children this is just injustice here we have to worry about these children another thing, us adults we have diabetes we have high blood pressure we're wheelchairs it's hard to get on wheelchairs but try to find that spirit we need to think of these things we're not thinking of we're just thinking about we're not thinking about this definitely at once and then I'm looking at getting older so I'm thinking about myself getting older we need to think about these we need to do better that's a dissertation response to what you just said but what you just said and all the complexities of public health and how it relates to how wide your street is how much access you have to things like skinny rinks or even parks exactly why I say tomorrow it was brought together is that we can't solve these issues simply by looking at zoning designations or by looking at one segment of the city budget in fact, what you were talking about with regard to schools the shoes a little bit on the other foot we don't have control of our school districts we support our state leaders and we're on the same page with regard to school finance and things like that that need to occur but all of these things are layered together and while we get caught up in talking about infrastructure and claim striping and even PCI scores the truth of the matter is we don't do any of that just to get the metrics what we're trying to do is improve the lives of our constituents making sure that the next generation of children grows up healthier and has a better opportunity for success and being happy frankly I'm here with Collins Gardens Neighborhood Association and we talk about growth and things like that and I hear a lot about zoning I just want to bring something to your attention that happened recently in my neighborhood we had a zoning request for Zosmora and Soralbo and what they wanted to do was they wanted to put in in essence another slaughterhouse they were going to house live animals there and butcher them and sell them to meat the problem was that I found out they only send notices to the first 200 feet but they only send it to the property owners not the residents in there and where this would have been was right across the street from some brand new apartments that were built these people had no idea what might have been coming down the road and if you've ever tried to break a lease with an apartment it's very expensive and I think with something as critical we managed to get it stopped with help from not only our neighborhood association Paul Hyde speaking ill everybody got together because when you put a slaughterhouse in smell travels if you're aware of the stockyards you will remember that smell and I've hit it out of your nose but I think in the future instead of just the property owners you would find the residents that live within 200 feet of something like that because even further because this has a big impact and the people in the apartments had no idea until we kind of started ruggling feathers and going out there and then they're like oh we didn't know this but that's something that somebody might be to consider because we don't want to have stuff like that just kind of creeping to our neighborhoods with no warning until it's there so that's just my two cents for that and so this has come up a number of times that renters are not notified and so I know that Councilman and I were fighting very much for more transparency and the staff response at the time was that they cannot compile information for all of the renters that live there that it would be very burdensome and I know that we were really challenging them on that that you know if you have an apartment can't you distribute a fire to everybody in the apartment but it would be on the apartment manager to distribute that out so I know that we've been working on that and I owe you an update for what the status was unless you can remember Councilman did we finally get the city staff to agree to do that because it has come up very often it seems like they could have put a big sign even restaurants never find the residents that this is happening so they did have a big sign as well and I think we changed it there was some legal reason why you know the sign for where that was somebody took it down so I called zoning and I told the case worker I said look that sign notifying the people of this rezoning has been taken down and we went and put another one back up I know that's been a big issue is that notifying the renters so we'll have to get that unless we can remember we definitely have big signs but it's also why it's so important that we have neighborhood associations because I know that then there was some concern that they were going to move that to a neighborhood that didn't have any neighborhood associations because then they don't have to they don't have to ask anyone yeah we updated the signage and we are also asking to have a much wider neighborhood distribution but this also points to a bigger problem about how we look at our city between homeowners and renters and you have neighborhoods that don't have that even of a split so this really brings up such an important issue for affordability folks who are going to be represented fully at the city with all the tools that we have available because a lot of renters are just simply not represented too well can I add something to that I know that with SA tomorrow when I talked to Chris Ryerson the Las Palmas area didn't have a neighborhood association to even know what was going on with the SA tomorrow and how are you going to take care of that how are those people going to be represented the other thing with that is and I told him that's my backyard over there what happens over there what happens over here so there's no associations over there why doesn't he come to the other associations to talk to them about it well I mean a lot of it is a requirement that they only have to notify the neighborhood association and it's only if it's a really complicated project do they go beyond that and those sort of ordinances I think are laws that are written in that they don't have to notify but I think this is also why it's so important that every neighborhood is covered by a neighborhood association so that's either like a flaw that we have to adjust so that the renters are not being notified and also that there's no neighborhood association and even if you're like one block away and