Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the San Antonio Building Standards Board for 28 May 2026.

We're pleased to have the entire board here today.

And we will get through this as rapidly as I can push it.

Uh I do have a meeting this afternoon.

Unfortunately, another board meeting.

But uh we'll see how fast we could.

If we could, let's do a roll call, please.

Right present.

You're now on the mic.

Sorry, Dwayne Nelson.

And I'm still present.

Fred Andes.

Present.

Robert Banke.

Ryan Baldwin.

Dora Solis.

Here.

Dr.

Fazal Hussein.

Kayla Miranda.

Here.

Paul Hernandez.

Here.

Dr.

Linda Lopez Rodriguez.

Joel Solis.

Present.

George Grimes Jr.

Present.

Yvonne Addison.

Present.

Jamie Little.

Present.

David Valtiera.

Also present in the medium from the City of San Antonio, Arcevita Ray from the City Attorney's Office and from Development Services.

Danny Liguez, Interim Assistant Director.

Kathy Rodriguez, Development Services Administrator.

Michael Uresti, Development Services Manager.

Alice Cohardo, Development Services Manager.

Jenny Ramidez, interim code enforcement administrator.

Melissa Garza, Administrative Assistant 2, S DRT's Development Services Specialist 1, and myself, Judy Kroom, Development Services Specialist Supervisor.

Chair Aquorum is present.

Thank you.

The City of San Antonio provides translation services for anyone who may need assistance in a language other than English.

If we could let's have a translation of that statement.

Good morning to everybody.

Good morning.

Buenos días.

Los servicios de interpretación al español stand disponible durante esta reunion.

The reunion está siendo grabada in español.

Los servicios de interpretación stand disponibles para aquellos que se inscribieron para hablar.

Gracias.

Thank you.

As stated previously, a quorum is present.

Please sign it your cell phones or any device that may disrupt the public hearing.

No person shall delay or disrupt the proceedings or disobey the orders of the chair.

Please note that it is unlawful for any person present in the building to solicit or pedal service regarding any property under consideration by this board during the course of this public hearing as per city code section 16-236.

If with that, then we will move right into a staff report on emergency demolitions.

The proposal was that we did have minutes to approve, and while you're coming up, then we will approve the minutes.

Do we have any corrections or amendments to those minutes?

No correction to the minute.

With that, the chair would take a nominal I motion to approve.

I have a motion.

Thank you.

I move that we approve the minutes.

Motion is to approve the minutes as drafted.

Do I have a second?

Just read and it's a second.

A second, and any discussion still.

And with that, all in favor of approval of the motion say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, nay.

The motion carries unanimously.

And now then we will have the staff report.

Good morning, board members.

My name is Jenny Ramirez, Interim Code Enforcement Administrator.

I have several items to read into the record this morning.

If I may proceed.

Yes, please.

All right.

First one.

Structure located at 3506 West Woodlawn, which was an accessory structure, was demolished as an emergency on May the 7th of 2026 due to an extensive fire which occurred on April the 30th of 2026.

Pursuant to Chapter 6 175.

No further action is needed by the board at this time.

Uh, this is this structure does reside in council district seven.

And there were our before and after photos.

Next structure located at 1608 Minchaka Street, which was a main structure, was demolished as an emergency on May the 12th of 2026 due to an extensive fire which occurred on May 6th of 2026.

Pursuant to Chapter 6 175, no further actions needed by the board at this time.

This is in Council District 1.

And there are before and after photos.

Next structure, 325 East Cortland Place was demolished as an emergency on May the 13th of 2026 due to an extension extensive fire which occurred on May the 5th of 2026.

Pursuant to Chapter 6-175, no further action is needed by the board at this time.

This was an accessory structure in Council District 1.

Next property at 3926 West Martin Street was demolished as an emergency on May the 16th of 2026 due to an extensive fire which occurred on May the 12th of 2026.

Pursuant to Chapter 6-175, no further actions needed by the board at this time.

This is the main structure in Council District 5.

And the last one 9248 Toronto Drive was demolished as an emergency on May the 15th of 2026 due to an extensive fire which occurred on May 11th of 2026.

Pursuant to Chapter 6-175, no further action is needed by the board at this time.

This is a mobile home in Council District 2.

There are before and after photos.

Board, that does complete my report this morning unless there's any questions.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions?

There are none.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Judy, if you would please uh read into record the information.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Judy Cream Development Services.

We do have three former members that we'd like to recognize with the certificate of appreciation.

Miss Rollette Shrek and Ghost was appointed to the BSB on June 20th, 2024.

She represented Council District 1 and was a member of panel A.

Her membership ended on November 6, 2025.

Mr.

Robert Tapia appointed to the BSB on October 31st, 2019.

He represented the at-large position and was a member of panel A.

His membership ended on April 30th, 2026.

And Ms.

Ann Weiner was appointed to the BSB on March 17, 2022.

She represented the at-large position and was a member of panel A.

Her membership ended on April 9, 2026.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We do want to thank those individuals who have been here and provided service to the city.

And we also want to say to every member of the board who's here today, thank you very much for number one being here today, but number two for the service that you're providing to the city.

And we do appreciate it.

As chairman of the board as well as just a member of the community.

Thank you very much for what you do.

It is really a pleasure to work with each of you.

With that, then we will move into.

Thank you.

We'll move into the director's report.

And those of you who are trying to read the agenda along with me, yes, I changed the agenda again, so bear with us.

And any if you would go ahead and continue with the director's report.

All right.

Well, thank you for that, Mr.

Nelson.

Uh, Danny League is code enforcement.

Um, excuse me, interim assistant director for code enforcement, and thank you for that curveball this morning.

I was waiting for the executive session to come on.

I was like, okay.

Um, nevertheless, um, performance measures.

So we're looking at this fiscal year and year to date, right?

And so um, just as you mentioned earlier, um, you know, kudos to for the work you guys do, it's really an important job.

And again, we wouldn't be where we're at today without the help of you guys each day, every day each time we meet.

So uh we understand that some days are harder than others, right?

And so uh, but it's like our staff out there, they're killing it as well, right?

So if you look at the performance measures year to date, uh so far we've conducted about 70,000 cases, if you will, for property demands-related um inspections, um, and all within a performance measure.

So we have some performance goals, so those that are new to the board, um DSD uh code enforcement has performance measures, and we want to make sure we manage our teams uh appropriately.

So uh we did commit to a response time of one to two days um for both tier one and tier two violations, as you can see in the report here.

Uh in both cases, whether it's tier one or tier two, uh, we are well under the two-day mark.

So that means we're getting out there um definitely within a day or so to address these violations that are reported to us the 311 or us proactively investigating.

Um in regards to proactivity, uh, we do have a performance goal of 65 percent uh currently, excuse me.

I'm sorry, my vision is a little blurry with the allergies right now.

81% is our goal.

And we see 81% is our is our target right now where we're at.

So uh throughout the entire fiscal year, we've been well on track on the uh on the mark.

Uh so we're well above the sixty-five percent uh target goal that we have in place.

And compliance rate, while early on the beginning of the year, uh as you can see indicated there, perhaps in red, uh we struggled a little bit with our our compliance rate.

Um for a number of different reasons, but beginning of February we took a more targeted approach to address what we call our pending investigations, uh things that were out there that were outstanding.

Um, and so since February we've been back on track with well above 90 percent.

So overall, we're meeting our goal year to day at 90 percent.

Uh so kudos to the code enforcement team that are out there uh each and every day, um inspecting and really serving the community if you will.

Um and our graffiti team as well.

Um, you know, we have a performance goal of 50,000 sites per year.

Uh year to date, we're about 32,000.

Uh we're on track uh to meet our performance uh go as well.

And turnaround uh while it says three days there, it's actually two days.

Uh we've committed to go to graffiti to abeta graffiti if it call comes in in two days and we're well under that mark as well.

