City Council - Regular Meeting

We'll be right back.

Good afternoon. The time is now 1 0 5 PM on Wednesday, May 13th, 2026 in the city of San Antonio. B session is called to order. Madam clerk, please call roll.

Councilmember Mickey Rodriguez. Councilmember Villagran. Here. Councilmember Munguia. Councilmember Castillo. Here. Councilmember Galvan.

Here.

Councilmember Alderete Gavito. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Present. Councilmember Spears. Here. Councilmember White. Here. Mayor Jones. Here. Mayor, we have quorum. Thank you.

So we have two items for discussion today the shelter and housing framework as well as an update on the 2027 bond process Eric overview for a presentation

Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So our first presentation is on the municipal bond program. And we have taken the comments that we received from the council in January at our session and have incorporated them in a presentation to you today on a proposed process for our bond program development. So a municipal bond program is frankly any city's opportunity to invest in the community and the infrastructure and finance that capital investment over a period of time. Mike is going to walk through a number of slides. It's a comprehensive process that we have begun. We still have a lot of work to do. That comprehensive process goes through major milestones such as identifying the need, council discussion, and community engagement. So this afternoon, One of the things that I'm looking for from you all as a group is some feedback on the guiding principles that we'll lay out and propose to you, the process and the timeline. We've got two timelines in the presentation because in January, at the January presentation, there were some comments about either of May 2027 or November 2027. So we've kind of laid out both timeline options. And one thing you will not see in the presentation is what an actual bond amount would be, given last week's conversation and where we're at with the tax rate. We did share some projections in January. All of that information in the tax value is still preliminary, so I would anticipate bringing it back to the council as part of the proposed budget and the certified role in August. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mike. Mike is going to be assisted by Troy and Veronica on a couple of components and on this first presentation. Mike.

Thank you, Eric. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Again, I'm Mike Shannon, Capital Delivery Director, and as mentioned, I'm going to talk about as we prepare for the next bond, the 2027 bond, and I'm going to develop, this presentation is really developed to walk you through key process items, where we're at, where we need to go. We'll talk about a few things, and as mentioned, Troy and Veronica here to talk about a couple items related to it. First and foremost, we're currently in the middle of the 2022 bond program, and this is just a high-level status of our 2022. We had over 180 projects that were approved by voters last time in 2022 bond, and we are at 66% completion, either complete or under construction. That's a metric that we follow along with the bond you'll see the numbers there you know 59 completed 64 under construction design 63 we're in the fourth year of the five-year bond and what that means is a lot of those projects so almost 40 of those projects that are in design will before the end of the year come to you all with a solicitation for contractors to to move into construction generally what we look for and if you look at last year's I'm sorry, last bond at this time, we were shooting for over 90% of our projects complete or under construction as we ask voters to consider the next bond. So we are on track for that, but certainly you'll see a lot more activity between now and the end of the year when we bring those construction contracts. You've actually already seen an uptick in them on the Thursday agendas. I'm going to hand it off right quick to Veronica. She's going to talk a little bit about the affordable housing bond progress, and then I'll bring it back to me. We can talk a little bit more about the bond.

Thank you. So the 2022 affordable housing bond focused on five funding categories, including home rehab funding, creation of new homes to own in our home ownership production. We have funding set aside for rental properties, including rehab of existing affordable rental properties. as well as production of new rental housing. And then our fifth category was permanent supportive housing, which created new housing specifically for individuals who have been chronically homeless and living with a disability. Through the housing bond funds that we've awarded, we have supported over 5,200 homes that have been produced or preserved including nearly 1200 homes specifically set aside for the most vulnerable in our community, including families below 30% of the area median income. In total, about 81% of all of our awarded funds are complete or under construction, and the remaining 21% remains in the pre-construction design phase. We have committed all but $9 million of the housing bond, and that remaining funds is set aside for strategic land acquisition to acquire properties along the green or silver line, which will then have future affordable housing built on it. Those recommendations of property acquisition will come to you this summer. So now I'll turn it over to Troy to go over our debt management plan.

Thank you, Veronica. Troy Litt, Chief Financial Officer. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Before moving into the following slides, talking about the proposed 2027 bond program, I thought there'd be value to just briefly summarizing or recapping my presentation in January. Given kind of where we are with property values and basically talking about what was our approach to, alternate approach to basically managing our debt management plan and our bonding capacity. As we talked about in January, historically the city has structured bond programs around maintaining a fixed debt service tax rate. Our current debt service tax rate is 21 cents per $100 evaluation. Using that same tax rate and applying that against our current valuations, as we talked about in January and as Eric mentioned, we are seeing our bonding capacity diminished, not at the same level we had for the 2022 bond program. If Council would want to move forward with a larger bond program, it could be pursued if City Council is open to moving to more of a variable debt rate strategy. That variable debt rate strategy, what that means is the rate may increase or decrease annually based on property valuations. And last week when Freddie presented the forecast, he was presenting that our taxable values have actually declined more than what we were expecting. Based on the current forecast, a bond program comparable in size to the 2022 program would require a tax rate increase to meet the bond repayment obligations. Conversely, stronger than expected property value growth could allow for a lower tax rate or allow us certain levers to move things back and forth in terms of a shorter bond repayment program. This approach would support funding a higher level community improvements and infrastructure investments for our community. If this is something the council would consider, we can certainly move forward and do additional modeling and also work with Mike and his team on the propositions on how we would structure a tax rate to support these level community improvements. Thank you, and I'll turn it over to Mike now.

All right. All right, thank you, Veronica and Troy. So those were just some high-level updates of where we're at with the 22, certainly the debt management plan conversation that Troy just touched upon again. But this is really where the meat of this presentation is talking to you about, as we move into the process in developing the next bond, there's some certain things that I want to talk about. So for example, the bond program categories. The five categories that you see up there are ones that we have used historically over the last several bond cycles. And it's very basic infrastructure, basic priorities. We have five buckets there. We actually had six propositions last time because the facilities category was split into public safety and non-public safety facilities. Again, streets and bridges and sidewalks, of course, drainage, flood control, parks and rec facilities, as I mentioned. Then of course, last year, as Veronica mentioned, their last bond in the 2022, we had the $150 million allocated to the housing bond. That was the second time housing was on the bond program, but it was the first significant one. In 2017, we did the $20 million part of the program for that. We are proposing to start here. These are the five categories where most of our citywide infrastructure needs fall into and we'll move forward. One of the other things that we typically talk about at this time is as we start identifying needed projects, What are the guiding principles that are moving the projects onto a list? As we guide through a lot of conversation with you, the community internally with city staff, city manager's office, boards and commissions, eventually bond committees that I'll talk about next. We have these guiding principles. These are the guiding principles that I'm proposing for the 27 bond. Most of them are the same, but I'll just talk about a couple. The plan alignment. We used to use one called connectivity, like how these infrastructure projects connect us as a community, Well, one of the things we're talking about, look, we have so many plans that we've adopted over the years. We have our city's master plan, which is SA Tomorrow. We have things like hazard mitigation plan, bike network plans, those type of things. So these projects, these infrastructure projects, generally need to be aligned or they should be aligned with moving us forward with those planning documents that have already been passed by the mayor and council, whether it's this mayor and council or previous over the last, let's say, decade or so. Public health and safety, I think that's obvious. Most of our projects help us provide better health and safety for our community, whether it's facilities, whether it's drainage projects, streets, et cetera, parks and recreation. Resiliency, that one is certainly one we have to consider. How are we going to continue to bring... bring more resiliency to our community. How can we withstand natural or man-made hazards, those type of things. Certainly, the example of flood control is one. In 2022, we were talking a lot about COVID and what that was doing to us and what projects could help us there. Resiliency, I think, is a guiding principle that is still important to us. The next one is called economic viability. This is one that I put in there and I'm proposing that, look, the conversation that Troy was just talking about that you all have been talking about over the last couple of budget cycles, certainly with the forecast probably next week and as we get into the budget is we have to be very clear as to our economic You know plan moving for our forecast moving forward and while that is never absolute we have we're going to have to be tight on the belt and When we're picking projects some of them cost more and certainly cost more long-term That may be a facility that's needed that's going to inherently require some long-term cost when that new facility gets operational and But again, something we need to talk about that doesn't mean any project is not going to happen, but just certainly something we need to talk about as we pick these projects. Last, of course, council input. As we talk about the process moving forward, you all are the ones that eventually approve a list of projects that we can put on a vote for really the voters to approve. Of course, not just today, but as we move forward and you'll see in the timeline, there are many stops along the way that you're going to see me, you'll be sick of me. Pause for dramatic effect. Thank you. But you will see me often, and we'll be talking about this, and we'll need your input as we move this process forward. All right, so one of the questions we get asked, and certainly through the process, is how we're determining needs or priorities. We have a lot of needs. There are more needs than we probably can afford. That's, I think, every bond cycle that we've ever talked about, at least in my research going backwards. The need is always bigger than we have available. So we're going to be fighting for priorities or to try to determine the priorities. What I have here is a list of priority-led topics that we're using, but we have adopted plans as I mentioned. We have department assessments that we've looked at departments. For example, San Antonio Police Department looked at their facilities a few years back. They had a facility assessment that helps guide us as to what their priorities at least were a few years ago and as we're moving. Fire Department, I think, is going through one this year. But we have other departments and other facilities that have done those similar assessments. We have multi-phase projects. So, for example, you all just passed Ceiling Channel Phase 4 in District 7. That was just passed by Council this past week. That is Phase 4 of a regional drainage project that we've been working on since mid-2000s. that we know that's a 20 to 30 year project to fully get the benefit of that regional drainage improvement. We're on phase four now, so we'll probably be considering phase five at that. And we've been talking about that for over a decade. We have other examples of that as well. But we have other projects that are shovel ready. Design is complete or almost complete. Some of the conversation in the past through the previous bond or other capital investment has been, hey, we should already invest in this project at least to get it shovel ready for consideration as to when the next bucket of money, if not the bond or another grant or other funding is available. So we do have a list of projects that are in that stage. So that'll be something that we consider. We have other projects in 2022 did not make the list. We call it below the line. We had $1.2 billion of capacity last time. As I mentioned earlier, we had more need than that, of course. Throughout this long process, city council, city staff, the bond committees, we wrestled with all these projects to prioritize what we could afford. And once we got to $1.2 billion, there were several projects that were considered below the line. So we're looking at those to see if those still have the priority that they had back then or more priority now or even less priority, but those are certainly a number of projects that we're going to look at and consider. We work always with city boards, and we have a number of them. The library has their library board, the parks has a parks board, certainly housing has the housing commission, those type of things. Last time after the 22 bond process was done, we stood up two new boards, the stormwater advisory board, the streets advisory board. We're working with those to not only go through a process of understanding what the needs are, how to prioritize, Those are helping us develop a priority list and we're incorporating that in when we bring projects to you later this summer. Lastly, leverage funding. Certainly, there's always projects we look for leverage funding. Great example is if we have a project that we can work with the state on, maybe we put 20% of the money up and they put 80% or whatever that leverage funding is, can we make the funding go further by partnering with other entities like either the county or state or others? So there's a number of examples that we have there. We've done that. We've also had projects where we have given funding to other entities, and I'm sure that will be part of the conversation to leverage that for a benefit to the community. So those are some of the categories. I think it's – I tried to list them very basic. There's a lot in each one of those, but that's where we're – what we're using to determine needs, and we'd like some feedback on that today. I'm going to pause again and ask Veronica to come up and talk a little bit about moving forward with the 27 housing.

Thank you. As mentioned earlier, the 2022 housing bond focused on five specific funding categories. And as we look to the potential of a 2027 housing bond, we've learned a lot by administering the first one. Affordable housing is the foundation of a healthy, thriving community. Our housing investments have been very impactful and there is additional continued need in the community, especially in areas that have not yet been supported by the bond. Several considerations have emerged as we look forward, including the need to continue supporting deeply affordable housing. This housing connection is very important to helping the most vulnerable in our community. So with the next round of housing bond dollars, we maybe want to consider continuing that emphasis on helping families at 30% of the area median income up to 50% of the area median income and beyond. We also want to consider more inclusivity around our housing options for the unhoused population beyond just permanent supportive housing. This would be in alignment with our homeless strategic plan. You'll hear more about the homelessness and housing connection in Mark's presentation this afternoon and how our housing bond could help support the city's investment in this area. As mentioned earlier, we have already set aside a small portion of the current housing bond for proactive strategic land acquisition along our transit corridors. So with the next housing bond, we want to consider maybe what that looks like. And finally, our current bond does support the creation of new affordable home ownership opportunities. So in the next round, maybe we consider broadening the range of incomes for whom we are creating those home ownership opportunities. This summer we will be organizing and hosting community conversations, one in each city council district to better inform the public on what we've done with the 22 housing bond and collect feedback on the impact. These sessions start next week on Monday and we look forward to hosting and hearing directly from the community on how we continue to invest in affordable housing across the city. So I'll turn it back over to Mike.

Thank you, Veronica. Okay, a few more slides until we get to the end. So the other thing I want to talk about is the community bond committee. So if you think of last time and others, we generally look for the mayor and council to appoint and create community bond committees where we get members of our community. Once we have a draft list of projects that we think we can afford based on our overall capacity, You all will then direct us to send this over to those committees. Last time we had five committees, they had 30 people each, so they were pretty big in size. But their job is to actually review those projects, lead more community input during those meetings. It's a three-month sprint of many, many meetings, but each of those categories get projects vetted significantly through the community input process. Those bond committees will review those, make recommendations, they will make recommendations to any changes, and they will eventually bring back a list of projects for your consideration. That's certainly a big part of the process. The city staff certainly facilitates that. But again, your role on that is usually to appoint committee members based on whatever approved categories we come up with. We'll probably be looking for that sometime mid to late summer to start thinking about who those people are that you want on them. I had some questions already from some of you, but that'll be the part. And when I look at the timeline, you'll see that. But we certainly think the community bond committee process is a significant part of developing that final list and getting the support eventually from the voters. So as Eric mentioned in the get-go, here's the proposed timeline. The purpose of this slide is really to tell you there's a lot of work to be done. So if you look at that left column, that really just highlights a number of big rocks that we have to continue to work through to get to a list of projects that we want the voters to consider. So we have the May in 27 timelines listed there for your consideration. Certainly would like some feedback on that. But you'll also see we've highlighted B sessions, like today, several other B sessions and A sessions. Those aren't the only ones that we can do. If we need to do more, we'll do more, but we're just talking about the big significant items that we'll be working on. But you'll also notice a few things. So in the May-June timeframe, which is now, we're here talking about the process, getting some feedback today. We're also internally, staff, we're trying to identify potential projects based on a lot of priorities and needs. We'll also be working with not only internally but externally getting some cost estimates because we want to be able to bring back to you a list of projects that have cost estimates that have been vetted. So we'll be scoping and cost estimating those this summer. We'll also be hosting, and I think I talked to many of you already, but I think that the priority would be to engage the community through some Bond 101 sessions this summer. We're working with you all, working with your neighborhoods, working with your president's councils, whatever that may be. But we think there's value in certainly getting in front of the community talking about what a bond is, the Bond 101 stuff, Certainly, community engagement during probably the budget town hall process will probably be a big part of that conversation, or at least a part of that conversation. A lot of it's tied together, as Troy was mentioning. Then we'll be back later in the summer showing you probably a list of projects to consider, and we'll consider that back and forth before we give it to the council committees. The council committees usually work if we were looking at the May schedule I'll just use that one the May timeline that would probably be October through December ish somewhere around there The key would be that we would have to approve that and get a call for a vote in February And then you'll see the different timelines there on for the November but again I think we just put that out there to show you some of the big things that we'll be working on and some of the big steps that we have to do a lot of little individual things that we're working on to develop it. But with that, I will just kind of summarize for the feedback that we're looking for today. Again, as Eric mentioned, today is really about the process, right? We have a lot of work to do. We need a lot of input from you and the community. These are the things that I kind of presented today, things like our guiding principles that I'm proposing, how we're determining our needs, some of those categories that I listed out there, certainly the election timeline again, community engagement, doing things this summer into the budget season, and then certainly through the community bond committee structure and process, and then certainly anything on the proposed propositions. I showed you the five categories there. That's what I'll be looking for feedback. Certainly, we're here to answer any questions you have, and that'll conclude my presentation today.

Great. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate that. In case it's helpful for those listening or for any of my colleagues, and as it relates to one of the things you specifically asked about, on the timing piece, the last time that this was before the voters, May 2022, Election turnout was 8%. Obviously, with something so significant, we'd want to hear from as many of our neighbors as possible. So can you talk a little bit about, or maybe it's for C&E, but a little bit about how we go about engaging with the public around, no kidding, hey, there's a vote on the bond in particular, considering there won't be other major things on the ballot this time.

Yep, so let me take a stab at that, Mayor. So because eventually the council calls for an election, it turns into a campaign. So independent of the city, there is a campaign organization that helps with that. The city's role in that is that there becomes, and executives, and you all as elected officials, the opportunity to do fact-based informational sessions on the bond program. And when I look back to the 2022, that process really began for the council at the time and the executive staff in the December, January timeframe and ran all the way to voting. There are certain rules that we have to adhere to. We can't advocate or vote yes. We can't advocate until we will vote yes or no. But the materials that get prepared in terms of the bond brochure become critical guidelines for us and informational pieces. And there becomes, it's almost like a speaker's bureau. Now part of that, as I mentioned, is handled by certainly the elected officials and the executive staff. But separate and apart, there's a campaign that's generally organized. And they also become part of that Speaker's Bureau. It's a little bit different because they don't have to adhere to the requirements we do. But that would need to be organized probably as we get into the fall and apart from the city.

If I could add to that real quickly, Mayor, while Eric's correct, we can't advocate for or against any particular bond package, the council can certainly always call upon the community to go vote.

Certainly familiar, thanks for Eric and Andy, certainly familiar with the campaign, but in light of 8%, speaks to what other things we may want to look at to encourage more of our neighbors to participate in such an important process. And as we just took steps to move the municipal elections from May to November, recognizing one, higher turnout, lower costs, wanted to ensure we were considering those sufficiently as part of this. Okay, Veronica on the housing bond piece, please. How have we traditionally worked with the San Antonio Housing Trust and their bonding capacity to think about how we overall increase supply in our community? Understanding not all of that needs to come from city bond money, right? But they certainly have a key resource there. So how have we thought about collaborating with them and using that capacity to help meet our needs?

Yeah, absolutely. So for every $1 of housing bond funds we've put into the community, that's leveraged a little over $7 back. A lot of that is because we're not the full amount. So by partnering with the trust and they have to compete for the housing bond dollars, just like all the other entities, all of our solicitations are competitive. But many times they're not asking, I say all of the time, they're not asking for us to fund the entire project because they're able to offer the tax breaks that they do through their PFC. They're able to leverage other funding sources. So our bond dollars go a lot further than they do perhaps with other entities. The other way we've partnered with them is on the strategic land acquisition. We will be granting those dollars to the housing trust. And they are right now looking at different options along the green and silver line. And then they would be the entity that would proceed with the competitive solicitation. Or as mentioned in the housing supply task force report, they could identify a specific special population that they want to create housing for and then move forward with that solicitation.

I think that's helpful. I would certainly appreciate a clearer understanding, again, because we're dealing with a much smaller amount of money and because the housing trust has their own bonding capacity. And then when you couple their bonding capacity with then other incentives like tax exemptions from us, all of a sudden there's a lot of not our money that is building housing. I'd welcome understanding a short white paper or something that helps us understand what type of housing that might be best focused on addressing. I don't know at what level that is maybe most appropriate, whether you're talking about the 50 percent AMI or whether it can in fact be helpful with the 30 percent AMI. But looking at other people's money and how it can help us, and to the extent it can, I think is really helpful as we are looking at the overall supply that we want to create, of which, as you just pointed out, we don't have to create all of it ourselves. And we know, we recognize that 30% AMI is in fact the hardest. Can you also provide us something that helps us understand the gap in our community? We know we want more of it. to the extent we can think about our investments in this bond as opportunities to chip away and get closer to where we want to be, but absent an understanding of what the current gap is in our community, I think it's hard for us to judge how much we'd want to allot specifically to that. So if you would provide that as a follow-up. Thank you. Sure. Mike, just for everyone's edification, if you would, it came up in our session. I found it helpful. But if you would just level set with folks on the status of the 2017 bond.

sure so the 2017 bond is not a hundred percent complete we're at 98 percent complete or under construction we have actually three projects that are still in design two of those are street projects one of those is a parks project so I'll talk about the parks one first Bracken Ridge Park for example That one's been stuck in litigation for quite some time, about four plus years. We're actually moving the needle on that, working to get a significant phase of that moving forward, possibly this summer, but certainly litigation did slow that one down. There's two other projects, Probant and Roosevelt. They were part of the 2017, some good investment there. Those actually were, we have to redesign those. Actually we went down a path, those were part of the TxDOT buyback program, not buyback program, turn back, thank you. I misspoke there. The turn back program where those are state facilities that they were going to turn back to us so that we would really control them and fully maintain them. Through a series of discussions and stuff that changed. We had already designed pretty much those projects so those designs had to really be scrapped and started over so we're well we're behind on those but 98% complete around a construction a few other ped mobility type projects that we're finishing up the public art piece of that 2017 bond we still have some leftovers there because we're waiting for some of those projects to finish up but again 98% complete would love to say a hundred but a few extraneous circumstances there

Thanks, Mike. And I thought that was helpful context because as folks begin identifying potential road projects that they want them understanding, those that may frankly be susceptible to that same unfortunate hurdle, we'd want to at least recognize going in. And if you wanted to at least know that going into it or at least prioritize others that didn't come with that same hurdle, then we could save ourselves some time and potentially some heartache. Thank you for that. In the, when I was looking at the list of other, of previous projects, and just because I think it is helpful in terms of an ROI analysis, for example, when we think of economic development. I saw the funding, for example, that went toward the port in the last one, Brooks in the last one, as well as Texas A&M, San Antonio. 40 million just for those three projects. How have we traditionally understood ROI on what I would consider kind of economic development projects, frankly minus the A&M project, but the other two, right? How have we traditionally looked at ROI for those projects?

