Good afternoon delegates and thank you to the organisers for inviting me here today, giving me the opportunity to discuss how to drive productive agricultural supply chains through innovative and responsive systems and infrastructure. While my fellow presenters have considered a lot of the macro efficiencies derived in agricultural supply chains, my presentation will look to provide examples of opportunities where initiatives are actually delivering efficiencies within the supply chain through an effective freight system. Firstly, however, I'll provide a bit of background into the Queensland freight network, which actually provides context then for some of those examples that I'll consider later on. Very quickly, 180,000 kilometres of roads, 150 locally controlled and 100,000 unsealed. We've got about 9,500 of rail line and we're really lucky to have a variety of railway line, narrow, standard and drill gauge. We have 15 imported and export ports, three international ports and two key intermodal freight terminals, which the Queensland Government is also looking to expand. Queensland has an extensive freight task, moving about 871 million tonnes. Despite the downturn and coal prices, resources still make up the bulk of the line shares of our freight volumes. However, second to the resource sector, agricultural commodities including livestock are important economic contributors in regional Queensland. The movement of agricultural commodities and livestock is largely skewed to road. It's higher than the state average, representing about 70 to 80% on road, depending on the commodity versus the state average of about 69%. The reasons for this are quite well known. Road offers superior door-to-door service. It's flexible, it's reliable and it can also provide competitive two-way loading rates. Approximately 29% moves on rail, largely made up of bulk commodities such as resources, however, some grain and sugar also moves on rail. Hasn't always been the case. The dominance of road up until about 25 years ago when we had in place regulated commodity permits, rail actually had a lot higher percentage of modal share. Moving to consider the challenges, constraints and the cost within our freight system. Vulnerable structures in both the agricultural production areas in both the road and the rail, such as aging bridges, culverts, road envelope and pavement depth and axle loadings. They limit the use of high productivity vehicles and the efficient transport of goods. I've got a picture there of the Eaton's Range there, which is one of the main roads out of Mackay High where we like to move oversize over mass equipment out into the Galilee Basin. You can see there the geography is not very conducive to that. Much of our rail system has very low axle load limits, around 15.75 tonnes per axle limit. Limits the efficiency of all the payload for rail and also the state of the track is also vulnerable to environmental events. And the track there is the one outside of Emerald after the 2011 floods. Further south, we're also very lucky to have a lot of our rail system heritage listed. So it's great for tourists, but you can see there with the Grand Chester tunnels, it limits our capacity to export commodities out of high-cube boxes such as cotton and grain. Agricultural and primary industries rely on freight bulk rail freight services for approximately four months of the calendar year, but it means that for approximately two-thirds of the year the rail system is underutilised for the movement of agricultural products. It makes it really difficult to get year-round contracts that aren't take or pay. And it is also difficult to get pathways when agricultural commodities are in competition with very high-value commodities such as coal. While geography increases our challenges, we also have a very expensive freight system. Australia's logistics make up approximately 50% of our—or can make up to 50% of our market price, whereas Canada is about half of that. If we look specifically at grain, port receivable, handling and vessel charges in Canada are about two-thirds of the equivalent charges in Australia, meaning that it's $14 per tonne in Canada versus $21 per tonne in Australia. Collectively transport costs can represent on average about 30% of total production costs. And I'm noting one of the earlier presentations. I think it was Tafts who actually said that we need to reduce the cost of production. Road—the freight and movement of our goods is one area where we can reduce the cost of production, as it's very high. In one grain producing region in Queensland, we had a look at the road rail cost of actually moving a tonne of grain to the Port of Brisbane. When we added in $65 for the road costs, storage up-country and port costs, also $65. The $130 in just transport costs represented over 50% of the total tonnage rate that they were getting in the market. Our port costs are also quite high in Australia relative to other countries, and that's something that I'll look at in a bit further on. Importantly, infrastructure upgrades alone won't deliver the benefits unless the comparative advantages of each mode are optimised through supply chain innovation and through a responsive freight system. Agricultural supply chains will benefit from innovative and strategic freight transport improvements and provide savings in end-to-end transit times and the total transit costs. These costs then, or whether the efficiencies generate these savings, they can then be passed on to customers or to the primary producers. It's well documented and accepted that rail is the suitable motor transport for moving many agricultural commodities. However, the infrastructure issues that are cited earlier and the constraints means that it is often not flexible and doesn't deliver sufficient payloads. It can be unreliable and all of this is actually contributed to the decline in its market share in Queensland. Central barrier to overcoming these issues is cost. Cost of upgrading lines to competitive axle load limits, the cost of actually purchasing bespoke rolling stock that then isn't utilised for much of the year and that underutilisation and the underutilisation of the blow rail assets also result in inefficiencies and a lack of productivity. The provision of container handling facilities and an expanded general cargo capability at ports outside Brisbane would also reduce the cost to producers from moving freight from North Queensland such as refrigerated meat all the way down to the Port of Brisbane so we can export it out of the Port of Brisbane. A network of inline intermodal freight hubs or terminals would support optimisation of the freight network and provide efficiencies including reduced impact on road amongst other benefits. High productivity vehicles deliver a higher payload which can improve productivity efficiency and whilst some PBS or HPVs operate in standard configurations under guidelines we're looking towards the use of PBS regulated vehicles to actually generate higher payloads and increase the efficiency and productivity in this mode. I think probably the greatest opportunity to enhance productivity however in the agricultural sector in particular is through better sharing, coordination, rationalisation and utilisation of data to improve the efficiency of the supply chain and the lost productivity associated with as I mentioned before the underutilisation of the freight infrastructure and I'll cover that off. Quickly looking at Yamala intermodal terminal the principle underlying Yamala is the supply chain efficiency through better utilisation of the infrastructure and utilising the comparative or maximising the comparative advantages of each mode. Yamala is located outside of Emerald basically it's being set up as an intermodal terminal to facilitate fuel into the Galilee Basin about 268 B-doubles leave Mackay each day to take fuel out into the Galilee it's best suited to go on to rail with an interchange at Yamala and then go out on road. What underpins the efficient use of this or the