Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thank you for spending your afternoon with us wherever it
is that you may be. The big story today is
that we are moving forward to get a vote in
November for the passing of a hotel motel tax and
a usage tax for car rentals. Also, I think it's
called the TURS tax. Te er z about the area
(00:28):
the sales tax. That's a proportion of the sales tax
that's collected that goes to the state in the area
around where the building is going to be built over
a certain number of years, would be reallocated to pay
for the building. You don't get that money to do
something else with it. You only get that money if
you're building a building or building convention center space or
(00:51):
things of that nature. So I do think that it
is it is important to understand that the Spurs have
released a state for managing partner Peter J. Holt. He
says today's vote shows the vision and leadership of our
city council and county partners. The Spurs are committed to
investing two billion dollars in San Antonio's future to build
(01:11):
a downtown arena in a community space. We're all proud
of covering one hundred percent of cost overruns and ensuring
no tax impact on local families. Now, the next step
belongs to the people of Bear County on November fourth.
Remember those words, no tax impact on people of Bear County.
(01:31):
I don't think that that can be reiterated enough. And
for those and for the four council people, including the
mayor who voted to have a pause, you still have
what seventy days or so before November fourth, and you
can do all the economic impact studies you want and
all the independent studies and see if they match and
(01:53):
if the people are all being honest. I would imagine
if they're off by a little bit, they're going to
be very miniscule as to how far they're off, And
everybody that does a study like that is probably going
to have a little bit of a different opinion. But
I don't think the Spurs created one that was a
lopsided in their favor. And then I'm going to go
back and even mention this, and who cares if they did.
(02:15):
From this standpoint, obviously, we want everybody to be honest
with what they're doing and things like that, and I
don't think the Spurs would ever create a proposal that
is that if anybody else did another study would find
vast differences in that especially, I don't think they would
want anybody would want to take the risk of being
(02:36):
fact checked on what the economic impact of a team
is or what the downside is of a team leaving
all of those things are. Certainly you need to be
as honest and as for right forthright as you could
possibly be. But whether this is five years, six years,
seven years, or twelve years of collecting this car rental tax,
(02:57):
unless you rent a car or less you stay in
a hotel, it's not affecting you. And part of this
Facebook post that I was bending back and forth with
today was that discussion, the discussion about well, I rent
cars and I stay in hotels, and I'm like, okay,
how often do you do that? Is it a once
(03:17):
a week thing, is it a once a month thing.
Is it a staycation that you do every summer? Do
you go downtown on the river Walk once a year
on your anniversary? Yeah, all of those things people actually do.
But when we're talking about one percent of your bill
and you spend I mean, if you spend one thousand dollars,
one percent of your bill is ten bucks. If you're
(03:39):
spending one thousand dollars, Are you really going to miss
ten bucks? I don't understand where people are thinking that
this is going to create a difference in their lives.
I did see something that I would I'm going to
try to find out some more information on because I
have no idea. But somebody said, I don't own a
house in the downtown area, but I will land is
my tax? Is my tax is going to increase because
(04:02):
the value of my land's going to go up? Probably,
I would say yes, I would think that if there's
a lot of economic boom in the area, the land
value it would go up. But why didn't you buy land?
What's the purpose of buying any asset you wanted to
increase in value so that you can sell it someday,
or you can improve it by putting a hotel on
(04:23):
it or a house on it, or whatever you are.
I mean, let's just go back to playing monopoly. The
reason that you you buy land, that you buy property,
is so that you hope it increases in value so
that when you go to sell it, you can sell
it for more. So I would think that that would
be something that would affect very few people.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Since the Spurs left.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
The downtown area and the Alamo Dome, and even when
the Spurs were in the Alamodome, it was kind of
hard to get to the river Walk stuff unless you
park there and then took the land the bridge across
the highway to get to the Dome. So, but I
can go back to the Hemisphere days, and I believe
it was on the corner of Market and Bowie there
was there was a Landry's restaurant and that was where
(05:08):
I think the fire Marshal probably was asleep that night
because there was way more people in that restaurant than
there should have been, and there was plenty of other
places along the river Walk that people kind of hung
out and went and did things before and after games.
And I believe that if we build this new building
where they're proposing that it will be at the Texas
Institute of Culture's location, we're going to have that again.
(05:29):
And I think the fact that the Spurs games can
be more of an event driven thing than they are now.