Well, I think those projects that you mentioned, I think, are a great example of we've invested from a policy standpoint our SA Tomorrow and those development regions. So, one, it's clear that those are growing. Those are creating jobs. Those are the needs for the infrastructure, you know, roads and drainage projects, those type of things. Certainly, that's what brought those to the attention of prioritization. I don't think I can answer the return on investment in terms of economic value. We could certainly work to bring that back to you. I'll work with some of our other departments to get that. But clearly, I think the idea, as I mentioned, SA Tomorrow, we have these 13 regional centers that we've highlighted as, hey, we are going to plan. These are economic, whether it's those that you described, medical centers, some of the others. Those are areas that are either growing or need to grow more, and we need to put our infrastructure dollars there to help facilitate that. or to keep up with that, if you will. So I think that would be my answer today. If you'd like more analysis of that, we could certainly do that.

I appreciate that. I know Eric has something to say. But when we are looking at those, other than, hey, this meets our plan, right, really going back to the conversations we've had in other areas is where does the dollar go the furthest? And to the extent that some of these business entities can in fact show, different ROI not just we're part of your plan but actually for example Port San Antonio when you invest in this thing that allows it to come off the books of other entities which makes them actually more competitive when they compete for contracts etc etc so if there is a way in which we could consider that kind of ROI I think that would be we'd be better informed as a result Eric did you want to add something

Yes, ma'am. I was just going to say that beyond the 13 regional areas in the 2022 bond program, we did not do the type of analysis you're describing. So but here you loud and clear. I think and I think you all talked about this in January. There are a number of other you, you, you laid out three of them. There are a number of outside groups. And so a similar analysis that would take into consideration We can take a look at but we certainly didn't do that last time and we'll need to do something different going forward Yeah, all of a sudden we gotta get real creative when there's less money.

So Or scrutinize these a little bit more. Absolutely. Okay. I'll save the rest of my comments for a bit later Councilman Mungu

Thank you, Mayor.

Yeah, I think I would also like a little additional analysis. At first, I was a little confused on what you meant by economic viability. So you're talking about leverage partnership bond projects, not necessarily like road or infrastructure projects?

Well, I'm talking about all projects, to tell you the truth. I think, you know, when we look at projects, and I think we've done this before. This has been part of our program the last several bond cycles, probably before that is. When we invest in infrastructure, it's usually not one and done, but it does cause some long-term costs. But it might be different. If we improve a drainage channel, we improve a street infrastructure, a lot of times our maintenance cost or maintenance of that street is a little bit less early on. Whereas if we build a new facility, which may absolutely be needed, we just have to have that conversation that we are signing up for. really a long-term cost. I'll give you an example. It would be the police station that we're building right now in District 3. That police station has been talked about for over a decade. We're excited we're building it. It's going to come online next summer. But that does come with long-term costs that we're absorbing. And that's for other parts, whether it's parks or facilities, etc. So I think The idea of what we're putting that in there is we want that conversation to be loud and clear so that when we do approve these bonds or the voters approve these bonds, we know not only what we're doing in the next couple of years, we're doing more long term. So that was my intent with that proposal.

careful when we talk about a dollar for dollar return on something like a sidewalk that's residential nature and highly needed right around a school maybe that's not going to be an economic incentive or something like that this is councilman yeah I think at all part of the forecast you saw last week in those out years we have in their programmed facilities that are being constructed from the 2022 bond program that we need that we need to pay the light bill we have to

we have to be able to pay the operating expenses there's a some of you are familiar with a local school district that is kind of rethinking about the investment of a bond program because of the operating expense this is just making sure that as we go through this process we keep an eye on what that impact is and we were able to deliver on the back end right yeah and if new facilities and parts of town are our priority then we deal with that right as we go along

I would also ask you to do some looking at Zarzamora, because you talk about before these bond packages, these bond projects, in my mind are supposed to be, if you're investing $25 million, how long should that road be taken care of before we have to do it again? Zarzamora was a 2012 bond project, I believe, and it was done at the end of that program. a failing street now. So that work was not a very long-term work, and it probably is gonna be again in this upcoming bond. We've gotta look at how we're building the roadways, places like that that have soil conditions that are rough, we need to take extra care of and build that into the cost of the project because we can't come back 15 years later and say we have to do another $25 million. It just doesn't make sense like that. So I appreciate that. I would also say I do strongly believe we need another housing bond. I think we do need to have it at the same level or greater. And I think we've got to do a deep dive into what projects have been happening. I know NHSD are working on that already. And talk about leverage partnerships. I think every project is a leverage partnership with every dollar right in the housing bond So they're very important I think maybe it's also shifting what our priority is if we are successful with that in the first three years of that five-year program Because we want to make sure that we're not Flooding the market in some areas of town, right? Because I understand that for some of these deals, the economics behind it is that we will lease up by a certain amount of time. And if you have five, you know, low-income properties right next to each other, the leasing up of those properties is a bit challenging. So maybe it's also like... if we get this money refocus on what the first maybe couple stages are. I think Mark's going to get into that in the next presentation about really homelessness was a bucket, but maybe not as much investment as we needed to have altogether. So I would just say that. And I know you're working on that also.

Yes. Yes.

Great.

Thank you. And then as Mark will highlight as well, The bucket of permanent supportive housing was very narrowly focused on only one type of housing, so maybe considering expanding that definition.

Absolutely. That'd be great. And I do think we have to have our traditional committees with every category. I think that's very important. And I didn't see the numbers yet, but I know you guys are scrubbing the numbers for... what it would look like on the debt service tax if we wanted, you know, a higher bond amount. I don't know what that is yet. I guess you guys are still waiting for the numbers to come back in. I would say unless it's an outrageous percentage point, you know, having 1.2 again at the very least is important, right? Maintaining the investment that we had in the last bond is extremely important for us, especially if we're talking about some of these other bigger projects that are going to come out on top first. and sort of reduce the district pie, the piece of pie that we all get, right? So I'm thinking, you know, housing bond takes out of that amount first, the entertainment district portion comes out of that first, second, I should say, the rest is kind of divided among 10 districts. So we want to make sure that we're getting as much or more take-home projects as the last bond. So that's important for me. Again, just figuring out what that percentage looks like based on the numbers from the county. And something else I've talked about with some of my colleagues, and I do believe in it strongly, is that if you go to slide 5 with all the bond categories, this mirrors what was in 22, correct? okay so in conversations that i having i think it is worth having an additional proposition making it six propositions the six being entertainment district specific i understand the arguments against that i understand that's not your recommendation but i do think it's there's value in having that be its own category i think embedding entertainment district projects into probably would only be in Prop A, the streets and bridges and sidewalks, puts too much of that together. And I think it is really a separate conversation to have. I understand that's never, Troy, did you want to add something?

Yeah, I just wanted to provide a little bit of clarification. So we have been working with outside legal counsel and our bond counsel on that very question. You can have propositions specific to the district.

You can or cannot?

You can, but with a caveat. You can have a general bucket called the district that has streets, parks, facilities in it. Back on that slide that was up there, what would have to happen was you would have a general streets proposition, and then you would have a district streets proposition. You would have a drainage and flood control general proposition, then you'd have a district So you may have multiple propositions related to the district for each one of these categories that are up here.

Sure. But are you prepared to say that the district is going to have all of these, is going to be in every single proposition?

At this point, no.

So it may only be one extra category.

Well, there may be streets. There may be a park. I think there's a good chance there's more than one. Right now, I can't tell you how many that would be related to the district.

Well, you know, that information's helpful to have. I don't think we even have a dollar amount yet on what that looks like, and that helps inform our decision. So I hear you on that point, but, you know, that's news to me, right, that it might be three different propositions that you're trying to get that entertainment district into. So that's a level of transparency I think we still need to have and have a number attached to that, especially as we're considering the total cost of it. But I think there, and that's all, thank you. I think there is some precedence. Obviously the Alamo Dome was its own proposition. Obviously that was a via tax or a half cent tax that was approved in 1989 for that. But I think it is certainly worth having something separate for that. And I understand there's connectivity points. There are things that may be right outside that district that you could say are part of it. i think we have to make a line and say what investment are we asking voters to pay for goes into an entertainment district versus a traditional bond package that has other things in there so i would certainly welcome feedback from my colleagues on that but i think it is worth looking into And again, really need to have numbers, really need to have scope of projects for that that you're asking us to consider and place on this bond. So those are my comments for now. Thank you.

We're just a real quick on a couple things and I had one so what one thing for you all to consider that something that as we have further conversation later on in the year round need and it's 2 years or more point there there are probably. Parts of town where we would look at as part of the need and looking at are over here we would probably look at a different type of road construction. High traffic areas may require concrete, not asphalt. Concrete is gonna be a little bit more expensive, but the investment is different. The city's typically not done that. We have done that in some areas, but that's just kind of a marker. I think that's a further conversation for the staff to have with you all in terms of prioritization, because as many of you know, sometimes a good old asphalt road in some parts of our city don't last, and so that certainly has a maintenance impact on us down the road in our annual budget. Secondly, to the downtown issue, so we're scheduled to bring back to you all an infrastructure estimate in September, which lines up with the timeline that Mike outlined with you, and we'll see what it looks like. It's not gonna look like it did last June, and we'll keep you abreast of that, and then lastly, Think I think what Troy's saying is that it depends on what it is, but you're right. We don't know what it is We just want to answer the question that you can't have your own proposition. You can the council can designate that I would I would district or downtown or geography aside The city nor other cities have typically geographically located a proposition And I would go so far as to say that schools don't do that either. They don't say Walsh Elementary or Villa Gomez High School, right? It's for facilities. And so I think the council, as you have those conversations at the end of summer and get into the nitty gritty of it about propositions, just be, you should be mindful, we should all be mindful that we may be setting a precedent for geographical based propositions.

Just a couple points. Thank you, Eric. And I would also say in the analysis that you bring back to us, put in there, if you can, if you don't already have it, the P of Z opportunities that may exist in that. So if you can do some of these infrastructure things through the P of Z, obviously realizing there might be something else pushed out or timeline-wise pushed out longer for the other things we're considering, that's an analysis I think that would be helpful for me to make some decisions. And the second piece is, I would say, more than geographically speaking, it's a project-based situation. And, you know, whether people are for or against this, it's a radical re-envisioning of downtown, especially in that very specific area. So I think it merits its own. So I know that's a subjective thing that depends on your take on things. I don't think it sets a bad precedent about north side bond, south side bond, things like that. But I do think it is worth an evaluation to see what's possible.

No argument, Councilman. But it's very objective, actually. It's not subjective at all, but it's very objective. And I think it's worthy of the conversation. I will share that in the 2012 bond program and the 2017 bond program, and not so much in the 2022, but some of you that may have been part of the conversations, there was a lot of conversation around what was categorized as citywide projects. and more so in 2017 and one of the guiding principles of 2022 was that we weren't going to have city-wide projects um and and and and to a certain extent those city-wide projects were a very objective in the sense that they were either streets or parks in in in the 2017 bond program It became a little bit like lightning rod issues, and I think that's probably part of the reason why the council wants to have a conversation about a downtown proposition or district proposition, whatever we call it. But there is a little bit of history we've gone through, and we'll be more than happy to be prepared for that conversation when we get to that point.

I'll just say really quick citywide. I think could be subjective because all of the green organics receptacles Waste comes all the way to district 4, right? that's a citywide product of things that come down one street in district 4 and Half of the trash in the city goes to Covell Gardens and D4, right? That Covell Road was not considered citywide, despite the fact that everybody's trash goes down that street. But other parks and things were considered. So I think there is a level of subjectivity in what we define as citywide.

I would agree with that, and that should have been a concrete road probably. Yeah.

In case it helps anyone else's comments, Eric, just to refresh, how did folks distinguish between citywide versus regional?

um you know what mayor that's a white paper we can prepare for the 2017. i mean it was it was such a lightning rod issue i'm making it out more than it probably was it was it was a bit of a lightning rod issue in 2017 so much so that we avoided it in 2022 and so we'll you know we can prepare some material that um broadway uh broadway street project was a city-wide project

the Hartberger bridge Sorry, I'm distinguishing because there's on the list there's citywide and then there's regional how did you all just differentiate between the two because on the list for example Hemisphere Civic Park is regional. So how was that regional versus citywide?

There was a different definition of that was applied, and we'll go back to 2017 and provide it to you. In both cases, regional and citywide, we did not utilize that in 2022. So we'll go back to the 2017 and prepare that. Well in regional it was a regional park In name only but there was a category regional in prior bond programs Yeah, like we had a regional park in district not a district six That was not the same. That was that was truly the definition of regional. It was not the regional category from previous bond programs and which is why in 2022 we got away from all of those categories because they became points of debate that we wanted to avoid.

Councilman Rodriguez.

Thank you. Thank you all so much for the presentation. I am incredibly excited to get the ball rolling on our next bond program. It's often one of the only opportunities that we have to make really, really large capital investments in our facilities, libraries, parks, bridges, drainage. and some of our other major needs. And so I would start off by saying that I'm supportive of the proposed propositions, including the housing bond. And I think we would need to prioritize no barrier shelter and permanent supportive housing should we proceed further. Projects that can't happen without significant public support. And so, of course, deep affordability, but also the permanent support of housing and no and no barrier shelter. I do maintain my position and agree with Councilmember Munguia that we should add additional propositions to separate some of the downtown investments relating to Project Marvel. I think people will likely support all propositions. We've made their way through the committee process, but there is an interest, just as this discussion was happening, in understanding investments on a neighborhood level versus the continuation of a second and third decade of downtown. I also do support a May election, and though I continue to be supportive of moving our general elections to November, in this instance, the need is tremendous, and as months go by, costs go up and projects get more expensive, and so there's a sense of urgency associated with the bond that we need to meet. And so to that end, the difference between May and November is an entire solicitation period, and if we put projects on the ballot in May, we can have multiple shovels in the ground by November. Regarding the structure of the bond committee, I support a model similar to last bond cycle where the mayor appoints the tri chairs and committee chairs and each council and the mayor appoints three people per proposition. I think that was solid last time and I think the more people involved, the more eyes on each of these projects, I think the better and more likely the propositions are to pass. I would recommend that we have these members appointed sooner rather than later and that they be present and may be appointed even prior to those initial public community meetings. That way they can hear constituent feedback through a lens of responsibility and to make some face time with the community so we can introduce folk, introduce the community to these individuals who have been appointed. I think there's a lot of benefit there. One of the challenges, and I would like to pose this question. This isn't feedback you were asking for, but it's feedback I think is important. Council will put forth a list of projects for the committee's initial consideration. And as the process moves forward, the committee will negotiate dollar amounts for projects. For example, they might say rather than a $10 million library project, they'll support an $8 million project and move $2 million elsewhere without fully considering how that impacts the viability and the scope of that project. So I don't know how we address that, but I think maybe as we get projects sent over, we identify some of the untouchables or we better communicate what is possible within certain dollar amounts for individual projects, specifically projects that can't move forward without that full funding. Lastly, we've touched on that, and this is a guiding principle, I think, for both of those two. Lastly, we've touched on the issue of support for external organizations in our general fund, and that's been a point of contention and debate. And I maintain that we have a responsibility to support programming and initiatives that allow nonprofits and our community partners to operate, especially those that won't happen at the scale that we need without public support. but as it relates to capital improvements and expansions of certain facilities and organizations' property, we may have to reduce the amount of funds or support that we give to those external organizations, especially if they aren't operating on city property. We have a lot of our own needs internally, and I want us to do what we can to get as much capacity as possible because we need to address the needs of our facilities, and that might mean limiting how much support we might give to some of those external organizations. I would like to, on the topic, but also not on the topic, I would like to ask for my colleagues' support once again for a project special to my district. You will not be surprised or blindsided. You all know I've been working on development of a new D2 Senior Center at Copernicus Park for the past, three years and some change now. We purchased the land, we funded design, and design is currently underway. We will have a shovel-ready project in the coming years, and the last step is to identify funding for construction, and it's going to be, you know, with the cost of materials, the cost of building these kinds of projects, it's going to be a $30 million-plus project. But we've identified a path forward to fully fund the project using inner city TERS dollars so that it's not dominating any one of our propositions. But it comes with some council action. So the existing senior center, as I've explained before, is a leased facility shared with an electric and auto supply shop. And so I want to replace it and move those operations. I would like to, in the coming months, extend the life of the inner city TURs through 2050. This would allow us to issue debt through the TURs without impacting our capacity elsewhere and to fully fund the project. So getting support from you all today will give staff a little bit more confidence so that we can proceed in that direction. And I would certainly appreciate y'all's help because I feel like we're this close to the finish line for this project. The inner city terse has been successful as a terse largely because of increment created at the hands of gentrification and displacement. And so the opportunity to utilize this increment for a project that will serve the public good is one that I think is owed to my district and to my constituents. And so the relevance to this conversation and why I ask for your support in that extension and funding mechanism is so that we can take these $30 million plus out of the competition for bond dollars. Dropping that there, thank you all for the presentation. I hope you've received all of my feedback. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Councilman Galvan.

Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Mike, Troy, and Veronica for the presentation today. A couple quick things. I think for the housing bond in particular, well, one question on it. For the rental and the homeownership portion of it, are those only production, or is it also rehab within both of those? I know we're going to have the community conversations, but I just wanted to see what the current framework is.

On the consideration slide?

Yes.

Yes. So we're not recommending buckets. We're just noting that the, so those amounts focusing on deeply affordable housing, 30 and 50% would focus on rental housing.

Okay, I see. So it still could go into either production or rehab, et cetera? Yes, either one. Okay, thank you for that. I think some of the things that my council colleagues have shared, and I know we talked about it during our pre-meeting a little bit too. I got the right words for it this time. But talking about the housing trust and how we can kind of continue to coordinate with them, continue to work with them. In the interest of, I guess, trying to be as flexible as possible and be able to move as quickly as possible with the growing housing needs, I'd be interested in seeing some form of analysis or some form of yeah, I guess analysis right word for it a comparison of using our evolving loan Through the housing trust by gift by granting money to work from the housing bond directly to them And that way that fund can be used a bit more flexibly for any kind of rehab or production or deeper affordability. It's kind of serving as bridge gap financing through the housing trust itself, and that way the money can come back into the same fund and hopefully continue that work in perpetuity versus continuing to solicit housing bonds for years to come. It's an idea that I know Montgomery, Maryland has incorporated and commissioned. Other states are doing it, but it's a statewide level. Other cities, including Chicago and Seattle, are taking a look at that as well. I don't know what it'll look like here. I don't know how it would meet the current market here as well, but I'd be interested in seeing how it could continue to kind of strengthen that leverage that the housing trust has to again be more flexible but also to I mean to provide more funding for the continued housing needs in our city hopefully at deeper levels so it's been interesting I guess the comparison of what that could look like versus our current housing bond structure and even just if it's different levels of scale there if we're doing a smaller bond level for the housing bond how far could that go by being in that kind of revolving loan fund versus the kind of current gap financing that we do

Sure. So you're talking about like a specific set aside that would go straight to the housing trust and then allow them to use that how they decide.

Correct. And that kind of framework. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Sure. We can look at that.

Okay. Thank you. And then for the guiding principles, it's more for Mike. Thank you, Veronica. Okay. I know, of course, these are overarching in terms of plan alignment and resiliency, but I think a little bit as it kind of sums to the conversation around the materials we're using for concrete to kind of look at that longevity of our project, I'd also be interested in seeing how we can better coordinate or incorporate complete streets and the kind of bike network plans. I know that's kind of part of it already, but thinking at the beginning, looking at evaluations of street safety as our outcome there versus simply repaving a street or something of the sort. Similarly, I think with resiliency efforts, sustainability efforts too, how can we incorporate sustainable materials in some form? Of course, understanding that the upfront cost may be a bit higher, but looking at the comparison to the longevity of the project itself, right? Whether it's a facility improvement, energy efficiency, what's the return investment there, or even water? sustainability efforts there, what does that impact to our operational costs? And then of course with construction materials, with maintenance in the future for not only facilities but also infrastructure itself, just kind of seeing what we can weigh there at the beginning of the conversation versus towards the end as an add-on.