efficiency generated by this intermodal terminal is the containerisation and the standardised logistics platform using flatbed rolling stock with click-on containers versus the purchase of bespoke rolling stock which is highly expensive and underutilised throughout the large part of the year. The advantage also is the back-loading opportunities for a large amount of agricultural products generated in and around the Emerald area with contestable demand spread across a wide variety including grain, citrus fruits, wood chips and forestry products that can then be exported using the standardised logistics platform where the actual containers just click on to the flatbed rolling stock. Fuel road trips, road freight movements and improved safety are one of the large benefits to be generated from the Yamala intermodal terminal including also the opportunity for back-loading opportunities as I mentioned previously. The use of a flatbed standardised logistics platform also overcome seasonality issues with improved utilisation of infrastructure which again points to improved efficiency. Since 2010, A-doubles have been used to move grain into the Port of Brisbane they're about four metres long than the previously used B-double and they can carry two 40-foot containers and four 20-foot containers and the only combination that can do that. For a four metre length increase the A-doubles provide 25% productivity gain and they're also a lot safer. They're regulated under PBS. They can stop quicker than B-doubles and are more agile thanks to the Dolly system which actually enables them to take the two 40-foot containers. Very soon now that some of the vulnerable structures are also being upgraded the A-doubles should be able to run at HML high mass limits which equates to be about 85 tonnes. When that happens, one of the biggest producers of containers in this country I think they are the biggest producer, JV Australia will be able to take two 40-foot meat containers to the Port of Brisbane which will represent a huge productivity gain. However, efficiencies need to be considered along the whole supply chain so currently the QTLC in conjunction with the Queensland Government is looking to optimise the use of catalytic infrastructure such as the Toomba second range crossing where Type 1 road trains will be permitted to go through the tunnel and to make sure that we can actually take those from Toomba all the way down to the Port of Brisbane but therefore optimising across point of production to the point of export and not just part of the network. Supply chain coordination offers the agricultural sector an opportunity to reduce costs through improved utilisation of data in a shared logistics platform. This is an initiative that I keep banging on about which everyone thinks only relates to coal but I'm going to point out today some of the principal supporting supply chain coordination which can be applied to the ag sector to improve productivity and efficiency and largely relates to what Hermione was discussing before around visibility and traceability in the system. The Hunter Valley coal chain coordinator basically provides a helicopter view of the entire supply chain as well as essentialised planning and monitoring service on behalf of all of its members. Its aim is to ensure minimum total logistics cost and maximise volumes in accordance with the collectively agreed needs. It also recommends where infrastructure and investment are along the supply chain. The key component of the supply chain coordination function is slot management which actually coordinates production volumes with train capacity and shipping schedules. I'll just... Here's an example of actually how the Hunter Valley coal chain operates is, as you can see there, there's 1,000 kilometres of rail tracks, 1,600 annual train deliveries, 40 coal mines, 1200 coal export vessels and the handling of 80 different coal blends. It has excelled in identifying and optimising innovative efficiency and investment improvements in the Hunter Valley coal chain and on a smaller scale... I mean, a lot of people argue agricultural commodities can't collectively get together and coordinate on that kind of scale. In Queensland, the Dalrymple Bay coal terminal coal chain coordinator, I'll only say that once, actually operates on a smaller scale through producers, Rio Tinto and Peabody Energy, working with Pacific National to again coordinate on agreed-to needs volumes, shipping schedule, rail slot management to actually ensure that everyone's productivity is maximised and the minimum logistics costs are incurred by optimising that supply chain through optimising of the infrastructure and the systems within it. The principles can be applied to agricultural supply chains providing volume slots, shipping receivable times through the provision of production forecasts and contractual needs, rail capacity and constraints and port loading information. And we recently had a case in Queensland where we had a bumper chickpea crop. No one knew that we were having a bumper chickpea crop, including the transport people, so we had no capacity to actually fill the vessels that were arriving, resulting in the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator getting a call, I think, on Saturday night to get special permits for a whole range of high productivity vehicles to take all these commodities down into the port. And so the whole idea of the supply chain coordination is that that visibility would be within the system and we can actually adequately plan according to the needs of those producers and the shipping schedules to maximise the use of the rail network to achieve the lowest common, lowest logistics costs with the most amount of efficiency within the system. Critical to the success of these initiatives is the sharing of and efficient management of data and beyond infrastructure upgrades, innovation or agricultural supply chain data and information management is required to optimise productivity. Another data sharing system which promotes visibility and traceability as a port community system, it seeks to optimise supply chain productivity through an open commuter system which allows all the supply chain participants to rapidly and securely exchange information after a single submission of data by the data owner. It connects the multiple systems operated by the various operators within the supply chain. So if you're thinking shipping, container numbers, voyage numbers, receiver addresses, all those kinds of things, they're actually in operation in a number of ports throughout the world and have proved their worth in terms of the efficiency they derive as well as the productivity they generate. In Australia, a couple of entities are working together with various ports around Australia to develop and implement a port community system here. What we do need to explore further, however, is what value could be conferred to agricultural supply chains. I noted earlier that our port costs are extremely high, that our freight transport costs are extremely high component of overall production costs. So what kind of value could be conferred from a port community system to agricultural commodities, particularly in the reduction of data error as well as the duplication or repetitive inputting of data in multiple times throughout the supply chain. It's worth looking at given the costs. In summary though, infrastructure upgrades alone are not going to be the panacea to improving productivity, not even in Queensland in the agricultural supply chains. We need a whole of supply chain approach, not an industry approach, particularly within agricultural industries to consider how it can optimise our freight system through innovative approaches to coordination and to the use of data. It needs to be whole of supply chain. We cannot seek to optimise one part of the network and expect that there will be efficiency gains that flow through up from downstream where there may be impediments blocking inefficiency and productivity. That's all. Thanks.