We're at one day right now.

So again, overall uh the team is meeting the goals that we've set for the year, and um we'll continue hopefully do so.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Hey Danny, this is Fred.

Hey, on your first uh red up here, we're down 11% year over year.

From 24?

This is from from 26 to 25.

Yep.

Yeah, from uh month year over year and then year over year.

Correct.

Three year average, but we're down 11%.

Is that because we're not getting as many proactive cases or we don't have the employees to go out for the proactive?

It's probably a combination of both.

Uh I don't have the 25 numbers in front of me right now to look at that, but it's probably both.

So we've seen recently when we take a slight dip is is when we have vacancies, right?

So this throughout this year, yeah, we've been on average about eight to 11 vacancies uh citywide.

So while we're trying to quickly fill the positions as we fill the positions, um either somebody gets promoted or somebody leaves to another job or something to the case may be.

So it's really hard to fill uh all our positions, right?

But it also means too perhaps the number of calls that we're getting are are fewer calls, right?

So um it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing because in red, it's just you know, there's some factors that really play into it.

And then the next one would be the same under reactive for rate, the same thing month over year, you're at seventeen percent, it'd be your one, two, three, four, five, and then all of a sudden it drops to three percent.

Correct, and that's what I'm talking about the reactive, right?

Those are calls that come in through 311 that are us going out to reactively identify.

So again, it shows perhaps there's a dip from 25 to 26, right?

So again, that overall averages out.

So you'd be looking at 24, 25, 26, or 23, 24, 25.

For a month for for month, year to year, yes.

Well, it's only I believe this case here is uh year to year, so it's looking at 25 and 26 fiscal years.

And then you don't have the numbers yet because we're not done with the year yet.

Correct.

We're not done, obviously we FY26, right?

We run through September, and so um we'll have a better idea where we're at, but I think at this point we're on target to meet our goal either way.

So your long-term is working as we're getting more community activity reporting.

So you don't have to necessarily go out and chase them.

The community's actually reporting more.

It's it's not probably not so much a reporting.

Again, I don't have those numbers in front of me, but we've done a lot of education at this point now.

We're doing a lot more to inform residents of a code violation.

So we're trying to go out there proactively and educate residents on what is and what's not a code violation, and so perhaps maybe that's what we're seeing a slight dip in some of those calls that are coming in.

People are proactively identifying or addressing their own issues that they you know, perhaps cutting the grass sooner than later and what have you.

Um but again that's part of our student plan that we're working through is one to make sure that you know all employees, excuse me, not only employees, but the residents know right more so than anybody else that what a violation is and what it's not.

Thank you.

Yes, sir.

An example of of what's happening is last night I was in a district nine meeting, and we actually had code officers present in our meeting, even though they weren't on the agenda per se, they had an opportunity to talk about the things that the code officers could do uh for the community and and help with uh education of the uh owner property owners in our district.

So thanks for having them available for us.

I'm glad again, thank you.

And they did a great job last night.

I want you to know that.

Great.

Thank you for sure.

I appreciate it.

Okay, Mr.

Chair.

Yes, ma'am.

This is Sabita Rye with legal.

Um I just want to add on to what uh assistant director League has presented.

But uh what he did not say is uh code enforcement is being pulled in every single direction possible when a new program or a new ordinance is has been written, the automatic default response uh to the question who's going to enforce code enforcement.

So uh that may also uh be a cause for the reduction, because the department is being pulled in too many directions, and uh they are expected to do too much with too little.

My two cents.

Well, thank you for that, plug sweet.

I appreciate that.

Um, but certainly we make the most what we have.

So again, um thank you for that comment.

Any other questions?

Any other questions?

None, thank you very much.

All right, thank you guys.

Appreciate it.

Have a good one.

We'll do that.

And then we'll move into the step updates.

And the first item is going to be, I think, repair programs.

Good morning.

Good morning all.

Yeah, thank you.

Perfect.

Thank you all for inviting us here.

We are excited to share a bit more about our um housing assistance programs uh with the neighborhood and housing services department.

I am Connie Taube.

I have the pleasure of serving as the program manager and overseeing this program and other programs, and we're gonna share uh with you about some of those programs.

Miss Emma Rodriguez is our face uh of these programs in the community.

She works very closely with TSD, so but I'm gonna start out with our rental assistance program.

So rental assistance is temporary financial assistance to cover rent and utilities.

Applications are accepted monthly on the second Wednesday of the month from 1 to 2 p.m.

We are committed to supporting those uh in greatest need, and so we prioritize applicants who have received an eviction notice or a notice to vacate.

Covered expenses are up to three months of rent, utilities, including CPS, SAWs, and internet.

Some of the eligibility requirements.

Uh applicants must be the primary leaseholder.

Uh households should demonstrate a financial hardship, such as loss of income or unexpected expenses, along with housing instability.

So there are two of those requirements.

Um the financial hardship and the housing uh instability.

So that housing instability is uh a notice to vacate or an eviction at the time that we're processing the applications, because sometimes folks are uh sort of anticipating that they're going to be in trouble uh in June, and so they'll submit the application, but there is no hardship.

There's no rent that is old, and so we can't approve an application that there's no rent that is due.

So it's important for us to say that there's there must be a housing instability at the time uh of application submission.

Households should be located within the city limits, council districts one through 10, and we do provide a link for residents to check that before they submit the application.

Household income should be at or below 80% AMI.

Elgible households may receive rent or relocation assistance, and we'll go more into what relocation assistance is, but they may receive rent or relocation assistance once in a 12-month period.

Okay.

Housing providers, and this is very important.

Housing providers must agree to participate in the program.

If they decline, the applicant is not eligible for assistance, right?

So even if the application is approved, but the housing provider declines to accept the funds, then the applicant is not eligible for assistance.

At least not eligible for rental assistance, but then they could turn around and apply for relocation assistance.

So we do leave them with options, and it's very important for our teams to make sure if for whatever reason we have to say no, that we do give them other options to make sure that they know that there are other options to remain housed.

The required documents for rental assistance.

I'm not going to go over every single thing, but there is an income verification requirement, right?

Because we need to be able to ensure that these are the most vulnerable households.

And so we do ask for employments, W-2s, pay stubs, tax forms, SSI approval letters, unemployment benefits, so that we can uh verify that that household is at or below 80% AMI.

Hardship examples would be medical expenses, um, loss of employment, loss of working hours, unexpected expenses, and for all of these proofs or examples, we do ask for residents to submit the supporting documents that show that identification.

For the adults living in the home, we're asking for their social security cards and uh valid non-expired IDs and driver's licenses.

Uh, and for children living in the home, we're asking for their social security card and their birth certificates, snap award letters, um, passports.

So we try to provide as many samples of documents that we ask for, so that folks, if they don't have something, we we do again try to assist with um optional documents.

The housing provider documents is gonna be the tenant ledger and the housing provider agreement form, along with the vendor registration form.

I'm giving uh Miss Rodriguez a break.

She's having some trouble with her allergies as well.

So we'll be tag teaming this a little bit.

Um I'll let her go into relocation assistance.

Good morning, board members.

My name is Emma Rodriguez.

I am a senior family support worker with neighborhood and housing services.

I work with relocation and I also work with the Dart team.

So I'll be talking to you about the relocation assistance program that we offer to individuals.

It is not emergency uh assistance.

Uh, we can assist with the moving expenses, and it does not include rent.

Uh, some of the covered expenses that the program covers is the security deposit, the application fee, utility connection fees to SAS or CPS.

We can assist with a pet deposit, temporary lodging.

Uh, for that, we do need pre-approval that is required.

Uh, movers, we can also assist with moving expenses.

Uh, we would be the ones to schedule the move for for the client uh that's applying for the program.

Another uh fee that we can assist with is a risk fee.