Sure, and I think you hit on it. That conversation for each of the projects as we move forward, right, and the economic, I call it economic viability for lack of a better term, but are we thinking not just short-term and long-term? Whether it's a facility, I think we used facilities as the previous discussion, but you nailed it. I mean, what type of streets are we building? Are there going to be more complete streets that have bike infrastructure? additional landscaping that hit a lot of other planned, you know, initiatives. But what does that mean long term? And I think that as long as we're having that conversation is, I think Eric even emphasizes, we want to have that with each of the projects we're moving forward. So we're informed to pick the right projects.

Good. Thank you. That's helpful. I think similar to Councilman McKee Rodriguez's point around the community bond committees. I mean, I'm open to the one that we did last time as well as any kind of additional one that maybe is two or three people or two people instead of three. But either way, open to having to continue to have the committees. But in particular, looking at ways to have our folks be appointed sooner than later so that way they can be a part of that conversation. I know we talked briefly about How are they able to kind of review the not only the current project list that we have internally, but to also add any others and understanding what that time would be? Of course, I know it requires design and everything else, too, but still giving them the opportunity to kind of say, you know, I'm seeing all these ones. These are great. Can we add in this one or at least review this one that I'm seeing in my community or I'm hearing from other residents? I don't know what that would look like fully, but I understand, I guess, where that could fit within the timeline. What will we need to do to have them on board in that way to be able to do that kind of work with us?

I'll just add, I think to that point is, in January we had this conversation. We had a similar slide up on the generic timeline of the big steps that we need. What I heard back from you all, which I totally agree with, is that we need to do more community engagement, more of those conversations. maybe start in the summer those bond 101s part of the budget town halls maybe appointing you know your selections earlier than we would have normally last time and and and then identifying why that's helpful so all those things you just said I think they're aligned with what I'm proposing I don't have it fully flushed out certainly wanted some of that feedback today but based on the feedback we get from you today which is hey let's develop something for the summer let's develop something for the

committee appointments I think we can come back and work with you all to maybe put a little bit more fine-tuned schedule of what that looks like and then and then we'll just execute it that way thank you helpful on the sports district portion I'd be supportive of a separating out in some form and kind of going into more detail about what could look like without all you know what I guess it would all incorporate On the debt management one, I mean, of course, I think we still need to see the numbers for it. But I'd be interested in seeing what the variable tax rate would look like in terms of creating expanded air capacity compared to what is currently available. And we'll get that information later. But at this time, I guess I'm open to seeing what that would look like. I think for the elections, I'm still kind of weighing it a bit. But I'm leaning more towards May, just given the inflation that we're seeing and the high need there. supportive of Councilman Kirojigas' point for the senior center that he's been working on really diligently and see how they can increase our capacity within the general bond work there. I think that's all my feedback. Otherwise, great presentation. I feel good at this moment. I'll chime back in if any other questions come up. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Councilman White.

Thanks, Mayor. Thank you all for the presentation. Mike, I usually agree with 99% of what you say. Maybe it's the 1% today, or maybe I just disagree with you on your meat and potatoes comment on the second half of the presentation. I think the meat and potatoes was right up front on this variable tax rate. discussion under absolutely no circumstances should we consider the variable tax rate because it's not really going to be a variable tax rate this is going to mean a tax rate increase for the citizens of San Antonio and to do that right now to me is just an absolute non-starter should not be considered If you look at the five-year financial forecast, property tax valuations declining 2.1% this year, flat in 28, and then recovering a couple years after that, but only at a rate of 1.5%. So any suggestion that this variable tax rate could mean lower taxes in the future, frankly, is laughable. It's going to mean an increase in our property tax rate for our citizens, and under no circumstances should we consider that. We need to live within our means, and if that means a $625 million bond, then that's exactly what we need to deal with. will also point out for folks that talk about you know tough fight financial you know times and sometimes we need to we need to increase rates and things like that we've lived through you know we haven't raised the tax rate as Eric mentions to us and in 30 plus years. And we've lived through COVID-19, the pandemic, of course, a few years ago. We've lived through financial crises back in 2007, 2008 range. We've lived through 9-11. We've lived through a lot of Really unfortunate things and and have managed to have bond programs and not raise taxes and under no circumstances again Should we do it now? And yes the same goes for raising saws rates CPS energy rates too, and we know we've been having those conversations At the same time, so let's not do that to the people of San Antonio um in terms of the election date i'm for the the may of 2027 um bond election i think i think that makes sense i think if we can get it done by then we should i did like mike where y'all talk about economic viability in the program that being one of the factors that makes all the sense in the world let's not put ourselves on the hook for dollars down the line with some of these projects that frankly we're not going to be able to afford so to look at that now going into the bond program I was I was really pleased to see that it makes it makes a lot of sense to me the district specific Bond proposition that was mentioned I am I am NOT for that I don't think we need any any district specific proposition I Did have I Did have a question Here I thought maybe I covered it in terms of councilman McKee Rodriguez is senior center I would I would want to see that proposal fleshed out a bit but it but it is in in his district and if we can help him get that senior center done through the tours you know I'd love to to see that to see that happen so That's really all I've got. I'm excited about the bond program. These projects do add to our community, certainly, but we don't need to stretch ourselves too thin. We do not need to raise taxes on the citizens to have a bigger bond. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you. Troy, a point of clarification just based on, you said, the Bond Council's advice at this point, and in case it informs anybody else's feedback on their support for a district-specific proposition. As you described, for example, streets, bridges, and sidewalks, you would then have to have a separate district, streets, bridges, and sidewalks. Yes, ma'am. Correct. Okay. In terms of the actual mechanics of it, If somebody voted for the big one but not for the subset, would that subset of funding just go revert back to the original larger bucket?

I don't believe so. I can get that clarification from Bond Council.

Unless you could even write it that way. If you say no here on the district part, this money will, in fact, revert to the larger pot, if you will.

And that's where I would need to get clarification as far as how it would be styled.

Sounds good. Thank you. Appreciate that.

We'll go back and study that, Mayor, working with Finance and our Bond Council.

Yeah, because I think that then raises the question about if it's not approved and that's a significant chunk of money, where does it go? In the interest of efficiency, could it just go to the larger bucket? Okay. Thank you. Council Member Villagran?

Thank you, Mayor. On May 7, 2022, the San Antonio public approved the propositions for the city's 2022 bond program, totaling $1.2 billion and including 183 projects. As we enter this year's bond program discussion, the guiding principle I am focused on is simple. Make every taxpayer dollar go further. As we have this conversation and because it has been so interesting up until this point, there's just a couple of things. Anytime we want to talk about 2017 bond and why the changes came, I will be more than happy to talk to you all about that. It was a different city manager, it was a different time, it was a different council, and thank goodness towards their leadership, Terry and I saw great success in 2022 for our bond projects. Oh, and District 2, too. I'm sorry. I know. Southeast side, southeast side. So we were able to see that because we moved from that regional to citywide to having conversations about what was significant to the community. And as we look at the categories, and if we're going to get to add new categories, which, you know, thank you for opening that up, Councilman Munguia, I would like to see a category that if we could possibly look at our education and from early childhood and we talked about, we've talked about pre-K for SA all the way to adult continuing education, which is a lot of what Ready to Work does and a lot of what our delegate agencies do. So when we look at categories, I don't want to be limited to this special district because as we have this special district, I am in no doubt that that will pass what i am concerned about is if we move to a special district and we keep the bond at a six hundred million instead of going to the one point two billion that we need is that the voters of san antonio will go in and say you know what makes my tax pay or dollar go further is if I vote for the downtown district and the downtown housing and the downtown flood and drainage rather than for that in different parts of town so I think we you really do need to spell it out because what I'm hearing is not that we would have Just five categories, but we could have up to ten categories if the Sports and entertainment district comes forward and says we're gonna have affordable housing in our district this round We're gonna need I I can tell just based on this streets and sidewalks is going to be in that I know you see it Troy Drainage and flood control is going to be in that but if they put a park there if they put a housing there if we want to fix up that um park police facility that sits in the middle of hemisphere that's all going to be separated into another category and we could have up to 10. so instead of that i would rather see have the big categories and have our committee members look at how we divide up those dollars So I think the amount needs to stay at the $1 billion, preferably the $1.2 billion. The date, I'm in agreement with my council members, Council Member Galvan, which should probably be, and Councilman McKee-Rodriguez, should be May 2027 because of inflation. think as we look forward the top priorities for me of course is seeing how we can get South Texas Parkway the infrastructure around Texas A&M streets and sidewalks and drainage control there the Roosevelt corridor of course which has been a great example of what we do when we move from phase one to phase two and And of course I think we need to support the TERS and have a larger conversation about how all of the TERS that we have can help, when we start that development, can help take away from what we're spending in the bond because we're using our TERS. And we've seen that successfully happen over in Brooks, and I want to make sure that that continues So I think this conversation with the TERS probably should be have sooner rather than later. The one thing that's the conversation about housing trust I'd like that when we have our second conversation to be cleared up because Veronica I know that you will go and you will ask but sitting on the board of housing trust and knowing that they are run by a Different board and a different entity is that we can't overcommit for them Because there may be things that they can and can't do they have a lot of big big projects that if you're following us on the meetings which are are televised are out there in the internet and You know they have projects that they're working on. So to task them with some of the things that I've just heard lately, I'm not sure that it's within their capacity at this point. So let's make sure we take that into consideration. The other is the bond committee and composition. I believe this year we should... look at the tri-chairs and get that, because this has all been my practice, but I think we should start formalizing the process and make sure that the tri-chair bonds are approved by the majority of city council as we move forward. So I'd like to see that come forward in a proposal or let us know if we need a CCR to get that done. And I'm in favor of doing the Housing Bond 101 program and making sure that My residents kind of understand where we're going from here. We what happens in times like these when we are financially We're not seeing the federal support or the grant opportunities that we've seen in the past or we're not sure what they're going to look like is It gives us the opportunity to get creative It gives us the opportunity to work with our stakeholders when we talk about streets bridges and sidewalks I think we can leverage our school partnerships with our districts and meeting with our districts and the public private partnership when we talk about parks and recreations I think it's important that we understand what's happening in DC and if we can start if we do have phases two and three of certain park programs that we can take out and get that federal funding for that we have that ready to go and then when we talk about facilities in our city facilities we do need to have a clear conversation about rebuild versus remodel and especially in some of those fire stations and police substations. Housing is critical and important and We have been successful with our SHIP goals and I think we need to continue. I think any conversation that does not include the city being a critical part or this being part of the bond is short-sighted because we understand that it takes one closure in one of our adjacent communities like Del Rio. like Casterville, like Uvalde, that will bring people to San Antonio looking for work and jobs. And we need to have the housing stock here at the various levels for people to live in. We know that's going to be multifamily. We know that's going to be single family. And that's what a housing bond allows us to do is making sure we're maintaining with the growth we know is coming and then the growth that could possibly happen if we see another another crisis come out. So as we move forward, I think we need to take that into consideration. I'm looking forward to seeing what sort of options we have if we're going to do a sixth category. I'm not above talking about the sports and entertainment district, but please take into consideration other categories that we can have that kind of incorporate some of what we are discussing today. So thank you and I'm hoping TPR will call me so we can talk about 2017 bond. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I think it's important that we build upon the progress that we've made in 2022. And so that's why I'm looking at this next bond package and making sure that we're clear about the priorities that our communities have and that my district is already every neighborhood association meeting. I am asked questions about the next bond project and they have projects in mind that they've kind of kept in their back pocket as well. And so I know a lot of our residents are doing the same thing all over the city. So I guess I'll start with, I think it's slide two, three on the 22 housing bond progress. Do we have a, on the home ownership rehab and preservation, do we have, and you guys are working on this, If you can provide how many applications were received versus funded, do you have that number handy or you can just provide that at a later? Sure.

So we've changed. You're talking about the home rehab program? We've changed the way we do that. Now we only accept applications for when they're complete, ready to go. So we can look at what our latest numbers of how many have been applying recently since we made that change.

And then do you have like a breakdown demographics, I guess, district wise of where those applications are coming from? Sure.

Yeah, we can get that for you.

And then is there a wait list for eligible homeowners that maybe didn't get this round?

So we went through all of the previous applicants and followed up with them. got current documents, and now we have a new round for call. We do have application appointments all the way through July, and so we will open it up again when we get closer to that point for anyone else who still hasn't been able to get an appointment.

And is the homeowner rehab focused on single family, or is there some smaller multi-family units in there as well? So the one through the bond is funding owner-occupied single family rehab. Owner-occupied single, okay. Okay, sounds good. Thank you. On the debt management plan, can you kind of help explain this as much as possible? On the variable tax rate, is that variable tax rate allowing for new capacity?

It would. I mean, based on the current forecast and what we've seen, taxable value is declining. In order to get to a $1.2 billion bond program, you would have to increase the tax rate. The current tax rate that we have today won't produce a $1.2 billion bond program. So over the future, based on what values are doing under this variable tax rate, you would have the ability to increase the tax rate or decrease the tax rate depending on where values are falling. but we would have to levy a tax rate because once we enter into a contract with the voters for a $1.2 billion bond program, we have to have a way to pay for it.

And the tax, okay. Okay. I'll think about it next. Thank you. I think I'm concerned a little bit about you know the 600 million or 625 I think that was the size of our 2012 bond and knowing that Infrastructure is what it is, but our city continues to grow I don't want us to kick the can down the road in that sense where We have a smaller amount, but the needs are still there. You've got residents waiting five years on these big projects that might have to wait another 10 years because of that. I know we have a while to go on this, but those are just some initial concerns I have on the smaller projects. bond capacity amount so I look forward to just kind of hearing more on an update on that in the future and I have a question on the specific to the sports and entertainment district there's also work that we're doing on the convention center is in that sports and entertainment district piece so is it are those projects but for the district they would not be considered is that how we're

At the Convention Center?

Or just in general, with the Sports and Entertainment District, if we do have its own category, how are we determining, are we saying but for the Sports and Entertainment District, these projects would not be on a list?

Councilman, I think I understand your question. I'm going to try and answer it. If I'm wrong, please go ahead. I think there's some needs now in this same area. Imagine an event day at the Alamo Dome. There are some improvements that we could do now. We know that there are things that need to happen now around access off the interstate, around how the intersections work around the dome, around the rest of downtown. So I think that we can break it out for you and set up what we think we need now.

and where the line is for the district and and have you react those are the needs that you would have had whether or not we had an arena vote correct okay that's what i'm trying to yep we'll try to we'll try to categorize them and and and we can get your feedback on that yeah i mean i'm open to the idea i just want to make sure that that project is specifically there because the sports and right the new plan I guess I'm supportive of the May 20 27 bond because I do appreciate that that cycle just being on that's really the only thing major thing on the ballot is that those bonds and November 27, we've got constitutional amendments, I believe, on the ballot as well. So those will come before those bond projects and that's a long list of amendments that are coming our way, I'm sure. So I'm supportive of the May 2027 bond.

What else, what else?

The community bond committee, I was in the mayor's office at that time when the last community bond committee was set up, the bond oversight committee. I think they're very valuable, so I hope that we set it up in the same way. I know that's a good, a good thing for us as far as just getting a residence involved i can already tell you that residents that are ready to go uh... and excited for those bond oversight committees and i mean it though they are ready to uh... get to get the call and and get out so uh... i would appreciate the same uh... oversight committee structure Talked about May. I think we were talking about Jalen, right? Your pitch on the senior center. Absolutely. Come bring that money my way to the Bob Ross Senior Center when you're done. Because we are the oldest senior center, the first senior center in San Antonio, and that needs a lot of love. Since we're talking about specific projects, I'll throw in the Bob Ross Senior Center is a huge priority for me and the residents that use that space every single day. So thank you. Those are all my comments right now.

Thank you. Council Member Castillo.

Thank you. And thank you, Mike and Veronica, as well as to your teams. You all have been great stewards of public dollars. And I know District 5 residents have been extremely grateful for the impact. And we know there's much more needed in our community. And I'm reminded of some of the site visits that we've had with the public works team where constituents show a petition of signatures that they gathered in the 80s and the 60s of them requesting a sidewalk in their neighborhood. And because of the 2022 bond dollars and some 2017 dollars, we've been able to make an impact and meet that community need. So extremely grateful for capital improvements, the public works team. And grateful for NHST because in District 5 alone, we've seen the rehabilitation and or construction of over 700 affordable units in District 5. So grateful for that work and thankful that you all have been stellar stewards of public dollars. So I'm eager for us to initiate this process. I'm supportive of replicating the 2022 bond committee process. And I agree that we should initiate that conversation sooner than later. to ensure that our appointees can hear from the community and our shared constituency on what the goals and priorities are. I do believe there is value in weaving in any CIP projects that all 10 of us have identified and earmarked funding. For example, Martinez Park and District 5, following the 2022 conversation, the process was already ongoing and constituents came up with this plan to invest in Martinez Park, but we had just missed that conversation. So using CIP, we've constructed a master plan to improve Martinez Park. So that's a park that we'll be continuing to advocate for, but highlighting Many of us have used the IP dollars to plan in preparation for the 2027 bond. So that's something that I would like for us to see us replicate in terms of the process. If it needs to be codified, I'm supportive of that as well. Again, with the guiding principles, I'm supportive of what Mike's laid out. What I would encourage, and I'm sure it's part of the process, is that we continue to use the Equity Atlas when analyzing the projects and the areas in which those projects will be placed. With the housing bond, supportive of the recommendations, I know I didn't see home rehab explicitly stated on there, but I would encourage and I'm assuming that that's going to be included in the process. But as we enter the next B session conversation and we discuss what the housing bond can look like, I would like to lean on Mark Carmona and Patrick Steck in terms of what they're seeing the need in terms of addressing homelessness. I know within the San Antonio Housing Trust, for example, we've talked about how we can expand opportunity for more shared living spaces, whether that's for whatever the demographic may be. There's a need for us to think more creatively of how we can meet more need in our community and be more impactful with housing bond dollars. So eager for that conversation, of course, to weave in what we learn with the next presentation to continue to chip away at the needs and goals. And I really appreciated how you highlighted, Veronica, one housing bond dollar it stretches into $7. So it's just great impact and grateful for the San Antonio Housing Trust, again, for being that impactful partner in terms of what the standards of housing that end up at the end of the pipeline. So just very eager for 2027 with that would be supportive of a May 2027 election. As folks have highlighted, the cost of services continue to go up. There's one project in our district, not bond related. Delays have increased it by several thousand dollars. So I can't imagine moving it to November, the cost that that would fall on the taxpayers in terms of that delayed timeline. In addition to that, I am supportive of Councilman McCready Rodriguez's plan using TERS to support a senior center in his district. I know it's not common for council members to name something after themselves, but I believe the work that the councilman has done in District 2 has been very impactful, and I think it's something council should consider, whether it's a park or a senior center, but it's been great to see the councilman worked towards creating a space for seniors and everyone in District 2 and citywide to go and enjoy the senior center and the community that you're working towards building. I didn't see it on the presentation, but I want to ensure that we continue to support our public arts. The funding allocated towards supporting public art projects, is that something that will be baked into this?

councilwoman it's not part of the presentation it was not intended to take that out I think that's going to be an important part of the conversation it has been for several of the bond cycles it was 1.5 percent of each of the propositions minus the housing last time so I know that will be part of it and we expect that and then wherever that lands based on the process and then certainly you all that that's definitely intended to be part of the conversation

Great. Thanks, Mike. And then lastly, in terms of the housing bond conversation, right, of course, I would be supportive of increasing from $150 million to whatever we have the capacity in terms of the housing bond. And lastly, I would be supportive in terms of exploring separating the downtown, the sports district propositions into your own, allowing the public to weigh in in terms of investment. And that's something that I would hope that we can see in the 2027 bond. Those are my comments. Thank you.

you councilman spears thanks mayor thank you so much for the presentation mike i know that y'all do a whole lot of work to get us here and um i really appreciate it because it gives us something to start diving into um So I sort of have the same, here's the first thing I wanna say. When I'm up here speaking, I want everyone to just understand that I'm an advocate and I'm listening to what my residents are saying. So when you see me, I'm 145,000 people behind me. And I'm gonna share with you some of the things that we've been talking about and will continue to talk about in my district. So first, I had a couple of questions though. On these bond projects, when we wait, are they always gonna go up in price? Like we passed this in 2022, always it's gonna be more when we start to spend those dollars five years later, correct?

Generally, construction gets more expensive, and when we plan a project, and we'll be scoping and estimating projects now, we build in some inflation estimates. Sometimes that holds firm. Sometimes we may be a little more conservative. There are some times we're not as conservative, but we do build that inflation in, but we really haven't seen construction costs go down in recent memory.

Yeah. How are we going to be, I want us to be looking at how we're gonna be prioritizing projects based on necessity versus desirability. And then I did have a question too on housing. I see that, I saw this in a document. Will future affordable housing bond language continue to allow undocumented immigrants to qualify for the housing assistance?

So many of our housing bond projects also layer federal funding, and we do require as part of our policy identification for anyone qualifying for services. And since, again, many of our housing bond funded, like the rental housing or rehab, layer the federal funds, they also require that documentation of an individual's status. So it's not necessarily always a city requirement. A lot of times it's a federal requirement that we're responding to as well.