Our seventh inductee is Dan Vallez. Dan was a three-year member of the Men's Lacrosse team and totaled 84 goals and 68 assists for 152 points in 38 games. He ranks 10th in career assists and 11th in career points and as a junior, totaled 36 goals and 24 assists. No one outworked Dan Vallez on the practice field. He never took 30 seconds off. And it wasn't because he was a perfectionist, it was because he was determined to be as good as he could possibly be and also work on the things that would make the team better. Dan was another quiet leader. He wasn't a raw, raw guy, but he took everything so seriously that people around him didn't dare not to be serious and work hard with him. And so his entire focus of his commitment to the game, his desire to be the best he could be and his team to be the best he could be because he really was all about the team. That made everybody really stand up and pay attention. Well Dan, first of all, is just a truly great lacrosse player. I think it speaks volumes that he's got, he stands 11th on the total points list still when we played less games. We did schedule some pretty good teams in there and we never made a term it. We had one ECAC Championship game, so that was one extra game at the end of the season. And he's 10th on the assists list, all-time assists list. Those things are pretty remarkable achievements for that early era of the game. And again, Dan drew the toughest defenseman in every matchup and I think that speaks volumes about his abilities as an attackman. And as I mentioned, his leadership skills and his key contributions as a leader I think all speak volumes about him. Dan's commitment to being the best that he could possibly be was something that everybody noticed and it rubbed off on and I think that made him a great teammate. So Dan was not only just a great player, he was a great teammate. And his commitment to the sport and to the team was an enormous influence on how well we did in those days in that early era of lacrosse at Stevens. From the class of 2003, it is my honor to welcome Dan Velez into the Dick Watts Athletics Hall of Fame. Let me say first that I am extremely honored and excited and a little nervous as well. But this has really been great. The video this evening, the whole day, everyone did an excellent job and it's really amazing. When I got the call, similar type of thought, I think Coach Brett said we're transitional or setting the foundation of the teams and so forth for all the great things that you've accomplished here since then. And when I think back on it and back to those teams, I don't think we really had those types of thoughts and minds. We weren't really thinking about what it was going to look like today. We just wanted to get out on the field and play lacrosse because we liked it. We enjoyed it. We wanted to win. We wanted to compete. We learned how to lose. A lot of those lessons that you get through the years. And I was very fortunate through the years to have a lot of great coaches. Most of them on the field. My parents off the field through or at every game. And then at Stevenson, we had Coach Chadwick but also Coach Skip and Coach Whit brought a tremendous amount of experience since Steve was talking about it earlier. The tradition and the work ethic that they brought and they instilled in our team was amazing. And what they brought was we all wanted to work harder and do better. And a lot of times that meant a lot of that was on our team on the lacrosse field. But it was also building a program. You probably heard back then if you were listening we want to be a real program, right? You probably heard that more than once. And I think we vocalized that a few times probably to Brett and probably more than once especially I think towards the end of the senior year there was the long stretch of rain and we didn't have a field to play on and we were kind of doing this running around Baltimore County trying to find a lacrosse field to play on. But I would say it's probably safe to say on behalf of all of those people all the great teammates I had and people that were part of that organization that everything that we were asking for to be delivered as part of a program you guys have certainly succeeded on and done a really great job more than we could ever imagine.  So thank you for that very much and I guess the I want to end I guess thank you with my parents very much for everything you've done through the years through my earliest days been a great supporter gave me nothing but confidence on the lacrosse field and through life and thank you to my wife Deanna my children Lily and Grady and Colin at home Deanna you are my rock and Lily and Grady I look forward to seeing everything you know all of your accomplishments and the hard work and the lessons that you'll learn and really appreciate it very honored and thank you.


I mean, we have the potential to be stronger than all of those things and we have unlimited potential actually, right? Because we were created in the image of God. So, we have unlimited potential.  Like, was that actually real or just made up? I think it's real, because back then we were just so much more connected with nature and we were able to unlock these abilities inside us. And maybe it was even normal place for people to have these abilities, but then over time because of all these disruptions of our frequencies that come from our food and from environments, it basically took that away. So, so, so, yes, our bodies, if we train it, we can have that those super human abilities and we can have, you know, ultra health and so on. She calls and frequencies may not, you know, you can use these technologies, which I think is the best, but there's many technologies that can use, you can use as a tool to get you back to that place to get you back to that.


Good evening. I'm Charlotte Ann Lucas with Nowcast SA and welcome to the City of San Antonio's first budget open house. We're trying something different this year. Some of you may recall this is the third year that we've webcast these but we're doing something different this year. Jeff, tell us about it. Sure. I'm Jeff Coyle with the City of San Antonio. This is, as Charlotte mentioned, a budget open house, meaning it's an open house format. It's sort of casual. You come and go as you want to ask questions about our city budget. The city budget's the most important decision the City Council makes every year. It defines what the priorities of the city are. And if you look around, you'll see that there are tables here for various departments, parks, libraries, police, animal care, residents are being invited to come up and ask questions. And we are going to turn here in a second and introduce Councilman Mike Gallagher and Councilman Alan Warwick who are hosting this meeting tonight. And when we come back, we'll be answering questions from people at home. And if you're watching us, you've already figured out it's a virtual open house through your computer. So we'll be answering questions about the budget. And let's turn now to the Councilmembers. Okay. Everybody turned out for it. There's a lot to talk about tonight. It's just absolutely amazing. The main thing I really know the answer, for example, if you've got a 3-1-1 question, yes, we need to go. How many people in this room have dialed 3-1-1? There you go. So we know you've got a good, solid job for you. That's the kind of thing that I think is so important in why this really works so well. I've got to remember what I was talking about. Oh, thank you so much. I have to hold this other one. This is so that people that have their computers on and interweb and all that kind of stuff, they'll get to hear all the brilliant things we have to say as well. Again, ladies and gentlemen, what we need to do and what this format is tonight is really not so much this meeting that we're doing right now. We're sitting here in these chairs. The idea that you actually can go and talk to a city representative on which things that you find most important. A real good example, like for me, is I think as somebody who's worked in the neighborhood a long time, you're still here. The safe officer is safe. I'll mention this. Say you're really concerned about whether EMS responds in your neighborhood the way you want it to. Some of us have more trouble than others. Depending on the age of the people in the neighborhood, that kind of thing. So where would you go to ask questions about EMS and virus response? There you go. So that gives you the idea. There's a whole lot of different reps here that we'll be able to talk to. It gives me pleasure now to introduce Councilman Alan Warwick from District 2s here. We're glad you're here. Alan, I'm glad you could be a part of this. Thank