Sometimes individuals that are moving to a new location, they may have uh something negative in the background, like a broken lease or something that they find.

Um, we can assist with a risk fee as well.

The eligibility uh criteria for the relocation assistance program is similar to to the rental.

Uh they do need to be a primary leaseholder, and they need to demonstrate a financial hardship, which would be like a loss of income, uh, something unexpected happened that got them behind.

Um, they also need to have a housing, be facing housing instability, which would be that notice to vacate or the eviction that they're going through.

Both the current household and to the new address that they moved to, it needs to be within uh council districts one through 10.

So when they do apply uh for the program, whether it be rental or relocation on the website is a link where they can check to make sure uh where their address falls under those council districts.

Uh same thing with the AMI.

Uh the household needs to be below 80% AMI.

And when they apply for the program, they can check on the website as well.

It gives them idea of where they're at.

Uh eligible households, they may receive rent or relocation once in a 12-month period.

They won't be able to get both programs uh within a 12-month period.

The required documentation uh for the relocation assistance program.

Again, it's similar to the rental program.

Uh, they do need to provide income verification, uh, which would be check steps, SSI benefit letters, unemployment benefits if they're receiving unemployment benefits, hardship, uh proof of examples, uh, there could be maybe an unexpected medical expense, maybe their car broke down unexpectedly, not routine repairs, maybe the transmission went out, they had to pay for it, and it got them behind on their rent, which caused a financial hardship, for example.

Identification, uh, social security, valid ID card, um, but we do accept other forms that they they provide.

Even if it's expired, it could possibly be accepted.

For children, social security birth certificates, uh, or a SNAP award letter.

Uh, if they receive SNAP benefits, we can accept that on behalf of the children.

The housing provider documents that we uh request is the tenant ledger.

We do need that, and also vendor registration for uh for the new for the new apartment.

Thank you, Emma.

So, in addition to our rental assistance program and our relocation assistance program, we have a team of senior family support workers at all of the JP courts across the city.

And so those folks are in those eviction courts Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 p.m.

Program services include connections to rental and relocation assistance, referrals to legal aid, job training, and other social services.

Translation services are provided, however, they don't do those translation services except for Spanish, but we do have access to a language language line, and so uh language is not a barrier in eviction court.

Fair housing is another one of our programs.

The Fair Housing Program is a HUD approved housing counseling agency.

The program serves residents from San Antonio.

The program services are tenant, landlord mediation, mortgage counseling, and housing discrimination complaints.

So the tenant and landlord mediation addresses a range of issues, including including lease terms, repairs, rent disputes, and other housing-related matters, as well as providing information on tenant landlord rights.

Mortgage counseling is assisting individuals and families with exploring foreclosure prevention options, understanding their mortgage terms, and navigating challenges related to home ownership.

The housing discrimination complaints part of it is where they're reviewing complaints that violate city, city and federal fair housing laws.

So if there are folks out there in the community and they've got questions about what their rights are, if they feel like they've been discriminated against, then this is the team of folks that would help them navigate those processes.

We are accessible.

Our contact information is here.

We've got the phone number, the 210-2076459 is the best number to reach us by.gov.

We try to keep it simple.

Relocation help at San Antonio.gov is that address for relocation assistance questions and inquiries.

And then for help with an eviction, it is eviction help at San Antonio.gov.

And then the fair housing phone numbers here.

It's the 210 207 5309.

We've put some information in the presentation about uh some of the annual reports.

Uh the division and department work really hard on creating some of these renter resources.

We wanted to make sure to educate the community on the number of platforms and a number of languages, and so uh if you're working with constituents and residents out in the community, certainly um direct them to our renters resources page.

There's videos and some legal aid information, tenant rights information uh on those videos, and then we've got some of our uh the websites.

So for both rent and relocation assistance, they can uh find us at sa.gov, or slash nhsd, and we put that on there.

That brings us to the end of our presentation, and we would be happy to answer any questions.

Are there any questions?

Yes.

Okay, so uh first that was a really great presentation.

You you really got into the details of the different programs, and I and I very much appreciate that.

Um I do have a couple of things.

Um you said AMI, of course.

I know what AMI is, but I don't know if everyone else knows what AMI is.

So can you uh break down AMI?

So it changes in June, but it's the area medium income.

So it's uh an average income per household based on household members, and we can provide the new list or the new ranges that come out in June.

We'd be happy to provide that for you.

Um, and and folks typically don't know what their their annual um the medium income is either.

Um and that's why we put a very simple calculator on there.

They can pretty much take their check subs or their SSI documentation and plug in those numbers, and it'll give them their AMI.

Um, but we double check that, of course.

So we we crunch the numbers on our end.

And then um San Antonio is calculated with the markets and New Broncos raising our AMI for the region.

Um, significantly um and uh the official uh right now it's it's at 100 100,600, correct?

The 100% AMI for to be eligible for these programs, no, not for the eligibility, but the average uh AMI for San Antonio New Rompos area is 100,600.

Okay, I'm not that's 100% AMI.

So when you say they have to be below 80% AMI, um, and depending on the household size for a single person, they have to be below $56,000 a year.

Or below around the average for San Antonio, okay.

Um, one other thing, uh, can you explain um did the how the payments are made out on the rental assistance program?

Um, like so say that they're approved.

Yes.

Um how many months, how much money, what's the limitation?

Yeah.

So I'm glad you asked that question.

Good question.

So with rental assistance, uh households can be eligible for up to three months of rental assistance and this is what that means.

If their rent is $900 a month, then they could be eligible for up to $2,700, right?

That's three months.

However, if their rent is $1,500 a month, then they could get as much as three thousand dollars.

So it's it's three months or three thousand dollars, whichever happens first.

And then if there is someone in the household with a disability then that household could be eligible for an additional $500 so $3,500.

And then on the flip side of that for like a public housing tenant that pays $10 a month.

Yes.

They only get $30.

Yes.

And also that that does that's just back to rent, correct?

Yes.

Well, if there's rate fees or um maintenance fees or anything like that that's holding their account back.

It's it's rental arrears.

Okay.

And then one more thing um I I've heard from people that do the applications every month that sometimes it closes in five minutes.

Is there a reason for that?

Well the portal is open on the second second Wednesday of the month from one until two.

So that portal is open for an hour on the second Wednesday of the month.

It's coalition for dignitive housing her new student Rico she does the applications every single month of tenants and she's in the middle of the first application and it'll close saying that it's already maxed out.

So it may be a good system just for their airware.

Yes thank you but it is it's it should be open it's open from one until two but thank you for that okay thank you.

Joel.

I was gonna ask um well actually I'm very pleased to know that you're at the Justice of the peace courts of the eviction court so that's good to hear.

Um one comment I have is that we know that there's a change to the eviction law it is on a rapid docket if you're only taking applications once a month I think the renter could now be tossed out within 10 days evicted.

I'm just wondering six six days wow it almost seems that you really need to open up the window every uh week and the other I've been concerned about is with the eviction notices that you know this it used to be something that would staple on the door you would know that you had it received it but if you're accepting electronic communication from your tenant then they could email it and you may not even know that that you've you've got that notice to have to leave.

And so I'm just wondering if there's anything there that you're gonna be doing when the law does kick in and the other is I didn't hear anything about storage since we're on a rapid docket to throw people out is there any possibility some folks could get storage instead of having everything tossed to the curb and leaving them with nothing.

Perfect good questions that's what we aim to do in terms of rental assistance is to prevent that eviction and in the uh case that the eviction is not preventable then that's where the relocation assistance kicks in the relocation assistance can cover storage fees.

If someone is being evicted and they don't have a place to go to right another place to move their items to we may be able to help them move their items into storage if they're eligible for relocation assistance.

One of the things that we really aim to do is to educate our residents as soon as possible right we'd like for them to know that these services are available before the Hiddy Eviction Court.

