Hey, hey, this is Carlos and the founder and CEO at Product School. Today I'm here with another founder, Miki Alon, who's also the Chief Technology Officer at GainSight. Hey, Miki. Hey, Carlos. Good to see you again. Good to have you on the show again.  I remember when we first had you, we had a great conversation mostly around PLG and the intersection between customer success teams and product teams. I'm happy to dive deeper into that as well as getting an update from your perspective on what's going on now with the future of product management. You have a finger on the pulse. Absolutely. I'm happy to dive into that. So let's start from the beginning. For people who might not be super aware of GainSight yet, can you please give us an overview of what your company does? Sure. At GainSight, we help companies build a durable growth business. We have three main products. One is community, which we believe we can drive community-led growth, and then obviously with customer success platform, which is helping you with customer-led growth. And you have the product experience platform, which I own, which helps with product growth. We believe that to build efficient growth and durable growth, you need to use technology to scale and to tap into user demand, understand how customers are using your solution, and also reach out and close the loop with customers. And for that, we believe those three channels are really, really important and feed into each other. And now we're also seeing in the market that companies obviously are now measuring against efficiency. Right? It's no longer... Just two years ago, we saw massive investments and growth at any cost. But now the companies that are efficient, cash flow positive, their net revenue retention is good, they will get the best valuation as opposed to just the high growth. So at GainSight, we're trying to really build everything you need to run an efficient SaaS business. One thing that I found really unique in your business is that you have these three business units that are interconnected, focused on consumer success, community and product. Most of them, other product tech companies that I've seen, have an intersection between like user acquisition and product or data analytics and product. You guys seem to be very focused on like that retention component. So why did you take that approach? That's a great question. I think if you look historically, and I've led the global product development team at Marketo for three years as well. And so if you look at historically on the evolution, Salesforce obviously pioneered the cloud and SaaS and everything, and they wanted to create this and they created customer relationship management. But then the cloud happened and SaaS happened and Marketo and HubSpot and all these tools came in and they tried to take their customer relationship to the next level with the digital offering, with personalization, ended up serving mostly top of funnel, the acquisition part, which is a massive challenge and there's a lot of needs around customer acquisition and personalizing that and creating a brand awareness and so forth. And then the SaaS took over in the past, I would say 10 years or so and with SaaS, a big shift has happened in the market because you have to, in order to be a sustainable business, you have to thrive, you have to retain customers in the past. You do this marketing customer experience and everything and you can do like customer marketing. In the end, your customers will download a solution and it's up to them to be successful with SaaS, that's no longer the truth. Suddenly, the opportunity is to help customers get up and running quicker, but you have to make sure that they're renewed, you have to make sure that they actually derive enough value from your product in order for them to stay with you and if you're not, you have a licking bucket. So in the game side, we say, hey, who's going to be the next generation of customer experience? I think marketing automation is doing a fantastic job, but they have a huge blind spot, which is the product and again, the product is still, I feel like misunderstood completely because that blind spot is massive. If you think about where are your customers spending most of the time and how do you acquire customers today? So acquiring customers is very, very expensive, it's going up, but customers want to even start small. You can use your product to acquire customer better, but from that point and throughout customer lifetime value, it means that throughout the fact that you need to retain them and then expose them to additional product or functionality or increase their spend, you need to optimize that type of experience. So customer experience, in my view, is becoming the product experience, is 95% product experience. This is where customers spend their time and at game side, we want to make sure that we offer you that solution. We did realize, by the way, speaking about PLG, for example, and what's happening in PLG. So you see companies that are building PLG from the ground up, very simple to use solution. They don't hire salespeople, they sometimes don't even customer success, but what happens as soon as they hit five or 10 million ARR, either some other player builds a simple tool like them and just cheaper, because they just didn't build a mode around their solution. Because eventually, if you want to go upmarket, you need more functionality, you need to cater to bigger customers, or you offer more solutions. This is where sales and customer success have to jump in, and this is where it makes sense for having high-touch mode. In game side, we are the only solution that can blend high-touch and low-touch and zero-touch. This is like, and I think that most PLG companies, as they go upmarket, they actually are building sales, customer success, to kind of really cater to this bigger solution. So we believe that that's going to be the next generation of customer experience. And again, the no star for us is to help you escape, to build a durable growth business. And I'm not just throwing more people at the problem. You're actually using technology to escape what you do. I noticed you used the word on the term customer experience multiple times. And I'm very interested in that. I want to double-click, because on the one hand, obviously product or product experience is important. On the other hand, customer success is important. And I've seen this integration happen, hopefully now more often. I remember when the PLG term was coined, was maybe around 2016, 2017. My Lord, when did you publish your book on PLG? Right. I wrote some blog posts then, like, what kind of book was it? It was 16. We published it at 17. Together with OpenView. OpenView is like the term that I contribute a lot to their initial blog post, writing about that. So obviously, there's been some time for the market to adopt this mindset. It now seems more obvious that retention is the new growth, and it's actually cheaper and more efficient to do a good job keeping your users happy and renew them instead of just bringing new customers all the time and having them live after a year or so. Now, in terms of the maturity model for companies, what is the next level for companies that are fully integrating product management with customer success in what you call customer experience? I think it's for them to get this alignment. First of all, again, like expansion and retention are kind of tightly coupled. I think that if you improve, imagine improving one point of retention in your company, how much that will contribute to revenue as opposed to improving one point in conversion in trials. Usually, one point in retention will translate to way, way more revenue for you in sats, right? So if you really try to build a sustainable business that has its leverage and growing very efficiently, you make sure that retention is there. Once retention is there, then you're open up for expansion. So I think the next level is to kind of have this interlock relationship between when is the right time to have customer success, have this one-on-one human interaction with your customers, and when do you use the product to carry some of the heavy lifting required to drive adoption?  I like to kind of figure out by myself, and I like to speak with an expert when it's truly strategic discussions and I want to hear best practices. So I think the interaction is to create that journey and map that customer experience journey and decide at company level what should be part of the product and what should be a high touch. And there's a lot of consideration going into that. One is like, what's the error of customer? Like, what's the minimum threshold that at that point makes sense to apply a human interaction and what should be, you know, maybe support, but that should be the kind of, it should be on the product to deliver. And we're seeing that it's a combination. Like throughout the lifecycle, even if you're high paying account enterprise, still you have a lot of users and you need to make sure that the product experience is always attentive to users. It's number one enabling users, making sure that the product is intuitive, collecting feedback from end users. Because what we saw is you cannot rely on one champion as a customer yet because if the end user is not happy, you know, things happen. One, they feel there's no ROI.  So they influence the renewal dramatically over the decision on tools. So the user, even in high touch, even in both top down decisions, I think you have to worry about the end user. That said, it's not going to be just that, you know, when, for example, we use Amazon Cloud, Google Cloud, at some point when our spend hit a threshold, then we started to have closer discussions with Google Cloud, Amazon Cloud, and then they start to also listen to what do we need in the future. Right. This is where the product needs to have the customer success input from strategic accounts, which are paying you seven figures. What are they? What's their strategy next year? And is it aligned with your product strategy? Because that's not going to come from the end user feedback or usage. So that's kind of the intersection that we feel from customer success, helping drive the business and the product that kind of helps scale the business. And that's an evolution that I've seen in product lead. Obviously, the definition was, yes, you have to satisfy the end user and create these bottoms up motion. And I agree with what you said that it's also important to have the buying from the top. So thinking about how those two relations connect, it's critical, not just one or the other. Kind of like reminds me of this concept around B2C is the new B2B. No more, oh, it's B2B. We just need to make the decision maker happy. We don't need to worry about the user experience, whatever. We assign a contract, and then we show the product. And then one year later, when we have a conversation. Yeah, I think there's still no kind of chooser versus user. And I think you have to worry about both. I think the chooser is definitely important. But eventually ROI for them will come from the user. If the user doesn't use the product, the chooser, right? So advice versa. You can't just rely on users. Because sometimes there's like a change in the company, or they don't know necessarily how to translate through ROI from your solutions. I think it's a combination. But definitely the end user should be your focus because you can be super successful. The chooser, even like you as a company, but they choose other tools. That's the wall that can happen. You built a category, you and Marketo, we built a category, we built the strategy. And suddenly, in some cases, they love Marketo, but they buy something else. And that's like really painful. And then so we invested a time in the product to make sure that we re-retain those users and deliver value to them. Because that's eventually what the true value, the intrinsic value is. One thing that I'm curious to learn from you is in terms of org design, we understand obviously there's a chief technology officer.  