you, Mike, and thank you all for coming out and showing your support for the budget process. It's not just about the budget items that you want. It's about the process and bringing things out to the community so that we can all be a part of this and all give the feedback that we are looking for in order to make this a better city and not just a better District 10 or a better District 2, but all the Districts are going to benefit from this budget process and benefit from the added activity online and in person. So again, I'm not going to steal the show. This is my show. I'm just here to support any of my Northeast residents. Can I see the Northeast District 2 residents? Can you raise your hand, folks? Yep. We've got a couple. Please come and introduce yourselves to me if I haven't met you already because I'd love to meet you and I'd love to learn more about the issues and what's going on in your neighborhood. So again, thank you again for all your support and thank you, Mike, for allowing me to come share this event with you. It's an honor to introduce somebody who I really have admired ever since she came to San Antonio and it's really done a very good job of leading the city and making sure if nothing else, we spend our money right. And if you don't believe we've done that, guess what's the only big city of our size or larger that has a AAA bond rating? And so I'm really honored to introduce our city manager, Cheryl Scully. Let's give her a hand. We've got lots of technology tonight, don't we? Good evening. Thanks for being here. This is a big crowd and we're very excited that you're all here. So we have a different format than we had in previous years. We try to change it up so you don't get bored with our budget presentations. And tonight is an open house format because sometimes you all want to talk about a specific issue, but you may not necessarily want to hear about six or seven other items that are being discussed. You want to focus on street maintenance or you want to talk about the libraries or in Sally's case animal control. And so we have a number of city staff here tonight and I'm going to introduce some of them so that you can see around the room who is here because we have quite a few people. So starting in the back, Parks and Recreation. I'd like for you guys to wait so they can see where you are. Parks and Recreation are here and we have Mickey Bramos and Dale McNeil. Our assistant directors are back there. Well actually, Dale is with the library. So I'm headed to the Parks and Libraries at the same time but they're back there in that corner. So if you have an issue or a question, we invite you to go to the back. And Charlotte, tell me to back up if there's too much feedback here. We've got lots of microphones going on. Human Services is next. Melody Woosley, our director is there. Melody, thank you for being here. And Human Services takes care of all of the social services programs. And they're here and can talk with you about our Haven for Hope homeless campus or any of the social services that they managed for the city. Okay, next we have our fire department and we're glad that our deputy assistant chief are here, Carl. Wheatage is here. And we also have Chris is here and Monastir. So thank you both for being here tonight. Okay, next is 311 in Councilman Gallagher. I already mentioned that. And Laura Davis is here. Our call center manager. And they receive how many calls a year? 900,000 calls a year. So Laura has a big job. She manages those to make sure that we're responsive as well. We have performance metrics for each of our departments. They need to respond to those calls that come in within so many hours. And we hold our department heads accountable. So if you have an issue or a question, let's talk with Laura tonight and she can help you out. The animal care services also here tonight and Vincent Medley is here, our assistant director. Code enforcement, John Jax is here, assistant director of our development services department. David McCurry is here, director of Solid Waste. And we have our program, a number of staff for Solid Waste. We're moving forward with our program, our variable re-cricing. So if you don't have very much trash and you would like a smaller can, because you don't fill up your can each week, you can do that at a reduced rate. And if you talk with David, he can explain that a little bit more for you. Our police chief is here tonight. Maria Viecomes has been our director for many years. You know Maria, and she was just promoted to assistant city manager. So after we've been in the city manager's office and we're excited about that, Chad Tustason is here. He's our assistant director and Brian Layton assistant director. And we have a number of budget staff here. So if you have a question, please just ask one of the budget staff. And then transportation and capital improvements. Rosy Vasini is here tonight, assistant director. And with SA Tomorrow, where's our SA Tomorrow crew in the back? Trisha Wallace and Rudy Nino are here from planning. Our planning manager from TCI and also Rudy is the planning administrator planning and community development. And they are working on our comprehensive development plan update as well as the transportation plan and sustainability plan and coordinating all of the public engagement aspects of that. So SA Tomorrow is that effort and they've been doing a number of meetings in the community. How many of you have attended one? Poor comprehensive plan. Okay, we need to have more people attending those meetings to help us. It's about the growth and development of the community and what do we want as residents for San Antonio? How do we want the city to grow? Or perhaps not grow quite as fast as it is. So a whole discussion about that throughout the community. So we thank them for being here tonight. We also have a number of executive staff. Eric Walsh, Eric Wade, he's deputy city manager in the back of the room. Jeff Coyle, our director of communications for the city is here. Peter Zanoni, deputy city manager to my right. Who I know we have a number of other staff. Who's back there? Di Gabbard. Where's Di? Next. There's Di. She's back there by Jeff Coyle. We have a number of other city staff here tonight. So we're glad you're here and we're all willing to answer your questions. Now just a couple of things about the budget to highlight for you. So we have this open format. Please if you're interested in streets construction because this budget at the direction of the mayor and city council includes more funding for street maintenance. Increases our street maintenance budget so that we have $64 million. That is compared to only $41 million this year for street maintenance up to $64 million. We've heard that from you. A lot of them clear that you want to see better and more street maintenance. Also sidewalk improvements. The budget increases the sidewalk budget by $10 million so that this year the budget has $5 million for sidewalks next year. A total of $15 million. And also $12 million of additional funding for drainage improvements. We have seen what happened this spring with all the extra rain that we received and many of our neighborhoods had been flooded. And so we have extra additional funding proposed in the budget so that we can address some of those drainage needs. The overall budget is balanced. We're required by law as you know to maintain a balanced budget. It's balanced today. It's balanced as proposed and the council will adopt a balanced budget. And so it also includes a reduction in the city's property tax rate. So we have recommended a reduction of three-quarter of the budget on the city's property tax rate. And that represents about $6 million that we will forego in revenue in this year's budget. Now we all know that in our tax bill, property tax bill, about half of that goes to the public schools. About a quarter of our total property tax bill goes to the county, the community colleges, the river authority, and the university county hospital system. And about 22% comes to the city of San Antonio.  