you're a developer you don't have to notify and we can do a better job with communications so we've asked our communications department to have the ability to get out there and communicate more but ultimately we ask for your help because as you pointed out it's giving the word out, giving your help and working with you to find out where are those deficiencies and then giving the right person on there so let's state your name my name is Mike Lawrence I would address two issues earlier shortly we set across a motion coming out to the suburban area so I'm saying why don't we invest more money out there it seems like all the money is being spent downtown on a lot of development if you move a lot of people out of the 1604 area if you could always add to that and bring that in it seems like this net is being put up there via something like that that's pushing more of the outcome stuff to bring people in and so there's a lot of room out there people that are coming in people out there, we're here we've been paying our taxes we've got the right to be here and have the quality of life that we want and not being crowded by well now we're going to have multi-family homes here and big blocks on the west side we got big blocks the other thing I want to address is we brought it up a little while ago Phil Hartberger has to put some more money for his part it's a case of the rich get richer that part is nice, I've been there if you could spend some money you could spend some money on these parts here first money spend the money here first but we don't have some big way to go down and rob you guys with money beautiful isn't it, we can't see you we can't get to you, but somebody like that can spend that money here let's make these parts look that good and then and only then should Phil Hartberger get some money for his part well thank you so that's why the equity budget was still important because for the first time since single-member districts districts within our urban quarter got an additional $70 million additional money and so we're seeing that with sidewalls as I mentioned before finally more funding coming to the areas that need it most because before two years ago all the monies was being distributed 10 separate ways so rough proportionality, every district got the same amount of money regardless of your pavement index regardless of how many streets you have regardless of how many libraries regardless of how many parks everybody got the same amount of money and so that's where we're starting to change with the new leadership the same amount of money for what for the street development oh yes it is happening perhaps you walked in a little bit late when I mentioned we have an additional $70 million for our streets districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 that's huge we've never done that District 6 the 5 districts that had less than 70 District 6 does not have less than 70 PCI score because District 6 encompasses a lot of 16 or 4 out that way and that area is mostly new that's what's unfair because it seems like the District 6 inside new 410 is never considered is considering the major part of the District 6 outside of the 410 the District 6 budget was over $6 million in the District 6 budget just for streets in that area the council member also has to play a role in deciding which streets are paved and which are not based on the priorities of the community what Shirley is saying is that there is it used to be it used to be that we live in political jurisdictions there's 10 separate districts here in the city of San Antonio and so it used to be that you take the city budget and everything was divided by 10 so that if you lived in District 9 you get the same amount as you lived in District 2 problem is District 2 there has been redlining for generations and the streets over there are paved on clay and District 9 are paved on limestone so a street on the east side in 5 years needs another repair while the street on the north side on District 9 will probably last you 30 years so if you divide everything by 10 District 2, District 6 in the Edgewood area and several other areas are just going to continue to fall behind and so what the council did was said you know what it might be politically easy to divide everything by 10 but that's not right it's not right for our community we have to allocate the resources based on the needs that are there and that's what we're doing it won't happen in one year that everything gets up to speed but if we continue to show a little bit of intestinal fortitude and we continue to listen to our community and understand where the priorities are we can continue to do this and slowly but surely everywhere in the city it won't matter what side of town you're on you will be represented fairly by the services and the infrastructure there now I will tell you and you're not going to want to hear this but you know folks who live in District 8, 9 and 10 love Hart Burger Park and they're going to want some of the money that's available to continue to improve Hart Burger Park it shouldn't leave any west side parks out of the funding however consider this if folks on one side of town were to say you know what we want that money over there and we're able to put it on the ballot and say we don't want you to have any money you know what kind of chaos that we can sue a couple days before we had single member districts where it wasn't everyone had a representative in each part of town to represent their interests it would be wherever the votes are coming from that's where all the money goes and is that where you want to get to I'm okay with the money being distributed but I'm saying that these should get the attention first before any months and wholeheartedly agree with that and I think we all agree with that which is why the proportionate share of the resources for streets and drainage and sidewalks and even parks are beginning to go to the west side into the east side into the south side that have been left behind for so long and it just so happens that you have council members in other parts of town that aren't getting as much but getting enough they agree with that it's time that in this city it doesn't matter what zip code you live on you live in a quality city and we agree with that and I will get off my stump if you want to talk about these charter propositions I want to talk to you about it because those charter