Because you can go deep in both technology and business. A few years ago, we were all evangelizing the need of a chief product officer at the table. And I think that's more mainstream. But if we want to really elevate the role of the customer experience or customer success, what is the highest ranked person in the organization that can really advocate for this? I think it's like the customer experience leader is I think it's like the one that should advocate and should see both the digital aspect as well as the human interaction and like everything about the customer from post-set perspective as well, like from onboarding to adoption to expansion. But it spans also, like you need to get like alignment around different ceiling. I think you have to get the alignment from the CRO, CMO, it's a thing eventually it's a team sport. And I think you have to have all these people in the table. And still the CPO I think has the most impactful long-term impact on the business because it's very hard to go fix a roadmap or product. It's way slower, it's way more expensive. So those decisions are critical. And I think again, they can truly leverage and embrace product led or product assisted motion and prioritize the roadmap to have an assistance. So by the way, I'm seeing another trend which is like product assisted as opposed to product led growth. So in some cases you do product assisted in areas that you say, hey, still gonna be gonna speak with sales but we're gonna have the product assist with scale. But it requires prioritization from the roadmap from the product organization. So I think eventually CPOs have a massive impact on the customer experience end to end, right? Eventually it's about the product. If it's intuitive, customer are happy, your customer success leader is happy because their retention numbers are amazing. If your product is not, then the customer success are basically dealing with product gaps and you see burnout and they will not be ultimately be able to fix those, right? So eventually I think the CPO still is in my view one of the top like leading positions that you wanna make sure that they are very customer centric and they are aligning in partner with the customer success leaders and CRO. Yeah, that's how we structure our current organization. We have our customer success leader part of the product organization reporting directly to our chief product officer. I know there are companies that are taking this even further and defining like a chief customer officer which I think it's awesome but ultimately respecting and elevating the role of the customer success and not just calling it customer support, not putting it at the end of the process just to fix bugs instead of just being in the conversation even before a user becomes a customer and really trying to care and do what's right by the user. It's something that I know it's necessary. I also know it's really hard for companies that have been operating under a traditional model that kind of works, right? Like, hey, if I have a strong enough sales team I have good relationships with people who've been buying me for years. Like why would these people need to change? Like what are some of those reality checks that you've seen that are pushing these companies to now consider a more modern approach? I think they're just saying that how efficient products get crazy valuation and make their job much, much easier. This is why I think also like coming from product perspective long term, eventually the customer, chief customer officer still they need to be kind of product with a strong product background at least. So they know what the company delivers, what can be done, what to influence the roadmap but look at those companies that in the past, you know, years and their valuation. Look at Figma, for example. Like really powerful tool, very focused on customer, collaboration, all those features, grew like crazy and their numbers, their efficiency is amazing. Look at their NRR. So it's a product that actually deliver meaningful value and which leads to really strong retention, strong expansion numbers. So all the other counterpart in the company are doing better job because the product is doing a better job. Vice versa, I didn't saw a lot of examples. Like if the product's bad, then at some point, initially you can get away with it. You can get away with when you kind of, the first in the category, the end user and the chooser are not experienced but those companies suddenly get competition and at some point, some of you are starting to see key account that was like, usually they would win very easily, suddenly they lose those accounts. And usually the number one reason is not necessarily like, oh, these other companies just cool or they, no, we still love you as category leaders but the others actually delivering great products, great functionality, maybe it's better pricing, maybe it's better functionality, maybe it's a fuse but it's a reality that is suddenly gonna hit you and there's gonna be more in any market, market automation at some point, after Eloquah, Marketo, suddenly became like more and more market automation, more and more vendors and it's up to the product still. I think Marketo is differentiated and this is why they're able to be strong on the larger accounts because of the product, not because of anything else. So I feel that is a reality that is gonna happen. Just a question of when, sometimes you can just be, if you're the category leader, there's not enough traction in your space, you can still get away with it. Totally, I agree with you. I've seen this happening in Martek as you mentioned, eventually these technologies become commodities and what separates one from the other is the quality of the product and that's something you cannot win or just fix at the end. I heard you talk about NRR, Net Revenue Retention and I think that's great because back in the day, most of the key metrics that investors would use to value a company were like CAC, like customer acquisition cost and maybe lifetime value, but that was pretty much it. Now we're taking a deeper look at the funnel. So what is NRR and how do you guys use it? That's fantastic. I think so, so Net Revenue Retention or Net Dollar Retention is a good indication to see how well are you retaining and app selling and cross selling to your customers. So it's combines together if it's just growth revenue retention, it's how well you retain but when you think about Net Revenue Retention or Net Dollar Retention, it takes into account both churn but also app selling and cross selling. So in that number, obviously if you're hitting 120%, 140% it means that you're way more efficient in terms of the way you continue to grow your install base. And this is why it actually means that you're able to build a sustainable business. So NDR is becoming the number one metric both for investors and also in public sector like in public companies, if you're NDR and especially PRG companies tend to have very good NDR metric because once you start using it, you grow by consumption. So for you to spend more, for example, if I spend more in Google Cloud and Amazon Cloud, they didn't need to invest in almost anything. I start from X amount of ARR and then they grow to 10 X ARR, they did not need to invest 10 X investment. For them it's actually just very, very organic. And I think that's where it shows how well your company can grow and it's almost unstoppable business as opposed to bad NDR, which means that you're kind of not either have an issue with your cost of sustaining or retaining customers too high, you have a leaky bucket so you will never be able to truly become a capital efficient business. In a capital efficient business, eventually it should be the goal for every company. If we assume all companies will just continue to lose money, it's not really sustainable way, right? We'll see those market downturns every time but at some point people say, hey, you should pay back the investment. That's a great reminder. And I really like this metric because when using churn alone is not enough. It almost assumes when you are going to lose a customer but it doesn't include the opportunity to upsell or cross sell a customer. Like technically that should be the end game, not just keep the customer as is. Exactly and I think from a roadmap perspective, think about that like how many of us will prioritize the stickiness of our product and investing in features that drive stickiness. We invest in features that differentiate and create wow effect but the sticky features sometimes are not the same. Sticky features, for example, can be collaboration feature, right? Sharing, integration because the more you get customers to put more data in your system and then you enrich the data and then you share the data and you allow them to collaborate, you're creating this stickiness that it's very hard to swap and very hard to switch to another solution as well as just getting more value because you integrate with all these systems and you allow them to collaborate, so we increase productivity, you grab more mind share. So those are features we can prioritize to drive the GRR and NRR efficiently. And then second is like, we need to do also, product leaders need to do a discussion or run a discussion with product marketing and go to marketing saying, is the pricing and packaging still optimized for what we deliver, right? It's usually it's like, oh, it's very, we're trying to do simple pricing and think if you're not moving towards some consumption based market pricing and then adding some features that customers will actually pay for as an expansion, you're losing out on the opportunity to build a healthier business because your customers might not be able to pay or consume all your features, especially in B2B takes them quite some times to really take all the advantage of what you build. Why not to just slice it and then you can actually optimize the price and then expand, you will get faster deals and more organic expansion as opposed to create always unnatural pressure points and you as a product manager, kind of always need to deliver a ton more features. Everything is for free, like not for free, but under the same subscription. Why not to just, hey, I have like small companies, larger, I can actually build packaging that if they get the bigger package, they actually pay for more. And then you can also prioritize your roadmap. Yeah, where do we see more growth opportunities? Let's invest in those set of features. If everything is the same bucket, then it becomes very tough to really optimize our product roadmap versus revenue, right? This becomes very, very tough. Yeah, amen. We could do a whole episode on pricing and I would love to do that actually because there's so much evolution on that. This is constantly made between freemium versus free trial versus now there are models that include both. And I think that's a good approach because putting a cap on usage of a certain feature instead of just saying, no, you have to pay in order to use the feature, it's an artificial barrier allowing the user to use actual product for real. And then beside, well, if you want more of these, then is when you have to upgrade, seems to be like a better way for the user to get full value. Absolutely. And I think eventually if you look at the longterm, the only way to drive growth is with more products, right? But if you have one price for your product, then expansion is very tough. How do you expand? If you have only seed base, so companies don't just hire like crazy and so the seed base is limiting you. If you do consumption plus freemium features, now you're allowing your sales team to truly drive expansion and growth as opposed to kind of really maximizing the first deal and it just makes their life, I think, harder because they're trying to optimize the first deal and once the deal is done, they have to run for the next customer because there's nothing to expand and expansion is very marginal. So I