But nonetheless, the city council directed us to take a look at could we give some relief because the appraiser, the county appraiser has increased values this year. And so the council asked that we consider that in the budget proposal and try to help, especially our seniors. And you know that we also have a homestead exemption for our seniors as well. Nonetheless, we are proposing a rate decrease. Now in the past 10 years, we have lowered the city's property tax rate four times. We may not think or realize that we have done that, but mayor and city council members have been very conscientious about trying to address, especially those on fixed incomes, what can we do to help in that effort. So this budget does do that. The budget also keeps our public safety spending at just under 66%. Some of you know that we've been working at that for the past several years trying to manage our costs and the escalation of public safety expense, which has grown dramatically over the past decade, specifically in terms of health care costs. In fact, those budgets have grown faster than our general fund revenue. And because we're required to maintain a balanced budget, what that's forced us to do is make reductions in other areas of the budget. Street maintenance, parks and recreation, libraries, code enforcement, animal care services, the general administration of the city. All of those things that impact the quality of life in San Antonio, and yet because we're required to maintain a balanced budget, it has to come from somewhere. So what we are attempting to do is manage those costs better and the mayor and council unanimously ask us to keep that spending without reducing positions. How do we keep that spending within 66% of our general fund budget? So we're doing that. So those are the major components of the budget. Our total city budget is $2.5 billion, and that includes all funds, our general fund that supports police and fire, our restricted funds, those funds that are managed by the revenue generated. So solid waste, for example, is not supported by property taxes, but rather supported by the fees we pay as rate payers into the system. Same with the aviation department. The airport is supported by the fees that the airlines pay for operating at the airport, from the users, from the retailers there at the airport. And then our capital budget, that which we have approved as voters and our general obligation bonds, the 2007 bond program, the 2012 voter approved bond program, those capital projects that the voters have approved has well as our capital construction for the convention center that's supported by the hotel tax, not by the local residents, but rather those that come and stay in San Antonio and pay a tax to stay in the hotels, and also the capital construction at the airport that is supported by that fund. So we're a big operation, 2.5 billion. We have 12,000 city employees, 4,000 uniforms, fire and police and 8,000 civilian employees. And it's a big operation. It's a complicated one too that's very diverse because we provide so many different kinds of services that I've just mentioned. Nonetheless, the budget is balanced and we invite you to speak up. We want you to tell us what you think should be in our city budget and we invite you to go to the tables to ask questions of the staff who are here and to offer your suggestions as to what we should increase or decrease. And then before you leave tonight, we would like you to give us your feedback on this process. As I said, we're trying something a little bit different this year so that we can specialize and allow you the opportunity to get more information on those things that are most important to you. So on behalf of the city staff who are here tonight in our city organization, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for being involved in the community and for speaking up on our city budget. Let's give her a big round of applause if they can. For those of you who are a little bit confused about how much of the property tax actually goes to the city and that sort of thing which in 22 cents, I was hoping for the whole thing but we're not going to get it. There's some pie charts back there that talk about where the money goes that's really worth looking at and learning about. I think it's very important that we send a message right now to Cheryl and to all of the city leaders in the room here that who they've spoken to tonight. This is a very different audience that they're going to find at a lot of the other budget meetings. Most of the people, the vast majority of the people that are sitting in this room, Cheryl, are neighborhood leaders. A lot of them hold offices right now or they've held offices in the neighborhood and that throws the responsibility now back on you that what you learned this evening, I want you to get that out to the residents of your neighborhood. Promise me you'll do that, okay? I sure appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for turning out and like I say, get into these tables and ask those tough questions, ask code enforcement, how can we have them get out and cross the street from my house? Alright, thanks everybody. Yes, yes, okay. So that was a really good intro from all of these folks, from Councilman Gallagher, from Councilman Morick, and from the city manager. We also have another video. Sure, we do. It's our budget introduction video. It's about three and a half minutes long, sort of gives an overview of what the budget's about. So we're going to run that in a second. When we come back, we've been gathering questions from people at home and we'll pull some folks aside and answer some of those questions and allow you to participate from home as well, even if you're not here. So why don't we toss to the video and we'll come back in a second. Hello, I'm city manager Cheryl Scully. The fiscal year 2016 proposed budget is $2.5 billion and reflects policy direction from the Mayor and City Council and valuable input from residents on the community's priorities. The proposed budget reduces the city's property tax rate, increases our investment in streets, sidewalks and drainage, and maintains the public safety budget within 66% of the general fund. Over the next few weeks with valuable input from the community, the City Council will carefully consider the proposed budget before its adoption on September 10th. We appreciate your interest in the fiscal year 2016 budget and for your shared commitment to making San Antonio a diverse, dynamic and healthy community for you and your family. We asked you to speak up San Antonio and you did. In meetups and online, you told us what was important to you. I love that I don't have to wait forever at a stoplight. I really appreciate the Marinette Stopwell Library Service because it meets my direct needs. Truly both code enforcement and code compliance. I love knowing that the plants and the trees that we plant are going to be around for generations to come. The City of San Antonio's fiscal year 2016 proposed budget reflects a community that prioritizes lower property tax rates, better streets and sidewalks and an affordable balance between community and other priorities such as parks, libraries, animal care and human services. The proposed budget makes a big investment in your streets. As our population continues to grow, we will have to be able to move a larger population from point A to point B. $23 million is added for street maintenance increasing the streets budget from $41 million to $64 million. $10 million more is added for sidewalk improvements. An additional $12 million is proposed in new drainage improvements to reduce flooding across San Antonio. The proposed budget includes funding for the operation of two new senior centers, two new libraries and a new spay and neuter surgery clinic to help reduce the number of stray animals in the city and increase adoption. Animal care services helps pets find homes. Funding for the maintenance and security of highways and parks completed through the 2012 bond program is also included. We see kids and adults outplaying together all the time. All of this is proposed while also reducing the city's property tax rate saving taxpayers $6.1 million next year. By far, the biggest portion of the general fund budget is public safety. The proposed budget keeps public safety spending below 66% of the federal fund. Funds are added for new body cameras, updated technology and equipment for police officers and firefighters. And several dozen new firefighters and police officers will be hired to serve the area formerly known as City South. Before the budget goes to the city council for approval on September 10th, we want to hear from you. Please join us for one of our five open house nights If you can't actually make it to the open house, you can stop in virtually through your computer or smart phone. Visit www.saspeakup.com or join the social conversation with hashtag saspeakup. San Antonio, thank you for speaking up. Not everybody can be here and not everybody can be here even online. And so what we've been doing is across social media collecting questions for various city departments and for the city about the budget. And Jeff? Yes, and Charlotte and we're grateful that Nowcast SA is doing this for us so that people at home can join in our open house and ask questions and we would encourage people at home to ask more of them because we've got