Prevention is going to be better than intervention right and so that's why we do our best to meet with partners across the city.

We just had a partner meeting uh last Friday with dozens of case managers and agencies in that meeting to make sure that they understood um that we are available to help, and it was a beautiful thing because they let us know what they uh what they are superstars at doing, and so now we're able to collaborate and partner to help um families um earlier in the process, and so we align our efforts and we kind of collaborative collaterally collaboratively uh work to assist um these families.

Was there another question that you had?

Uh one was with the IDs.

We know with the elderly, especially with voting, they do allow the elderly to vote with expired uh ID.

Is that something you might be able to align with later on?

Yes, but just to add quickly, thank you for what you do.

It's really wonderful.

And I hope everyone knows that the services that are provided by the city, just really something else.

Thank you.

Um, any other questions?

Mr.

Chairman, George, uh why is the application window so short and so limited?

So it's a um a measured approach to how the services and funding is being distributed.

Um so this is what we try to do as well is provide uh support with submitting those applications as well.

So we can uh work with residents who who do need some assistance.

That's uh if if there is a disability or they don't have access.

Um from time to time this board uh requires a property to be vacated, and occasionally it's somebody who has a right to be on the property.

Um how does this housing assistance program work with those people?

I mean, if they're not uh if this the one hour a month uh limit applies to them, how do how do they get assistance if if they qualify for it?

Okay, I think that's two questions.

So for rental assistance, I wanted to back up.

Uh we encourage folks to use libraries, um, bibliothek locations to submit those apple applications, and we also encourage folks to have those documents ready because we're gonna we do, as you saw in the presentation, we ask for a number of documentation.

Um so instead of uploading documents right there in the moment, we ask them to do things like have those documents already uploaded on your device.

And so when it comes time to uh add those documents to your application, they're already there, and you're not waiting on that little circle, that little spinning circle while you're uploading one document at a time.

So we do work with um residents and the case managers, and we put out these tips to folks to help them get through that application process more quickly.

And then your question was about if someone is being asked to vacate, how do these programs help?

So they if they're being asked to vacate, they're gonna be leaning um to relocation assistance.

Um, and as Ms.

Rodriguez was saying, relocation assistance is emergent, it's not emergency assistance.

Now we can do a lot, and we do quite a bit.

Uh, but we do ask for the resident to actually do the apartment search so they would find their their own next home, and and then relocation assistance would kick in um to help them with the move.

So if it's a short turnaround, when they find the home, then we're ready to help them uh with the process as soon as they have that new lease.

But but if they haven't applied in your one hour per month of application period, they're out of luck, right?

Thank you for that question.

I knew there was something I wanted to clarify.

So for rental assistance, that is the the one-hour window, but for relocation, we're open uh to receive applications 24-7.

So for that moving assistance 24-7, um, folks can submit the application, but not for rental assistance.

Rental is the second Wednesday of the month for an hour.

Yes, rental is the one hour a month.

And why is that so limited?

So it's it's based on the capacity that we have in terms of the funding and and staffing.

Thank you.

This is fair ends.

Let me ask you this.

You said partners earlier, and you defined a few of them.

Can you define partners?

So community partners range anywhere from case managers who were in that meeting on Friday.

We had um Sam's Ministries was there, Salvation Army, uh, Family Services, Workforce Solutions, Alamo, um, who else?

Catholic charities was in there, community connections Hotline uh was there.

We had some veteran services there.

Who else was there?

A lot of the folks that are on the front lines and they have a good number of clients that they serve who face housing instability.

So this partner uh meeting, we we have it on a regular basis and we send out those invitations, and that is the goal is to make sure that we are aligning the services and coordinating our efforts.

It seems like we're missing probably a predominant of people who are not connected in a program that they probably know nothing about.

Have you guys made an attempt to go out to homeowners associations, these neighborhood areas with council members and discuss your programs?

Yes.

So it gets deeper into the communities.

Yes.

So we've been at some of the the council um, there's been multiple council meetings where multiple councils come together and we have been in those.

We've been in uh neighborhood meetings as well.

We partnered as well.

Opportunity homes uh was there.

We do reach out and partner with the apartment association as well.

Uh, and so they have all of the programs.

It'd be wonderful if we could um partner with the apartment association even further to have this information on their payment portals.

So when residents are paying rent through those portals, there would be a notification that says, Did you know the city has these programs if you're having trouble?

Or if they would add something like flyers to those welcome packets when you get your new home or your new apartment and there's a welcome packet in there, because if they would have some of this information in there that says we we're glad to have you on our property, and by the way, if you ever get into a hard situation, these are some programs that you could use.

Well, I'll go a little more deeper, is you're talking new homes.

I've got in my resident area, used to be all old folks' homes.

I don't mean retirement homes, I mean people who've lived there 90, well it's years in some cases, now they're turning into rental properties.

So these aren't new homes, these are renters, and some of them are already in trouble with rent, and they're not notified of this.

So if the people are on the computer to find these programs, and they're last minute programs in some of the cases where you're evicted in some cases and told you have X amount of days, or you're removed one way or another, power goes out or something like that.

The only one I hear for emergencies like that would be Red Cross, Salvation Army or somewhere in that neighborhood.

Why is your program not as rolled off the tongue for assistance as some other programs?

Good question as well.

I re I forgot that communities in schools was also in their program.

So we try to you know increase our footprint as as much as we can in partnership is the way that we do that.

So communities in schools, they have um case managers in all of the schools and in many of the districts, and so that's one of the ways um that we spread information out is by getting it to teachers and principals and school leadership, and that's um one way that we do that.

We also we met with Region 20, same very um similar effort was to talk to teachers and counselors and social workers and make sure that they knew about that information.

So that's uh, you know, one of those um mechanisms by which we get the information out, and that's been really helpful as well is to get it out to the teachers and social workers and counselors in the school system.

So they are part of our partner um meeting as well.

Because it almost sounds as a military term, you're in a cross stage still, you're not even up to walk and run.

Mr.

Andes.

So I I'm I I also wanted to step in.

I'm sorry, Connie.

I don't want to step in on your on your presentation.

This is uh Jenny Damita's uh board members.

I just want to speak on behalf of code enforcement and the coordination efforts we make with NHSD on a regular basis.

That we have instilled that and put it into our processes that any time, definitely on the one-on-one issuances where we're dealing with tenants that are having issues, whether it's an apartment complex, a home, a rental home, things like that, where our staff are first kind of boots on the ground.

We have completely drilled that into our staff members that they are making those referrals to residents.

We track that as often as possible, but we're always on our training, always on our reminding in-service classes to coordinate that.

We have it as a stance.

Anytime we're gonna issue through our processes a notice to vacate, which is a notice, you know, what deficiencies or health hazards are happening on the property.

We don't do that until we've actually made an on-site visit with coordinated efforts from from uh Connie's team.

So we we do we make every effort to do that.

I think um in the last couple of years that has grown stronger by the minute uh over the last several years because we want to track that.

We want to make sure those efforts are at least being made.

Now whether the services they qualify for, you know, that that falls into different standards, but we know we've really merged that very carefully very closely with our staff to make sure those one-on-one connections are we're making those attempts to make that make.

And that's why I'm asking because it seems like it it's not really reaching like deeper into the community and it it sounds like it is, it's just not getting to some of the like my area where they're turning into rentals, and is there another way that we can assist citywide to get that out there for people from the development services staff remember uh presentation several months ago, the amount of printed material that's available to the public uh and the development services staff literally carry that with them almost everywhere they go.

So the attempt through the development services certainly is there, and any time you have uh an assistance program, it's extremely difficult to get the word out.

I mean, even in the veterans uh uh communication issue, it's real difficult to get out veterans assistance information.

And we so you're you're doing a great job.