think, you know, the discussion should be like, can we build the product and functionality and it's not necessarily freemium or free trial. Let's say you have a customer, but can I just sell them like a smaller package and then grow as opposed to try to again, squeeze everything to the first deal and then deal with like stress for renewal and like it's always like, you know, and then not having good focus on expansion as well. And so I think that's a different mindset and then if I think on political leaders, as product managers, if we knew, hey, this is a new pricing and packaging, here's what we can actually charge for, we are building that into the pricing as well, then we can actually balance our roadmap in a better way because we truly can drive more features that will drive growth. Today we kind of drive features and eventually it's like to help win more but not for expansion. So ask yourself, you know, how can I build features for expansion to drive more organic growth and that should be roadmap plus pricing and packaging. And that's a discussion that companies has to do and it's sometimes just overlook like they keep the old pricing and packaging and just like, and kind of put all the burden on the product to kind of somehow figure out growth. And I want to make sure we make a little space to discuss community and know that you guys acquired a company called Insighted and that connects nicely with the other two products that you have on product and customer success. So how does this complement what you have and what do you see, what is the role that community is going to play in the customer experience? Yeah, so as you saw, there's like thinking evolution wise was marketing like growth and then product like growth is just helping you escape from the product. So community like growth is what we bet as the next kind of a channel to grow your business and customers. And for us, we're seeing that, you know, customers actually spend quite some times in the community helping each other, right? And then like all providing more feedback and looking for best practices. So we're seeing that as a fantastic channel to help you build in mode actually. If you have a strong community around your product, you're getting more expertise, you're getting deeper feedback, you get, you know, you tap into the future demand from your product because you're seeing the discussion. You get this awareness or tapping into those discussions and you're able to also communicate them to them back like here's the roadmap and allow them to do like feature prioritization and allow them to vote because it's kind of a community that they actually know your product, they use your product. So it's not just like, you know, fly my or just like, you know, those early feedback. So I think we see it as very, very strategic to growth. And if you don't have a community, then you have a gap. I think, you know, the product itself is not enough and customer success is not enough. You have to make sure that you are facilitating discussions and communication with customers. And that should feedback to as a customer, if you're a customer, then it should feedback to your product experience and the customer success play to see, hey, this is a way to scale. There's another trend that is called digital debt. Countries are trying to improve ratio between how many customer success to how many customers you have. And increasing that ratio at some point, that ratio means that it's not gonna be very personalized anymore. And one way to address that is through community. You can have, hey, all customers are here, they're gonna share knowledge, they're gonna be exposed and as customer success, I can post things that are relevant to 100 customers in my book of business or 200 customers. So I'm scanning the way and it stays there. What's nice about it, it actually stays there and it's searchable. So we believe it's another channel to invest in. And it's gonna be part of any kind of SaaS business that wants to scale. And I agree, I mean, Figma to your point is a great example, not just of a product-led mindset, they also have an incredible community-led mindset. And I think those two things combined ultimately are generating unstoppable growth as you define. So I'm very excited, you know, because when we started product school, we also invested, we're still investing very hard in community. And it felt lonely when we were talking about this because it's hard to measure ROI at least in the short term. But I think if we take a longer term approach and we truly are not just in terms of dollars but actually like value for people because at this point it's not only the company evangelizing it's also the users of the same company connecting and helping each other out. It can be also extremely cost efficient. Yeah, but if you think about like what is, if you ask the Marketo, what was their big life differentiation? And one of the key modes is actually the marketing nation. We had a huge community of marketers both customers and non-customers. It was bigger than Marketo. And then so, yeah, I think very early we had like 5,000, you know, marketers as part of the community. So obviously it helped us position the brand, be the thought leaders, learn from them. It's very bi-directional. Learn from your community is really important but own that. And that was like the biggest mode that helped drove Marketo to be very iconic. Pulse for games that is the same, right? Pulse is actually community and many customer success, whatever tool they use they still come to Pulse to learn, to share ideas, to grow the customer success community. And now the product community is something obviously communities is really one of their modes that you have to consider if you wanna go serious about scaling and efficient, capital efficient growth. Miki, it's been a pleasure to learn from you one more time. Thank you so much for your time. Awesome, thanks for having me.


Thank you for being here. We haven't had a new floor. The air conditioning is controlled by the school district gods. That is the school district. So we have to get out of the ground for a bit. So thanks for being here. Let's say hello and welcome all our candidates while we're here. How many forms have you guys done so far? A work with a dozen? More? Yeah, more. So anyway, as you all know, early voting starts on Monday. We'll read a few notes. And I'll put this at the end as well. We'll be gathering at the Cape Town, right down the road for Jolly Merriment finish. If you guys would like to come and visit with us for more, then we'd love to have you. So the rules of engagement perhaps. So we have one microphone. We will pass it down. I will ask a question. This is my first time in officially moderating the forum. So please be gracious with the moderator. We will begin with a two minute opening statement. We have a few questions for you guys and we'll do a one minute closing statement. We did not plan and budget time for rebuttals. So please keep that in mind as you give your answers. We have been collecting questions from the neighborhood from our neighbors through an online submission for about two weeks. So we are not accepting questions from the audience tonight. But if you have a question for a specific candidate, drag them down in the parking lot and bring them to the picnic. Okay, great. So we'll get started with Ms. Udiennes for a two minute opening statement. Good evening and thank you for being here. I am very pleased to be a part of this wonderful group of familiar faces. We've actually been working together at different locations, either with HDRC and its own. I'm a neighbor down the street in Government Hill. And the reason why I'm actually in this race is because of the issues that we've been facing in Distritude, which it could still be in HDRC. Tier 1 has been addressing the responsibility of our developers dealing and working with our communities. We need to encourage that and continue that path. We've been successful, but we've also had some failures. But we need to work together as a community for the entire Distritude. Because if it's happening here, it will happen through our neighborhoods for the candidates that are here in front of us. So I'm very happy to be a part of this and a part of it would be. I am a political science major with UTSA. I'm actually from Brownsville, Texas. But I came here in ancient and I decided to come to UTSA. This is home and it is my home. Our home has no time to retire right now, especially now that I'm involved in this. He is a veterinarian in the area. But the fact is we hear the concerns of many of our residents in San Antonio. We have to hear, I haven't hear, we've been involved, we know we have issues that we all need to work together. So now I'm a science provider of this office with your support. I can hopefully have a better voice, a better voice for your concerns. Thank you very much. Hi, my name is Joseph Powell. I'm running for city council here in District 2. It's so great to be here in Maggie Park. I used to do jobs here when I was a beekeeper. We would go and trade out and switch out hives at the mechanical gardens with the yard that we had in Castroville. So I really like the neighborhood. I like the place I was there before. It was a little seedy. The 109, the 106. Yeah, that was, you know, I mean everybody went there. It didn't mean anything. Anyways, I'm saying too much.  If you want somebody who isn't paid by the developers, I can promise you going in that also. If you want somebody who's actually studying public finance, I can help you with that as well. I do have a lot of interesting ideas about the city and I think what is the sustainable opportunities for the future of regarding development. Thank you so much. I grew up on Carson Street, so in Government Hill. Since I was 14 years old, I've been walking all of these streets because I had to walk down Carson through Fort St. Houston when it used to be open and work right here at Kitty Park. Since 14, so $1.40 an hour. I should mention that. A little child labor law, something that we should look at. I'm very familiar with this neighborhood between Sonic, Witty, everything else back in the day when it used to look like. I am well informed of everything that's going on to the needs that I want to work on. In this area, of course, is public safety, making sure we have access to transportation other than just vehicles. Because with all the construction, we have modes of transportation for this community. Of course, me growing up, we're living in a Harvard PC small where I went to Wheatley St. Houston in Phillips. I understand all of the dynamics that come around with it. I am a small business owner, both my husband and I have a construction company. I do have a not-for-profit that's called the Port River Project, where I teach young girls business using the Big Low Tech off of Walter. We have to make sure we have a streamlined appointment to become business owners with board leaders that will impact your lives as well as our own daily pieces. I do serve on the Port of Sarah sent each of your regional alliance to the public and I believe one of your neighbors for that is the E.T. as well. So, if you want to inquire about the work I've done, you can just ask your neighbor as well it's the weekend analysis that looks like. I look forward to not a politician, but a public servant. So, serving the community, serving the community as I have done before, during, and as I will continue regardless of what happens today for us. Thank you very much and Salinas, on behalf of us and I look forward to meeting all of you this evening. Thank you. Good evening everyone. I'm Tony and the former counselor here and I don't know if you've resolved your traffic issues from Fort Sam, my former employer retired from, but I know you've had those issues and I know that that's something that needs to be worked on because your streets became through waves and not streets and I assume that probably the same thing going on right now. So, we need to work on that. That's