That we provide housing for undocumented immigrants?

No, that they have to have a social security card or some sort of legal status.

Well, because in our bond recommendation, the Housing Community Bond Committee recommendations, it had in there undocumented immigrants.

Sure, so that is the parameters that the Housing Bond Committee established, but since we have proceeded with moving towards

Issuing gap solicitation that includes both federal and bond funding Usually we have to usually fall back on what the federal requirements are for projects that accept both okay, I Just and then I wondered to why we why we focused so heavily on housing I know it's important that we haven't talked as much about all these other areas today

Well, I think the intent, Councilwoman, is, look, the 2022 bond, we talked about housing. That was really the first time we had housing in, you know, a significant part of our bond. 2017, we had $20 million. That was actually the first time, and it was a result of a charter change, I believe it was, to allow that. So we kind of dipped our toe in the water. The need was there in 2017. We wanted to just give an update of a significant, relatively new piece. Certainly drainage, streets, parks facilities those have been in the category in the bond categories go back decades um still very important uh they still got most of the dollars in the 1.2 billion so it was not intended to minimize the importance of those it was just to highlight kind of the update of the new housing bond that was added last time that makes sense um so

Oh, sorry, you just sat down. But SA Tomorrow projects, the Stone Oak Regional Plan, they're having a fit about the Stone Oak Regional Plan. Stone Oak's pretty well built out. And there's all these questions about why are we even, this doesn't match what we want or need anymore. And they're not feeling heard. And my question is, when constituents are pushing back, like we had a public meeting this week pushing back about something. How are we responding to that? How are we tracking that? I mean, we say call 311, but you're in the room with them and they're talking to the experts, the people doing the project and hearing, we don't want this anymore. We no longer need this. This doesn't solve our problem. You actually already fixed our problem five years ago. Like things like that, it's, their frustrations come out and then they get apathetic and then they don't want to come vote on the bond and then they feel unheard it's a whole problem

after that meeting that is atypical certainly usually we're at those meetings and saying thank thank goodness you're here we've been waiting for it for a long time we have a lot of energy effort put into this process that I just laid out it's a year-long plus project process to determine the needs we're fighting for the dollars to get into the bond and then get approved so now certainly you had an example in your district that we went out there there was some pushback as to the need of that project I still need to work with you and really our team on that because, look, that project's been approved by voters, and part of our job is to deliver that project to address some flooding and street needs. I think we need to dig into specifics and have more conversation. So again, we're here to deliver the projects that are needed. Certainly if things change, we have to address that. Again, a little unique circumstance that I'll continue to work with you and those residents on, but that is very atypical. Usually when we are at those meetings, They are ready to go. It's been a long time coming. Hurry up and get done. But I think more to come on that one, I think I would just say.

I hear you saying it's atypical, although that's not exactly how I'm hearing it. Because I've got some other projects, mainly on drainage, quite frankly, and I'm so glad. I love to talk about water and drainage. It's one of my favorite things to talk about because... I want to reiterate this one thing that came to my attention. The scope of every drainage project, at least for us in District 9 and 8, I believe, when we're over the recharge zone, has to be thinking about watershed and how we can keep that water filtering into our aquifer. And to find out that some of these projects are not doing that, just a lost opportunity to to build resiliency in our aquifer and I think that should just be first top of mind when we're talking about drainage and flood control topography and because you know this will greatly affect my colleagues down in the clay areas of town I don't I don't want that I want to trap it up in the bedrock the Flintstone area and let it just pour into that aquifer and if we're not thinking that way about drainage and stormwater and watershed, we've just got to always look at that. And that was shocking to the residents as well.

I think that's one you and I talked about that we're looking into. All of our drainage projects, especially over the aquifer, they do have to go through the TCEQ process to make sure we're meeting all the standards for the aquifer and those protected regions. Again, I'm still looking into those comments. I wasn't at the meeting with you, but I do know that's built in, and I think I'll work with Art and our stormwater team to make sure that Those are there for every one of our drainage projects. I believe they are, but you brought up one. There was a conversation that there were some questions on.

Yeah, and we've got new floodplain maps coming out. See, that's the other problem with the way you get new information. And then this project, you actually fixed it with a quick little culvert fix, and now it's a $17.5 million project that nobody wants. That's what I'm trying to wrap my head around is how do we claw that back? Can we claw that back? Since we've waited so long and nobody wants it anymore and the economy changed and everybody feels differently and would vote differently today I don't know how to respond on those situations And so we're just going to keep engaging with our residents during this process as much as possible because to the mayor's point we have to have huge turnout and engagement it's it's Because then you deal with people saying, well, I don't want this. I don't like this. And then they didn't vote in it because they feel that no one's listening. So I want to make sure that they feel heard and that we are listening. I would say, too, I found this document called Necessity is the Mother of Innovation. balancing the budget through rapid assessment of core services. Does anybody here remember this document? Justina? It was drafted here actually in 2011 and it's a really good document. It's only like five pages long. I would love to see something like that Again, it really hones in on what our core services are and what we really need to do in our city, and I think it was done around the time when we were in the same situation financially, and I think my office was gonna ask if we could get something like that, and I have copies of it if we need it. I am very leery of a variable tax rate, because I think when you give an inch, people will take a mile, I just can't. All I hear is, I can't afford it. I can't afford it, Misty. I can't do it. And I'm not, sorry, I guess I'll sign up for the next one. Thank you. Council Member Kaur.

Thank you, Mayor. Can you all tell me about the tax, the variable tax rate? How would that change the median bill that we talked about last week? So we had a property tax rate conversation for M&O, which would increase the bill by $17 for a 156K home. What would this do potentially? I know that's hard to make a determination on because it's variable.

I think that's something, as we get more information from the Appraisal District, we can come back to you and present. In theory, as values are going down, applied against that stagnant or historical tax rate, and their tax bill's going down, in theory, and we have to model this, but it should level out their tax bill over time.

And our debt service tax rate is what we're talking about for this point.

Yes, ma'am.

Also has changed over the last couple of years.

Our debt service tax rate has been constant for about the last 20 years. We have not changed it.

And what is it at right now?

21 cents per $100.

Got it. And that's the max that it could ever be at right now?

No, it can actually go up. We have legal debt caps. We can go up to $1.50. So we have a lot of capacity.

Got it. And what other cities keep a fixed debt service tax rate?

I have the information. I can go back and look. I don't want to say anything incorrectly. I have to provide the information. But there are a lot of cities too that also do the variable rate method.

I think what would be helpful for us, because it's really hard to make a statement when we don't know what the impact could possibly be, like the comment that was actually just said, right? Does this mean someone's bill is gonna go from, like increase by $5, by $100 for that median income home? And so it's hard to be able to make a statement if we don't know what the impact would be. So maybe we give, at the next presentation, we get some examples of if we were to change it to a variable tax rate, we have a million dollar or a billion dollar bond this is and these are potential scenarios so three scenarios where our rates are increasing and this is what the rate would be property values are decreasing this is what the rate would be etc like three different potential scenarios where it's conservative to aggressive absolutely once we start getting down into that detail we'll provide that information okay

And I would anticipate that, Councilwoman, that that would be part of the August presentation when we have the certified roll.

Okay. So then based on the timeline slide, I think it's slide 11, I was just a little bit confused about that timeline slide because if we go to May, which I understand why my colleagues are saying that, and I absolutely support that. I think it's the one right before this. Sorry, slide 10. This is stating that we've already done steps one and two for a May 2027 bond because it's May 2026.

right it means that we've started that and that's going to continue through the summer so we've um you know we've we talked in january about a 2027 possible 27 bond actually in august we talked about possibly 26 or 27. so this conversation is happening but uh certainly initiating and developing a program and thinking about it so city staff to try to lead up to today we've been thinking about you know what a 27 bond could look like May, November, and then we're starting to identify projects. So my team and I over the last month or so working with some other city departments, just pulling up old records, old needs, kind of some of the things I talked to you about on another slide was what are the potentials Right now, it's very, you know, there's some holes in that. We don't have a lot of detail on those, and that's what we need to build out through the summer until the time, for example, where it says that we will identify, staff will present to you some potential projects, which is maybe, I think it's in that August time frame, staff-recommended projects and community meeting process.

The hard part about those two things that I just heard is we're identifying potential projects and we don't know what our capacity will be till August. And so that makes it difficult for us to be talking to residents and saying, like, we're collecting ideas, we want to know what you have, because we don't want to set false expectations. I mean, I feel like we've already, our history is going to have us set false expectations in terms of how much bond we've been able to take out, or debt we've been able to take out, but I'm just wondering how that timeline works if we do, which I feel like so many of my colleagues have said they want to push for May. How does that, and when will we know what our capacity is if we go in May versus November?

We'll go in August with the certified rule. The certified rule that we get the end of July is going to help us with the setting of our operating budget, and it's going to set the capacity requirements under either fixed rate or a variable rate option that we'll present to you in August.

Okay.

And I would just add, so as part of the identifying potential projects, I don't think we know, we don't need to know where the line is. At least we don't as city staff as we're trying to identify potential projects. We're working with other city departments. For example, talking with the library, talking with them about what their operational needs are, what they've been planning for, what their Are there buildings that they need to renovate or DHS with the senior center? I think we talked about the oldest senior center. There are some needs there that we know about. And once we know where the line is, that'll help us with the priority and how much we can afford. But I think I can still do that whether it's you know, a 500, 600, a billion, I think I said it earlier, there's probably more need than we have whichever number we land. So I think there's enough information for us to get started. But very quickly, to your point, we will need that number to make some firm decisions later in the summer, I think after the tax rate is there. Is that?

Okay. I think in August when you guys come back because I mean for me if the difference is between 600 million and a billion dollars May versus November is worth it right so I just think it and I understand inflation costs and I understand that point but I just need to know what what we're giving up by giving up those six months and I also to Councilmember White's point would like a holistic image of what MNO if the if we increase the MNO rate what would that mean for an average rate if we change this to variable what would that mean What would a CPS rate increase mean? What would a SAWS rate increase mean? So we can get a holistic picture because this is all a lot all at once. So I just want to see what the impact to our most underserved communities would be. That's where my focus is. It's the people that are at that median below that we don't want to unfairly impact. And so that's the lens that I'm looking at. support council member McKee Rodriguez's point on senior center from the inner city tourism on that board. So I'd be happy to vote on that with you. On the downtown district conversation, so I know you guys are gonna come back and identify and I think that's really important because for example, if we do wanna RFP out the affordable housing lot, the D5 lot for affordable housing on Hemisphere, would that be considered if we wanted to save allocate dollars from the affordable housing bond for that project? Would we have to separate that out to say we wanna fund that in the affordable housing bond?

think that would that would be up to you all to decide and and you know the categories that's the only one other than maybe Park but I don't think that'll really be part of that infrastructure update you guys in September the d5 or any related downtown housing the council could or you could include it as part of the general housing

I just think we should do what we do for one for all of the buckets So if we decide that we're gonna split out infrastructure, I think we should do that for affordable housing, too Would be my thought there What about the magic theater if we wanted to pull funding for the magic theater would that be considered for?

a part of like the downtown district project The issue there as Troy mentioned at the beginning that's a city facility so it would probably have to be under a separate proposition if we followed that path and Okay, I'm just like or I'm sorry or it could be part of a facility proposition for the city.

Yeah, so I just pulling out projects that are included in the district that I think are really important that we have been previously funding. that would cause us to go out on like, if we do this, we have to really think about all of the impacts of pulling out these propositions and making sure that we want our voters to vote, every single person to vote on the magic theater. Because I think that is just, I am worried that it becomes a slippery slope of, okay, what about the playhouse? Everybody from the city comes to the playhouse. Should that be in its own proposition? So I'm just wondering where we draw that line. And so that's what I'd like to get feedback on in the next conversation. As far as the housing trust conversation, really quickly in that last minute, five of us sit on the housing trust board, two of us are on the executive, or on serving in vice president and treasurer role, and we have the majority on the voting for the PFC. If we allocate, my worry if we allocate just dollars to the housing trust, we are basically saying we don't want to create a sense of competition in the affordable housing marketplace. Like any other industry, affordable housing is a competitive industry, and if we just say we're funding only housing trust, which I have fiduciary responsibility with housing trust, might create a sense that we are only wanting, we're not creating a fair competitive marketplace for all of the organizations that are doing affordable housing. And then Opportunity Home could come back to us and say, hey, you should be considering us in the same way because they do developments as well. So I just think it gets a little bit tricky there. But I wanted to share that. Of course, I support the affordable housing one in general. Thanks, Mayor.

Great. Thank you. Councilwoman Alderete-Gavito.

Thank you. And thank you, Mike, for the pre-brief. And after reviewing the deck and the pre-brief, sorry, working mom had to go to my daughter's school conference. So I just had a few comments. I'm good with the current categories. I think that, you know, the previous bond processes have worked well. I'm not supportive of a separate bond to councilman cores point. I mean the Usage is going to be from all over the city. So Definitely not in support of of us taking out a separate bond for spurs related projects downtown You know, I agree with councilman core on the expectation setting it's hard to let residents know what kind of bond we're expecting when we just don't have those answers right now. But I will say this. Last Saturday, I had a coffee with a councilman. We had probably well over 80 people packed at Texas Star Inn. And we talked about the potential sales rate increase. We talked about a potential property tax increase. And just all of this. And there was overwhelming sentiment. against it. You know, I mean, this is a hard time for residents. So whenever we're talking about a potential increase It's going to be very difficult to push that on to them when we're all dealing with higher gas prices. We're all dealing with the economy, which is out of our control. I'm not saying that this is something caused by the city of San Antonio. There's obviously outside factors that are weighing on us, but right now is not the time. to be looking at increases, tax increases, or rate increases on our residents. I agree with Councilman Villagran about the tri-chairs being approved by a majority of city council. And... Those are all my comments, and we'll work with y'all on different specifics. But yes, I see the chicken and the egg. When we don't have specifics, it's hard to set those expectations, and our expectations accordingly, too. So thank you.

Council Member Speers on the second round. Okay, thank you. Yeah, so I... I... How are we going to right the ship on the value, the taxable values? Because, I mean, how are we going to take out more debt for the terrors if there isn't a forecast where that goes up?

Are you referring to Councilman McKee-Rodriguez?

Not specifically, no. Just in general, like, I mean, because we issue debt on the TERS, right? And that's based on future forecasted revenues of taxable values.

It is, yes, ma'am.

But it were forecasted to go down.

But we've those forecasts and the TERS align with what we do with our what we see in value property values They're not separate apart. They're they're a they're they're part of that overall And and I think that's one of the reasons that specifically that I think that customer McEwen Rodriguez is talking about Part of that adjustment is also the alignment of time and when how long that TERS is available Am I answering your question

I think so so you've already accounted for the fact that the values are going down.

In your in your borrowing capacity, it always has to be adjusted and amended just like our annual budget. OK, and the issuance of any debt. I mean, there's. I'll use Brooks as an example. The issuance of any debt, and generally all the use of the Brooks TERS has been for infrastructure and street work. So they issue debt, we issue debt with them, and that debt is paid for out of the TERS, and it's a certificate of obligation. Any debt that we issue through a TERS still has to go through the council for approval. The board's first, the council's second.

OK. I'm supportive of the bond committee process. I can't see a way to get behind the variable tax rate. And I think there are unintended consequences if we start looking at district-specific propositions. Just researching it at all will show that that's been a problem in other cities. And I would... I urge everyone to be looking a little more closely at what that does in other markets. And to my colleague's point, I mean, that is really the basis of what I'm trying to say is everyone in my district is saying we can't do all these things you're asking us to pay for. We just can't do it. And on the arts and culture piece, and I know this is gonna probably ruffle some feathers, but they almost had a fit that there was an arts and culture sculpture put in an area on a roadway improvement for $300,000 and $350,000. I just don't know how to justify that on a road improvement. And... and also the placement of it is gonna block their vision that they're worried about. That's a really hard one for me to talk about because it doesn't tie together for me how you build in arts and culture when you're trying to do infrastructure like that because I don't think that's what they're voting on. I don't think they're even thinking about that. They're thinking, how are you going to help me get my road improved so I can get home, or there's not so much water collecting on the road, or that's the stuff they want fixed. They just want their roads to be better. So all the fluff around it is very, very unimportant to them. I really appreciate what Councilwoman Kaur was saying about the holistic picture of what we're asking for with dollars. Percentages are hard, and that's even hard if it's something that they want, because when you start talking in percentages, it's worst-case scenario every time. I do it. I think most people do it. You start going, well, what does that mean? So we need to see dollars and cents and that will help tremendously in our discussions as moving forward. So thank you.

Would anyone else like to speak on the second round? Okay. Thank you Troy, Mike, Veronica for all of the, certainly for the presentation and then for the clarification. On the guiding principles, I shared with Mike, but have a real appreciation for the economic viability. And as soon as we talked about it, I was like, oh, you're talking about long-term sustainment costs. This reminded me of being at the Pentagon and you'd be gifted all these planes you didn't ask for and then have to sustain them for the next 30 years. And so I can appreciate how we think about not only the cost to build the thing, but now how we need to think about sustainability. sustaining that longer term, which really gets us into thinking about kind of the base level of service we should think about for each of these public services. I think the Senior Center is a great example. I was just with our seniors at Rosedale for their senior fiesta, let's just call it that. Certainly, how we as a community can commit to making sure that all of our senior centers have a basic level of service. I don't know enough about Councilman McKee-Rodriguez, the senior center that you're putting forth and how that may differ in service higher than or less than, for example, than Walker Ranch. But when I talk to folks, Walker Ranch is the example, and that's what everybody wants. And frankly, that's what everybody deserves. What I don't know enough about is if we all committed to that, what then are not only the build costs, but what are the long-term sustainment costs as a result of that? So I would appreciate just kind of as an intellectual exercise for us to know what those costs are and how we might look at that in this bond. I think that'd be very helpful and goes to what our seniors, frankly, everybody is really wanting to understand is, why can't I have that? Right, so I'd appreciate that analysis, Mike and team. Do we have a sense of how many of the projects that we funded last time came with leverage funding? And were those projects given additional consideration, in fact, because they came with leverage funding?

I'll say the easy answer is yes to the second question. We do have the list of them. I'm not sure I have that with me, but we can pull that out. If you look at the bond guide that we publish and we still have online, we actually call that out in every project, which ones are leveraged funding or not that we're doing. I can follow up with that with you and the council fairly quickly.

Certainly, and my focus would be, one, is it the public facility want to does it come with leverage funding i think we just as much as we can leverage other people's money certainly this time we need to we need to do that

mayor we'll we'll do that but just to the answer the part two of your question how much consideration was it given it was it was part of the consideration that the council gave but i wouldn't call it necessarily a driving because the council was dealing with the council was dealing with drainage needs or street needs or parks needs or and so it was a factor i'm not sure it was certainly helpful would be even more interesting for us to provide you all um from mike is what the initial leverage request was and what it was at the very end because it changed over time and and i think that might help kind of clarify the how that how that process moved through the council

Yeah, and thank you for that, Eric. I appreciate that. And, you know, to the extent we can actually also encourage folks to consider things a leveraged opportunity. I know we're going to talk about this a little bit with Mark's presentation and, frankly, the need to look into private dollars, public-private partnerships that can help us better fund these things. A greater contribution, for example, from philanthropy, local, at corporate as well, would be helpful. So... how we understand what the leverage opportunities are currently, but how we might also consider creating more space for those would be helpful as well. Because again, I can empathize with a lot of my colleagues here that are not interested in increasing the property tax rate, so that means we just gotta ask for more. Okay. On the determining the needs, I do support a separate proposition for arena-related infrastructure. I do want to prioritize on the flood projects, projects related to the Kleinfelder report. We want to make sure that that report and its recommendations, we're implementing those recommendations as quickly as possible in the interest of public safety and resilience. I'm sure we have it, but I'd welcome, in light of additional renewed analysis, that helps us understand investments that we can make either for the 100-year storm or for the 25-year storm events. I'd like us to understand what risk we have in the community as a result of where some of our infrastructure is vis-a-vis those requirements. On the city facilities, Eric and I, you and I, we've had conversations on this numerous times, but laying out very clearly the projects that are more expensive to maintain than they would be to just go ahead and replace. I know that's a longer list than we would like it to be, not only because there are our facilities, but also because our workers, our city workers live in those, excuse me, work in those facilities, and we want to make sure those are top-notch. When we're thinking of economic development, as I mentioned, some of the other things, whether it be the port or others, but there's also this component when I go to, for example, Rosedale. Rosedale hosts the Conjunto Festival. 45,000 people come into that festival like every single year. and yet there's not proper parking. I welcome understanding how we might be, and I don't want to move it from Rosedale, that is not the headline, but understanding how we invest in that infrastructure that has significant economic returns for our community. How we prioritize a project like that in light of hosting this very unique cultural event, but also tourist event is something that I'd welcome your help factoring into our analysis and other projects, other public facilities that may fall into that. On the home ownership piece, I want to make sure that we're We're trying to solve or thinking about this the same way. I certainly can appreciate helping people enter home ownership. I think what I'm more concerned with, because ultimately what we're talking about is people building wealth. Home equity. And so if we're thinking more about how many more people can we help build wealth, how many more people can we help build home equity, we might be looking at a different solution than single-family homes on large lots. To my colleague's point about are we looking at more multifamily solutions, smaller units, et cetera. So an analysis of... how many people are we putting in a single-family home versus how many more people could we help if we're thinking about helping people generate equity and wealth, leads potentially to different solutions. Veronica, if you'd like to say something to that.