propositions will upend all of this equity that we've been talking about where everybody lives in a city that is quality it will take us back 40 years to the days where we didn't have representatives on every side of town fighting for their constituents it would take us back to a time where wherever the votes are coming from that's whoever gets the most money and that's not fair for anybody no matter where you are in the city and so I want to talk with you about the charter propositions because it's complicated and I'm going to ask you to vote no on those charter propositions to make sure that we can continue to build a city that's equitable for everyone so Mary, I thought there was a group of council members as I said so everybody's going to get the same share of money every year is that what you're saying? no, well, so there's a cap on each district and you don't go for that we had done it like that since for the last how many years our city existed at least since single member districts when we did rough proportionality what we're doing now in our street maintenance program also in other city departments including public safety and local care services is that the money will go to the areas that need it most and I think that that explains it a little bit versus how do you talk about PCI score or if it's about the areas that need it most would be addressed and so hopefully that gets to the gentleman's concern about parks and other services is that the money goes to the music bus so that started this year? well actually last year so last year with Mayor Nero thank you my name is Gesiella Sanchez I grew up in the west side and still have a family there and I'm on the west side planning committee as well as the midtown planning committee and it's been very frustrating being on those committees because as people have said it's not even an English that we're speaking it's about trying to learn the language of planners and some of the commission and all that sort of stuff and being very frustrated because we're trying to also be creative and we're also trying to talk about keeping people in that those neighborhoods so yes maybe people aren't going to the schools anymore but it's not that the kids aren't in that neighborhood they might just be going to charter schools or they may be going to magnet schools and so the schools that are there are falling again just like someone else Reese became Reese and hardly Cooper closed down linear is destined to possibly close Stapoyas same things they talked about those schools being closed and here we are planning for the future and we don't even know what's happening with the schools around us when you said that since the stable member districts were created the reality of how the budget was created I mean I think it's very frustrating because that was 1976 that was when I was 16 and here I am 58 and to think that we have had representation where before we didn't have representation and that this is it's taken this long to even consider that the city continues to be ruled by Esmeria and her book and it's told us all the 17 white men doesn't matter who they are they might die but somebody else replaces them and they represent the power of money and making more money and greed at the expense of the poor and marginalized people of this city and so it's a shame to say that here we have been voting for the last 42 years representatives that aren't even representing us I think that's what I'm going to talk about respect because we go before city council we go to these meetings we sit on these subcommittees and give hours and hours and hours and hours and we can continue to talk about hours for free and then when there's a vote because of this new development or that we're not listening to they don't pay attention to us and then people wonder why the folks in districts 1 through inner city 6 don't vote it's because not because we're apathetic it's because people aren't paying attention to us so we say let's give up so we're concerned about the land use we're concerned because again density is important but to think also historically density doesn't go necessarily up inside Antonio density has gone horizontal in little casitas and how can we look at that when we talk about it and not find ourselves in clashes with the city planners who want the west side to look like Broadway even want the west side to look like Broadway and so we want to see the neighborhoods the plans of land use will be superseded by and I think we said we wanted to get through the group that's taking place thank you thank you thank you for the west coast bird association I wanted to ask I know when I went up here I was talking about the SA Tomorrow plan the plans are already in place the neighborhood plans are already in place the land use is already in place the comprehensive plan is it going to supersede what's already in place and if it's not is there going to be something a statement or something on a document saying that it's not going to it's not going to supersede these plans because I'm a little good I have to say this is confusing I did go to your committee meeting on Thursday that you had for the comprehensive plan for the SA Tomorrow and so I know that you delayed to October the 11th but please understand from us that we this is even though it's been a year it's been hard for us to understand all this and at that meeting I saw that it was hard for you all to understand it so how do you think we feel that you know we've been in it for a year and we still have more questions and answers and when I say that is because when we go up when we're at the meetings and we want to ask Christians they want to right away shut us down right away and I have committee members here that will attest to us and so this is why it was important for us to get together instead of just the planners the city planners, directors and everybody that's involved in that plan you only get to hear from the committee Loud and clear and first I just want to point out that we are making sure that the members of the plan are incorporated in all of this and so to answer your question we will get that to you and we will show you where it's written and we will continue to fight for that because to your point we've heard and these plans are truly being considered and you can get it right absolutely we all want that and I think you also touched on the fact that as you mentioned at