four more of these over the course of the next week and a half. So I'm going to bring Nikki Ramoson who's our assistant director at the recreation department. Nikki, the question we got was from a resident in Mark Turpac who asked via Twitter how does this year's budget help complete the remaining 32 miles of the Howard Peak Greenway Trail? What can citizens expect from the Greenway program in FY 16? So over a million dollars was allocated to provide operations, maintenance, security, so when the trails open which we have another 19 miles that should open up this year and become every year after we'll be adding park police into the system for trail security, trail monitoring. We'll be adding folks to go out there, make sure the vegetation is cleared, make it easy to use, enjoyable for people to use, and then additional project and program management as we continue to plan for new miles of trail. We just got approved another 80 million dollars to continue to build out so we will be building for quite some time. We're going to address the miles that will be completed this year and it will be anywhere from maintenance to safety. So it's the sales tax that builds it and it's the city's annual budget then that operates it. So as you add more miles you need to add more equipment and staff and everything else to it. Absolutely. So we really focus on timing when the new miles will come online so that we make sure that we're ready to go. So as soon as they're ready we're ready to take care of it. I think that's really good to understand exactly where the funding comes from for various parts of the park and that not all of the park is being paid for out of our property tax dollars which is an important thing to know. Well and I see over your shoulder another gentleman I want to bring in. This is Vincent Medley from the Animal Care Services Department. Vincent we got a question from someone at home about roaming animals which is a problem obviously in lots of communities. What is the number one thing that a resident can do to try to address or help resolve that problem? So in our slogan is leash not loose. So number one buy a dog leash for your animal so that number one that does a number of powerful things. It gives the animal the indication that every day it's going to be exercised but it also gives you some a means of interacting with with your animal and that's one of the reasons why animals run loose quite a bit dogs is that lack of exercise that lack of activity and so we recommend you exercise your animal and also take them to the dog park we have plenty of beautiful dog parks in the city those things I think will you know go a long way towards making sure that your animal stays on your property and that when it's on the property if it's been exercised that it it knows that it'll get that exercise every day. If I'm going to take the liberty to add on to our viewers question there's also a big investment in this year's budget in your department talk about what's new in animal care in the FY16 budget. So for the FY16 budget one of the great things that we new programs that we have is the education team. That team is going to be responsible for providing information to the public from anything to what you just asked about how do I better interact with my animal how do I keep them on my property what are the laws concerning my animals but the greatest thing they're going to do is make sure that the community understands and knows the services that the city supports and funds for the average pet owner in the city of San Antonio. I think we want to hear from some people here why don't I hand you the mic I'm going to go find some residents that we can ask about their priorities and we'll come back. Okay, alrighty so we have some video now of and I think we're going to go to one residents video and she's talking about why she loves to learn at the San Antonio Public Library because it meets my drag needs I need to use the internet a lot to learn how to look for jobs and stuff so they really help because I know that there are people here that can help me if I get stuck with something when I have a question of anything and I can see that they're making a difference and I'm standing here with Roger Martinez and Roger tell me you're with a homeowner association yes I'm the president of Northern Hills Homeowner Association I'm also the vice president of El Chaparral Fertile Valley Homeowner Association oh my you have civic engagement to the max here well I try to do my civic duty if I can absolutely so tell me I suspect that you've been to previous budget sessions in the past yes this is a unique concept they're utilizing this time I think this is a good format because it gives us the opportunity to speak to the various departments to get an idea of what their plans are for the future and how we can implement them into our scheme plan and also giving you one more opportunity to speak directly with the folks in various departments oh yes yes get to know them so they get to know us because we like to bring them into our association periodically understand that the services are available and how they can utilize the services better okay so what are some of the messages that you're bringing about the city budget from the homeowners associations that you're affiliated with well our big concern as a community is the infrastructure we're very much concerned that the stability of the roads is kept up issues with potholes a lot of the main thoroughfares are well worn and they're doing significant damage causing accidents and we want a lot of that to be dealt with we're also concerned with the police department they have the SAFE program that we've been utilizing quite successfully for the past 10 years it's helped us reduce crime in our neighborhood substantially we'd like to see that to continue we've also got other areas in terms of the police department and make sure that they keep the SAFE officer program going because I know it's going to be a stretch as the city grows to try to utilize the officers that we have now it's a very difficult task which is a big deal I mean as we're being told over and over again by the year 2040 we will have more than a million new residents of San Antonio and that's going to mean trying to figure out how to spread services across all of those people as well true and as a community we have to think about the youth we're also concerned about the sidewalk situation there's a number of major thoroughfares in San Antonio don't even have sidewalks and these children are walking to school and their safety is a big concern well and I think we saw from the beginning of the as they speak up campaign when people were asked what they were very very concerned about their number one public safety issue was sidewalks, streets and drainage and they were talking about that in terms of young people and not so young people and what we heard from the city manager tonight was that the budget changed to reflect those concerns well that's true and there's so many areas of importance to us I mean I didn't even bring up code enforcement one of the reasons why our neighborhood has been able to uphold its value is because we try to maintain the standards of maintained homes and the quality of life is also all these various policing agencies do a great deal of good for our neighborhood and we want to encourage more participation in the city to keep these programs going because if it wasn't for our safety we would have very little to work with well thank you so much for taking the time well thank you very much thank you alright Charlotte Ann thank you I've got another question from one of our folks at home participating in our virtual open house it has to do with the Lone Star Rail District which is that train that would connect San Antonio to Austin I'm going to pull in our point person from the city on that project this is Peter Zinoni he's our deputy city manager and Peter we had a question about the Lone Star Rail project which we know you're working on the question was from Mark on Twitter and he asks are we planning for parallel hike and bike trails to help with transportation, recreation and safety if that train system gets developed the answer is yes we will try to do that as much as we can there's two things that we're keeping in mind though one is safety and two is availability of land so it's not the city that's actually constructing the Lone Star Rail system the Lone Star Rail District if you will and I spoke with them today and their train operator the lead operator for the system who has 30 years experience in the train business quickly told me that those are two points they will have to consider safety, you want to have a bike trail or a walking trail that's