Sure. Our solicitations are usually very open to different types of housing. What we tend to get back is a standard single-family home on a large lot. Some of the homeownership funds did go to converting a mobile home park to collect community land ownership, community ownership. And then in the home rehab category, we also use some of the funds to incentivize community land trust. So we can be creative with the funds. That's just kind of more traditionally the largest percentage of the housing that we built with the homeownership.

Thank you.

But to be clear, please take back for your team maybe another approach that helps us understand if we were focused on helping more people achieve equity, home equity, would we look at different solutions, different requests from the community in terms of investment opportunities? Okay.

Mayor, just a quick follow-up question. So what you're talking about is in order to potentially increase someone's opportunity for home equity, are you saying that for us to look at potentially doing less rental and more ownership models? say that last part again well let less less rental and more ownership models right because we do that the current the first housing bond did a mix right because it was our first time right part of what part of what the second time around is narrowing down on on a focus and and and are you are you asking us to make sure we look at maybe

I'm not necessarily looking for a different mix, but I'm saying when we are looking at home ownership, that we're thinking more not necessarily about how many people can purchase a single-family home on a large lot, but how many more people, home ownership, with the end goal being home equity. Because we want people to build wealth. My goal is for you not to mow a yard. My goal is for you to have equity. You can tell how I feel about mowing yards, by the way. I would appreciate, I think we all appreciate that things are just more expensive than they were in 2022, but all those below-the-line projects, if you could refresh the estimates on those, because those, frankly, you've all put a lot of thought and analysis into already. I would imagine there's probably still community interest in those. Where those fare, based on additional input as of now, I think would be helpful, but just to get us a sense of how much the costs have increased on those would be helpful. Thank you. And then lastly, I do want to make sure, well, I'll come back to that point. In terms of the election timeline, I think with the significance of these investments, we do take the time to hear from as much of our neighbors as possible. And given that more of them, as with everything, they're paying more attention in November than they are in May. which lends itself to additional input and feedback and potentially participation from them. So I would still support a November election. I know that's different than many of my colleagues. I think you've got a number of do-outs. Thank you again for all the hard work that went into that. Eric, we look forward to hearing in August what will be the variable tax rate so we can determine what makes the most sense for our community. Okay. All right. Second presentation.

Yes, ma'am. Just thank you for that conversation on the first topic. I know these are these are large, large issues that that you're wrestling with. And we appreciate the conversation. We got a lot out of this conversation today. So the second presentation, Mayor and Council is on A briefing on our long-term shelter and housing framework for our community homeless response system. Many of you remember that we created the Homeless Services and Strategy Department in this year's budget, and one of the main purposes was to reorganize.

One second, Eric. We're going to wait to get Quorum back. Two, three, four, five. Okay. We'll recess then for a 10-minute break.

Eric over to you.

Thank you, Mayor. So the second presentation is a update from Mark Carmona on our newly created homeless services and strategy department that we created this year. And what Mark is going to lay out part of one of the major tasks that he had this year was to help identify and set a framework for our long term shelter and housing as it relates to our homeless response system. So a lot of good work. This is kind of the initial presentation and I'll turn it over to Mark to you'll see a lot of commonalities. I'm glad we had the both the bond conversation and this presentation on the same day because there is some overlap as it relates to our housing bond. Mark.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor, Council. My name is Mark Carmona, chief housing officer and director of the Department of Homeless Services and Strategy. When the department was created, the primary charge from the city manager was to create a shelter and housing framework as a proactive response to meeting the needs of the unhoused. Our department wants to think close to home. the HUD-designated Continuum of Care Lead Agency, the Homeless Management Information System, the HMIS team at Haven for Hope, our nonprofit agency partners, some that are in the audience today, and our fellow city departments, particularly Human Services, Metro Health, Neighborhood and Housing Services, and Integrated Community Safety. Each of these partners contributed by providing data and improving the resulting framework. The purpose in this framework really is how do we build out something that's comprehensive, balanced, and coordinated to create a meaningful reduction in homelessness in San Antonio? We are, just as some process touch points, we are building off of six recommendations. So back in 2020 to 2025, There was a homeless strategic plan that was in place that was developed and implemented under the leadership of the Department of Human Services. There were six recommendations that came out of that plan. It was implementing a single collective impact leadership group for the community, which was created then the homeless huddle and our close to homes homeless strategic plan advisory board. It was increasing investment in community-based housing and service options. Our housing bond, which was discussed today, built out those units in the capacity for permanent supportive housing. It was increasing capacity effectiveness of outreach. At the beginning of this plan, there was probably system-wide only about five outreach workers across the whole community. Through the city's investment, but through investment of partners in the homeless response system, there are now 39 outreach workers in the system. We have three clinicians as part of our outreach team, and partner agencies have also built capacity in the clinical space. It was the fourth thing was calling upon a an analysis to identify high utilizers Within of people that are experiencing homelessness the city worked with Strack to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of permanent supportive housing for high utilizers and we also developed a community court with the DA's office Municipal Court and Community Court 15 We wanted to detail prioritization policies and targeted interventions to effectively connect and unhoused people to stable housing and the first start in that was the creation and establishment of a low barrier shelter in a hotel. This first started in 2021 in a 45 unit hotel, expanded to 2023 to 185 unit operation funded by the city through the end of this fiscal year. And then finally, increasing focus on consumer engagement and equity. Building on the CoC's youth homelessness demonstration program and partners like Sam and others, the community has utilized lived experience throughout RFP processes, CoC governance structures, the lived experience advisory board, and on their board of directors. Another area in terms of process touch points is we want, we'll obviously presenting here today. Uh, we'll want to conduct internal and external stakeholder work sessions in the summertime. Uh, some of the system partners that we want to involved in that are our local funders, both local state and federal partner agencies, our faith based organizations, obviously our COC and our partner agencies in the audience, Strack. via bear county chambers of commerce the health care system criminal justice and a number of other systems in the community that touch homelessness so working with our coc we were really able to do a deeper dive into hmis historically the cities utilize the point in time data for policy and potential funding recommendations but for this framework we conducted a deeper dive into HMIS to identify our three focus areas. As you can imagine, there were many aspects and areas that we could have looked at, but these three focus areas really rose to the top in our analysis. The three areas are preventing homelessness, guiding people off the streets, and keeping people in housing. In FY25, we had over 1,700 people experience homelessness for the first time. If we're not addressing the prevention of homelessness, any positive gains we have in getting people into shelter, housing, and services is replaced by a new set of people coming into homelessness. This doesn't make sense to us. Guiding people off the streets. In FY25, we estimate that there were over 4,100 people that were unhoused on the street. Through engagement, through outreach and other methods, we were able to get over 2,800 of those folks into shelter or housing. that leaves us with a gap of 1327. And then finally, we had 609 people that accessed shelter in FY25, but still returned to homelessness. Why? Why did that happen? What are some of the factors that were coming into play? There were some questions that I think came up in some of our briefing sessions about what was causing folks to kind of end up in homelessness in the first place. And I think what we're learning was that People were coming in due to some external factors, evictions, housing affordability, economic factors were driving some of those elements. So we have many response system interventions that are involved in this work. And we wanted to organize these different interventions into the three focus areas. So when you consider preventing homelessness, there's three interventions I think that are important to point out. The first is short-term rental assistance. So, NHSD provides just over 1,900, they serve over 1,900 households through their rental assistance program. We have the VA and United Way and others also provide rental assistance in this space. Diversion and rapid exit provide some immediate solutions to prevent shelter entry or quickly exit. The city funds $400,000 to Close to Home to operate a diversion program in which we're trying to divert people from homelessness. And then Haven for Hope has a shallow subsidy program that has a similar function. So both of those interventions serve our current capacity of over 5,100 households annually that we serve. Although not in that capacity calculation, we do think that housing vouchers, which provide an early connection to rental subsidy, is an important strategic consideration kind of moving forward. When you look at our second focus area of guiding people off the streets, there's probably the most of the interventions fall into this bucket. Street outreach, which I've talked a little bit about, where the system-wide street outreach workers are going out on the streets, connecting with people, engaging, trying to get them into shelter, housing, and services. Site abatement is the balance that we provide in terms of being able to address health and safety needs of people living in encampments and the neighbors that are around them. At the same time, trying to engage people into higher levels of services and care. Our day center is a safe place with basic services and resources. The largest activity is operated by Corazon Ministries. Mental health treatment is really a throughput through all of these interventions. We're seeing more and more on the street and in encampments the need to access mental health treatment and substance use treatment on the spot for many, many people. And emergency shelter continues to be a viable intervention to be able to, as you're engaging people off the street, to get them into a first place or a shelter bed to start the engagement process with them. Our current system capacity in this focus area is 2,700 shelter beds, over 13 nonprofit agencies that include Haven for Hope, SAM, Crosspoint, and others in the community. Our third focus area is keeping people in housing. So this is really once people are in shelter, how do we begin to identify the next phase of housing for them? This could be interim housing, which we define as transitional housing and rapid rehousing assistance. Housing vouchers, again, come into play. The housing vouchers that assist us in the rental assistance, but as I was sharing also with the mayor, it also helps us on the development side. Project-based vouchers are critical in the development of building out permanent supportive housing. Those that were involved in the Commons at Ezekiel Trails saw where the utilization of 88 project-based vouchers from the Housing Authority helped to get that project across the finish line. And then finally, permanent supportive housing, which is long-term housing with wraparound services, but specifically looking at those folks that are disabled and unable to care for themselves long-term. I know there was a question about The breakout of the current capacity that we have in the system of 5,991 households. The breakout of that is transitional housing. We have, according to the homeless inventory count, 335 units of that available. Rapid rehousing, we have 974 units that are available. Vouchers represent the most which is thirty three thousand five hundred and eight vouchers specifically set aside for people experiencing homelessness and within that number is twelve hundred vast vouchers and then finally our permanent supportive housing capacity is at eleven seventy four and finally we put in investments for homelessness that the city provides in fiscal year 26 so you can see 4 million in preventing homelessness 19.8 million in the bucket for guiding people off the streets and 6.7 million in keeping people in housing I will say this cannot be and we're not proposing this to be a city only funded or implemented framework. The partners listed here on this screen are vital to the implementation of any proactive system improvement that we identify and implement. But there are future partners that we need to engage that are not on this slide from the business community. More from the healthcare sector, criminal justice system, faith-based communities, and others are missing. These systems are impacted by homelessness, and our goal is to bring this framework to them and determine how we can collaborate and all push in the same direction. To that end, some good news. The greater chamber locally has formed a task force on homelessness. It's a five-year commitment that looks to sunset in 2030. They're looking to raise dollars and support projects that align with the framework focus, namely reducing unsheltered homelessness, decreasing first-time homelessness, improving safety and well-being of homelessness experiencing mental illness and addiction, and increasing affordable housing and permanent supportive housing units. Critical functions. And we hope that this sets the pace for other systems that want to get involved as investors. So when we consider the first focus area preventing homelessness, we already identified what the gap is in terms of the number of people coming into the system. We also think that it's essential to consider some upstream strategies as we look at this. What are clear pathways that we're connecting people that are coming in for rental assistance in this area to affordable housing? I mean, we would need to do further analysis, but I think from my own look, I can see where the city's investment in affordable housing, specifically in deeper levels of affordable housing, deeper affordability has made the market available for people to be able to access some of what they need in the housing space. But how do we continue to build on that? Behavioral health, I think we're seeing more and more day in and day out a clear path in the behavioral health space. I want to thank Jesse Higgins, our chief mental health officer, who has gone out with our encampment teams and our outreach teams to better understand what we're dealing with out there and is beginning to identify some partnerships within the city and then externally that we can start to build on. We have to look at childcare and early childhood education as an upstream strategy as well as workforce development. We think it's important to standardize case management across the provider network so that the process is as seamless as possible for someone that's coming in to receive service from us. And then finally, exploring donor advised funds as an ongoing source of rental assistance. This is something we became aware of that's happening in other parts of the country. where you would explore a public-private philanthropic partnership to expand access to tenant-based housing assistance for residents who are both cost burdened and housing unstable. Guiding people off the streets, we identified the 1327 unsheltered numbers that are still on the streets today. When you looked at our basically, we have a bed turnover rate of about 2.4, 2.5 a year, meaning that a bed turns over and serves 2.4, 2.5 people in a year. So using that calculation, we estimate the gap in the emergency shelter space to be 550 beds. During the winter storm, we had 474 people that came out on the street or from an encampment into a shelter. That tells us that there is a growing number of people that need day center services. Right now, the day center that Corazon operates is at about 300. I know that they're working on a facility to increase the capacity, but we wanted to identify that as a gap. Hopefully you understand that we have a clear gap in behavioral health connections, both in the outreach area and the abatements areas. We're also looking at enhanced, we're in conversations now with TxDOT on enhanced coordination around abatements and looking at some of the strategies that we have in place. I think the strategies part of this probably is the most area that we're interested in initially. Part of our strategies needs to consider encampment decommissioning with a focus. I know that District 2 has a CCR that was implemented while a councilman was on parental leave. but we have looked at that closely, but we think models from Houston and models from Oklahoma City can give us some ideas. But the reality is to run through that process of decommissioning, to have that focus will require additional resource in shelter beds, in housing, in treatment services, but also what some of the deterrents are that can be put in place, but that has to be done together. We think outreach restructuring to maximize connection to mental health services makes sense to us. When you consider the three clinicians we currently have on our team, how are we better utilizing that? When I first started at this department, I met with each one of the teams out of cloud black. And, um, that's this team really said we're not maximized. We're not utilizing the clinicians we have in the best way possible. Um, I would say. How can we also better utilize the entire breadth of outreach capacity we have in the whole system? How can we be more strategic when you consider the number of recurring abatements that go on within a year? Can that be a target point for us to begin to look at utilizing our resources? And we would need more outreach capacity in those strategic areas to be able to do that. How do we begin to do that? And I think that's one of the things that we want to talk more about, but I'm interested in getting feedback from you all. Workforce development connection, not only with Ready to Work, but the establishment of a day work program, also part of the CCR. We looked at the Denver Day Work Program. We've looked at a few others in Austin and Albuquerque. But my own experience at my time at Haven for Hope, told me, helped me understand that for people that have been chronically homeless for a while that are now in shelter, that a day work program could be a viable option for them as they are just considering employment again and the need for income before maybe that they would be ready for something like ready to work. I could see ready to work being more effective on the prevention side because it's that people that are coming into the system the first time may have just lost a job. I think would be better qualified to want to connect with ready to work or maybe even be more interested we need to consider consider leveraging city bond programs and we just had that that conversation around transitional housing shelter capacity and permanent supportive housing neighborhood NHSD hosted bond stakeholder sessions last summer and the need for transitional bridge and shelter capacity came up We support the development of a jail diversion center and in light of what's happened recently at Laurel Ridge, we definitely support the need for increasing capacity for psychiatric hospital beds. This is a big hit for us in the community. Keeping people in housing, we talked about the 609 folks returning to homelessness. We also anticipate that there's an additional 866 that are currently unsheltered, part of that 1327 that need housing. So we're showing a gap of 728 units of interim housing that's both transitional and rapid. More vouchers, specifically 283 vouchers that are available, that could be available and we would utilize. and then 464 permanent supportive housing units this number aligns well with the SHIP which still shows us with the need for 500 in the community so I liked seeing that our analysis suffered surfaced a similar number strategies into this end is how do we again maximize future city bonds but we want to actively partner with our housing authorities on the voucher side look at creative funding tools Like we did in permanent supportive housing, utilizing project-based vouchers, LIHTC, equity. Are there other tools that we could utilize creatively to build out the capacity that we need in some of these other areas, especially if bond dollars are gonna be used? I'm thinking of Veronica's comment of, for every bond dollar, we were able to leverage seven. How can we do something similar in this space? And again, we think the exploration of donor-advised funds makes sense for us. In summary, our framework identifies three areas we're focused. Preventing homelessness, guiding people off the streets, keeping people in housing. We show you our capacity and we show you what our gap is. So the next step for us is we want to implement any feedback we get from the B session today. We want to facilitate these work sessions in the summertime with the partners that I talked about earlier and some that are listed on the screen here. And then we would come back in August for a final framework plan that I would present as part of my budget presentation in August. That's my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mark. Appreciate the presentation. Let me also just thank you for the ride along that for me was very helpful to not only see, unfortunately, an abatement taking place in real time, but then to be able to sit down with one of your mental health professionals and understanding just what a critical resource they are and how much more help they need. That was helpful for me in thinking about what your department needs to look like and frankly be protected from any funding cuts in light of how much you already do with so little. If I may, this is a really helpful snapshot in time and I think it is helpful that we just had the bond discussion so we can take a longer time horizon outlook on this. So what would help me and maybe also some of my colleagues is, What are some of the planning assumptions that you have? What do you anticipate the population looking like, for example, at the end of 2032, 2031, so that we can think about that in the context of our bond deliberations? Help us know where you think this demand is going to go so we can account for that. And I see Katie in the back who has shared this stat with me that is like impressed in my head, which is $100 increase in the median rent in our community leads to a 9% increase in the unhoused population. Is that still accurate, Katie or Mark? What it does is speak to the fragility in our community.

So thank you, yes, we love that statistic too, because it really paints a picture. That was a national statistic, so we can check and see where we are now. But that's part of our partnership, is that we're working right now on a five-year strategy with some objectives and key results that we'll be monitoring. And so the gaps analysis that's been done is a foundation for that, but we still have some predictive analysis that we're doing. And so at the State of Homelessness in August, we'll do kind of a five-year reflection what things will look like if we don't take action and set ourselves up for launching a five-year strategy in partnership with the city and other partners.

Great, that'll be helpful. So it sounds like we'll have that to inform our bond deliberations, thank you. And Mark, you hit it on the head with, unfortunately, some of the loss in critical resources in our community, whether you're talking about Nix or Laurel Ridge, as well as the federal changes that are allowing for more folks to become unhoused. It's really important that we're taking a longer look at this issue. What would be helpful, and the stat that I appreciate from our pre-brief, and you shared it here again, is one bed serves 2.4 people a year. Is that an average statistic? Excuse me, is that a statistic that we see in other communities? Are we on the lower end? Are we on the higher end? Help us understand that statistic.

I think we're probably in the middle range. And so I think we'll go back and we'll evaluate that. I got that feedback from you in terms of how do we raise that from 2.4 say to 5 right I think some of that is in shelter operation itself obviously if there's ample amount of housing and supportive services that are available people could move through the shelter system faster but we will do that analysis

Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, and I wanted to, one, help folks understand, one, what the stat is, but if we wanted to move that metric, what does it mean in terms of how much more housing we need for people to go into, and what are the other services that are required to get them into that bed in the first place? So, you know, what assumptions you need, and I get it's not going to be perfect, but if we wanted that to be five, right, five people a year, what helps us get there? Thank you for that. I think as we think about this and related also to our previous conversation, as much other money that we can tap into, I think is super helpful. So your gap analysis of the vouchers that we need today, appreciate that. Do we have an understanding of how many of those vouchers would help veterans in particular? And I say that having not only gone to the Pavement for Hope, but also for the hotel downtown, understanding a large percentage of those folks are veterans. But then they can also then easily tap into other resources, right? So when we're thinking about the voucher gap, how much of that could be is a VASH, somebody could qualify for a VASH voucher or something else. So what it does is lend itself to a more targeted approach in how we increase our supply of vouchers in the community. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Well, what I can say, Mayor, is that I was struck by your comment to me when we went on the ride-along of how the city of San Jose, I think, has 200 more vouchers than we do half our size. When we looked into it a little bit more, I think what we learned specifically on the VASH side was that, you know, the VA locally would have to approve this, but if they allocated more VASH vouchers without case management, we would, working with organizations like Endeavors and NVOP, could provide the case management here locally. So that's a strategy for us to really pursue to see. I'm more interested in getting the voucher. Because what we're finding, especially in the homelessness side, is that if we have a homeless veteran that has a VASH voucher, we don't have trouble finding them housing. And usually it's housing where they want to live, right? Not to go there. But I'm just simply saying, how do we get the resource here? And then how do we leverage local case management resources to be able to carry that out?