one of the things. Not only was I a former counselor, I spent 15 years as a school board member in the Fort Sam Houston ISD. I actually retired in Army. I'm a Vietnam veteran and I'm proud of the Bronze Star product back in Vietnam. I'm proud of the sense of service I brought back as well because before that it was about me, but Vietnam product is not about you. It's about service to other people and so that's why I'm running. I had no intention of running. My wife and I are retired. We talk about fixed incomes. We live on social security and retirement. So we're fixed income folks and we understand that. So that's why I'm running because people came to me and said you need to get back into this. We need you to get back into this. What do you do? It's about service. It's not about self. And so that's why I'm running and I appreciate your consideration for you both. Glad you're here tonight. I look forward to your questions. Well good evening everyone. I am Jada Andrew Sullivan. I am a life long resident of District 2. I was born and raised out of East Commerce and Honey and I still reside there with my mother and my children. I decided to step into this arena not understanding exactly what being a politician was but definitely as a concern community resident. I have done a lot of the things that Mr. Keith Tony has done in my life but as I look forward to being your District 2 representative I have worked with San Antonio City of San Antonio and I was appointed to the Martin Luther King Junior Commission. I worked with the NAACP on their veteran services. I also have moved forward with my church and making sure that we do community outreach by giving away gas, toys, food, clothes, our health care. Those are just some of the things that I look forward to continuing to do on a larger level for District 2. As I walk the neighborhood we heard many of the concerns of the community and I plan to address those as much as possible. We have worked with developers we have received our donations from some developers but it's all in the act of doing something before you get in the seat that makes the difference. So as I stand here today there are many great things that are coming to District 2 there are many great people that want to see a change in District 2 and if we work together in cohesiveness as one unit we bridge the gap to fight amongst each other we build amongst each other and as candidates we look forward to representing our District with our whole hearts. So thank you. Well hello everyone my name is Ruben Arsenega my family has a 300 year history in San Antonio specifically the east side and in terms of a quick story we have a small landscaping company called Boyka Landscapes and one of our first clients in 1993 was a Miss King who lives right here and I recall she had a 1967 El Dorado Cadillac but she's long just passed away but I'll never forget how open she was with this allowing her for us to service her yard but having said that I've been educated at Texas Lutheran University I've got my master's degree at UTSA where I currently work in the department of civil engineering but like we've said in many of these forums are in our communities specifically with the families the peoples and the leaders and looking here today I see the hallmarks of diversity which essentially are the cornerstone and the strength of our community to District 2 what has to happen is our vision needs to change we need to alter our trajectory we have the ability to lead San Antonio as a people and as a community and we create one District 2 we need to unify our own community lines I know we all have different needs like Memphis, Mankey Park, Denver Heights Wilshire, Roosevelt however we can unify among the shared experiences that we currently have we'll have more advocacy and a stronger unified voice in District 2 one of the major challenges that we do face is the issue of stability we've had a number of council people in the last five years but I look toward the future and I reclaim the notion that we can reclaim our future and we can lead San Antonio as we premiere District in all San Antonio remember we have the social capital we have the people, we have the youth so why can't we reach even further and higher I believe this is possible it can be done but it'll take hard work backbone and the ability to communicate those issues amongst all our clientele and our position in season so I look forward to the questions today and thank you thank you to the folks my name is Voss Perry I grew up in a local head kid I used to be a problem down the street my wife she's running for SAASD school board in District 2 we're running because we're invested in the district we bought our home three years ago we have six kids in the district and my wife works at St. Louis College we both graduate from St. Louis College so we're invested we feel like the best way to show that you love the community is to love the community so we bought our house right off of L Street and that area is very challenging gunshots, violence all sorts of things but we invested in that area because we believe in that area and we believe in the people our platform is simple we want community engagement like what we're doing right now we want to talk to you we want to get your ideas we want to get your opinions you guys got to feel safe I already grew up in St. Louis we're prostitutes to be right off the road so I know this city really, really well another thing is economic development we guys have done a two-minute job transforming this from pretty much for prostitutes to being so offensively safe and so you should give yourselves a hand because we need to emulate you guys and try to do what you guys are doing another thing is youth services I'm a really big champion for youth services, I'm in the program I'll suit up what we help after you give a head in life and then we get the brand new students to teach them how to talk to them simple things like that but the most important thing right now is your property taxes I'm going to be the champion for property taxes because as a new homeowner I'm just learning about my property taxes I need to know, I need to teach my kids and that's what we need to sit down and figure out how we get these taxes to stop keeping us out of our neighborhoods and the properties that talk to the deaf and the children just want to make a little money off of the taxes is more than what you're making off the property so we got to try to find a way to lower the taxes on free thank you, my name is Walter Perry and we're going to the job I'll just raise my hand this evening what issues do you see that basically she was going to be first which was it honestly, which should you say give me all right I do have a I have a strong opinion about this but y'all can probably make better opinions this is a more generalized type of thing I am just so set up with the fact that you can't drive through Fort San Houston anymore we as a city council probably don't have that much of a say but like how much longer will our city and this neighborhood keep being directly affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks I mean like come on open the base up let us use it that's where we used to play soccer that's where we had all of our childhood memories like come on I mean I think that's a very unique issue that faces the same and I think it would greatly improve I think her with jail we really do need to open up Fort San Houston as a child once again it was me sneaking on base I grew up on Carson street but having to walk through the base but ultimately seeing all the businesses and everything that closed down just doesn't allow for the congestion and if you really if we really did open and yes Fort San is a city in its own right like they literally want to dictate what happened that really has no influence but from people who had experience in the past or have been in these positions you know these are conversations we could have already established I'm all about connecting maybe relationships, having conversations there is something there should be no reason why we could not pressure that and make that happen but ultimately with all the traffic with all the bond, everything that's coming on Broadway and we do not find a parallel route that will lead to some of this traffic congestion I couldn't even get from Carson Street onto Broadway and I attempted like five different shortcuts so there's a lot that we can do and we'll do one of the issues I think I see for you is that you're landlocked I mean you are just happy just happy here it just blows my mind that you guys are just landlocked so you just can't spread out for example you got to go vertically and then the city steps in and says you can't do that so that makes it tough for you now I asked Fort San back in 2014-2015 there was a plan there were several but there was a plan for an underground tunnel if you will that would come out on the other side on New Broncos Avenue and I don't know what happened to that I don't know if that was so or what but it was less than $25 million which is the amount of money Hartford got for that land bridge it's gone across the road so I just think there would have been money better spent to make it more convenient for you as residents tax-free residents so that's one of the options community and the biggest concern was your NCD is what everybody was concerned with the first one the original one worked well for the community however with all the changes and the different ordinances that have come with the NCD I've heard a lot of people say that it affects the community totally so when you talk about being beginning to your own community that needs to be resolved you need to have total access to where you live and we as a community as leaders for our district need to make sure that our residents come first so we need to address that along with making sure that everything that is needed within the community from the speed limits to the scooters to the developments are actually done properly so I want to let you take the conversation maybe a little bit of a different area so to speak obviously you are landlocked and that brings us on host of issues in terms of the LRE population in terms of one in the hospital so that's a potential problem and one that's already struck so to speak and that has to be addressed immediately but what I would say while doing some of the research in the neighborhood it would say that Airbnb this has one of the highest areas of density in terms of health and set of issues like we had said before in terms of people not necessarily respecting the area that they're in please have me come at different times in the night and that goes back to the notion of what the city is trying to address in terms of the tier one and tier two properties and what essentially what they're saying is if you're tier one Airbnb owner so to speak you actually live in homes that you're renting out or leasing in terms of the short term rental the second part of that it's a tier two property more immediate issue and that is to say you don't live in the actual building that you're leasing out you actually live in different residents all together you may not even be a district resident thank you can somebody correct me if I'm wrong this is the gate open I thought they opened the gate already oh part of the gate okay part of the gate is open I think the best they changed the gate okay the question pretty much is if I'm wrong to say what's the best way to connect with the rest of the east side well we kind of have the same type of issue in the property like I said you guys have done a tremendous job of transforming your neighborhood taking charge of your neighborhood and doing the necessary changes yourselves I think the best way to connect is to you guys have a lot of smaller bars and clubs over here and I think connecting with some of the small businesses over there on the east side some of the black, Hispanic, and Asian and other cultures and bring a different flavor down here so that way people