It just it if there was a way to make it better, we'd like to make it better.

Thank you.

And the once again, the answer is how much money do we give you to communicate?

Uh so it's a real difficult challenge to communicate the good that you do.

And I do want to say as well as Joel said, we're grateful from a board uh point of view that you're uh available, that your your programs work for us also because it makes us make our decisions a little bit easier because of the services that you provide.

And just in case of time or for the sake of time, uh do we have any other questions, Fred?

No, no, thank you.

And I was gonna say that it's appreciated, but it seems like you're constantly getting the word out, but at the same time still assisting.

Yes, in the schools, in workforce centers, when folks are looking for jobs, they can we appreciate that as well.

And okay, add it to the board, we appreciate it.

I'm gonna bring us back to uh the programs that are available um for the properties that are brought before the board, the rental assistance, uh that's completely separate from this board's jurisdiction.

But I want to reinforce what uh Jenny Ramirez said, uh the initial question uh from Mr.

Grimes was uh what about when the board issues an order to vacate along with uh you know repair or demolition or what have you, uh keep in mind it's anywhere between nine to eighteen months before uh property is brought before you uh prior to that, the uh dangerous premises officer or the code enforcement officer, uh, they provide uh list of all the available assistance programs that uh the city can provide, the county can provide.

Um, the big group, um uh other nonprofits, and uh relocation assistance, uh is offered on occupied properties being brought before the board far in advance of when it comes to the board.

So if an occupied structure comes to the board, uh I believe we had one uh January and uh Connie spoke to y'all, when the occupied properties are brought to the board, sometime nine to eighteen months through that process, the uh occupants are advised to follow the programs, and uh numerous attempts are uh made to offer relocation assistance when you see an occupied home before you uh ninety-nine percent of the time uh those occupants have refused uh to uh consider uh they've refused relocation assistance and or applying for other programs.

So I just want the board to be aware that uh all the services uh through NHSD and uh partner agencies are provided by the code officers and dangerous premises investigators at the start of their investigation.

Okay, um, and just piggybacking off of that, um, the relocation assistance, that's what we hear about the most here.

Um, can you explain the the process of it again real quick?

Um they have to find their own apartment, correct?

Yes.

Okay, they have to qualify with the background credit check, all of that correct?

Okay, um they have to have the income qualifications correct.

Okay, um, and how is this paid out to landlord?

It's how long does that take?

So the housing providers are um required to set up a vendor account now, and so when that account is set up, they can elect to have the funds sent ACH so wired to them.

So the first step would be for them to get the account set up, um, and then we can we can wire the funds that way.

They have to have a signed lease first.

So, how does that work as far as if you're paying for the deposit, so they have to pay it first and get reimbursed?

Sometimes they pay it first and then they're reimbursed.

Um, but one of the things that we do in another uh initiative is making sure that we have relationships with as many of the housing providers as possible as well.

And we do speak to every single housing provider um for folks who uh get approved for relocation assistance, and so we are there as a support, not just to process applications, but to support the resident um throughout the process.

So if there are any questions that those housing providers have, then my team is there to answer those questions.

Um, but then the funds are um sent to directly to the housing provider.

After they have a sign lease.

Yes.

So again, if it's the landlord that's not uh community partner, then that money has to be paid up front and then reimbursed later.

Yeah, it'll be reimbursed to the account.

Okay, and that also rent, you don't cover rents with relocation.

No, no.

It will be the security deposit, um, the application fees, pet fees, any of those move in expenses, and so it doesn't kick in until we have a signed contract, which is the lease.

So we have to have the signed contract before we can then move towards approving any funds to go out.

Okay, and um, if they use your moving, like is there like a partnership where you know the moving services are provided for them?

Or is it do they have to pay for it up front and get reimbursed?

No.

So we do cover the movement moving costs.

Now they do have a budget, right?

$3,000 or $3,500.

And so that's why we asked for those three quotes first, flat rate quotes, not hourly quotes, so that we can then pick the the we select the option that's gonna be a best fit for the budget that they're working with.

But that's that's paid through the city, doesn't uh the resident is not paying it out of pocket.

Okay.

So much.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate your presentation.

Thank you all.

The next presentation is going to be one that I'm interested in because my initial reaction the first time I read about it was negative.

And I will tell you my attitude has changed substantially because of some of the successes that you've had.

Uh so the deconstruction program.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, good morning, everyone.

My name is Stephanie Phillips.

I am the senior manager over the city's deconstruction and circular economy program, which is housed in the Office of Historic Preservation.

I do want to qualify.

If I stumble over my words today, I'm throwing my beautiful nine-month daughter under the bus.

She is teething, so we've been up throughout the night.

If you've been there, you understand, just want to qualify that.

Um, so I am here to brief you on our deconstruction program.

Um, here on the screen is the primary homepage of our ordinance, which is the primary component of our program.

City council adopted uh deconstruction ordinance in September of 2022.

So this fall it will be four years since that ordinance has taken effect.

Um it only applies to residential properties based on build date.

So if a residential structure is either ordered for demolition or comes to us through a private demolition request, and it was built in 1945 and earlier, anywhere in the city or 1960 and earlier in historic districts or neighborhood conservation districts.

This is when the deconstruction ordinance kicks in.

Um it follows the standard demolition permit review process, so no additional permit requirements, um, just coordination with our office and our team of two to make sure that any um requirements subjected by the ordinance are complied with.

If you want to go to the next slide.

That includes our annual deconstruction contractor training program.

Uh so our office is committed to offering deconstruction training opportunities indefinitely as part of an opportunity to have people enter this trade professionally.

We have been offering this training since 2019.

Um our next training cohorts will be in either January or February of next year.

Um and this is a picture of one of our cohorts from a few years ago.

Uh they deconstructed a circa 1,800 or 1890 building that was owned by the National Park Service.

So we try to work with public agencies that already have demolition projects in the pipeline, reach out to them, say, hey, this would be a great training site to upskill contractors in deconstruction.

Um, and we do try to document those training opportunities really heavily.

The histories that are uncovered, the materials that are recovered.

Um so I highly encourage you all checking out our training website as well, especially if you're interested in building histories.

Next slide.

Um another keystone part of our program um that's a little unique for cities around the country that have deconstruction programs is the Material Innovation Center.

Uh, we have a facility at Port San Antonio, a small garage that we are leased to for free, uh, where people can donate excess reclaimed or surplus building materials.

This is also where recover building materials from this board are sent, um, and we store those and redirect them into community impact projects, affordable housing projects, and trades education and design education.

So those are kind of the three buckets that we prioritize.

We make these materials available for free.

So people aren't paying for them.

It's not available to the general public or an individual contractor or property owner.

Um, we're kind of still operating at a pilot scale.

Um, it's this is just funded by our staff from the city, so we're kind of playing matchmakers for projects that come to us either through affordable housing, like the NHSD project that's on the screen, um, trades design education, that picture was actually taken last month through our Living Heritage Trades Academy, which also teaches preservation carpentry and wood window repair.

Uh, those windows were donated to us by contractors, and now they're being used to teach things like glass repair, glazing, window repair, things like that.

And then community impact projects is probably our largest bucket.

For those of you that are in the architecture profession or know building materials really well, not every material that we receive is necessarily suitable to go back into housing, which is our priority.

Sometimes they're really short boards, or maybe there's some material damage that just doesn't lend itself to go back into housing repair production.

So that's when we redirect them into community impact projects.

And the image on the screen is one of my recent favorites.

That is an urban farm in the Denver Heights neighborhood.

It's called Dawn's Harvest.

And she recovered some materials that were donated to our center through a deconstruction project to build that little kiosk that you see there.

So her goal is to mitigate the food desert in that area through a community garden and urban farm.

But something that I want to highlight is she came to our center specifically looking for materials that came from the east side.

So the materials that she selected actually came from a deconstruction project about three blocks away.