Yeah, I appreciate that. I know Councilman Mesa Gonzalez has talked about the importance of that as well. So certainly appreciate anything we can do to get more vouchers in the community. You also, I appreciated your comments during our pre-brief in case it's helpful for others as well. The other community that really needs a targeted approach are our foster kids, right? So can you help me understand what the current approach is, what the strategy looks like, how we might be able to think about that given the unique needs of that community and their over-representation in our unhoused

Well, I think a couple things come to mind. DHS hosted, I think it was maybe a year and a half ago, I'm looking at Patrick, who hosted it, kind of a larger conversation about needs of youth What grew out of that was a specific focus on foster care that then was picked up by the Housing Trust, ULI, and some others in a charrette that brought in housing developers, foster care youth themselves, and agencies. And I think that's resulted in the Housing Trust having a project now that's going to be able to provide housing. and some other initiatives that are underway right now. I think we're learning a lot in terms of the services that are provided in the community. It's a growing need. We have an opportunity through, and I know it's called FYI and I think it's fostering youth towards independence, but those vouchers are available. We recently um was in a conversation with the statewide director around this so I think that there's some system intervention leverage opportunities around this specific population it's growing it's in its importance at the federal level and this administration has a real specific focus on foster care youth so I think those things line up um in in our favor to help us leverage what investment we're putting locally to get more

Okay. I'll specifically be looking at that in your briefing, your budget briefing, your targeted approach for foster kids, for veterans, and then for seniors. When I was at Haven for Hope, I asked them what was the difference between the population they serve today and the population they served five years ago. And they said this population is older and they have more mental health needs. So I appreciate your focus on that. And of course, ask for resources associated with it. One of the things I also asked Mark to provide is a better picture of the true fragility in our community. We know how many folks are unhoused. We know how many folks are at Haven for Hope and some of these other providers. But also understanding how many people are living in the hotels by week or by month. That gives us a really good idea of where we are potentially likely to see unhoused folks or those entering the unhoused community. As much, Mark, as you can help us figure out what that population looks like and recognizing that those folks are already paying quite a bit for that housing. There is the exception that folks that are living in those hotels, if they stay there for 30 days or longer, they don't have to pay the visitor tax. I want to make sure that we have a campaign that helps people ensure that they should and they know about that exemption and they are taking advantage of it because, again, these are some of the most vulnerable in the community. So welcome, Mark, an information campaign that helps us do that. And then lastly, there's some great research done, some recent reporting. I think some of the housing huddle saw this as well from Texas Housers. The real concern that some of those with the highest rates of eviction are in fact those that are receiving public financing, tax exemptions, or operating the income-restricted facilities, which of course support our low-income renters. Are there kind of some initial thoughts around policy solutions that you all think would be helpful to ensure that those that are receiving our incentives are not also in fact some of the highest evicting in our community?

I think it starts with data and data analysis. I think it's looking at who's receiving that service, trying to break down some of those populations, understanding what that is, to see if there would be any potential policy recommendation that we would make to council or any kind of form. I think looking at some of the studies you've referenced and then cross-referencing that with what we understand our local situation to be. As a starting point, Mayor, we'd have to dig deeper into it.

Okay.

You didn't talk about it here, but it may inform some of my other comment, my comment, my colleague's comment, excuse me. The staff that you got, and I'm not trying to get into the budget conversation, but when you think about the infrastructure that you need, not only as a new department, but also as I was, again, the very helpful conversation I had with your staff in terms of mental health professionals on your team that allow them to do the kind of work that helps with either the outreach or connecting them to other resources. Can you spend maybe just a minute on that? to level set. Thank you.

Yeah, I would say, you know, when you look at the plan itself, I think, you know, the ability to really be able to access in some form or fashion, the mental health and treatment, substance use treatment services, I think is first and foremost, what does that look like? Either from a capacity side or treatment service direct side. Case management, I think, continues to be an ongoing function that's really important. And then I would say finally, Mayor, you know, in the role that the city manager laid out for us, for the student department on the strategy side. How are we able to assess, evaluate through data and policy support how we're doing? If council decides to drop a set amount of money into preventing homelessness as an example, and we push that button, what's the ripple effect that gonna be across the rest of the interventions and across the system itself? So I think those are some just initial things that we'll look at when we have internal discussions in our budget process.

Okay, thank you. Council Member McKee-Rodriguez.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you all, everyone who participates in this system. Thank you all for everything you do. And beyond the people who came here today, I know there's a lot of folk who are on the streets right now and are participating in some way who are employed and play a role in this issue. Thank you all. I know this is very emotional, emotional, laborsome, difficult, and challenging work that feels like... it feels never ending and so i just want to extend that appreciation and gratitude verbally last year as you mentioned former council member castillo anguiano worked with my team to file a council consideration request calling for implementation of a day labor program similar to denver day works increased options for very low to no barrier shelter to increase housing options for houses residents who are especially ineligible for existing low barrier shelters and other housing options And then third, a cost-benefit analysis and recommendations based on the return on investment of these various strategies. So evaluating allocations to our partner agencies, rental assistance or eviction prevention, post-eviction housing assistance, and homeless prevention and diversion funds, and encampment abatements. And that ROI analysis would advise which of these strategies are getting people housed, preventing homelessness, and reducing homelessness in a way that is worth our investments so that we may prioritize our dollars based on data. So this was a request that was built alongside outreach workers, including city employees and partner agencies who are doing work alongside our houseless community, including Leo's own experience with the Thrive Youth Center. So I would request that the information requested in the CCR be heard and presented at a B session prior to our budget discussions, especially since... That was such an interesting sound. Especially since it was filed eight months ago. And I appreciate some of that was just shared here today. I am happy to see the day work program mentioned as a strategy in addition to increase shelter capacity through our bond program and other leverage funds. But I do want to, of course, emphasize the kinds of shelter that don't exist today, the kinds of shelter that would get people to say yes to getting off the street and getting housed and to accept services. And I think the last component that's missing in this request is the analysis on the return on investment. Our dollars are thin, as I just mentioned, as we've heard for the past several weeks and months. And so as we make investments, the spirit of this CCR was to have clear data to inform the actions and strategies that we actively pursue and why, using the encampment sweeps and abatements as an example. are we seeing people accept services as a result of these abatements or is it something else that's happening are we seeing people magically find housing because they've been told that they you know can't be at this campsite and their belongings are thrown away and they're separated from their animal is there something is there value to the encampment abatement that i'm not seeing and i i would probably, I hypothesize the answer is no, which is why I support the move towards a new strategy, which is the decommissioning. Would you please describe that strategy for us?

So when we think about decommissioning, I think, Councilman, I think I'll just reference the Houston model. And so looking at a housing surge, they really look at first, well, it's a two-to-three-month process where they're first engaging with a number of different outreach workers, which hints my comments around strategic utilization of the resource system-wide. Then based off of that, they have a housing surge where they identify housing for folks that are encampments because you will have, I don't have an exact percentage, but I think a good percentage of people that are in encampments today that would say yes to housing if it was made available to them. And then I think the final piece of it would be the ability to access and utilize the mental health and substance use treatment services that are available just to be able to get people from that situation. But a lot of this, I think, makes sense to me on the front end with engagement because you won't – Unless you're working that encampment on a regular basis, you have to build out some of those relationships. And I think doing that in a systematic way seems to make sense. So those are some of the elements that are in that model. It's a different way of doing business. It's a different way of approaching encampments. But I think if we're looking at decommissioning in some of these particular areas where we're spending a lot of time in encampments, it makes sense to me.

Thank you, and I'll emphasize what I really want to see out of this new approach is that, or what I hope that we address is that currently we spend millions of dollars on encampment sweeps. And what we see happen is the folk go out there, they clear the encampment, two hours later it's back. And so we're spending this money and we're not seeing any return on investment. All we're doing is eroding trust, preventing... They see city employees coming and they immediately do not trust them. And so how do we make the job of our outreach workers a little bit easier? How do we make it more likely that someone is going to see a city emblem and say, okay, I can get help here versus, hey, this is an entity that has routinely caused harm, made it harder for me to live. I have to... bear the environment and whether that means being rained on or it means living in drainage channels they're experiencing trauma and over and over and over again and so this is an approach that I have repeatedly asked us to reconsider as a council and as a body and as an organization and hopefully this is a step in that direction thank you

Mayor, just one. So, Councilman, the broader plan that Mark laid out is going to require, and it's more than just the city, an investment in the filling of gaps that we do not have. And so those folks that we inconvenience, um in terms of an encampment um we need we need a place for them to go and and we have a gap in our community right now and so the struggle here is that um and and you all hear it too we'll hear it during the budget i'm sure we have for the last two or three is that is that there is a part of part of this plan is making sure the public understands the plan as well like what mark just laid out to all of you because there's a fair amount of the public that just wants to call 311 to eliminate an encampment, right? And so making sure that what Mark's laying out to you all is communicated to the rest of the community and the business community about how we solve is gonna be key because we are dealing with the fact that there are parts of our community that want immediate reaction, right? They want something done in as quick as you can order it online. and I think we'll get there, but I think it's a constant balance, and obviously there are some components of this in terms of space and additional housing and facilities and support that we're gonna need, and I don't think it's gonna happen overnight, but I want you to know that we're cognizant of that. Your ask of that hasn't fallen on deaf ears, but I feel like we're dealing with two ends of the stick here.

I hear you. So I've heard this evolution at my budget town hall meetings over the past four or five years, however long it's been at this point. And folk who at one point were saying, we need more abatements, we need to just clear them out, they are now seeing, hey, you do these abatements and nothing is changing. And so I imagine this is a feeling and this is a sentiment that is growing and evolving. And it just takes council members not caving and not saying, hey, You know, if you want an abatement, we'll give it to you no matter how ineffective it is. It takes saying, hey, we can do this, or those millions of dollars that we're spending to do these routine abatements that aren't resulting in any sort of positive, like no positive change, we can instead invest those dollars in the outreach that we're doing so that they will accept services so that the encampments that you see aren't so large in the next couple of months, they're not so large in the next couple of years, and eventually they're gone. long-term. That needs to be the communication that we're having with our residents, especially at these budget town halls.

Okay.

And I also just want to flag what you've just mentioned again, what we need and want to continue the conversation that we were having last week about cuts to our budgets and overspending. This is an area we are not spending enough on, and I don't think we can at this point. And so we're going to need as much advocacy as possible at our upcoming budget work sessions, at the community meetings, and in real honest conversation with us. These are areas that we cannot afford to cut. These human services, the homeless outreach, all of these areas, we can't afford to cut them, and we can't afford to not grow them. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Alderete-Capito.

Thank you, Mark, for the presentation. And, you know, I will just say this. You know, during our briefing, was that yesterday? The day before? You know, I left feeling extremely confident in the plan, knowing that you and your team are doing such great work. Katie, you have continuously done great work. And so I feel that it just felt more focused, more targeted. So I'm looking forward to seeing It play out. I think what you were talking about strategic staffing of where we're seeing Issues arise is important and and I hear councilman McHugh Rodriguez where you know And I've often said cleaning homelessness homeless encampments is a little bit like marbles in a box, you know We move it on one side of Bandera Road. It goes to the other there are pros and cons. I mean, you know, I definitely think A pro that we have to contend with is that you know if we don't do anything about the encampment they become permanent fixtures which has its own set of issues but also to I will say the resident feedback when we do clean up the encampments is. very much a message of gratitude. Thank you, because this encampment was getting unruly and this and that, and people were doing all sorts of stuff there and stuff. So I don't necessarily think it's a silver bullet answer, but we have to outweigh the pros and cons. That's all I'll say on that. I really appreciated about the plan that we're pulling in partners. Homelessness doesn't fall on the city alone. We've had business community tell us for a long time and our economic development partners it's hard to attract businesses here when when we have so many homeless in a certain area or you know and and and so I do think that bringing them their innovative style of thinking and just bringing them along tying arms looping arms with them and and marching for Ford on a goal together is helpful they they can play extremely important parts in the solution. So I am really thankful that you all did that. And I will offer for me, and just like I mentioned to you already, if there's ways that you all need to leverage me or my team to create those partnerships, happy to. I'm happy to be a resource there. One of the things I know was talked about earlier was our foster youth and I know that I've been on this issue for a while now because having served on the Bexar County Child Welfare Board you see that when our foster care kids quote unquote graduate from the foster care system you know they've been focusing their whole life on surviving not on thriving right so they don't necessarily know how to go get that ID they don't know how to get the apartment the job but life skills and so I know the Through Project is a wonderful nonprofit in District 7 that helps them get those life skills and helps them transition, but I definitely agree that that is a place to almost stop the bleed. right and so I'm looking forward to seeing us continue to stay targeted in that area and and making strides there obviously with Laurel Ridge closing we we also need to figure out a way a coordinated way to address this because we will see the impacts in our community and our residents. One of the things I know that an area that we can also help with is we discussed with you about rental assistance. My team often sees the same folks coming back to our council offices, and I'm sure all of us see this with our council offices, the same folks coming back for rental assistance again and again. So I know that we offer the suggestion of looking how we can improve follow-up case management to prevent reoccurrence, maybe do a more comprehensive review if they've come back to our office or equipping our council offices when we are seeing the resident come back again and again on how we help them find a more sustainable answer rather than returning back to us. I know that we had a great discussion on leveraging our faith community. City Church, which is a church in District 7, is definitely on board with being a partner and they are an amazing partner. And so, however, give us our marching orders to connect them with you or build out that partner list. I think all of us probably have churches or organizations in each of our respective districts that would want to help being a willing and long-term committed partner. Let's see. You know, I definitely know in looking obviously at the funds going to this, this continues to be high usage of our taxpayer dollars. And while I agree homelessness needs funding so that way we can continue to do the right things, I think one of the things that stuck out to me the most after our conversation yesterday was how effectively you all plan on using these dollars. So I was really thankful on that. Yes, it's a big dollar amount, but what we had seen in the past couple years is us investing more and more, but the problem getting worse. And I'm not saying that this is going to be the silver bullet plan for the problem to stop getting worse, but we have to try new things. And so I'm looking forward to seeing how we kind of chip away at this together. Those are all my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilwoman Viagran.

Thank you. I'll start with slide four. What I don't see here is any breakdown between men and women in any of the slides. Do we have that? Okay, I need that because telling me 609 people access shelter but return to homelessness, my questions are how many were foster youth, veterans, seniors? How many are suffering from mental health? addiction issues, were justice involved, and then of course, men versus women on terms of that. So I appreciate how succinct you wanted to be in the presentation. All of these guides are good, preventing homelessness, guiding people off the streets, keeping people in housing, and I am making, moves to kind of help with that in terms of budgeting and prioritizing how what we prioritize in our budget and how we do that but in order to do that I need to know who my audience is if they're men if they're women I know in my neighborhoods who the audience are because my neighbors tell me the the person with the addiction the person with the mental health issues the woman that you know just you know got is getting abused by her husband so she's constantly on the street we know those stories but when we get them placed in in these numbers I need to know how I can help them Katie I want to thank you for being here I know you were tri chair of our last bond committee when it came to housing to make sure we stayed on not tri chair you were the chair for housing committee making sure we stayed on track and we did that as y'all know I Permanent supportive housing, I think, is the key. Pete hears that from me all the time. So does Mark and the rest of the community members at San Antonio Housing Trust. But I know that trying to take that out into the community is difficult. The other thing is I do agree with Councilman McKee-Rodriguez that over these five years regarding abatement, it has been an education process with our communities and neighbors in saying, Okay, is it is there criminal activity going on? Is it not criminal activity? How often are there coming back? Is it new people coming back to that location because it's it's you know, well wooded and and guided so there they are engaging with the community members and the partners to learn more about What is happening out on the streets on how to best describe the situation the one thing of my community in terms of abatements what we try and get on top of is the living in the ditches. We know the danger that can cause with the flooding. So that's one where it's a non-negotiable. The ones behind the park or in the wooded area, and as y'all know, on the south and the southeast side, we have some of those. That abatement, we're like, let's send in the counselors, let's have them have the conversation. Who from the neighborhood is giving somebody money who's walking into the neighborhood in and asking for dollars because they're gonna state we tell them they're gonna stay there as long as you keep on giving the money to you to move along and step they're not they're not gonna move along if you give them that twenty bucks so I think that's important the other thing I wanted to you talk about in this goes back Veronica and and mark a little to you what we talked about the voucher system identifying how many households we have how many units we have because it looks like we're going to move forward in that but really identifying what hotels that are working as low barrier shelters need to stop moving is hotels. It's not, okay, you can't charge them visitor tax because, no, if you're not going to, if you are going, and I'm thinking about my motels and hotels down, down Presa, and Roosevelt, if you are gonna function like that, you are no longer a hotel. And you need to come into guidelines and you need to function as a housing possibilities, a very expensive one if you're charging by the week, or a low barrier shelter. that's how we need to designate so i don't know if we need to go and eric will talk to jeff about this and uh to my council colleagues if we know that if we need to go to the state and get a designation for that or if we need to create an ordinance here to say if you are renting out a space for more than 30 days for more than six weeks Because you know that's when they get, and I have a lot of veterans that get their stipend and are not applying for the vouchers. But they're getting their disability. and you're letting them stay and then just charging them extra that last two weeks, then you are no longer functioning as a hotel. You are functioning as a low barrier shelter or as an apartment complex, and that comes out of a new code, and we have different requirements for you. So I think we really need to look at that as we do that, and then look at our partners, and there are so many out there, and I appreciate all of you that are here, and I know Haven for Hope is in one location, but if they have... counselors and community members that can identify these locations that are functioning as shelters, as low barrier shelters or as a type of housing, that we can get out there and get them the wraparound services that they need or the help that they need so that we can get them on a path to more affordable housing and get them on that day labor program. I think we need to do that. Because what we're seeing is people work around the system, motel operators, people work around the system and not being held to the standards that the government basically wants them to hold to the standards that they're going to get. the help that they need. So I really want to look as we look into that and we talk about guiding people off the streets is sometimes guiding people off the streets is guiding them out of those motels that are basically exploiting them. And y'all know I can tell all sorts of tales about the ones on the south side. As we move forward, I think we need to, as council members, do our part and make sure that we are talking to our community about prioritizing their needs, their budgets, where they spend their money is what they value, and making sure that they understand that they need to spend it on the necessities as they move forward. The one thing we talk about in terms of things that lead people to homelessness They're like, it's that accident. It's that loss of a job. It's maybe your car going out so you can't get there. But what we're not talking about and what I plan to talk about with my community members is it's those big changes. It's that child that you always wanted to send to college that is now in college, but you're not, it's hard for you to afford it. It's about that multi-generational home where you were counting on grandma's, you know, social security, and we lost grandma, and now we don't, So we don't have her there, so she can't watch the kids. My childcare did that. We paid for her funeral expenses, the debt she went into. There are just a lot of things that are happening within my community and within a multi-generational home that we need to sit down and talk with them there, that if we don't help them with that and get them connected to the partners, that that could lead to first-time homelessness. I'm glad that you guys are recognizing that there's those things. We always used to say it was one illness away or one job loss away, but now I'm seeing in a multi-generational home, It's a lot more things. It's that kid that got accepted into UT, but the scholarship doesn't quite cover all of it. It's the parent that had to go into a nursing home facility or pass. It is a lot more things than that. So as we move forward, I want to take those kind of upstream issues into consideration and see how we as council members can work and help navigate our community the best. This isn't an easy fix. I know that there's gonna be people saying that this isn't working and this isn't working, but my challenge is find me a solution. Find something that works because this is a reality for a majority of people within this nation and in this city. Thank you.

Councilman White.

Thank you, Mayor. Mark, thanks for the presentation. And I agree with Councilwoman, I'll just give you two, I like the framework. I like the framework, the three pillars. This is good. You know, how we fill the gaps, how we pay for some of this, I think is a real question. And so when we look at the homeless, our homeless program overall, I think the first thing we have to do, and really with any program that we have here, is what does success look like? Right? And to me, we're never gonna eliminate all homelessness, but to get homelessness to as low a percentage of our population as possible should be the goal. So preventing homelessness, number one, of course. And then number two, if somebody does become homeless, success to me is if we have an able-bodied human being, how quickly can we get them back into being a productive member of society? I mean, to me, that's what successful look like. Now, there's gonna be folks that have some sort of issue of some type where maybe they never can be that, and certainly we need to have a safety net for those folks and the permanent supportive housing and things that have been talked about earlier. think are great there but again what is success to me is if somebody falls into homelessness if we can't prevent it right we start there and then they fall into homelessness how do we get them back into society as quickly as possible and so I think your your framework here is Speaks to a lot of that You know, I just my quick math is about 30 million dollars or so it looks like in indirect spending here in 2026 for the response system But there's there's there's gaps as we've talked about so 550 beds and 1475 housing units and I'm looking at I guess slide 10 so to close the gaps the plan is what we're going to engage our partners ask members of the community and really find a way to close the gap there

So really, thank you for the question, Councilman.

And just to make comment, we're operating under the auspice of what would success look like. So I think that's a motivator for us. But who operates in what lane, I think, is a first step for us. So as we've talked to the chambers, their focus is on preventing homelessness. Their focus is on... helping people that are needing mental health treatment. So if those are some lanes they want to take and they want to put dollars into that, that can be outside of our system. We just needed everybody pushing in the same direction.

And I should mention, since you brought up the business community folks, jobs, right? Creating jobs needs to be a part of this plan.