can start seeing a different flavor down here you guys have the style it's just about bringing different types of cultures here and just making that commitment so our name is collaboration and just really taking the chance to know different cultures situation in San Antonio you have your CM right now there is better construction of the city park being moved into different parts and locals and the parents walking to the museum over to Lionsfield to the park really walking in the middle of the street who designed that and you have an e-store city along Broadway because you're going to increase traffic and take issues you also have a lot that will just recently so like create here there was a special thing in your community and not to be in a story there's really bad about being in a story I'm living in a historic district but the surrounding area of my government in your neighborhood is not we're fighting an uphill battle for this purpose in your neighborhood that are working to benefit you so this is what we need to deal with and we need to work together regarding your future in your neighborhood thank you Craig, Councilman Art, he supports the decisions of the neighborhood association and has made it on the neighborhood association issues if you are elected, at what level will you work with neighborhood association and district? I think we've, where we're at as a community and as a district for too long we've been fragmented we've been isolated whether it's Maggie Park or Government Hill people just feel left out people aren't talking from one side of the district to the other and we really shouldn't be united this is the time for us to come together we really say that at the end of the day we're all second-hand and we're all district two residents and how can we help each other because one issue on one side it's going to address the other and so forth we don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time I'm a firm believer that go beyond neighborhood associations not every neighborhood association is the end all beyond there are community groups community organizations outside of the NA so not only in addition to supporting the neighborhood association and instead of splitting them up in quadrants I'll actually pair up presidents that are more matured with more novice or neo-fights so that they can then work together to teach each other what have been going on and providing that history within a community so in what to get we need to make sure that we're mentoring each other but going beyond just the neighborhood association and our representation supports our communities neighborhood association for instance so I know the value of the neighborhood association is large, small, doesn't matter doesn't matter you are the voice of your neighborhood therefore you are the voice of your community you represent your community and as a council person again because I've been a neighborhood association I know how valuable it is to have a council person that has an open door policy for you many times you just want to be heard sometimes some things you can get done as a council person some things you can but the thing is have an open door policy for neighborhood associations so you don't feel like you're being neglected or just ignored and I've seen both happen I'm glad it's not to be said I thank you guys for having me and as you speak about neighborhood associations we've actually started going out sitting down talking to neighborhood associations all of you and we know that that can be a problem if we don't have that accessibility accountability transparency and action as I sat with the councilman Art Hall and I listened to some of the issues that came out of course dignitating with the H3 bridge and I listened to what was lacking and that was the voice that was not being listened to and that was the communication that wasn't being had in unity with making sure that those needs of that community were truly met so before you even get to the seat you need to start working to make sure that those communities are actually heard wholeheartedly to stop what you're doing and listen to take accountability for what your community is wanting to do and you serve them and you become a servant of everything District 2 needs thank you so what I would say is neighborhood organizations are the essential lifeblood of putting communities back together and they're advocates for a neighborhood they're voices for people but what needs to be recognized are the people that are necessarily not part of the neighborhood associations and ultimately that's really where the harder work comes in in terms of saying how we put them and allow them to be stakeholders in our community so that's where the neighborhood association becomes more effective what I would say going back to the notion of neighborhood associations is this not necessarily all of them have the same agendas and that's okay we can work along to shared experiences but I do know in some instances in certain neighborhood associations and I'll say this and be upfront there are certain elements that actually have come in view of the neighborhood associations and push a different agenda and they're pretty brave about it they don't necessarily hide something that they want to do so in all honesty you have to say you know what in the neighborhood associations if their notion is to commit and work for a community then let's work with them however if we know there's a different agenda then they need to be put to task as well well if I'm lucky to represent you we have a 90 day plan which includes we're going to meet frequently with our home counselors so that way we can provide a transition plan because he already has things in place we're going to meet to schedule a vision to achieve the plan and meet and we're going to meet with all the neighborhood associations I'm aware that he has a president's meeting or we're going on across from our home so we're going to keep that president's meeting going but we want to expand it to more neighborhoods inside the district too the problem is is that a lot of these neighborhood associations are not organized and so we want to work to get these neighborhoods organized on at home we don't want one neighborhood taking care of five neighborhoods to get these neighborhoods self-sufficient like you guys are and get no one to have to where they can help themselves it's all about the community helping themselves it's all about the community helping themselves thank you and one of them is in my neighborhood and yes we have issues because our neighborhood association no longer is representative of our neighborhood we all have two methods on our board right now but this is public information the fact is when that happened our neighborhood got together we put a sign over 200 signatures to go to the city to say you know what we want to voice on an upcoming project because we're not meeting her those two members represented the entire neighborhood we no longer had members we put here a lot to be members their membership was denied our meeting took over we're going on again when you have just recognized your own neighbors from joining the neighborhood this is what the city felt was to come in make sure everyone is heard don't be screwed the entire neighborhood for a specific group of people who actually haven't found to be working for a developer so I would love to on that note people working for developers our call is out of touch totally appoint a person to HDRC out of a million and a half people in San Antonio a person who was formerly heavily involved in Alamedia working for one of the most controversial firms in this whole debate over the use of the leanin that doesn't make any sense except that it happens in every single place you look there's a small group of developers and people who have influenced this election for the past five years so am I going to listen to the neighborhood associations? no way and I don't even want you to vote because most of y'all, sorry and I'm sure there's a lot of good people here thank you for having me but you did not represent the neighborhoods that you came to I'm not kidding I live in I see it all the time I see the way the developers come in and just put their own people run people out who are longtime members of the neighborhoods I'm sorry I always make you part rhythm drastically as we know the legislature is still moving it's still in flux y'all support so this is a two-pronged question I was born in 1952 to me this is an issue of morality versus immorality if someone bought a house the year I was born and they raised their family and they paid their taxes they paid their mortgages from a certain age it's immoral in the United States of America that they should have to worry about being removed from that home their home is dead where they raise their children because they can't afford they're struggling to pay taxes it's just immoral it's immoral and I'm glad that the legislature is addressing this while moving to that part of it but they're not doing enough it's almost too little it's too late it's too little too late we have to address this taxes should never be a reason for someone to lose their home so yes the legislature is moving in the right direction and they tend to do that moving far too slowly and they're not doing enough what's the issue of property taxes I look at my mother and I know that she is proud to have the legacy that my grandparents learned but I've also seen her go down to the tax assessor's office and stand there to make arrangements for me that's a problem I'm 100% certain connected to say go bet so for me if I was to buy my own home I would be 100% property taxes but that doesn't speak to everyone that sits here when you look at the issue of property taxes that are skyrocketing anywhere from 210% you're starting looking at displacing a community then who are we actually serving when the legislature said that they will implement a goal to help with property taxes then they're saying so for me who actually wins because now you're still passing that down to the person that is already struggling in one area to have to struggle in another so we as a city truly need to implement the true homestead encryption for people who have owned their homes for 15 years or more to ensure that you have a home and a legacy to pass for your generation to come so in terms of the property tax issue it's a very highly energetic issue because it's impacting pretty much I was in the majority of San Antonio but specifically in terms of District 2 I bought my home 10 years ago I'm from the east side I bought my 10 years ago I'm mother born in the early 80s and it was at that time she was right near the Almodome neighborhood when your mother told you that in 1988 you don't necessarily take it serious consider it a neighborhood but you know what the words were proven to be prophetic now we see that the city has used different measures in terms of talking about a potential tax freeze which is something that we can look at in this case and I'm definitely for we've looked at maybe issuing out what they call the city homestead act initiative they don't need to know that they have the homestead exemption that has to happen but in terms of the second portion which I think is more important in a sense it's related to the state level and if cap the rate, the state legislature has cap the rate of property taxes which is tied to your school financing at 2.5% now on the surface that looks great because essentially what it says is look we're the good guys who are helping your community but what's not told is the notion that it begins to drive school financing in areas like here like a Lamar like a Douglas like maybe everyone on the west side so at this point it becomes somewhat a partisan issue there's this notion or attitude that well the school is shrinking or they're becoming smaller so the issue isn't necessarily that impactful and what I would say is we need to address that today and tomorrow I'm taking social education as I said before