If people are going to go to a Spurs game,
especially a weekend Spurs game, they're likely not going to
go downtown to eat and then have to repark when
they get to the Alamodome or to the I mean
to the Frost Bank Center. If they're going to go
(05:50):
to a if they're going to go to a game
twenty five thirty years ago, they might park downtown and
enjoy the river walk and enjoy the downtown area, go
to the game, and if it's early enough, come back
and have more opportunities after the game. I think that's
one of the things that really makes it great to
be back downtown is that you get all those restaurants,
(06:12):
all the things that make San Antonio unique as part
of your experience when you're going to games, and I'm
hoping that we see more and more of that.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
You know, it's going back for a second. You talked
about these people on Facebook. You go back and forth
with a little bit and a segment ago you talked
about how what San Antonio did twenty five and thirty
five years ago, what was different. I think what's different
now also, and this also correlates social media and the
city itself, is that we have a lot more younger
people who are able to vote, who are more informed because
(06:45):
of social media. They're more aware of what's going on
with the city. They are being told like people from
people like you, for example, who told about the hemisphere,
about the Almodome, but the frost and everything else, they
will along with it and they don't make that same mistake.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So I think that the good thing about.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
One of these things is that there's more people that
are being educated properly towards whereas is where this is going.
The growth that comes from economically, and really you see,
if you see a city that gains a sports franchise,
the city of itself grows. Austin a few years ago
they gained Austin FC. Now that that's very MLS is
very much a mini school league compared to the NBA,
but it's still added growth to that part of the city.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
The Spurs have been here since what the seventies, that's.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
When they first twenty four, seventy four, fifty to fifty
years they are. They are a staple of the city.
So at the very least, as we add new stadiums
and then in fifty years they're gonna ask for another
stadium again. Also, like you said, stadiums last twenty twenty
five years tops. The economic growth of this sort of
thing starts just here on a on a small scale,
and even if you are someone who rents a car
(07:43):
goes to hotel, So what add to the city that
that's the case?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Otherwise you're not paying for this at all.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Here's something else to think about it. In one of
these posts, its said that they don't enjoy going downtown
anymore because parking is terrible, and that there's there's riff
raff and things that weren't there a few years ago. Okay,
let's look what Detroit did Downtown. Detroit was not the
greatest place in the world to hang out until they
built the Ford Ford Field and they built Comerica Park
(08:12):
and whatever the Pistons playing now, I can't remember the
corporate name that's attached to that, and the hockey team,
and they cleaned up downtown and it's a very vibrant
place for pretty much everyone to enjoy and be.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
About Little Caesars Arena.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Okay, so the Little Caesars was originated from there. Downtown
parking in every downtown ever, in any city ever is awful.
You can only go up. And here's one of the
things I hope the Spurs do. I don't think it's
going to be something that's a make or break part
of the contract. But whether the Spurs or whoever is
designing this project, I would really like to see a
(08:48):
multi level multi maybe one on every corner parking garage.
And because you're going to have to create parking, you
can't park at the Alamodome for a Spurs game.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
There's to be other games.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The Alamodome is going to be in use a lot
when the Spurs are playing. There's no way that UTSA
can rapid schedule around a Spur schedule that they don't
even know about till August. There's no way that concerts
and tractor polls and garden shows and all those things
can be scheduled around a Spurs schedule that does not
exist until August of that year. So all of those
(09:22):
things are and then you are going to have playoff
games that are also going to fall in the night
that you know, Paul McCartney's at the Alamodome or whatever.
So all of those things are going to be important
to have different parking. But one other things I think
that would be really cool. And I'm not enough of
an architect to figure out where you put it, but
I'm sure there are people that could, but it would
(09:43):
be really good to have a jetway basically an exit ramp.
As you're exiting one of the garages on the south side,
it takes you to I thirty seven South immediately, and
if you're exiting from the north side, it takes you
north immediately. And if you have to do a turnaround,
you know, a mile or two down the road, whoop
do you do? But when Himispher Arena was around, I
(10:05):
think it was on Level three, there was an exit
and as soon as you hit the exit, it took
you on a little bit of a ramp and you
were right on thirty seven North going back to wherever
you needed to go. I think that would relieve a
lot of the congestion and the need for police, or
the need for additional police and stuff like that for
traffic control downtown. If you could just get people zipping
(10:26):
down thirty seven as soon as they exit of the building, I.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Think people nitpicking over traffic and parking is kind of
just kind.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Of everybody's going to find a reason to vote no
if they've already decided to vote no.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, that's because, like I've said before, I told you
many times, nostalgia is attached to cynicism.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
All Right, I'm going to talk about The Cowboys, a
show that I saw the other night after we talk
with Craig Way The Cowboys. There's a deal on Netflix
that it's about Jerry Jones, the gambler and his Cowboys
and how he made money and how he was able
to buy the Cowboys and it was those lifelong dreamed
to do so. And there was an art there was
(11:03):
a cameo appearance by former President George W. Bush and
he said, the city of Dallas, what was the city
of Dallas known for for many many years? And it
was unfortunately known as the place where President Kennedy was assassinated,
And that kind of hung over the city. And I
(11:24):
was barely I was born in sixty four, so I
was born after the president. After that assassination in the
November of sixty three, I was on the way, but
I wasn't hear yet. And so the city kind of
had this black cloud hanging over it for so long.