So we think that this is a much more productive use of those materials than a landfill.

So that's kind of the root of our mission with this project.

Next slide.

This is the recon Rinconcito de Esperanza, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center's community or cultural center on the near west side.

They have some casitas on the property that they are rehabbing, partially deconstructing and rebuilding.

So these are before pictures that we received from that community partner.

Next slide.

And some afters.

But the way that this connects to our program is that I think Graciela Sanchez mentioned to me that about 70% of the materials that you see here were recovered from the buildings themselves through partial deconstruction.

And then around 30% of this rehab included materials from our material innovation center.

So we're really happy to integrate materials from the West Side back into the West Side.

And that is the highest possible level of overview I can give you, but I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Please visit our website.

We try to make it as navigable and full of information as possible.

And we're happy to speak to you now or anytime.

Thank you all.

Thank you very much.

Questions.

Can we give uh three minutes to Lati Sanchez to talk about the reconcito?

Sure.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Leticia Sanchez, and I'm a board member of the Espitonsec Community Land Trust and the co-chairperson of the Historic West Site Residence Association.

And we're very happy that this presentation was made to be today, so that you can visualize what a deconstruction and reconstruction project looks like.

We've had as a co-chair of the Historic West Site Residence Association have come here a few times years before, if not me, then our manager from the community land trust trying to prevent some of the houses in our neighborhood from being demolished.

And so it's hard to visualize, right?

Like I've come to your meetings and I see what code enforcement presents to you, and you think like this is it.

And there's no way to renovate or or make any anything good out of uh the houses that come before you, but um that's why we're really happy that this was presented to you because we unfortunately there, you know, we've had lots of pictures of of a lot of there are actually like uh nine casitas on that property, and they were all deconstructed, and it was an amazing, it was amazing to watch um the contractors number every piece of wood, bring it down, and then reconstruct it.

And so uh we're just happy um that you're getting to see this.

We would like to invite you to come to the space at 816 South Colorado to see how this project has been done.

Um we uh are this is the work of the Esperanza Com uh Peace and Justice Center, but we the Esperanza has also established the Esperanza Community Land Trust, and so the role or the goal of the community land trust is to uh prevent residents from our neighborhood that are the at 30 percent AMI or below from losing their homes to demolition.

And so we are working proactively uh reaching out to residents.

Um I know I've worked with uh uh when Mike Michael Shannon was director, um, and our councilwoman uh Ms.

Castillo to ask that code compliance reach out to our association because we are a very proactive association wanting to prevent residents from losing or getting citations or losing ultimately losing their homes.

So we are in the community land trust has uh also taken on that war work, and so you may see us here before you for a house that uh code may be asking to demolish, and so we hope that by you seeing what can be done to a structure um you will take that into consideration in making your decision.

The I'm sorry, okay.

Um how cost effective is it to deconstruct and then reconstruct versus using new materials?

Yeah, so I mean uh as Stephanie said uh 70% of the materials that uh the original materials have been incorporated, and then about 30% are from the materials re repurposed materials.

So um I was unfortunately Graciela's not able to be here.

Um she's the one with all the budget, uh but she was saying, for example, if you have a uh uh budget of $70,000 for a house, um it's saving us the 30%, right?

Like, so uh it's a 30% of the 70,000 isn't quite cost-saving.

Okay, thank you.

I don't know if anyone else has a question.

Any other questions?

Um Mr.

Chairman, uh so the um properties that this board uh orders demolished if they fall into this window for deconstruction is required, then those houses are deconstructed in accordance with with this ordinance, is that right?

That is correct.

Uh that's the default, but uh the ultimate decision is for this board to make uh should a property come before you and uh if the board does not feel deconstruction uh is feasible, uh that's your decision to make, but the default is uh properties brought before you from 1945 or earlier, or in historic districts 1960 or earlier, uh deconstruction is the default.

And the the city has when the city performs this deconstruction, the city has contracts with contractors that are certified or qualified to do this deconstruction.

Yes, we do.

And are those contracts uh rebid annually or how often?

Lord, this is Jenny Damutas.

It's a five-year, that's part of the, I believe it's part of our demolition contract is what it's headlined as, but that it's included in that contract.

And is it more expensive to deconstruct a house than it is to tear down with you know one of those big loaders?

Very high level, very generic general terms, yes.

In most instances, it is if it's completely being deconstructed versus a um demolition.

And then again, what happens to the materials that are reusable?

I'll jump in here.

Um they're sent to the material innovation center that I outlined.

Okay, and then who can use those materials?

Community organizations, the city, or other government organizations for affordable housing, education, or community impact projects.

Thank you.

Any other questions in terms of Can I just make a comment about the cost?

So it appears, like when you say it's cheaper to demolish.

However, there are so many um quality materials that go into um deconstruction where you actually uh have more money.

Um the money balances out or whatever, like you have brass doorknobs, you have uh wood material that you you know if you were to try to purchase it in today's market would be extremely expensive.

So it's you know, it's yes, if you look at the dollar for dollar, it is is actually different because you can use the the materials though they can be used in a better way than if you're just throwing them to a dump.

So, and it's great for the environment.

So, and that's actually the the value that I've found in terms of the program, in terms of things are made available that you would not be able to find otherwise.

Uh the other part is that the city has done a superb job with the contractors in terms of getting it done faster than what I thought you could get it done.

Uh and I've even joined the program.

I'm repurposing things that happened in my neighborhood as a result of what you have been doing.

So thank you.

Any questions on the reif, thank you both very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Our next presentation is going to be on the vacant building program.

Uh this is a program that uh uh started off rather slow and all of a sudden exploded into doing very good for the city.

So let's hear about vacant buildings.

All right.

Uh well, my name is Brittany Williams.

I am the vacant building program manager.

Thank you for having me.

Um I'll be going through the program, just the history briefly, and then we'll talk about the ordinance and how it's implemented, and then a few stats.

Um the program actually started as a pilot actually in 2014.

It was made permanent in 2015.

Um, when the program originally started, it only covered 36 square miles of San Antonio, basically the original area, and then in 2017 it was expanded to cover um outside of historic districts.

So basically anywhere where there's revitalization, like neighborhood conservation districts, military bases, things like that.

Um in 2023 it was expanded to cover uh thousand foot buffer round schools.

So right now we're pretty much covering little less than half of San Antonio, but the major thing here is that we're not only inside historic districts, we're outside as well.

Um most of a most of our area, and I'll talk about this later, is concentrated within 410, but we do have some purview outside of that.

And obviously the the um goal of our program is to make sure that owners are maintaining their properties, keeping them safe for the community healthy and all that kind of stuff.

So we just make sure that those properties are maintained to a standard that allows everyone in the community to be safe and hopefully also spur revitalization, use those uh homes for affordable housing or business opportunities, things like that.

Next.

So recently our program transitioned, we were housed in the Office of Historic Preservation, and then in March, we moved to development services, so we are now development services program.

And the purpose of that was really to align our operations.

We work so closely with code enforcement.

So it just kind of makes sense to have us all under one roof and then hopefully straight line our operations to make a bigger impact.

This year we also got a code enforcement officer.

We did not have that in the previous years, and the purpose of that is to help us with the enforcement piece.

I have two case managers that work very hard on all thousand properties in our inventory, but unfortunately, enforcement's a little bit harder when you have that volume.

So we had him come on board.

He started in January, and things have really picked up as far as the filing of court cases.

So we've been seeing an improvement in the amount of registrations that we've received, and then we're working on just making sure that property owners are following up on their plans to repair.

So this is our program area.

As I mentioned, we're pretty much anywhere where there's revitalization.

Again, we recently expanded outside of schools, so we cover a lot of San Antonio.

And then again, a majority of our inventory is inside 410, but we do have some outside.

So our ordinance, we are governed by chapter 12.