I'm a 3 year homo and I was just talking about the homestead exemption last year and so a lot of people have been in their homes and they don't know that they talk about the homestead exemption I looked at my tax bill my homestead exemption went up from $10,000 to $13,000 my taxes went up about another $1,000 and so I'm trying to understand how the taxes are working out of my supports and others and so education is where it starts at and so for me if you are someone who's invested into the neighborhood and you're even a homo to a family and you're a pizza man on the street I think they should extend the homestead exemption to more than one I mean as long as you are here for the family and you don't have to go FB and B I think you should go ahead and let's you put that extra house on the homestead exemption if you're on the house and you're providing children for a family but for me, like I said this is about education and I'm going to be honest I'm not a tax expert but I'm learning every day I'm going down there, I'm reading and I'm talking to people and I'm learning as a homo because I'm invested and I want to know and I want to work with neighborhoods that are having problems with taxes and the biggest thing is that you guys just want to make a profit sometimes it's nothing wrong with making a profit off of something that you put your heart and money into and so as a counselor I'm not against development I'll just make sure I am Thank you So while you're taxing I have excuses they're not giving us numbers they're not telling us what our money is going to go to we know that for the incentives to the developers they're giving you years wouldn't you like to have your company tax free and frozen in the state segment for 10 years because the fact here is look at their taxes and what and I'm going on to be guide there's a map application on the internet look at your neighbors properties and see what their taxes the conversion to bars and restaurants means zero improvement on their tax bill that cost right now is $10,000 on the structure and you know they're going to be taxed because at the same time you have a neighbor's home down the street and they're being taxed out of your home why are they able to have your tax free and frozen or not actually in free for the homeowners this is what we think about legacy homeowners and legacy businesses we need to keep those people around with the state bill of community and we need to free their taxes thank you I'm not a tax expert either but I did work at one of those income tax places for a while but I quit because they were really predatory on the loans that they were giving people on every close and it's definitely my refund this year but it's going to be I wasn't able to pay my taxes on my house so it started the process it started with 12% initial fee and then additional 1% and then along with that is the letters from people who will help you pay your taxes you know if you sign over you can levelize your house so I don't see a huge difference between the pay day loans the predatory tax refund people and the way the city actually implements its policy to try to incentivize people to pay it makes the city more money for them not to pay whereas the actual rates everybody's saying oh they're so high, they're so high yeah they're high but we haven't had an increase in the cost of electricity in about 7 years for the most part that's a really long time especially when compared to the annual gain of the consumer price index if you look at how much CPS is a part of the actual city budget what do you think what do you think so there's a lot to this and I'm very solution oriented so I've already created or started something which means that I've been to the tax appraiser myself I had to create a due diligence checklist that was not ever done before so that home owners know how to go about testing their taxes both in English and in Spanish this was something that they've never had when you go in front of a five person panel and you have to protest your taxes the average citizen is not prepared for that battle so we need to make sure that we provide all of our benefits and tools and resources the knowledge they need to not only protest their taxes but to continue to fight for their property but I also want to state that in addition to homeowners our city is comprised of 55% renters so in addition to which also votes and when he's green and they pay taxes as well and you just not property taxes but if they're glad more for the tax increase on that house they're going to go ahead and pass that fee along because we're unable I too am a landlord so I understand that and I choose to eat at that cost because I know my tenants cannot pay that additional a thousand dollars per year it's unrealistic but we also need to be realistic here and say that it is the commercials that the companies, the very large companies that are not picking their share of fare and it's being put on us so unless you actually have someone that's willing to fight for you and not be moved into the chambers and everybody else you better just expect the same thing from leadership as it's been thank you Broadway when it comes to growth cutting our lanes and making people inaccessible to where they need to go we must address it now because as we continue to grow we know that many people are going to use our highways and our byways to get to and from the areas that they travel in we must ensure that our children's faith is met first within our school areas we must ensure that the buses can get through the parents can pick up their children and along this Broadway corridor you're not just sitting there idling for about 10 to 15 minutes at a time when you look at how Broadway is set up now coming into your neighborhood having one lane in the middle of 5 o'clock traffic is unpeakable we must start looking at different ways to access our roadways as we come up Broadway it's already narrow but many people are going to truly be able to access that without being stuck without having to waste gas without breaking emissions these are the things that we must look at as we continue to grow as a community and as a city to make sure that our populations that are critical to breathing and have asthma, COPD and things of that nature are not affected by how we shrink traffic thank you so again traffic at this point and there's no one easy and supportive but what I would say is there doesn't need to be a need a side promotion of the bonding and how transparent that it is and the work that's actually being done to me because Broadway has been worked on for a minimum I would say 10 years that I've seen that guy talk to a city planner when I was in my 20's so that tells me what we're at but in short what I would say is this there needs to be alternative forms of transportation a lot of our demographic is getting younger and they're more flexible in terms of saying look I don't necessarily need a car the jobs are being created in the same areas so what can't we look at bike lanes what can't we be comparable to something like Austin in terms of that the scooter issue I know is a very controversial one but they do help alleviate some of those concerns people have become more pedestrian oriented in the sense that they're willing to walk because now you have growth in terms of the bars the restaurants and museums so people are able to get there likewise but more importantly this adds to the notion of a moral issue and we need to see that process through well the big thing for me is that as more people are coming into this area they need to be safe we've had I think two or three bicycles killed T. L. Bramshaw and I've got a lot of out there around the community so safety is the biggest issue over here we have a lot of walkers this is a beautiful area the zoo there's so much stuff to do up here so many people have walked up and down Broadway across the street so I think safety is one of the things we need to focus on making sure that the other thing we come up with that the traffic is not competing on the tours that are around here because Easter's coming up this weekend so there's a lot more people around here so we gotta make sure that up and down Broadway not speeding people are respecting pedestrians and we'll just respect other cars as we pass by and I think it's all about respect it's all about when you drive you have to watch out for your neighbor so I think safety is the biggest important thing to focus on safety we also have to reevaluate how we get to and from work to appointments across town because not everybody is comfortable with the area because it doesn't mean so with that in mind we need to think about looking at that because we own the area and is that being efficient or something wrong with them so maybe even privatizing letting other companies in in respect to maybe working with other companies here in town we have Alma College with over 600 employees coming into our area maybe they even have something available for their employees because they won't work downtown more large shares to get them down here to work same thing with free homes we have free homes that go to the medical center we know we have people that made a data bank coming down to the museums coming down to the park coming down to the museum have free homes for them as well because we are going to keep cars and we will look around the park but now you have cars you can be happy to do we keep cars coming alright well there's a relatively new saying in Saudi Arabia it's that my father drove an automobile I have a jet and my son will ride a camel it's about the future of the fossil fuels in a way our society is changing if we say that we want the construction to end and we want to do construction the right way the first time we put it into a right way we know that the only way that we can have a sustainable road permit in San Antonio is to cut these lanes down it's what the experts have told us we're talking about billions of dollars in external costs of healthcare that's required because of having so many fossil fuel burning vehicles in such a dense area there will be a drastic change in the way society functions there will be driverless cars things will be very very different let's aim for it how many of y'all heard that they were going to close down wall bearing streets nobody? oh they have flags coming up for y'all nobody tells you it's also like recordage park three years ago when they were going to close down and make this to the cars but not enter once again I think all of us that have come up here because of election time they've been walking these streets since I was a young girl and when I worked at kidney park the best part of the send me was see all the low riders drive by on Broadway that was my favorite time and I still remember those days very clearly and we do not do something about our congestion if they closed down wall bearing as they did they wanted to do for recordage so cars could no longer enter and they're not even informing what recordage was going on what they had going on I had to go and tell them myself look I am a new cyclist I've cycled in Portland I've cycled in Amsterdam I've cycled in Vancouver but it wasn't until I came home and got hit on my bicycle in front of me in middle school and then on my way to a safety committee on top of that I could not make this step up so I understand the importance of having other modes of transportation but since I was a child 10 cents is what it used to cost us to get on the bus and we do not figure out something we are going to be in the same position as we have been not every option will fit every area of district or city unique again let me get back to that you are really congested here it is so bad you are a bottleneck right here in your little area on Broadway and again I know that cost is always rearing its head we need to know what the cost will be but we do have all of these companies that want to come in here these major corporations developers as a condition of doing business here built here and they