And then in nineteen seventy one, the Cowboys won the
Super Bowl. And there are a lot of people in
(11:46):
Dallas that equate the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl with
lifting that black cloud and giving the city a different
image than the image. Well this is where a president
was assassinated. And then you fast forward to more championships
in the seventies and then the championships in the nineties,
and the morale of the city improves when your team
(12:09):
is winning. And as soon as I had heard that,
I've heard that from many people, and I've heard that
for the more than the thirty years i've thirty six
seven years i've lived here. The sports team's success and
the sports team's notoriety gives you so much positive feedback
about your town. I can remember when I was in
(12:31):
college at OU and I went on a golf trip
to Piners, North Carolina, who was playing Piner's number one.
And it was me and my friend and we were
on this golf trip and we were with somebody from
North Carolina and they said, where are you from. We said, uh,
Oklahoma and ou. Oh, you guys have a great football team.
We didn't have to prompt them. They knew. And I'll
bet you there's a bunch of people out here that
(12:52):
when you go on your vacation someplace and you tell
somebody that you're from San Antonio, the first words out
of their mouth is, man. It was great when Tim
Duncan was there, wasn't it. How good of a guy
with Shawn Elliott and Tim Duncan and David Robinson. That's
what they remember. When you go to another city. People
know your city because of its sports success or even
(13:13):
sports failure or sports notoriety, and that to me is
something that it can't be measured in dollars and cents
when it comes to the promotion of your town in
terms of getting tourists, getting maybe future residents. It makes
your city in a light that cannot be done with
any other thing that I.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Think that you can create for your town.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
All right, let's have is it with Craig Way. We'll
talk Texas long warn football as they get ready to
start the season in nine days in Ohio. That's next
on the ticket.
Thank you for spending your afternoon with us wherever it
is that you may be. The big story today is
that we are moving forward to get a vote in
November for the passing of a hotel motel tax and
a usage tax for car rentals. Also, I think it's
called the TURS tax. Te er z about the area
(00:28):
the sales tax. That's a proportion of the sales tax
that's collected that goes to the state in the area
around where the building is going to be built over
a certain number of years, would be reallocated to pay
for the building. You don't get that money to do
something else with it. You only get that money if
you're building a building or building convention center space or
(00:51):
things of that nature. So I do think that it
is it is important to understand that the Spurs have
released a state for managing partner Peter J. Holt. He
says today's vote shows the vision and leadership of our
city council and county partners. The Spurs are committed to
investing two billion dollars in San Antonio's future to build
(01:11):
a downtown arena in a community space. We're all proud
of covering one hundred percent of cost overruns and ensuring
no tax impact on local families. Now, the next step
belongs to the people of Bear County on November fourth.
Remember those words, no tax impact on people of Bear County.
(01:31):
I don't think that that can be reiterated enough. And
for those and for the four council people, including the
mayor who voted to have a pause, you still have
what seventy days or so before November fourth, and you
can do all the economic impact studies you want and
all the independent studies and see if they match and
(01:53):
if the people are all being honest. I would imagine
if they're off by a little bit, they're going to
be very miniscule as to how far they're off, And
everybody that does a study like that is probably going
to have a little bit of a different opinion. But
I don't think the Spurs created one that was a
lopsided in their favor. And then I'm going to go
back and even mention this, and who cares if they did.
(02:15):
From this standpoint, obviously, we want everybody to be honest
with what they're doing and things like that, and I
don't think the Spurs would ever create a proposal that
is that if anybody else did another study would find
vast differences in that especially, I don't think they would
want anybody would want to take the risk of being
(02:36):
fact checked on what the economic impact of a team
is or what the downside is of a team leaving
all of those things are. Certainly you need to be
as honest and as for right forthright as you could
possibly be. But whether this is five years, six years,
seven years, or twelve years of collecting this car rental tax,
(02:57):
unless you rent a car or less you stay in
a hotel, it's not affecting you. And part of this
Facebook post that I was bending back and forth with
today was that discussion, the discussion about well, I rent
cars and I stay in hotels, and I'm like, okay,
how often do you do that? Is it a once
(03:17):
a week thing, is it a once a month thing.