And I think, Councilman, that's why we talked some about the day work program, which we contemplated that came from the CCR. People have to build their confidence and momentum in working to then be able to contemplate ready to work as a next step for them. But yes, definitely. What does that look like for people? When you look at Haven's study of 15 years, you know uh... providing services to over fifty thousand people sixty five percent of those folks councilman that went through got what they needed one time and never showed up in the homeless response system again so what is that service mix look like and i want to bet that some of that's going to be employment you know access to employment services and other things but we need to better understand what that is to make sure we're taking what we're learning from that and building across the system if we need us of that kind of service intervention to help prevent homelessness, then we should be looking at doing that. Yeah.

On slide, maybe it was four, 1327 unsheltered individuals who were engaged but didn't move into a shelter. How many were turned away because of capacity issues versus how many are just declining services?

We'd have to find out, Councilman. So that's something we can follow up on. We just know that we engaged over 4,100. Yep. 2,800 of that number we did engage into shelter and housing and left a net of 1,327. Now, whether that was a capacity issue, which I don't think on the shelter side, or what the issues were, we'd have to find that out.

All right, well, that would be some good information. And, you know, I'll take this moment to talk about, you know, I disagree a little bit with Councilman McKee-Rodriguez on the encampment abatements. I think that program, which was started a couple of years ago, I think now really does serve a purpose. I think, you know, we get calls to our office all the time about these encampments set up. near neighborhoods and things, and people are worried about safety and other issues, and so I think the encampment cleanup process actually has worked really well. Yes, it's true that oftentimes, or at least some of the time, the folks come back and it has to be done again, But I do support that process. What I'm told, though, is a lot of times, to the point I just made about are people declining services, they are offered, you know, to go to the low barrier shelter or whatever it may be when they're out there in the abatement process, but people are just saying no, right?

Well, I think it's all really about engagement. I think the more that you can have consistent engagement with someone, I think the more that you can build up a trusting relationship with that person in the encampment, the better off you're gonna be, the higher probability you would have that somebody would want to go to shelter. And to the councilman's point, I think we have to contemplate things like no barrier shelter, especially for the chronic homeless that have had situations over and over again that's caused them to fall back into homelessness. I think there has to be some different kind of options for that. But I mean, I've gone out on a few encampment abatements. And for some, it's I'm waiting on services. For others, it's I'm waiting for this. We would just have to find out what that 1327 breakout looks like.

You say no barrier shelters. So what would you say? I hear from people in my district all the time when they look at the low barrier shelter, and I asked this question last year. The folks that go to the low barrier shelter, they're not required to receive any wraparound services. Is that still the case, I'm assuming?

I'm not aware of that. I think that they are receiving services at the shelter.

Well, if they want to. Again, and I could be wrong now, but my understanding is the folks at the low barrier hotel downtown were not required to receive any additional services. And so I had people, and so whether you're talking about that or a no barrier shelter, where I guess they wouldn't be either, Providing housing for someone who is then not taking the opportunity to try to get better and is in this housing paid for by the public but with no attempt to help themselves, that strikes a lot of people in a negative way. So how do you speak to that?

Well, I would say when I think about no barrier, I'm not thinking about it in terms of service provision. I'm thinking about it in terms of there's no barriers for you walking in the door, right?

So will those people in a no barrier have to receive services?

Well, that's where you can begin to start to engage people is if there's no barrier for you walking in the door, you can walk in who you are with what you have on. And I'm thinking of what I see at Corazon when I go there. They operate pretty much at a no barrier level, meaning anyone can walk in that door. Okay. They start to have greater levels of success because people start trusting them from the very beginning when they walk in. That's going to be very inducive for people to want to create and say yes to services. If you walk in the door, Councilman, if I walked in the door right away, I don't know that I would want to receive services. I'm just trying to get a hot meal. I'm just trying to sleep. I'm trying to maybe take a shower and wash my clothes and make sure my dog is with me. cared for we saw this at Haven but over a period of time once people are sleeping again once they're eating again they can start to contemplate and think what's next for me what's the average length of time people stay at the the low barrier hotel right now I think it's right at a hundred days two hundred days and where is the most likely destination for somebody to go after they leave after a hundred days Transitional housing for a couple of years or rapid rehousing for a couple of years. They could go to a family member They could go to permanent supportive housing.

So there's some options for them But do we have statistics on where most folks end up after the low barrier shelter?

We have some breakout for you. We can share that with you.

Okay, that would be great If we could just follow up on those on those two points. Absolutely. That would be great. Appreciate the presentation Thank You councilman Galvan

Thank you, Marian. Thank you, Mark, for the presentation, and thank you to your entire team who does, I mean, tireless work every single day. My decision services team, particularly Christian and Krista, often work with folks in District 6 who are not only dealing with homelessness, who are concerned about homelessness, and also folks who are on the brink of homelessness, right? And it's the same issue each time, right? It's someone who just can't make the rent. It's someone who's had an emergency in their life. It's someone who... something just shifted in their life in some form, or someone who has been on the streets for a long time and is trying to find a way out. I think to Council Member Villagran's point, poverty is pervasive when folks are struggling with it. And to your point too, when we talk about the low barrier shelter component, For someone to be able to readjust back into normal life after not being able to brush their teeth every single day or the things that we do for granted, it just takes a while. It is what it is. As human beings, it takes a while for us to neurologically reset into a frame where we can think beyond what's in front of us and our very own survival needs. Especially it's of course compounded when you have additional stress on you, like the harsh effects of weather, the harsh effects of society that may not always look at you the right way, all these different things. And then of course, if there are things around drug abuse in some form, It all adds up, right? And so being able to get to that last point is critical. And so I think we have to find a way to get to more expansion of low barrier shelter here, or no barrier shelter in our city. I know it's difficult. I know folks are always going to have a bit of concern with it. But at the end of the day, if we want folks off the street, we want folks not circling in and out of the jail, going back out into the community, all costing taxpayer dollars each and every step of the way, the best thing we can do is give it that opportunity for that individual to be able to finally have that reset moment, that reset time, to be able to access those services. And you know this. But it's critical that we as city council do our best to do that. And I'm grateful for the housing bond conversation we had earlier, focusing on PSH and continuing to look at that. I know it's not the only solution there, but it's a critical component. I think those two are the major ones here. When we talk about folks who don't accept or struggle to accept services, that's part of the trust, right? Sending someone into somewhere where they aren't accepted, where they aren't able to get to that stability point. Yeah, I'll stop there. Again, I appreciate the entire department and the work that y'all do every single day. And I think a little bit to that last point is just, when I talked about this on the campaign trail a lot last year, I talked to residents across the district and all said, right, different parts of our district, Marbuck and 410, Military 90, even along... And underneath a lot of our other textile properties and highways, folks often ask just, what is the struggle here? And it was two things that I always talked about. Well, three. One, being everything we've been over. Two, being our outreach workers are extremely limited, extremely at capacity, not only for our city, but across the entire city, outside of a city services. And then three, right, it's getting the access to that service. If there's not the actual systemic back end of it, I can send as many Irish workers as possible, have as much resources that they can physically carry with them, but there's no way to get them to somewhere else. We're doing almost a disservice there. And so I'm grateful for this framework that looks at it holistically. I think I know my residents are eager to see this. It's been the number one survey response in District 6 for a long time during our budget surveys. And so I think there's just a continued focus here and interest in seeing how we can get this done, frankly. And the most compassionately possible to, I think, Councilor McHugh-Rodriguez's point, often the calls one of my staff members takes is about folks along Marbach and 410, and we have to go through, right? When the boulders were implemented there under TxDOT, it pushed people out of it for a little bit, and it was straight into the neighborhoods, and then residents had mixed results and said, well, I didn't like having them there, but now they're also nearby my family and everything, and it gets a little difficult there when there aren't services to get them out of the way into better spots, and so there is a concern of public safety now closer to me It's not a great solution to have them stay in the same spot, but there is a little bit of back and forth there. And so I appreciate the look at coordinating with TechStop. I think it's always going to come back to seeing how we can kind of create the largest systemic solutions here. And on that point, I think, don't know what the evaluation is for looking at of course housing needs to be everywhere in different forms everything of the sort are we looking at different neighborhood hubs as well for services beyond kind of coming to the downtown and looking at some of the different hotspots that we're seeing and seeing if there's ways that we can create those focal points for folks to get to yeah councilman I think we have to I think we have to and I'm just remembering the briefing I did with councilman McGee we have to also engage the faith community in the local districts we talked about this with d7 yesterday

with Councilwoman and her staff, those faith communities, those hubs probably have a lot more trust and validity with the unhoused, most of the unhoused that are in certain areas are probably areas they grew up in. And so they know that hub, they know that location, they've known the history of that location, they know that church. We have it is contemplating in the plan. The question now becomes in and we're starting to work with a group called Good Acres, which is doing a lot of work with faith communities in housing and in some other areas. But we want to build out. And this is the one thing we talked with the councilwoman about yesterday is with the church that she has, that's that they're telling us is ready to go. How do we engage them? Because the question is always What can we do? But my question back to them is always, how long are you willing to do it? Because I think that's the thing that the church has to contemplate or the hub has to contemplate is this isn't a one or two year or even three year thing. This is an extended period of time. And I think having honest conversations with them about what do they think as a mission or a charism or whatever you want to call it, whatever they want it. So yes, it's contemplated in the thought. That's great. Welcome ideas that you would have on that too.

Yeah, I think it's great. I'm glad. I'm eager to see the conversation go through later this year with the rest of the framework, the next steps there. Excited to see that's going to be a focal point there because I think it's just critical, especially when we look at the farther out parts of our district. I know, I talk about that pretty frequently. I mean, we're just further out of the downtown urban core, and so folks don't want to go all the way out there. So anyway, so grateful to see that as a part of it and open to seeing how we can braid city resources within those neighborhood hubs, whatever they may look like. whether it's within a church or it's within a city facility or whatever it may be, interested in seeing how we can kind of have our resources onsite or nearby in some form. So I think in particular when we talk about our outreach workers, and I was gonna get a bit more into that one, is thinking about, you know, one per district is difficult, it's of course, helpful for us to be able to reach out to somebody directly, and that's extremely great. But when it's District 6, which is extremely large, going from Alamo Ranch to Old Highway 90, it's just tough to try to get to each person every single day and create those relationships and all those things like that. I was wondering, I guess, with that coordination more so with the other outreach workers outside of the city of San Antonio, Is there gonna, have y'all looked at a single life system to kind of report to and to kind of conduct that kind of, not report to, but to, for folks to reach out to, to get the support they need in terms of, I think about ACS and the way, of course, it's all our own programming, right? But there's one email that we can all reach out to and they kind of filter the process to figure out how to send someone out there versus reaching out to the same person.

I think we've contemplated some of those ideas. I think it's really a question in my mind of how do we get to our homeless response system partners that have capacity and how do we begin to design it? And what do we think based on the experience with people that they're working with daily? I think it should work from the bottom up. What are they experiencing with the people that they're working with daily and how do we build out that system to be able to maximize the capacity that we have? Because, I mean, historically the city has used a geographic distribution at deployment. The question that I pose to you all is, does that continue to be effective? Or should we look at, while still meeting the needs of constituents in your district, utilize a more strategic approach? And that's what we're contemplating.

Yeah, that's great. And I'd be interested in seeing what that capacity threshold is, right? So that we can kind of unlock it for us to figure out where our investment goes. Got it. I think that'd be the most helpful to figure out, okay, if that's the threshold that we're going to get, then let's figure out how we get there. So that when someone calls 911 and 301 and non-emergency line, it goes into that system and people are able to go do that.

That's a good thought.

And then, of course. needing the rest of the system created too. Okay, well, I don't think I have too many other questions. Really appreciate everything y'all are doing. Yeah, I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Mesa-Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. You know, the homeless response partners, that slide always gets me because it's just... just a reminder right of how much of this is a team effort and it really does take a village here and so I think you could say that about a lot of city departments and the work that we do with our nonprofit community I think there's partnerships pretty much in probably every department in this city and so I think remind ourselves of that as well on council is important to know that we're not the only ones here making the decisions or ideas there's folks out there doing the work every day that we talk about up here right on the dais so I had a couple of questions on just making sure that the, what is it, the ship refresh and the shelter and housing framework Those are two different, you know, workshops happening. So where's the collaboration or is there a point person between the two?

Right. So as chief housing officer, I work in both spaces. Okay. So I guess I'm a point of contact. But like, for example, when we looked at the analysis on the need for the gap analysis on permanent supportive housing. We were working with NHSD as we were pulling together the data and then we were able to see how closely it still aligned with the need that we had in the ship itself. So from my perspective, Councilwoman, the housing and homelessness are natural. They fit. It's kind of why one of the reasons this opportunity was when it was presented was made sense to me was because of that. And so, yes, as the ship refresh goes and we look at and that's why I referenced the housing bond sessions that NHSD did last summer, because it identified those additional needs for transitional housing, bridge and shelter. And so which ties into, and unhoused has been a component of the ship from the very beginning.

Okay, thank you. And on the response system interventions, I think slide four or five, can you break down, right, those, the 19.8 million, just because we've heard about the homeless huddle and what's important, I think, in huddles is that I'm sure everybody at at the very beginning just says like, what do you do best? Who does what best? And so getting just a better idea of what partners play a role in each of those. We can break that out for you. Would be helpful just to know, right? Who does this work best or does the most of it?

Like who's in what lane?

Yeah, essentially, which I think we're all trying to ask that question right now too, right? So making sure we're in the right lanes and that helps me just better understand what partners are doing what work And just how much money, too, of the 19.8, how much of that is going to the day center? How much of that is going to the street abatement? That would be helpful.

Okay.

Just to clarify one thing, Councilwoman, that's just the city's investment? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Got it. Versus what?

Well, you mentioned the day center, so that's... Well, it's in here.

It says day center. Okay.

Yes, we will break out the thirty point five by lanes in that nineteen point eight bucket. Okay.

Awesome. Thank you And I just you know, I I think it's important that I Guess can you unpack before I make that statement the goal under the preventing homelessness? Reduce the number of new homeless individuals annually through prevention and early intervention services ensuring homelessness is rare I'm just curious what you think. Have you found that there are significant differences in terms of cost between the upstream prevention programs versus the sheltering and rehousing?

It's much more cost effective.

On the front end?

On the front end. Okay. Yeah, if you're able to catch people on the front end, you provide rental assistance, you're able to connect them to affordable housing, behavioral health treatment or childcare that's maybe covered by another system funding versus, you know, time in shelter or even the, although the expense of permanent supportive housing has shown to be very cost effective compared to everything else. Down the road. I think in any, My experience tells me in any social-serving kind of system approach, prevention is always the best cost-effective function.

I'd be open to that. We get there in how we shift dollars more towards that front end, right, to make sure that we're preventing this at all costs, right?

Councilwoman, we can go back and just look at what data we analyze to be able to kind of, and then what we can pull, excuse me, what we can pull from the, what we can pull from our data analysis and share it with you. Sorry.

It's okay. Thank you. And I also just, you know, those three focus areas, it's very clear, right, in all the strategies that public-private partnership, and I think it's important as, you know, we had our, you know, budget six plus six last week, and so it's very clear the strains that we're under, and so just making sure that our nonprofit partners, philanthropy, our business community are involved in a really strategic way, right? You mentioned earlier in the presentation that, I think it was that you said the chamber wants to... Yeah, the task force. Prevent homelessness. Well, we all want to prevent it, right? But what does that mean?

Right.

And so that's where I'm looking for like a deeper dive in, especially when folks like that come together, right? A really deeper dive in making sure that whatever dollars raised, where does that go really to move the needle on what we're trying to do here? So that's important to me. And let's think, I think that's it. On the donor advised funds, do you have any examples of that, what that looks like or other cities have used?

The one model that we've looked at is from San Francisco where they've utilized the donor advised funds and I think it really, in a lot of, Intents and purposes serves as a housing voucher in a way that where it can help on the rental assistance side in particular.

Is it on the landlord side? Or is it for the landlord to accept the voucher? Or is it on the tenant side?

I think it's structured differently, but I think it's direct assistance. It's a separate nonprofit that runs it. The city's not necessarily involved. Maybe they're identifying helping people being brought in, but you have a third party nonprofit that operates it. and gets the funds into either the landlord or the person.

Okay. I think those are all my questions for now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Munguia.

Thank you, Mayor. I would just say to some of the comments that were stated earlier, it's difficult to ask folks to get off the street and then when they get to housing say, well, you can only have housing if you're going to follow X, Y, and Z conditions. I think low barrier is certainly the way to go, and I think it doesn't do us any service to say, well, you have to have this, you have to pass this sort of test, you have to have this. So I think ensuring safety for everybody in these types of places is important, but it's difficult to say both things at the same time. So I just want to put that out there. in our response system i see you know it's about 30.5 million dollars on the i think it's slide five um does that include solid waste in sapd time that we've kind of seen in other presentations the solid waste time is an actual cost councilman is in the 19.8 bucket the sapd is an indirect cost that's separate um do we have that number

We can get the indirect costs from SAPD and fire. But the cost that solid waste has is counted as part of the 19.8.

Okay, great. Yeah, we can get those numbers.

The indirect cost is about $23 million.

$23 million.

And that includes police and fire.

that's just for police and fire yes okay not in the 30.5 it's not in the 30.5 councilman thank you um and i bring that up because i think in previous fiscal years the amount of indirect services that we were spending was far outweighing what we were actually spending in direct services so i'm glad we're kind of going to the right direction on that it's really important As far as rental assistance, I have to give a shout out to my director of constituent services, Yohani. She does a fantastic job getting people housed who sometimes are living in their car and sometimes folks are living in an apartment and they are about to be evicted and don't have anywhere to go. So I would welcome some rental assistance profiles maybe that we could see. Because I'm worried that, you know, is it a lot of folks who are maybe seniors who really do not have another opportunity to have a second income or to grow their income to what it is currently when they're still experiencing a crisis? You know, is it young mothers with children who already are employed? So I just kind of want to see what that picture looks like. And then how we're allotting it because I know it's a limited fund. And remind me, is it $5 million? Yes. And I think we do kind of a couple times a year because it is such a high demand that if we were to put the whole $5 million at the very beginning of the fiscal year, it would all be gone. Right. With no repeats, right? So I think that's a very devastating thing to understand. And so that's really good information to have. I do want to give also a shout out to the street outreach workers. They're out every single day in the community. As a staffer, I've gotten to go on so many site visits with them and see the work they do and the communication that they have with folks that SAPDs will never have or somebody Well, the suit will never have that connection, right? And as you do the intake over the summer and you talk to folks, getting their opinion is really, really important to me. And getting their unfiltered advice, right? Because they're on the street talking to people every day. And we have certain luxuries here that I think filter our input also. And so I welcome that information. And Councilman Galvan took some of my points earlier, but the mobilization of resources is something I've talked about for a long time, right? Again, we have people, Marbach and Fortan, Petrenko, 1604, they're not gonna go downtown to get services. And it was interesting, I had a conversation with a resident once, and he was complaining a lot about the homelessness of Marbach and Fortan, all these folks, homeless, out on the street. And I said, well, there's so many people here, would you want us, would it be okay with you if we put a shelter here so that you can take these folks and maybe they wouldn't be on the street and they'd be in the home off the street? And he said, well, no, that's going to attract more homeless people. And so you kind of, you know, with the general sentiment, you kind of run in circles like that. And I think we have to have better conversations with residents about what that means. But definitely, I think, you know, the faith-based places are definitely a really good way to go. And it could also avoid a controversial zoning case. by partnering with those folks. As my opinion, you wouldn't need a zoning change to do that if it's already a faith-based institution. And actually, I'd like to ask Jesse a couple questions. So Jesse, I know that they mentioned you went on some site visits. And just kind of talk to me very briefly about what are some of the mental health issues and crises that you're seeing out there? What do you see when you went out there?

Yeah, thank you so much. So good afternoon, Jesse Higgins, chief mental health officer in the health department. And first of all, what a great experience. I highly recommend you taking the time to go out. I was able to go out on the first day of an abatement where they do the assessments. And then on the next time when they go to the same group where they actually do the abatement and I do just want to talk about how our city staff is so keenly aware of sort of the meta context of what's happening. They're trying to be really trauma informed and they're trying to be really compassionate and that was across all solid waste police and our homeless services staff. But it's still really complicated and complex, right? We've got that balance of what's safe and healthy for you right this minute and and how can we get you into the right services and engage and give trust so we're seeing people um struggling to to trust the system struggling to get into a shelter or a house or a facility or whatever it is that's actually going to meet their needs and so we've got to build out the immediate need that would be substance use and mental health treatment. Sometimes we do substance use and they're going into detox or residential treatment. Sometimes it's a mental health treatment. But then we've got to build out shelter capacity that meets needs for people. We've got to build out a shelter capacity that meets the needs for community. That's a lot of times what you have in an encampment or you have on the streets. It meets the needs for autonomy. We know that that's huge in our unhoused population, but also meets the needs for actually their mental and physical health needs. And so we've got great options for that. But when we don't have enough of that, and when we don't have that that transitions into the actual transitional or permanent housing, then that's where we get people either not wanting to leave those transitional or those shelter beds or not being able to stay in the housing that they're placed in. Yeah.