When a property is identified to us either through a report from a resident, city council, neighborhood associations, and sometimes we just observe them out in the field.

We have 30 days to verify that that property is actually vacant.

So I have one specialist, he does all of our inspections.

He goes out, he observes the property, he talks to neighbors, he looks at utility usage, any permit activity, things like that.

He has 30 days to do that.

So he's always out in the field making those observations and doing those inspections for us.

Once he is determined that yes, this property is vacant, our case managers mail out a notice to the owner saying that we've identified your property as vacant, you have to register.

And I'll talk about what registration includes in the next slide.

But they have 90 days to submit the paperwork and make a payment or ask for a fee waiver on the fees.

During that time, the case managers are doing research to see, you know, who owns it, additional research because our specialist does the initial, and then they go through and they try to contact the owner proactively to let them know that the property's been identified, and they just kind of figure out what's happening with property, looking at taxes, seeing if there's possible foreclosure, things like that.

After that 90 days, if the owner has not responded, then we will issue a failure to register notice saying, Hey, we reached out to you, you have not responded, you need to respond within 14 days, and at that point a late fee of 150 dollars is assessed as well.

Um, and then after that, if they still haven't provided a registration packet, we will move forward with the citation, and then court cases filed with the municipal court.

The court case is a class C, so it's equivalent to a speeding ticket.

The fines are up to $500 for each violation, so they can get up to 13 violations, which is the failure to register plus the 12 standard of care violations that I'll go through a little bit later.

After we submit that court takes about 60 days to be scheduled, and then we go in and the owner has up to two appearances, two chances to come in, and if they don't, a warrant is issued.

We also monitor if they do register and provide a paperwork, we will make sure that they follow up with their repair plans.

If they don't, we do another citation for standard of care violations, and again, it's one violation, it's one court case per violation, so they can get up to 12 court cases at once.

So the registration packet includes the form includes contact information for either the owner or if they have a representative or somebody in charge of the property.

We need that information.

We also require a plan of action.

So over the next six months, what are you gonna do?

You're gonna pull permits, are you gonna paint?

What is your plan to get this property up to the standard?

And that's what our case managers will monitor to make sure that they are following through with those plans.

And then we also provide a trespass form so that they can file that with SAPD to make sure that anybody who's not supposed to be on the property is not there.

For uh commercial properties, we do require proof of insurance.

Um we do not require that for residential, and then of course a floor plan, which we usually will submit just to make sure that everyone knows the layout of the properties.

Um they do have an opportunity to get a fee waiver.

If they are actively working on the property, there are permits that we can verify, then they can get a waiver because we would rather them use that money toward the repairs than pay us.

Also, if the owner is deceased, obviously if it's an estate case, there's no clear responsible party, we will not charge the fees there.

Um, and then if it's actively listed for sale, we'll try to allow that sale to go through.

So we won't charge the fees at that time.

So there are 12 standard of care requirements, all exterior.

We don't really deal with the interior.

Basically, we just want to make sure that the foundation is sound, the roof is sound, um, walls are in place, no holes, no broken windows, no plywood.

Um we do allow plywood on a temporary basis, and it must be painted black, but then we do let owners know that at some point they need to make plans to remove that plywood.

Any single family residential property that meets the standard of care does not have to register with our program.

So as long as the outside is maintained, we're good.

They don't have to register.

Um, but if something happens and um that starts to deteriorate, they will have to register.

So we'll, you know, still be open to having them in the inventory if things change.

Um so currently on our website, um, we have mechanisms for people to see what properties are in our inventory.

Um I update the inventory list every month.

We have a map, you can go in, type in an address, see if it's in the inventory, if it's in the boundaries.

Um we provide resources for legal information for people who are going through Air's properties.

We have that, and then various ways to contact our staff.

We have a main phone line that is monitored at all day, every day.

Um, and then we have a main email box that's also monitored.

So there are several ways to get in touch with us for any questions or assistance with registration.

So a little bit about the program.

Um we kind of went through and did an analysis of who's in our program, and we realized that about 60% of the owners in the program are actually people, individuals, not businesses.

I think there's a misconception that LLCs come in and they buy up all the properties and now they're sitting there, but actually it's just regular everyday people who own these properties.

Maybe they inherited them or purchase them with the intent to renovate and rent them out and maybe hit a stopping point.

But um, I think it's very important to note that most of our owners are just individuals or families.

Um, and then that's kind of highlighted again here.

The majority of our properties are single family, not commercial.

Um, so that makes up the most of our properties, and then again, they're mainly individuals.

Um, and this is important to know because as we move through our program, we're trying to figure out how to help.

And so knowing that these people are going through estate issues, we try to find resources for them there.

Knowing that, you know, our people are individuals, we try to connect them to anything that the city has to offer, or if we become aware of something in the community, we try to make those connections for those owners.

Um, and so I think humanizing them and and knowing who they are helps us to try to help them as much as possible.

Since the program's inception, there has been over 1100 successful cases.

Success means that it's been renovated, it's occupied, or there is a new owner.

And we like new owners because sometimes people buy the properties and they renovate them right away.

So we count that as a win.

And that's it.

Ready to answer any questions.

So you are aware of the deconstruction program then.

Yes.

Good, okay.

Wanted to make sure of that.

Yes.

Okay, any questions?

Mr.

Chairman.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, George.

You mentioned that you help people with a state matters where there's no living owner.

How often is that successful?

Because a lot of the most many of the cases that come to this board, that's the problem that there is no title owner.

Yeah.

And so we don't directly help, but we work with mock.

We've established a partnership with them and salsa, and so we connect those owners to the Wales clinics that they hold.

Unfortunately, if it's already an issue, it's kind of harder to get that resolved because it's, I mean, there's so many errors.

I mean, I have one property where there's like five generations of people that would have to be served to figure it out.

So helping them for us is just connecting them to those resources.

And then what I would love to do is moving forward, do more preventative things like hey, you need to get a transfer on death deed in place.

Hey, you need to go to this Wills Clinic, you need to think about these things.

Um, so to answer your question as far as how successful it is, it's kind of hard to tell because those cases take years, but what we're trying to do now is establish partnerships and then get the information out ahead of time so that we're not having to deal with this in the years to come.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Oh, um, I I I lost my trade of thought.

Uh there's so many vacant businesses like everywhere.

How is the numbers on that?

It shows it's all single family uh homes, like what about all these businesses?

It could be the location.

Um, if they're not within our boundaries, then obviously they wouldn't be in the inventory.

Um, and then also if we're just missing some, we encourage people to report them.

Again, I have one person out in the street, so it's kind of hard to capture everything.

Um, but my guess would just be maybe they're not located within our boundaries.

So downtown within your boundaries, yes, and yeah, but I mean downtown, yeah.

Yeah, and downtown is is in there, but um also remember that we're a hundred and eighty-six square miles, so compared to the rest of our inventory, it's a little bit smaller number.

That's all I had.

Questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I thought he was gonna ask you a question.

Um your pie chart.

You have 99%.

On the other chart, you have 100%.

What's missing?

It's a rounding error.

Oh, the the total, yeah, it could just be a rounding error mostly, most likely.

Yeah, it's one shows a hundred percent.

So it so we're missing one percent?

Yeah, or half percent in one area and half percent in another.

And I can take a look at that and just make sure that those are updated.

It's like 31%.

What she was talking about earlier could be a 31%.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, I can definitely double check those.

Okay, thank you.

One last chance.

And again, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Y'all have a good day.

The program.

Nothing quite like a building that's going vacant, deteriorates, I think four or five times faster than an occupied building.

Uh the next presentation is going to be a compliance assistance fund.

Morning board members.

My name is Michael, your SD development services manager with the city of San Antonio.

I'm here today to give you an update on the administrative hearing compliance fund.