are going to make a ton of money or they wouldn't want to come in why don't we have them kick in for something specific transportation so that we can and it can be targeted maybe not to the entire city but certainly your Broadway quarter so let's look at enhanced black lanes enhanced for safety and there has got to be more technology so enhanced black lanes and droppings thank you for having me a lot of that for the conversation earlier about art and tea so development is the big booky monster that we typically throw out there well specifically we need to look at the details of what that is essentially we have development that comes from the form of condos apartment complexes bigger entities like that the other part of it comes from the form of people doing individual rehab but at the end of the day we are going to have a lot of people doing individual rehab but at the end of the day no matter what entities you have you have to be able to push the notion that development is here where you have to grapple with the new reality of it but it can't come at the cost of people moving their home of people being taxed out of the area and then saying well that's progress you need to be able to sacrifice what has to happen is this it's a very simple approach you have to have a council lead that has a backbone that won't be able to say one thing that you want to hear in terms of pandering or whatever we need to see out here but then as soon as you meet with the developer they'll sit there and drive an agenda and you're used to conduit for it now that's happened before in terms of the common people that we've had not necessarily just D2 that's something that happens throughout San Antonio across the country so what I say is this I issue a challenge if you come to character tests and you shoot and let the backbone stand firm for your neighborhood as I said I will hope for the neighborhood associations hope for the community have talks and discussions like this one also I will form a special projects community so that way we can go into the community and talk to people who know what's going on because I know there's a lot of stuff that's going on I know a few of them and for me I think it's it's important to get people who know the area who know how to talk to different people and just make sure that we have a proper oversight one of the biggest things that I have I was at the same age I was working as a senior and the biggest thing that we saw out of the developer was that none of them came with impact studies they wanted to do development but there was no impact study to show how that development would impact that neighborhood to make money and so I think everybody should be honest and tell the community how it is, how it would impact the community and help the community thank you I was distracted because the foundation is waiting for somebody to do development it's a quick build it's that quality build when you're living in a home that's over 100 years old and it still has care up there yeah, it's like a little wall to make sure it's up to money meaning you're competing it but it's still there, it has care up there and we're telling the neighborhood it's not care up there it's money and it's free I'll just start out and start with the spurts of feelings but these skinny houses over here I understand what they built oh yeah, I did a lot of block walking here too and everybody knows that the department matters so much to district 2 and district 2 candidates because this is where you can get the most donations so it's a really great place to go and knock on the doors so I was going around knocking on the doors it's such a great place to do that depending on the skinny houses at least some of them are being built with green materials so I guess it's all right but I mean they're so close together I don't see how the mud I don't see how the grass is ever going to grow between them I'm feeling it's just going to turn the mud and erosion eventually and the lean quality as well I think maybe we're in the same example but we don't want to build it at least what I've been seeing in the background I see a lot of homes that are repaired or have turned into Airbnb but they're except hard work so you have people coming in doing half jobs and not really fulfilling the needs that they have to by co-compliance and so forth so that's just a quick turnaround in which we can improve things right now just in building our homes because we want these homes to last for very long the second thing is we want people onto our boards and commissions that actually reflect not only your council member but the community itself and not selecting friends or selecting individuals you know, stretch your back and I stretch yours they have zoning is or anything else like that they just you know that's really why our city does not move forward this is why our district does not move forward because we keep on having the same mediocre mediocre leadership instead of having people push forward and representing the community as a home suddenly not all the people you live and make the park then the heights it's not unusual to have 100-year-old homes you don't have to say it's 100% correct and those homes have character now how do you define that? it's like a train wreck, you know it when you see it you may not be able to define it but you know a 100-year-old home has character and you look at some of these things that they're building now absolutely no character and I try to think what will this thing look like in 60 years I won't know, but I try to project that and I think it's just going to be friends if it's still there in 60 years I really do because the workmanship is shoddy and you can tell our communities just can't be sale folks I mean it's okay we can't stop and I guess it's development's America if you have the money and you want to develop and go through the system but that's where the problem lies downtown, if you say but you wanted to one of the first things is increased transparency between constituents and the city council I may not be the most fluidist but I'm straight up, I won't lie to you and you can always talk about another thing is I'm going to work really hard to make this place a lot better especially on this side and work on solving crime and I want to work hard and work with you both there and get those people on the right track and get those neighborhoods back on the right track so you can expect that from me I'm going to you tell us that we have a partnership that is responsible for our allies we know we're responsible for us right now but we also know that we can explore and demand that it develops from either through their part in my first 90 days I will book the yes I think it's one of the most important things we live in an ever changing world and it seems that as time goes on we are at the close of being ourselves an ecological catastrophe I think the way it comes to deciding whether to act or not to act when the end and final and worst possible outcome is the death of all mankind even if that is only one tenth of one hundred and one percent we should act against that that is what a proper management policy would involve it starts with showing up at the Colbert plants which is the ones that are in slave the second Scruces unit has to go and you're not going to let me win so we need to raise the utility fees we just have to raise it okay by 12 percent over the four year period thank you various industries various chambers yeah just why our city has not moved forward right not only our city but our district ridership organization because of the safety and so I'm going to make sure that all of our bike line things we have parallel routes are already addressed and figured out being proactive versus reactive not waiting until which we shouldn't have lost those lives to begin with at like 12 month mark is by having jobs 4719941 47199 4919941 in office out of office doesn't matter call me everywhere I know that from experience but when I can I'll come I'll come make bridges that but I'll come and open door policy to listen to you to listen to your concerns thank you so much and making sure that you come to the table making sure that your voice is heard making sure that the community has the transparency full accountability full access is exactly what you'll hear from me until the day that so there's two parts of this answer in terms of our vision like I said we want to alter where we're at we can lead San Antonio but that can be done by unifying all of the district to again we can't be fractured and then when we approach city hall say well we want to push this policy and this agenda because the second part to that which is more effective and we're not talking about is although we have these views when you get to city hall you're going to have to negotiate a contact with people that have a different viewpoint a different agenda a different type of constituency if you're going to lay down if you're going to give up if you're going to say well I can't do these things with them or gain up in the same place in two years so we ask that you just answer yes or no with no elaboration if you really have to talk about it not question yes or no only do you support the city ordinance city yes yes I support yes I mean I support yes well we yes yes yes yes yes the limit changed 25 miles an hour on residential street with the least enforcement of that stuff yes yes but it better be enforced how would you we said about the full name of the that was a lot of that but right now I'm just reading all these policies of primary market movement moving in the hood and the roughness movement is taught all night by the day of work so in acting I'm going to keep a little on the shirt a movie that I really really enjoy and for my guys I hope you the movie first I'll just say once and in the country-run election my market sister she's a lot of herself but shantara 900 pages ladies and gentlemen I'm an avid reader I'm a voracious reader in addition to shantara I'm just a movie buff but lover but now there's so many good ones this is really putting me on the spot I really haven't even thought of one so I'm just a foreign film lover so anything from foreign films I'll just and my favorite movie of all time just truly step outside and be kind of so in terms of reading I read the same to a heroine which is a blog, it's a community blog which I wrote and then the book it blessed me who came on I wrote it for 90 years one of my favorite books my favorite and in terms of movies I don't want to get over dramatic or sad but third grade at St. George we watch Glory and that's the first time that the young boy I've seen where good didn't necessarily always win it really shouldn't be and that movie always saved me and I love that movie the movie that I read from the company cover is called The Master Key System by Charles Hino it's a very good book they have audio version of it too also my favorite movie is Anything, Eddie Murphy Trade Place series Beverly Hills Top 48 Hours Delirious Country America so I'm a really big Eddie Murphy thing and so if you put on Eddie Murphy then we can add more thank you Hello folks, anything you have my name is Walter Perry and I'm asking you to go I'm asking you to go to the city I have about five thousand people in history too and over the years I will put the numbers in the dictionary so right now I want to remember call to action to all of you folks to go to the quote and let's send the message to City Hall history too thank you Mark and all of the members are engaged we are ready to change the direction of our city and people want to take control of our own lives and we decided. So I want you guys to vote. It's a really good people up here. We're all passionate about the community. Even if you don't vote for me, vote for somebody. But go vote, because a stroke won't happen. We want to send an message. So I'm gonna ask them for at least 20,000 votes. I want to see that go early vote. Please make me proud and please, please, please go vote. Thank you. Once again, thank you over this evening. And essentially what I'd say is this, I believe district 2 can be the lead community in all of San Antonio. And I believe it with all my heart. But more importantly, there was a number of issues that we have to address. But that has to be done by unifying all our communities, no matter what part of the east end that you live on. And to the end of what I say is this, no matter the outcome of what happens, I don't ask that you commit to me. I just ask, respectfully ask and request that you continue committing to your community. Because if that happens, then we'll be transformative and we'll change the thing that we want to change. If that doesn't happen, then we'll be back in the same place two years with other candidates. Thank you. Just remember, I'm not a politician. I'm just a concerned community member.  