Is it a staycation that you do every summer? Do
you go downtown on the river Walk once a year
on your anniversary? Yeah, all of those things people actually do.
But when we're talking about one percent of your bill
and you spend I mean, if you spend one thousand dollars,
one percent of your bill is ten bucks. If you're
(03:39):
spending one thousand dollars, Are you really going to miss
ten bucks? I don't understand where people are thinking that
this is going to create a difference in their lives.
I did see something that I would I'm going to
try to find out some more information on because I
have no idea. But somebody said, I don't own a
house in the downtown area, but I will land is
my tax? Is my tax is going to increase because
(04:02):
the value of my land's going to go up? Probably,
I would say yes, I would think that if there's
a lot of economic boom in the area, the land
value it would go up. But why didn't you buy land?
What's the purpose of buying any asset you wanted to
increase in value so that you can sell it someday,
or you can improve it by putting a hotel on
(04:23):
it or a house on it, or whatever you are.
I mean, let's just go back to playing monopoly. The
reason that you you buy land, that you buy property,
is so that you hope it increases in value so
that when you go to sell it, you can sell
it for more. So I would think that that would
be something that would affect very few people.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Since the Spurs left.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
The downtown area and the Alamo Dome, and even when
the Spurs were in the Alamodome, it was kind of
hard to get to the river Walk stuff unless you
park there and then took the land the bridge across
the highway to get to the Dome. So, but I
can go back to the Hemisphere days, and I believe
it was on the corner of Market and Bowie there
was there was a Landry's restaurant and that was where
(05:08):
I think the fire Marshal probably was asleep that night
because there was way more people in that restaurant than
there should have been, and there was plenty of other
places along the river Walk that people kind of hung
out and went and did things before and after games.
And I believe that if we build this new building
where they're proposing that it will be at the Texas
Institute of Culture's location, we're going to have that again.
(05:29):
And I think the fact that the Spurs games can
be more of an event driven thing than they are now.
If people are going to go to a Spurs game,
especially a weekend Spurs game, they're likely not going to
go downtown to eat and then have to repark when
they get to the Alamodome or to the I mean
to the Frost Bank Center. If they're going to go
(05:50):
to a if they're going to go to a game
twenty five thirty years ago, they might park downtown and
enjoy the river walk and enjoy the downtown area, go
to the game, and if it's early enough, come back
and have more opportunities after the game. I think that's
one of the things that really makes it great to
be back downtown is that you get all those restaurants,
(06:12):
all the things that make San Antonio unique as part
of your experience when you're going to games, and I'm
hoping that we see more and more of that.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
You know, it's going back for a second. You talked
about these people on Facebook. You go back and forth
with a little bit and a segment ago you talked
about how what San Antonio did twenty five and thirty
five years ago, what was different. I think what's different
now also, and this also correlates social media and the
city itself, is that we have a lot more younger
people who are able to vote, who are more informed because
(06:45):
of social media. They're more aware of what's going on
with the city. They are being told like people from
people like you, for example, who told about the hemisphere,
about the Almodome, but the frost and everything else, they
will along with it and they don't make that same mistake.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
So I think that the good thing about.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
One of these things is that there's more people that
are being educated properly towards whereas is where this is going.
The growth that comes from economically, and really you see,
if you see a city that gains a sports franchise,
the city of itself grows. Austin a few years ago
they gained Austin FC. Now that that's very MLS is
very much a mini school league compared to the NBA,
but it's still added growth to that part of the city.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
The Spurs have been here since what the seventies, that's.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
When they first twenty four, seventy four, fifty to fifty
years they are. They are a staple of the city.
So at the very least, as we add new stadiums
and then in fifty years they're gonna ask for another
stadium again. Also, like you said, stadiums last twenty twenty
five years tops. The economic growth of this sort of
thing starts just here on a on a small scale,
and even if you are someone who rents a car
(07:43):
goes to hotel, So what add to the city that
that's the case?
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Otherwise you're not paying for this at all.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Here's something else to think about it. In one of
these posts, its said that they don't enjoy going downtown
anymore because parking is terrible, and that there's there's riff
raff and things that weren't there a few years ago. Okay,
let's look what Detroit did Downtown. Detroit was not the
greatest place in the world to hang out until they
built the Ford Ford Field and they built Comerica Park
(08:12):
and whatever the Pistons playing now, I can't remember the
corporate name that's attached to that, and the hockey team,
and they cleaned up downtown and it's a very vibrant
place for pretty much everyone to enjoy and be.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
About Little Caesars Arena.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Okay, so the Little Caesars was originated from there. Downtown
parking in every downtown ever, in any city ever is awful.