And I would just add real quick, and are you seeing, you know, I'm not aware of all the different things going on, but is it like schizophrenia? Is it paranoia? Is it high anxiety? Is it maybe mental health caused by certain types of drug usage? Like what was that kind of that you saw?

Right, so it's hard to identify that within a brief meeting, right? Because drug use and organic mental illness that includes psychotic features like schizophrenia or paranoia can look very similar, right? And so that's why our clinical street outreach staff that we've got, the three that we have, if we can engage them in a way that helps actually follow the person instead of being program or site-based, which is what a lot of our services are like now, then I think we can have better outcomes in really getting to know the needs. It's hard to tell just on face value what people are dealing with. And a lot of times we assume that it is drugs and it's not necessarily.

Right. Absolutely. 100% agree. And I think, you know, doing a deeper dive on that would help us more because you heard some folks say, well, i've heard this from residents too right well you know why don't you have a jobs program why can't you pay them money to go clean or do something and i don't know how many of these folks that we're encountering are able to do that the very next day right or something to that nature so um you know further deeper analysis on on what's happening out there is important and also right if somebody had the opportunity to housing to get housing right away are they in a mental state where they could handle that responsibility too right because there's different responsibilities that come with Having your own home and so I think having that help would help us kind of see we're in the network There are gaps to do so. Thank you. Absolutely and I would say You know it being a top priority in the budgets and what we see and what also we don't see right district force home to a lot of vacant parcels that are have very very large acreage with a lot of encampments you would never see that driving it really is a crisis. I think we do need to start having real conversations as tragic as it is right, but we need to know how many folks are dying while they're homeless. We need to know that for the public. When I tell the public that I encountered a woman who was homeless who said she was sexually assaulted twice by the same person who, by the way, did not seem to be homeless, is a real, real tragedy. When I go to a homeless encampment site and someone said, oh, that's a memorial for a stillborn baby, That was, you know, homeless woman, homeless woman's baby is a real tragedy. So I think those are the types of things, you know, healthcare is a big component, right? How many homeless women are pregnant? Huge healthcare gaps that we have no clue about. And these are our neighbors that are dealing with that. So important information I think we should have.

Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Spears.

Thank you, Mayor. Mark, I want to say thank you for taking on such a complicated, important issue. And you did a really good presentation. And I appreciate you trying to take a different approach, because it is a lot of money. But more importantly, it's a lot of people that we really need to try to solve as many of their problems as we can and find them back in their communities and living a fruitful life. But I had a couple of things I wanted to touch on myself, and a lot of it's been touched on by my colleagues. And I'm so happy that Councilman Munguia brought that up about the 23 million in indirect costs. And we were reminded that our first responders are often the first touch to these people or maybe the first touch that week. And so their training and their expertise in that area, we need to be reminded of how they interact with our unhoused population. Slide five, I agree with Councilman Meza-Gonzalez, that we should, if you can identify for us the leaders in those different tracks, I think honing in on who's doing it best a smart approach, and then we just really get behind them. I've been to Chorazon and worked with them a lot, and I like what they're doing. One of the things that I hear often is that need for an ID can open doors in ways that we can't, what Councilman Munguia was talking about with the stillborns, that's a big problem. They can't access the wraparound services without an ID. That's something that seems so simple to collaborate with our partners on and to do often a real program we can scale up so that they have an ID. Interesting to note about the encampments. So Haven doesn't have a contract with District 9, so they don't come out to District 9. They'll accept District 9, anyone out in District 9. They don't come out there. The encampments abatements, while I appreciate that you want to decommission that, I don't know that we can do it entirely. It's something that this is the number one concern in my district about safety for everyone, safety for those who are homeless and for the residents, just natural feeling of safety. And then those who are on drugs or other substances, it's scary. It just is for them and for anyone around. On that note, we know that people often use drugs and alcohol to cope with other things, be it mental health or maybe it's a veteran going through PTSD or foster youth who have nobody. So I think it's wise that we look at treatment And prevention is the best course, totally agree there. We're seeing our federal government move toward that trajectory, treatment first over housing, and that I look forward to working with my colleagues on the legislative and government affairs to go pursue that route at the federal level and at the state level. And I think that we should be thinking about that. There's a reason they're doing that. They're seeing the results. And to your point, it's less expensive and it's effective. So on the low barrier shelter, I'm so conflicted about that, because I see what my colleagues are saying about you need that. It's expensive, but it's also too, when you sort of mix people with varying degrees of homelessness for different reasons, right? Because domestic violence is the number one reason too, and that means there's lots of kids. And then are they being exposed to drugs in a low barrier shelter? I worry a lot about that. It'd be nice if we could have, I don't know how to do that. I do say I have concern about hurting everyone together with different reasons for their homelessness. First time homelessness, we want it to be the only time last time. And so preventing them from getting into high risk behavior scenarios and environments is gonna be key. Again, with the prevention side of it.

Councilwoman, if I could, I will say that that's part of the assessment when somebody comes in. And just a reminder that Family Violence Prevention Services does operate as shelters, so we're mindful of that if children are involved or families are involved in terms of what's the best placement for someone as they're coming into the system.

And I would like to see that expanded, too, to foster youth, right? Because they're super at risk. Their numbers are scary and very heartbreaking. And then I bring up the seniors, too, to what the mayor's talking about. This one's really hard for me because they don't have a future earning capacity. Maybe their medications are too high. And we're an aging city, so that's really an area that we're seeing a surge in the state of Texas because there's so much growth. Maybe a spouse dies, an illness happens. Those things can get people to where they're homeless and living in cars or couch surfing or whatever it is that they end up trying to do and capturing them and finding housing. We don't talk enough about affordable housing for seniors. It's just not talked about enough in this city. I really think we need to be thinking very, very, because people live a lot longer now. That's a good thing, but it's hard to plan for that too. I want to remind everyone, too, when we're talking about raising taxes and raising rates on people, we need to identify that vulnerable population that would then maybe become unhoused because of those increases. So we need to really look at that as well. Let me see. I just appreciate the work here. This is a problem that I don't think ever goes away, but the most we can do is really keep tackling it and find really good examples and be the leader in this space. I think that's what you're trying to do. Showing our city the transparency about how we're spending tax dollars in this area is then says they see measurable results in the city that's going to be super helpful I know also that it takes a lot of touches and outreach to what councilman McKee Rodriguez is talking about that's true it's important that you but it takes a lot of outreach a lot of touches from what I've learned at Corazon before they'll accept services for whatever reason different reasons it doesn't matter that's just the reality so It's something that's very sad. I don't think any of us like it like seeing anyone in that situation and you know, it's important to realize that Circumstances could be different for any of us than we could be in that position. So thank you for taking this on I look forward to more continued talking about this and I appreciate you being so careful with everyone's tax dollars. Thank you Thank You councilmember Castillo

Thank you. And thank you, Mark, for the presentation. I wanted to also thank our city manager, Eric Walsh, for creating this department in response to public input over the last budget surveys. Again, as we know, homelessness and housing continue to be in the top two all throughout the city of San Antonio. So just appreciative that there's this effort and that Mark is leading this initiative, but also want to extend my gratitude to all the homeless partners for the work that they do in ensuring that we continue to house and keep individuals in shelter, so just extremely grateful. But I would be remiss if I didn't also highlight Katie Wilson and her work in leadership. With the last bond conversation that we had, I think the result that we got to was the result of your leadership serving as a tri-share and guiding the conversation about how we can have the greatest impact with the $150 million housing bond. So grateful for the continued work. In terms of the framework that's laid out, I do appreciate that you have highlighted the importance of working with or restructuring rather what encampment outreach looks like. This is something that our constituent services team extremely grateful for Cynthia and Christine on our team who do the relationship building work with your team and our outreach workers to connect folks to resources is that we continue to hear some of to my colleagues that the trend in which constituents are expressing frustration and that an encampment is cleared. And then a couple of days later, it's back up. So they're also understanding that this isn't necessarily a solution. And again, whether it's out of compassion or out of sight, out of mind, the solution is identifying low barrier housing to get folks housing out of the street or the vacant lot, whatever the case may be. So I'm supportive of that recommendation. I'm grateful that the recommendation from the council consideration request on a workforce is being considered. and discussed, so I appreciate Ready to Work also being identified on this list. In terms of where there's opportunity for preventing homelessness, and we talked about this in our one-on-one, I'm grateful that jail diversions included there as a potential point. But I would encourage that we continue to work with the Bexar County Reentry Center. I had an opportunity to sit with some of their case managers, and essentially when folks are released from the county jail, they have an option to go to the reentry center. And they're tracking what those needs are of individuals that are being released and what they may need support with. And what surface to the top as the top needs is housing and or utility assistance if they are housed. So I think there's opportunity. to catch folks before they enter homelessness by partnering, whether it's data sharing, whatever the case may be, but an opportunity to catch individuals. Because Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies has found that formerly incarcerated individuals are 10 times more likely than the general population to experience homelessness. If we have that opportunity, and of course, all the service providers in the shallow downtown, I think there's an opportunity for us to better triage individuals leaving the system. So just wanted to highlight that and grateful that Mark's connected with Ida to talk some more about what that could look like. But again, it's preventing folks before they enter homelessness. In terms of the mental health conversation, that's something that I hope this body continues to have conversations about with urgency. Same thing, doctors at the Bexar County Jail have shared that they're seeing a trend of individuals with dementia going into the county jail. And sometimes whether the time served, because whatever the case may be, they're back out on the street, and they're literally back out on the street, right, in need of mental health services. So I hope as this framework moves forward and we plan, that we take into consideration just that need and of course the work of Jessie Higgins and her recommendations as well.

I hope we learn a lot on Friday.

Yes. And I'll be brief because I'm supportive of the work that you're doing. And again, as we have the bond conversations, my expectation is that we do prioritize the needs that you and the homeless providers present to us as needs as a priority. with that bond conversation, but those are all my comments. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Kaur.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for this presentation, Mark, and everything that you are doing to lead this organization. I think, Eric, the departments that you created this last year have been already proven to be successful, so I think those were really great, and I think it's great that you are leading this and getting to see the work at a whole scale versus previously when you didn't get a chance to do that, so Thank you for all of the hard work that you're doing and for being opening and willing to hear ideas so I want to echo a couple of the comments that have already been made I know councilman Mesa Gonzales asked for a breakdown of those Components on that slide. I think it's slide five. I agree I would like to see that as well, but I also want to better understand what percentage of the whole is our portion so just you know you mentioned like for example the day center how much are we contributing to the whole of the the program so if it could be like if you could get that for us as well obviously we're covering 100 of site abatement but we're probably only covering five percent of day center right and then if there is a way to track from that investment all the way up to the support that it's providing right so for the day center, what is the metric that we're tracking for the day center, how much of support are we getting there versus for site abatement, how many site abatements have we done with those same dollars? Just so we can better understand the metrics. One of the things that you asked about was, if you can bring that slide back up, the street outreach program I've talked to you about and we had a conversation previously, I have gone out with the street outreach team. I've talked with them several times with a lot of our stakeholders. We have some several hotspots in District 1 where folks that live around the area are constantly frustrated because they don't see an improvement in the support that's being provided to the in-house program. And so I just want to know what the ROI is that we're looking for our street outreach program. I know they're out on the streets. all the time doing the work but how are we measuring the success of that i wanted to better understand that and also retention of our staff like i know we have a vacant position right now for d1 on the street outreach team just got filled oh really yeah they just uh identified somebody and i think they accepted the position that's awesome yeah so now we're completely staffed That's great. And we've had some turnover, though, in that team, right? And I'd like to bet it's a hard job. I understand it's a really tough job. But also I've heard from some folks that there are, are we, you know, lifting up lived experience in our hiring for those positions? Because from what I've heard and seen, folks with lived experience have the best success at connecting with other unhoused folks and so I just want to make sure that one we have the right setup for the team and that it's set it is still created in the right way I know there's two people for district one because it was advocated for by my predecessor and then there's one for each every other district but how are they is their time being equitably like we always go back to this equal is not equitable conversation right because we want one person for each district but do we is that the right breakdown of staff and I mean it's a street is just a street it's a made-up boundary sorry and so like how do we better make sure we are allocating that staff equitably for where the need is right if we know that There are certain areas that need more energy and more time, face time with folks. Are they getting back and talking to them? Because sometimes if they see the same person every day, maybe they will be ready the next day when an outreach team member comes. The second thing that I asked for, I don't know if any of my other colleagues would benefit from this, but some of my stakeholders don't know what the outreach team is doing. So they will say, oh, we don't see anything happening. You're not even trying. And when we tell them about all the different ways that we are trying to create support, they don't know that. They don't know that, oh, an outreach team member actually went out there and spoke to all of the individuals in this encampment area. And so one of the things that I've asked for is more stakeholder engagement from the outreach team. So if the outreach team can actually dedicate some of their time, and I know this takes away time from connecting with our unhoused, but to take some time to go out and talk to the individual stakeholders in certain areas, i.e., you know, we used to have an encampment right there on Culebra and talking to all the businesses there. We obviously have some on Fredericksburg Road. And going out and talking to the folks that are feeling that their businesses are being affected to say, hey, this is what I did today. These are the people I'm talking with. Here's my card. Call me and I can help. just more of a bridge rather than just focusing on working on those relationships. And I don't know if that's, it's just an idea. I'm not sure if that's completely, it takes away from their time and not the right focus, but I feel like if there's at least someone, it's kind of like our safe officers, right? Our safe officers are a great contact for people in our community to say, hey, this is issues going on, and then they know what's happening. So I'm trying to see if there's that bridge that can be made Because our safe officers, quite frankly, don't know what's happening with the street outreach workers either. They don't have a direct connection there. So maybe that's the right idea, is to connect them better to our safe officers. Anywho, I just think there needs to be more communication because there's not, and so it gets directed to our offices, or at least my office. So the other question that I have is the slides, the total number of dollars, that includes our delegate agency funding that's going out?

Correct.

Okay. Yeah, if you could split that out so we can see who's getting which portion. I mean, this is a great, I love this, and just being able to double-click on each of them is what I'd like to see. Okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah. And then the last thing, Council Member Glavine mentioned this ACS email. that ACS email sometimes gives us a little bit of anxiety only because I'm like, we'd sometimes it gets, you know, the, the notion that like, if it's coming to multiple people, who is the person to respond? Um, and so I, I like the thought that he's recommending though, about like, how do we create more funnel to ensure that it's going through a single line or we know everybody's involved in the process of being able to provide a solution. Right now, it's like you call one agency, then you call another, and then you call another. So I get the franticness of like, how do we help people? But also at the same time, making sure we're still figuring out a way to create more collaboration, which I think was the intent of that. The last thing is on HMIS. I'm glad to see the improvements. I feel like it's been long coming. It was like one of the first conversations I had with Sam like a couple of years ago about the challenges with HMIS. I would still love to see geolocation included on it. It's not. When you don't have a lot of information about individuals, at least knowing where they are is helpful so that you can say, like, we have people here that we are helping. So I really hope that that will come very soon. And then also for just the partnerships with information and how we're sending out information about the work that you are doing, even if it's more updates to the website, the encampment website, whatever it looks like, but also doesn't just include cleanup, but includes what we're doing to help. So if we can show both that You know, this is being cleaned up right now. And I understand the debates on cleanup. I totally get it. We asked the other day how much money had been spent on the same hotspot area because it's so much repeated and they're coming back. And I feel like it's a both-and solution because I also hear on the back end, if we do nothing, it looks like we're doing nothing. And then there's frustration there, too. So I feel like we have to figure out how to show our community I mean, Councilwoman Castillo said they eventually learn it's not the right solution. And I think that's what we have to figure out how to show and communicate that better to our constituents. And that's all of us. I do, too. But at the same time, they do see in at least like a couple of days that like the trash is picked up and cleaned away. And so maybe there's a way to do cleanup without totally I don't know. Anyways, I support your proposal moving forward, and it's a very tough challenge, and I'm glad to see that we're still making progress on it every day. I actually do think we're making progress. I know one of my council colleagues had a difference in opinion. It's still obviously a challenge, but so are sidewalks. We're always going to have challenges, but I do think that from the first day, I think three years ago, we set a target of this is how many people we were going to help. Provide housing for and we've been moving towards that. I think we've got to keep setting targets. He was like three years ago We said we were gonna do that for the first time we put a target on it We got to keep doing that and keep reaching that and I think councilman big gone mentioned the point about the hotel situation we have to just come up with a full-time low barrier housing Really true low barrier housing because like we do get feedback sometimes that even the low barrier housing is not low barrier enough so maybe there's like a pre-low barrier housing and a low barrier housing, but I'd love to advocate for that in the bond as well. And last plug. Mark has taken a great leadership of talking to some folks that have been doing pre-built small studio prefab permanent supportive housing sites across the country. And so he's spoken to a couple of providers about it. And we've been thinking about how can we create more cost-effective prefab permanent supportive housing. And I think there's always comments about innovation. So I think there is an innovative ways to do that. Thanks, Mayor.

Councilwoman, if I could just say real quickly, we're developing newsletters by council district that'll go out quarterly to give you that picture you're looking for. We'd love to get your feedback on it. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mark. Just a couple of final questions and comments. Really appreciate the work of your team as well as Veronica's team in helping to create the Special Supply Housing Task Force report. Thankful again for Councilman Munguia's leadership on that. So in your budget request, we'd like to see how some of the recommendations or your asks there speak directly to funding solutions as identified in that report for as we talked about some of the most vulnerable in our community that's the disabled LGBTQ youth and seniors clarification what what exactly is the um the connection between your department currently and and the ready to work program i know it's been alluded to but just to what's the finite connection between the two departments so when i was operating solely as chief housing officer we had create the the ready to work at create and has an existing mou with the san antonio housing trust

to have a presence at each one of the housing trust locations moving forward as a site for people to be able to do training. I think now moving forward with this new department mayor, I think that probably the first opportunity for us really is around the state work program and ongoing workforce moving forward. So that's really what Mike Ramsey and I are having conversations on right now.

Okay, thanks, Mark. Appreciate that. One of the points that you mentioned in the ride-along as well is there's a connectivity issue between different systems talking to each other and then having sufficient insight into who's being helped in what way. Whatever you need from... I know some of those systems are out of our control. They may be federal, the VA, for example, but if we can help in that or if you've identified other ways in which we can help unstick things, then please help us know how we can better advocate for that at various levels. Out of curiosity, Walker Ranch is open from 7 to 8, Monday through Thursday, and then Friday 7 to 4. Is that considered a day center?

I don't know.

It's a senior center, but does it also qualify by our definition as a day center? I will double check. Okay. Yes. I mean, I think as we're thinking kind of creatively about how we meet the demand, if it does that, then...

So I can say in this presentation how it's contemplated, no. The answer is no. But we do, across all the DHS senior centers, do see people experiencing homelessness accessing those services. And so our department works with DHS to go out there almost weekly or monthly to ensure we're connecting the right resources for those folks who are going to the centers.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I'm going to have follow-up points on that later. Okay. One of the things during the extreme weather event that we had recently, I stopped by a couple of the warming centers. One of them was Garza, and I spoke with folks that were homeless, and they had... Poor feedback, unfortunately, about how they had been supported during that, i.e., they were told to reach out, they were told they would get a phone call from somebody housing department that that never did so they ended up kind of making their way themselves to to the warming site so i'd welcome in your budget request right if you have a line in there that helps us understand what your surge capacity needs to be especially in times like that that'll help us better support you so that we can better support those folks Just a couple final points here. One of the things that you also mentioned, Mark, and if it requires follow-up in a paper, that might be easier, but the resource of Oxford Homes, how does your plan contemplate engaging with entities like that? I just did a quick search on my phone, and in our community for women, there's like 16 spots. For men, though, it's about shy of 50. to the question earlier about disparity among gender, but those are also insufficient of what we need in our community. So how does your plan contemplate incorporating those resources or incentivizing those in our community?

Yeah, I think it probably in the second and third focus areas of the plan, really, in terms of guiding people off the streets, especially if you're dealing with substance use issues, that an Oxford home, you know, if you've gone through the initial, say, substance use treatment, an Oxford house can, whether it's for men or women, can be a next step or a step down for you. That's outside of the current ecosystem there, so I think it's, one, first identifying not only the Oxford houses, but the the high number of mom and pop locations, and you and I talked about this a little bit, that are operating in the community. We need everyone in this effort, so what's the path that we're creating towards that? I mean, when I was at Haven, we had a number of people that would graduate from Haven or they would leave the shelter location and go to an Oxford house. Three or four people lived in the house. It was more of a setting for them that worked for them. So we can dive a little bit deeper into that, but that's how we're thinking about it.

Yeah, and I appreciate the resource that it serves. I was more interested in how we are incentivizing, i.e., we need to increase the supply. And so if that looks like some help with property tax or what have you, if that's kind of a cost-efficient way to increase the supply of a resource that we need, I'd like us to understand what that might look like. Thanks in advance for that. Okay, thanks so much, Mark. I hope you feel the support for your work here and the questions that you heard were more about how we can help you more. So thanks for taking the time to be so thorough. And that is the last comment. I know we've got public comment here. 15 folks signed up for that. Thanks again to all the presenters. The time is now 5.32 and this meeting is adjourned.