I speak like you from my community. There's harmony in unity. And there's harmony when we speak together. If we stand with each other, if we stand connected as a unit within district 2, we move mountains. We are the shining light that can lead an example. So what you can do when you truly work to ask that you speak for your district, that you speak for me. And I don't want any other political office after this. I'm not qualified to be a judge. So you don't have to worry about that. I don't want anything else. I don't need any more titles. I've been called the President's Award. I've been called a councilman. I've done all that kind of thing. And the best title in the world, other than Pennsylvania, I mean, somebody told me for 43 years, but it's that I have five young people on this earth who call me father. And that's the best thing in the world. I'm not a politician at all. And I'll tell you this. District 2 is comprised of what folks call the North East Side, the South East Side, the Near East Side, and the property court. So that's like having a child that doesn't have the same last name as everybody else in the family. So I take it to call you Broadway East. So you're East too. Because we're all in this together. Well, you've heard us all say that everybody's unique, but we're all District 2. I know you may not feel like that sometimes, but we're all District 2. I've never forgotten it. I won't forget it. Thank you for having us tonight. Vote Selena. Vote Selena. At the end of the day, I did not just show up on the scenes. I've been walking and working since I was 14 years old. It's not effort. Look for just what was put up the books, right? I have been working, and I know that many of you have been working that long. It's not longer in your lifetime. And you deserve better. You deserve to have leadership that's not only going to speak on your behalf, but you should report and see that all of the donors are individual, small donors, community members and residents, developers. There are no people. There are no president. I have signed up more votes. That is not about me. That is about us as a district. That's for your votes. Thank you. Once again, I'm Joseph Powell. As I think most of us have already observed, we've growth rate in this city is absolutely unsustainable. And the only way to stop that is to have policies that slow growth rate. The reason we should slow that is because those upon the people of the price shocks associated with raising rent increases faster than a certain percent amount per year otherwise would be sustainable at this point. It's not. And the people who suffer from this are not the people who can afford housing in this new economy. Anyways, it increases crime, increases crime, and adds to exacerbates the modification of human suffering and the corporate profiteering of the typical justice system within our city, within our nation. We need to do things to slow growth, we need a massive shift in the tax burden from individuals to business, capitalism as an object failure. Thank you. You remember when I take a confirmation sign, I love our history. We live in a country that does not mean that we can go forward without respecting our history. We know we have the important future. Who we actually used to be since yesterday was noted on in fire. And the artist I'm part of will be thinking, can't it be safe and when and how it will be safe? Congratulations to the city council right now that have dealt with the hour long. If we have an opportunity to voice our opinion and have the respect of our Texans to say, no, this is the law to us. Who gives you the right to give the hour long away? Gives you the right to close it off. Disrespect the war worth building. There's many things happening right now and your council person will be your voice and will be the vote of our city. Thank you.


So this little bit of news kind of flew under the radar over the last couple of days at least under my radar I'm sure some of you might have seen this story elsewhere But it appears that EA might have already abandoned the Nintendo switch after the release of FIFA 18 That might be a slight overreaction But I'm not sure how else to take this so EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen told the Wall Street Journal The publisher plans to wait until the console has been on the market a full year Before deciding whether to make more games for it According to Jorgensen, it's too early to judge the success of FIFA 18 on Nintendo switch Which you mean might be able to take that as a positive and then he says as such EA wants to fully understand What the demand is for the platform before committing more development resources to making new games for the platform That to me sounds like it's EA saying we're done with the switch Without Saying they're done with the switch. I don't know if we should really be all that surprised I know some people got on me for my report on the poor sales of switch in the UK but Well final sales figures are not here if the sales figures were actually good and as expected or better There wouldn't be this tepid attitude of yeah, we're gonna wait Basically, we want to wait a few months and see what happens with sales.  We will commit more games remember back when I said that some third parties and I was chiefly pointing at EA because they're the ones that seem to do this the most were dipping their toes in the water and Everything was reliant upon a single game Selling well a single game that some might argue is a little gimped although I think FIFA 18 is actually a fun game on switch I think it's a worthwhile experience. Is it as good as the full version of FIFA 18 on the other platforms? No But it's good. I mean, I can't say they didn't let these give us a good playable version of FIFA but It appears the sales must not be that impressive as is Because if they were and they have access to the digital sales as well as physical so even if physical Sales weren't impressive. They would know what digital demand is. It appears that things are not looking good For FIFA 18 on switch and if things are not looking good for FIFA 18 on switch The fact that EA is like, yeah, we're gonna wait a full year That means that they're not willing to commit any of their current development resources to switch until at least March or April of 2017 and when that is the case when that happens It's almost too late to commit any of your games in 2018 for the platform because in Order for those games to come over you're going to have to start working out frostbite now In fact start working on frostbite earlier this year to make frostbite run on switch And if you're not if you haven't done that yet And you're not willing to commit even a FIFA 19 or a Madden or or any other game to the platform until You know the first quarter of next year That pretty much means that we're if we do get games in 2018 They're again going to be subpar port jobs If they come at all and they might not bring anything till 2019 even because again a lot of these games are already well in development The next FIFA game is already in development The next Madden game is already in development. These are yearly franchises. These games are already in development It's really hard to come in, you know five six seven months into development be like hey By the way, we're also gonna bring this a switch and try and day and date it good luck Especially when you have not fully ported over your frostbite engine. So Yeah, EA and switch Maybe this isn't a surprise We haven't heard anything from 2k yet. We don't know I know what's happening on that side of the triple a stream Maybe they're maybe the NBA 2k 18 sales are actually really really good on switch I don't know. We don't have any numbers yet A physical version didn't release till October. So we won't get the October physical sales until later this month But yeah, this is obviously disappointing to say the least I know some of you guys out there are gonna be like who cares. I don't care about FIFA. I don't care about EA Games, but here's the deal like EA has the exclusive license for Star Wars games So if you want a Star Wars video game on switch, it's not gonna happen without EA In addition, there's EA games. I do like I like the Dragon Age series You know pretty much anything Bioware puts out. I enjoy even if the games aren't maybe as good as they used to be Uh, I also enjoy games like battlefield You know the battlefield world war one game is really really really good And I would have loved to see even a late port of that on switch Uh, there's other games too like madden. I'm a huge madden fan And all this really is guaranteed is that I'm going to have to own an xbox one or a playstation 4 or an xbox one x or whatever The case may be pretty much forever Um because games like madden don't even come to pc, right? So if I want to continue to play that I'm gonna have to continue to own other platforms Uh, and that's not really a problem. I don't have an issue owning multiple platforms But I I want that convenience of taking it on the go I mean they made madden for 3ds for crying out loud and they're not even doing it for switch granted I was obviously a massively watered down version of madden that wasn't any good, but at least they Tried And I guess that's what we could say about fifa 18 this year Uh I'm disappointed in this. I guess this should be expected But ea I think is making a big mistake if you look at the sales of switch It's just flying off shells right now And it's not just nintendo games that are selling while we have this month coming up with a bunch of third party games Right now I mean we're we're giving away three of these third party games this month And I have a feeling these third party games are going to sell very very well heading into this holiday season And if that's the case ea is just going to miss the boat entirely Uh, it's just it's frustrating. It's really really frustrating on one hand Nintendo's getting awesome third party support from a company like Bethesda on the other hand ea is doing the ea thing And like look we didn't make we didn't sell as many copies as we thought basically But you know what we're not going to make a final verdict yet We're going to give nintendo another handful of months to try to sell the game And nintendo has been putting fifa 18 into their commercials and everything But that doesn't mean the game's going to sell anymore than it has already Most people probably interested in fifa 18 on switch have already purchased fifa 18 on switch. So this This I don't know you guys tell me what you think about these quotes down in the comments below Again, I know i'm late on the boat on this and I do apologize for my late reaction But this just oh this irks me ea has essentially abandoned nintendo already At a time when switch is like the hottest thing on the market Against all rhyme logic and reason without ever giving one game with 100 full effort to the platform. They're gone Just it just doesn't make sense to me Anyways folks, I am Nathaniel ruffle jats from nintendo prime and I hope I'm wrong about all this I hope that Apparently fifa 18 just sells really really well during the holidays and they fully commit next year.