the last committee there was a lot of questions so just know that we're with you on that and as we continue to have questions we want to make sure that we're addressing your concerns because if we're having questions you've got to have a lot more questions and we're trying to facilitate as many meetings as possible on this we'll have as many meetings as we must and as plus 5 mentioned again please know the AIA is having some meetings at their facility there on South Florida we're going to have a few meetings at my field office I'm sure kind of one will tell us is going to have several meetings as well we'll continue to do that this is a complex process but we want to make sure that we can include everybody to make us feel good about being in harmony thank you and so I'll just also comment that in the last meeting some of you all were in the room was even the first time that I understood it really clearly and I've been in this for a year and a half I've been through multiple presentations I've been briefed multiple times I've understood the clarity of all the necessary changes so we can't expect that people would understand it you know just in your regular given that you have other lives and you were consumed by these things but I do hope that that you eventually feel confident that your plans are being accepted but also knowing that these additional land use that we discussed land use the last time gave lots more flexibility for different types of design that we haven't done in San Antonio so we'll look forward to just more conversations thank you my name is my name is my name is Veronica and I'm an adult in the area but I am a social worker and I just wanted to echo what I've been hearing in the room is that there aren't enough city sponsored programs for the youth coming from the area so I invite you to a lot of the go-kart place but here for the marginalized I've seen how just one of the HSU opens in my area and after they go and buy milk they're much less go and ride go-karts where their pockets are scarred so I just wanted to bring that up but from a social worker's perspective we lack in this side of town for you thank you thank you thank you so much I just want to point out that in this year's budget we did fund youth programs for West End Park at the Frank Garrett Center it's an area over here on the west side and councilman Matalas and I share that part that is a big win for West End Park and the Frank Garrett Center additionally we're also adding the youth free engagement center at the Frank Garrett Center so we agree with you, we want to try to apply as much resources towards our youth especially where it's most needed and that particular zip code 7207 has been identified as a zip code that needs it the most for our city some of the programs that I have found in the last year have been in the library and so I will look into what I know for our boys once you're 18 you don't qualify so I know it's big for a lot of others once you're 18 some of the programs you used to qualify for and so we'll just we know that we in the city actually have a really high percentage of not applying opportunity youth so that means young people 16 to 24 who are not going to school or are not employed and so we have to dedicate more money towards that effort I think in this year's budget it has been proposed $330,000 if I'm not mistaken to specifically go after that youth and get them re-engaged whether it's in school or in jobs and work force so we really need to dedicate a lot of our time with that opportunity youth we also have in this year's fund more money for our Memorial and for Las Palmas Branch Libraries in District 5 we have 4 libraries that's more than any other district with our library I think you might have more because you have downtown so District 1 may have more so we have a lot of libraries we also have a lot of parks we have 29 parks in District 5 also after District 1 District 2 actually has 44 parks but we have a lot of parks so that's why that equity budget is so significant because we have a lot of parks and we just need to invest in them appropriately Thank you so much Can we do just once I can read to that another roughly about 5 to 8 minutes questions that will be done for the night Go ahead and take your name Thank you, my name is Keita Aliz Mr. Brad, I'm born and raised in the west side graduated from linear high school top of the top of the times there now just graduated last year Mr. Brad, I want to say first off I think that things have not been fair for decades and creating this equity budget and taking that this approach I mean as you've heard all this evening we are Can I just say one thing on the equity budget it can take a whole lot of teamwork it takes a whole body of realness at many times over the last 40 years we've had people say this is not fair because they've never had the majority say and I appreciate that very much so thank you for that but if you've heard here tonight you know we are way far behind on the west side everything from our streets, our silence, our drainage our schools losing students everything the investment in the neighborhoods that Councilman Gonzalez talked about that investment in the neighborhoods is not there that's why we're losing students that's why people grow up here and move away and don't return they go to school or go to whatever and they don't return, people live here they have to go somewhere else to work they have to go somewhere for entertainment they go spend their dollars somewhere else we're very very very far behind and so I think that while it's really important I want to kind of bring that into help behind on everything so it's going to take a lot of you know it's not going to happen overnight but one of the things that we've talked about here is the neighborhood associations I want to we only have, I think you mentioned we have 11 here on the west side or district 5 we can't rely on just the formation of neighborhood associations to let people know what the things are going on we have so many things creep into the west side that really just kind of caught a lot of people by surprise middle associations are based on volunteers you guys are our elected officials you are the ones that are pages to be there to be our eyes and ears to understand everything that's going on in your district and so I'm asking you to do more to communicate better effectively you know the fact that there