not right up against the track sometimes there's a barrier that separates the two and then accessibility of land so that issue the accessibility of land may be a little bit of a challenge because the Lone Star Rail San Antonio to Austin will go on an existing track what's used today to carry freight for the Union Pacific and so having right of way available to buy or to lease for a hike and bike trail may be a little bit of a challenge but it's something they're willing to consider looking into and as the writer suggests it'd be a great idea and so we at the city who will help influence what Lone Star Rail does we'll add that to our things that we'll work on with them Peter thank you very much we really appreciate it so I'm going to hand it back to Charlotte Anne who's rustled up another guest for us here okay actually I think we're going to go to a video right now and that would be a video from an employee from America Medina talking about what she loves about her job with clean and green division of San Antonio I provide clean beautiful parks for the city of San Antonio I love providing the service because I'm able to see the public enjoy the parks watching them play with their kids, have barbecues enjoy the parties it's just great to know that they're out there enjoying the parks if you love this service or any of this service please let us know we'd love to hear your voice this is your chance San Antonio speak up alright so we're back here at our virtual open house on the city's FY16 budget I'm joined by Melody Woolsey who is our director of human services and we got a question for you Melody from someone through their computer the question is how much funding is provided to support human development services provided by non-profit agencies and how could a non-profit be considered for funding and so the city of San Antonio provides almost $21 million every year in general funding, grant funding to non-profit agencies to provide human services in the area of education family well-being safety net services and workforce development services we include homeless after school programs and job training programs these are groups outside of the city essentially that do work in the community and the city selects and funds them, correct? that's correct, groups like the YNCA Boys and Girls Club those types of non-profits or lead one of those non-profits how do they get considered for city funding in the future? initiate, implement a RFP process every other year by annually the last one that we did was in for 2014 and 2015 and so the next one that we issue will be in February of 2016 and so applicants respond to that process they provide us with a description of the program they want to provide, a budget what kind of outcomes they're they're going to provide to the city and to the community and then we evaluate those proposals and make recommendations and then city council approves them as part of the budget every year Melody, thank you very much, thank for everything you're doing for the city so I see another gentleman over here who's pretty hard to miss this is David McCrary he's our solid waste director good, David people are interested in the organics program we had somebody ask a question about that about an update on the organics can you give us an overview of how it's working and what you can put in it and so on and so forth well right now the organics program is a subscription program today we have 20,000 customers on that program we will no longer have a subscription program effective October of 2015 this year so it'll be for the FY 2016 budget but the good news is over the next 18 months beginning in October we will deliver organics carts city-wide and offer it to all residents so that they can trim not only do their grass grass clippings, yard waste that sort of thing even all their organic materials they'll be able to recycle that and give it back to nature which will allow us to compost it and it's at a cheaper rate we actually save over $6 a ton just to go from the brown cart to the green cart it's that amazing so residents will get a chance to get a packet it'll be a nice welcome packet and it'll give them all the instructions but it'll take 18 months so we're talking about from October of 2015 all the way through March of 2017 we'll do the whole city no additional costs and this question didn't come from our friends online right now but another big thing in the budget is the pay as you throw program in solid ways explain what that means what it means to the average resident pay as you throw is simply looking at your utilities it's like your light bill or even your water bill the more you use the more you pay the less you use the less you pay it's not like that in garbage so the one size fit all will no longer apply there so the question is residents will be given a choice of a large medium and small brown cart the smallest cart which is a 48 gallon they'll actually see a 50 cent reduction on their current bill which is $20.93 so that'll be taken down to $20.43 the medium size cart is like a 64 gallon cart again the more you recycle you can reduce what you throw away in the brown cart medium size cart would be $20.93 keep the same rate but those that maintain the larger cart against like a utility they're gonna pay $1.25 more and it'll take them up to $22.18 they'll have twice as much capacity but you know some might look at all three carts and say wow this is great I've got more volume whereas others may see it no that's a little too much for me so they'll reduce as long as you're recycling in the blue or the green cart then you've got an advantage and it can't accommodate them to get a smaller cart because then you'll be doing yourself injustice and an opportunity to save money while you're doing it absolutely, especially that David thank you very much very exciting stuff and we appreciate you joining all of our friends at home who are watching on their computers and their smartphones thank you David well I think we're gonna wrap things up here thank you let me just say before I turn it over our host here would now cast SA that this is the first of four of these open houses we're gonna have we would encourage you to come out and join us in person for one of the ones this week or next week and if you can't feel free to send us questions through the website and we'll make every effort to answer them online so either way we want to give you a chance to speak up and have your voice be heard and we thank you for doing all this and we do have the last word and say good night to our viewers here thank you so much and that's it for tonight we're about to go shut down for this evening but it's very important that you know that when you send in your questions online, when you send in your questions if you come here in person there is somebody who is sincerely listening to what you have to say and that's it


One of the most common clinical patterns that I see with patients and that I've experienced a long time is What's called spleen chi deficiency now in this video? I thought I would talk about it a little bit more Including what ancient doctors and ancient books mentioned about this pattern as well as foods that are good for it And foods that are bad for it. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein Chinese medicine doctor licensed acupuncturist and Author of the health book master the day on Amazon and audible now below this video I've included a free download Which is on four daily rituals that can possibly help you have years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine You can check it out right below the video now spleen chi deficiency as it's called is a very kind of textbook definition That is often a lot more complicated and a lot more nuanced in clinical practice But in this video I thought I would share some general Recommendations because they do come up quite a lot and a lot of people fit this picture Especially in this generation which seems to be the digestive problem epidemic So let's first look at two quotes and references on specifically what affects the spleen and what affects the certain organs and what kind of Pathological factors are most susceptible to now this first reference in the Hongjin aging says that Use bitter to drain it and use sweet to strengthen it now The second passage is all about really the pathological factors that certain organs Let's just say dislike or they hate or they're sensitive to so it says the heart loads or hates heat The lung hates cold the liver hates wind the spleen hates dampness the kidney hates dryness This is talking about the five organs and the things that I like to think of them as susceptibilities Right tendencies susceptibilities or weaknesses, so it said that the