You can only go up. And here's one of the
things I hope the Spurs do. I don't think it's
going to be something that's a make or break part
of the contract. But whether the Spurs or whoever is
designing this project, I would really like to see a
(08:48):
multi level multi maybe one on every corner parking garage.
And because you're going to have to create parking, you
can't park at the Alamodome for a Spurs game.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
There's to be other games.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The Alamodome is going to be in use a lot
when the Spurs are playing. There's no way that UTSA
can rapid schedule around a Spur schedule that they don't
even know about till August. There's no way that concerts
and tractor polls and garden shows and all those things
can be scheduled around a Spurs schedule that does not
exist until August of that year. So all of those
(09:22):
things are and then you are going to have playoff
games that are also going to fall in the night
that you know, Paul McCartney's at the Alamodome or whatever.
So all of those things are going to be important
to have different parking. But one other things I think
that would be really cool. And I'm not enough of
an architect to figure out where you put it, but
I'm sure there are people that could, but it would
(09:43):
be really good to have a jetway basically an exit ramp.
As you're exiting one of the garages on the south side,
it takes you to I thirty seven South immediately, and
if you're exiting from the north side, it takes you
north immediately. And if you have to do a turnaround,
you know, a mile or two down the road, whoop
do you do? But when Himispher Arena was around, I
(10:05):
think it was on Level three, there was an exit
and as soon as you hit the exit, it took
you on a little bit of a ramp and you
were right on thirty seven North going back to wherever
you needed to go. I think that would relieve a
lot of the congestion and the need for police, or
the need for additional police and stuff like that for
traffic control downtown. If you could just get people zipping
(10:26):
down thirty seven as soon as they exit of the building, I.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Think people nitpicking over traffic and parking is kind of
just kind.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Of everybody's going to find a reason to vote no
if they've already decided to vote no.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, that's because, like I've said before, I told you
many times, nostalgia is attached to cynicism.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
All Right, I'm going to talk about The Cowboys, a
show that I saw the other night after we talk
with Craig Way The Cowboys. There's a deal on Netflix
that it's about Jerry Jones, the gambler and his Cowboys
and how he made money and how he was able
to buy the Cowboys and it was those lifelong dreamed
to do so. And there was an art there was
(11:03):
a cameo appearance by former President George W. Bush and
he said, the city of Dallas, what was the city
of Dallas known for for many many years? And it
was unfortunately known as the place where President Kennedy was assassinated,
And that kind of hung over the city. And I
(11:24):
was barely I was born in sixty four, so I
was born after the president. After that assassination in the
November of sixty three, I was on the way, but
I wasn't hear yet. And so the city kind of
had this black cloud hanging over it for so long.
And then in nineteen seventy one, the Cowboys won the
Super Bowl. And there are a lot of people in
(11:46):
Dallas that equate the Cowboys winning the Super Bowl with
lifting that black cloud and giving the city a different
image than the image. Well this is where a president
was assassinated. And then you fast forward to more championships
in the seventies and then the championships in the nineties,
and the morale of the city improves when your team
(12:09):
is winning. And as soon as I had heard that,
I've heard that from many people, and I've heard that
for the more than the thirty years i've thirty six
seven years i've lived here. The sports team's success and
the sports team's notoriety gives you so much positive feedback
about your town. I can remember when I was in
(12:31):
college at OU and I went on a golf trip
to Piners, North Carolina, who was playing Piner's number one.
And it was me and my friend and we were
on this golf trip and we were with somebody from
North Carolina and they said, where are you from. We said, uh,
Oklahoma and ou. Oh, you guys have a great football team.
We didn't have to prompt them. They knew. And I'll
bet you there's a bunch of people out here that
(12:52):
when you go on your vacation someplace and you tell
somebody that you're from San Antonio, the first words out
of their mouth is, man. It was great when Tim
Duncan was there, wasn't it. How good of a guy
with Shawn Elliott and Tim Duncan and David Robinson. That's
what they remember. When you go to another city. People
know your city because of its sports success or even
(13:13):
sports failure or sports notoriety, and that to me is
something that it can't be measured in dollars and cents
when it comes to the promotion of your town in
terms of getting tourists, getting maybe future residents. It makes
your city in a light that cannot be done with
any other thing that I.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Think that you can create for your town.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
All right, let's have is it with Craig Way. We'll
talk Texas long warn football as they get ready to
start the season in nine days in Ohio. That's next
on the ticket.
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