was going to be a slaughterhouse another slaughterhouse on the west side that was being looked at and people didn't know we have a high percentage of renters in the west side so a lot of people kind of work to be homeowners and so we have bail bonds every everything that's undesirable has historically been dumped on the west side the jail the bail bonds the homeless shelter everything that has been undesirable for them and a lot of it has been happening again without really people being involved and like why because people don't vote people don't vote because they're discouraged because they believe that people don't care about the west side so I think the point being you guys have to be extremely active to make sure that when you hear something because you are the first ones to get notified or sure you're the first ones to get notified or your staffs that you are making sure that you're communicating back to the community and allowing the community to be proactive before it's already a done deal so again thank you for what you're doing and you know thank you thank you thanks for coming to the town to allow us to decide what we need to do yes so this is the town we were over to just you know you all have a knowledge on if a dollar is spent in my country in this district if the dollar is spent in this district how many times is it recycled before it goes out and then of course I have it just on ATV about given our ATV competition to redo that ATV and lost promise so I don't know the answer to your question but I'll tell you a couple of staffs that we know because now we have all kinds of data and so one thing that we do know that we actually have a higher percentage of home ownership than any other place in the city here in district 5 57% of our residents are home owners we know that in district 5 our housing stock was built before 1970 so that means we have old houses somebody said earlier we don't have any new developments in the neighborhood we also know that fewer people come to district 5 to work than any other place in the city so we have no big employers that's another thing that's weak data that we know but we also know that as we're doing our SA-DMR plan one thing that has come to light is that what we really want is for people to live, work, and play in their neighborhood but in district 5 we have no jobs so most people go out to work and hardly anybody comes in to work but we have the same percentage of people who live, work, and play in their neighborhood than any other place in the city so it's kind of just so we have about 10% of our population live, work, and play in the district nobody, hardly anybody comes here to work and those are just some just interesting data so what we need, what I have always advocated for is more investment in small businesses because we know that we're not going to get a big employer some of the things you mentioned are a little bit outside of my district so I'm not as intimately familiar with what's happening out past west instead of acting but we don't have any large employers and we also don't have any large retailers or single big box retailer in district 5 that means no Walmart no targets, no big nothing we only have small businesses and so I have always believed that we have to capitalize on our strengths we don't need to recruit those kind of businesses here anyway we don't have room all we can do is build organically and build with our strengths and that means doing the best we can to support small businesses I guess you're basically really answering you probably have dollars recycled once before it goes out well let me just add to that because I think she brings up some incredible points here with that high home ownership that really puts a high priority on saving the existing housing stock and just know something another piece of data that we collect and it's out there, I sit on the very place of board of directors and we did a map to take a look at what are some of the areas where we're seeing the highest prices of land values going up and we also when we did that map we learned that we found the areas that are dropping significantly and it's the West Side and so to that point if you have that high of ownership it's important to to let people know that this is housing stock that we need to protect these are home owners we need to allow every opportunity to age in place we've got programs to do that so take advantage of that this year 4.25 million dollars going citywide for roofs and I can see a lot of roofs going into those neighborhoods to help protect that housing stock a lot of money into the minor home repair as well this is an important part of our city I think that to our point we want to bring more businesses but let's protect that housing stock that is an important important point and percentage that I think is vital to the history and the culture of the West Side I wanted to make one statement I know that Graciel and other people have brought this up one thing that people forget a lot of the area in the West Side we have a lot of elderly a lot of the people do not have internet they do not have smart phones a lot of information is good but how do we get it to them I mean they don't have I mean when you don't have access to it you don't have it how is it getting out to the people because it's not part of it is we did start of course it was not very popular that stopped but it was those Google Huts and we did successfully get one installed in the West End part which allows for affordable internet in that area because of the way instruction the way Google was putting the system out AT&T's also got a lot of fiber going out into many parts of our neighborhoods but we got to keep pushing and there's a lot of partnerships that allow us to help connect local areas for internet services and provide some connectivity but on top of that are they going to actually use it so I would say we need to find the best tools available we're working with I know working with communications department to provide more mailers to provide information the old fashioned way and it still works but we need to get that out there we hope to see a lot more information going in the back of CPS bills or soft bills to help inform people everybody gets those so it would be a great way to get that information out I'll just add so we know again that we have these petitions that are coming that are very bad for our city