spleen loads or hates dampness That is considered the main pathological tendency that the spleen has from a Chinese medicine perspective Now let's talk about what specifically the clinical manifestations or the presentation of spleen cheat efficiency usually is So these are six very very very general characteristics and in practice It's often a lot more complicated and there are other patterns layered on now The first one is typically that the appetite is generally on the lower side and people are prone to getting a food baby So bloating with meals the second one is regarding bowel movements where a textbook spleen cheat efficiency pattern is Loose stools sometimes even diarrhea Potentially what I see is often constipation But the actual stools themselves are soft or wetter meaning like soft serve or they stick to the side of the bowl The next pattern is visually often people with spleen sheet efficiency or often more on the pale side or the more anemic side And that can be the sequela or a ranch manifestation later than the line of long-term spleen sheet efficiency can be anemic like presentations The fourth is that these people often have food allergies or they have food sensitivities So one of the expressions here that comes up a lot is that people with spleen sheet efficiency Often just don't like eating that much because they often feel food in their body. They feel bloating easily They easily get like that rock food doesn't descend in their stomach Sometimes eating is not an easy part of a spleen cheat efficient person's life So they often have a resistance to wanting to just eat that much The next pattern is that generally not always they tend to lose weight easily So one thing I see is that more of the textbook pattern is that people can be thin and can be prone to low appetite kind of what you think of as a very anemic presentation and when under stress sometimes these people fit the pattern of They just lose weight without even realizing it now on the other hand You can often have people who are quite overweight who feel like if they don't eat they get heavy fatigue So it's almost like a blood sugar dysregulation issue But the manifestation is that they're still very overweight, but they feel like if they stop eating Then they're fatigued but from an outside perspective They're eating quite a lot of food still so they're still overeating The last factor that I see is that generally like I mentioned they tend to not just enjoy eating But they also tend towards eating a limited specialized diet So this is generally how most people self adjust to this pattern is that over time They just eat fewer and fewer foods because they can't digest them They get too much bloating discomfort or other symptoms too and to avoid the pain and the discomfort They just really don't eat that much and that's been one of the ways they found a cope with this kind of problem So now let's talk about four pathological factors related to the spleen The first is basically a factor that really impacts the digestion is what you might consider directly dampness Causing foods because remember dampness is the king pathological factor the spleen is susceptible to so directly dampness causing foods can be oils Dairy cold and raw foods like salads or people who are on raw vegan diets beer fruit juice and sugar now for a lot of these people especially the ones getting a lot of phlegm in their throat with our Like always clearing their throat. It's usually easy to observe Sweet the flavor of sweet in almost any form it comes in is a problem because it will usually exacerbate that kind of flamminess the second is Congestion as a general thing meaning overeating in general. So this idea of congestion You know, you take someone who eats a healthy diet, but then let's just say it's a healthy kind of burrito But now for whatever reason they eat a massive of burrito in one sitting and Even though it's healthy food because they've introduced this massive log Spleen sheet efficiency means the person generally is weak digestion. They cannot eat a lot of food They cannot eat a lot of strong spices. So they eat this huge burrito and then for hours after they're like Because this kind of a mucus saliva is the fluid related to the spleen specifically So when the spleen is struggling it produces this excess mucus is excess saliva So even with a healthy diet overeating produces congestion Which is a problem for the spleen and then later even the gallbladder. So congestion is another big one People don't talk about the third strong flavors. So for example, you talk to people who are on the weaker digestive side And they'll say I went out to get spicy Mexican or spicy Indian And I had horrendous diarrhea the next day or all the next day or I very commonly here I drank beer and I got diarrhea I eat pizza and then I get diarrhea any of these strong things either Strong flavors like strong spices are a problem, but also just heavy food is a problem now the last I guess you could call pathological factor is this tendency to pivot what I see clinically in spleen sheet efficiency is What one of my mentors called excess opening or excess closing? Excess opening is when a person is prone to frequent stools. So I hear people that say I have Three four or five six seven stools a day. That's definitely spleen she or even spleen what we call young deficiency Where there's way too many stools on the other side is what's called? Too much closing where a person still has a spleen she pattern weak appetite food allergies anemic looking but they miss bowel movements easily they easily miss a day or two or three and Even then they still may be cold But this is still kind of the same pattern because a lot of the time but not always when the stool comes out Let's just say they miss one day when the stool comes out It can still be soft Maybe the first part is hard and then after it's soft or maybe they have just a large stool the next day And it still is pretty soft So there's still is that kind of wetness to it which is like the lack of digestive fire for lack of a better term Now finally let's talk about some of the beneficial foods for the spleen I'm going to give these two general buckets. Let's just call it dampness 1.0 dampness 2.0 Now dampness 1.0 is just General low-grade Loading a little bit of food sensitivities lower appetite side Maybe you just have two meals a day and that kind of thing So for general dampness 1.0 not super severe just the tendency you have I would say good general foods are rice easy to digest grains root vegetables meats cooked vegetables and warming spices like ginger Cardamom and pepper now and it's more severe state I call it dampness 2.0 because it's like dampness on steroids where the person's having just severe bloating at the point of shortness of breath or Severe food allergies where they really cannot eat much without getting headaches insomnia Crushing fatigue they often say things like I got gluten and then they're off for a few days The most severe being really severe ulcerative colitis where people are having like white rice and boiled chicken And that's that's it and they're still having 20 bloody bowel movements a day That would be the very very severe spleen she young and other organ deficiencies going on there But for these really severe cases or if you feel like you're allergic to literally everything I recommended the avoidance of all starch altogether whereas for the average person rice is usually not a problem even for spleen She deficient people bread can be a problem still Whereas in this 2.0 version all starch should be avoided. So a diet may look like No starches, which means rice and potatoes and root crops a moderate amount of sauteed vegetables Meats and then lesser portions of fat like avocados because remember those oily things can cause dampness And then modern diets that come to mind based on this the specific carbohydrate diet, which is specifically for digestive disorders strict paleo or These gaps and all these kinds of Elemental type diets those tend to be pretty extreme You know whole 30 all these kinds of things that are all related from each other that would be dampness 2.0 So I hope this gives some insight into what spleen she deficiency is obviously we could do 10 more videos on these and the various Manifestations is there reflux with it? Is our gallbladder disease gallstones? What is our abdominal pain because that's not strictly spleen she deficiency There are many other ways this can manifest that is the core pattern very useful to know Now if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine There's a link below to my clinic contact We can get a hold of me to book an appointment and before you go I have two related videos on the topic here