prefire party petitions regarding the city manager's pay for tenure, arbitration and lowering the threshold to get an ordinance on the ballot these are all really important because as it was said we vote in lower numbers and we know that the only way that we really communicate with our constituents in these districts on the west side is one on one and that makes it so much harder for us as electives to get our information out and so while internet I mean of course we have the digital divide and that's an issue that has plagued us for a long time that we don't have information and affordable access to the internet but it also makes our jobs very hard because we have to spend our time going one to one, going to our neighborhood associations, going to our churches even though the Catholic church doesn't want to get involved but I talked to Bob and I and he has told me he would at least let us talk to the other priests because we have to do it the old fashioned way and there's no way around it there's no shortcut I wish we could say but you know we'll say it last but as we're discussing these petitions and we're discussing the things that you all care about we just know that we have to do it the old fashioned way I'm going to find out what's your name my name is one mother of this I don't know if you know what I mean but it's when you keep going in the back that you can do it again sorry okay my neighborhood associations be controlled my neighborhood association is on this land use map and what concerned me is that the map is given to me is a large R6 area which is schools and as we all know the school can be anything R6 or whatever there's a lot of empty land but there's also some apartments that are in the edgewood apartments so it never dawned on me I saw number 12's passed by one I had forgotten that we had a case where right across the street where 15th one comes in 20 apartment units is on fire it took about a night compared to being signed fortunately to those people and guiding us so we get to the building the second story it was a big man group so we have an engineer we had to finish in order to like anybody I mean the second story the manager thank god she was there she opened the door go to the fire room go to the fire department do a quick check for anybody that's there close that door do a quick check for many kids who are in it closet and stuff under the bed anyway the manager the mom's taking me so I go to the door by this time I do 10 as of what was open last coming up from the stairs I go in, I raise myself open the room fully involved and last I come up so you wait and you can hear your body coming wait I know 26, 27, 30 30 things you're there in that moment on your own right across the street now all around our country they want to make it higher it's not just fire it's just medical so the concern I have is that we still haven't seen the fire station and in our responding minutes we're still saying you have more units but still why? I've got a kid from a lady down about 4 miles from my house and I am top 5 I was going to go check that out but my dad said I took the dog out and I didn't want him to come out and I thought it was a new lighting and I said oh gee I mean I don't do city version wood or anything so I go do that and the ladies backyard had two garages or whatever I didn't want to hold try to hold but anyhow you forget what you're actually doing it's not normal but the problem I mean you just do it what my concern is is we have more growth we've got to be careful it's all amazing we have an equity budget we need another budget a budget that transfers we're going to do that thing that collapse with sewer line but I went to the sewer salt and saw that sewer line system I'm not a kid oh I'm sorry but um emergency service response time it's very important if we keep bringing in my emergency HUD is going to advance our emergency so we're going to single family plans so if HUD is doing it with the enemy who saw this apartment or something like that so what's next for you I'm sorry I was a neighborhood president that was a wish I originally understood we have one more and that's it I just want to make this quick statement first of all thank you for being here tonight and I just want to say the Hispanic community has been a very suppressed community for generations and that sometimes has been I remember my mother telling me and I was saying in Spanish and then in English don't say anything go where they're required that will not happen anymore we care we love our family we want future for our kids we want great things for our community we have a lot of concerns please do not cry that's all I have to say we have a limitation we're 11 association proud can we have tours for you all for each of our associations we have 11, it's not 80, it's 11 we can do it we can do it each of us can show what we're talking about so that's a limitation it's not a challenge baby but we'd like you to be a part of it yes thank you for being here tonight so we accomplished a couple of things to work on here I'm going to stay for a little bit after that I shouldn't take very long we are on new business and really don't have to do new business I'm going to ask Belma Belma come on up we have announcements for our next meeting just want to thank our officials the western coalition the president speaks a third language of every month thank you just one more item that I wanted to make sure that gets addressed I went to a workshop for our property taxes when you want to fight your property taxes and some of the things that stayed with me there was that they were saying that it's very important for us to go to a meeting and they're going to set public tax rates and this meeting is going to take place on August 29 they say that these meetings are maybe one, two, three four or five people maybe go and it's very important that we show up at these meetings because this is where it counts when it comes to property taxes or things like that I just want to make sure I mention that on August 29 I see it on the channel 16 for city council when the meetings come out and all the information is posted on there thank you once again thank you for your officials everybody make sure you say thank you to Justin for all the peace that he bought tonight thanks for coming out and we also like to thank our folks who are now cast for coming out tonight thanks for coming out everybody