Um this is a um a summary of our from our fiscal year October one until April 25th of 2026.

Um, the amount of fines due right now are 977,365.

The costs due, and so when I say fines, fines is that that's what goes up for the actual fine.

Cost due is the amount that should be going up.

Is that $20 dollars that goes to the compliance fund?

The costs due is $170,269.50 cents for a total of one million one hundred thousand one hundred and forty seven thousand six hundred and thirty-four dollars and fifty cents.

Outstanding fines, $1,058,000 for a total again of $1,147,634.50 cents.

Currently, our balance for our compliance fund that we're uh working to on making easier to use, because please know that with this compliance fund, we do have to issue citations to people.

So it makes them not want to utilize it as often.

Uh we're working on making that easier, uh, but we currently still have the full value of fifteen thousand three hundred and ninety dollars.

However, I just did see an email that um Alice Guajardo is working on getting some of those funds used.

So hopefully we can utilize some of those funds before the end of the fiscal year.

Um again, we're working on making this program easier to use when the code comes up for renewal.

We're gonna be asking working with our city attorney, hopefully, to maybe do some modifications.

And I say maybe because um, again, we don't have any oversight of that.

We make our recommendations, but we're gonna be working on making this easier for everybody to use so we can help more people.

Any questions?

Yeah, this is for an answer.

If that fund you don't use all of it, is it lost or does it roll to the next fiscal budget?

From what I understand, it just it's it's in the general fund.

If we don't use it, we lose it.

But if you ask for more money, they're gonna say, well, you didn't use all of it last time, so you may not get as much.

It's um is that possible?

Uh it is, yeah.

Excuse me.

Uh it is possible.

Technically, uh the $20 from as Mike mentioned of every fine assessed is to be put into this compliance fund, that uh it should be growing and generating, and the balance is carried over.

Uh I did not realize that this is a budgeted item.

Uh there's been some miscommunication from when I wrote the ordinance to uh the application of it.

So we are trying to address that issue, but because it's budgeted, it could come back and bite if it's not all used because of the way the language in the uh ordinance is written.

Uh if the answer is yes, language is followed up, this should be uh continuing to generate year after year.

The language and the ordinance has been interpreted otherwise to make it uh an amount that uh comes to the compliance fund from the general fund, and so typical lawyer answer yes and no.

And that's why I asked that because like some other stuff we've talked about before budgeting.

If the money isn't used, then it can't be cut.

When you ask for X amount, the first thing they're gonna throw back is you didn't use this before, so you don't need to say.

So basically, yes, would be to for this case here until it's rewritten.

In the budgeting process, almost any kind of budget you you get involved in.

The the answer is anything is possible, and certainly if you do not spend it, you will not get it back.

Uh, and that's the general budgeting rule uh that has existed in all budgets.

It happens in the corporate world as well.

In fact, not only corporate world, it happens in the military world too.

So it's a difficult one.

Uh one last chance if you have questions on the compliance assistance fund.

Because I'm gonna let it move right into the next presentation.

Uh Mr.

Chairman, go ahead, George.

Uh, on this uh outstanding amount, uh that represents liens against all of the various properties that uh owe these uh fines, right?

No, sir.

These are not liens.

These are fines, uh, civil court fines.

So they get um eventually they should get reported to the uh the credit agencies if they fail to pay.

Um from what I understand, the municipal court is working on their collections, as far as that, that is for municipal court to it's in municipal courts realm, so I don't know all the ins and outs.

All I know is they are working on collecting those fees.

So why does this not represent liens on the properties to which the fines apply?

Uh since uh this is the administrative hearing process as an alternate, um the statute does not allow the city to file liens for fines assessed uh under the administrative hearing process.

Uh because it's uh within the jurisdiction of municipal court, uh municipal court has the responsibility to collect the funds, and does the municipal court have the ability to file liens on these properties?

No, no.

But the uh they uh recently entered into a contract uh to start collecting the money sewed.

Thank you.

And I'll uh I'll be happy to go into it a little more detail later.

Senior assistance fund.

Uh yes, sir.

Board uh please know that uh gonna give you a briefing on the senior assistance fund.

As you know, we have 100,000 budgeted for this fund this year.

Um we've received 53 applications for that.

We've abated 38 of those, six have been canceled, and three have been unfunded.

And unfunded means it was kind of probably above our our budget amount, so we are utilizing other city programs to send them out to so they can get assistance.

And those are because I think most of the time they're trees, and trees are expensive to cut down, especially some of these uh trees that are kind of like 30 years ago.

Currently, uh the total approved cost is uh 77,995 of the uh budget spent.

And if you look at the applications by uh district, you'll see council district one received nine, we abated seven, one was canceled, and the median cost is one thousand five hundred and forty-eight dollars.

District two, we received fifteen, we abated thirteen, zero have been canceled and zero or unfunded for median cost of four hundred and eighty dollars.

District three received four, abated three, one was canceled, the median cost is four hundred and eighty dollars, district four, we received six, um four were abated by the city, one was canceled and one was unfunded for a total of uh for the median cost being two thousand seven hundred and thirty two dollars.

District five, we received ten, four have been evaded, three were canceled, uh one is unfunded for a median cost of seven hundred and twenty dollars.

Uh District seven uh sorry, district six, uh we have not received any or spent any monies.

District seven, we have received six, five have been abated by the city, zero have been canceled, one is unfunded, and the median cost in district seven is three thousand thirty-eight dollars and zero cents in district eight.

We received one, um, however, no money has been spent at this time.

District nine, we have not received any applications.

District ten, we received two, we abated two for seven hundred and eighty-five dollars.

The current balance remaining is fifteen thousand three hundred and seventy-five dollars.

And uh if you want to know, hey, what kind of work are you doing?

You can look at the bottom, you'll see hazardous vegetation again, which is normally probably talking about trees.

Um removed 19.

So we abated 19 of hazardous vegetation, eight for outside placement, overgrown weeds, three, trash and debris, eight.

This program is uh what three years old now?

Um I think it's about three years old, yes.

Okay.

Uh we're doing good, just keep on doing good.

I have a question.

Um, so the median costs is that the total cost of everything, or is that the average cost of the median cost is gonna be the middle cost because of the um ranges of how much these can cost?

We get the middle, so that means fifty percent is below above and fifty percent is below.

It's not the average.

So why does district four have such a high amount in comparison to the number of the number of uh of requests and something like D5 who has 10 requests, you know, has the older housing stock has such a low amount.

Is it just that you're only cutting grass in D5, or is it I understand it's a product, but but how like housing so expensive in D4 versus in D5?

Well, you probably have more some of more you probably have older trees in D4.

If we had some of those uh larger abatements for trees, so I'd have to go back and look into the details to see exactly what caused that the um the rise in the amount of abatements there, but when you're looking at those large abatements, it's normally trees and vegetation.

Okay, thank you.

Any additional questions on the program?

I'm gonna go to district three.

Yes, sir.

We see four, did three.

What happens to the one if you run out of money?

Does it go to the next year's, or is it they have to reapply for it?

Um I don't think they have to reapply.

I think it sir.

Yeah, I I can answer that.

This is Danny League is uh interesting director.

So I used to administer this program, and so um first year uh I we we got an influx of applications, right?

And so the first year we were lucky enough to get some additional funding, if you will, uh on top of the hundred thousand that we got for that first year.

So we try to abate as many as we could that first year.

Now they were granted there were some that we could not, and to your point, they wrote over to the following year.

So they were kind of put on hold uh for the new fiscal year for the budget to be, you know, I guess come into effect, and then they started that process.

So there were so there was no one that had to reapply.

Okay, and then in district one where it gets nine, seven and one canceled, was the canceled because it was already taken care of, or because it was out of the cost.

Normally normally if it goes uh if it's cancelled, that's because the owner may have done it, or they may have had somebody else assist.

So it wouldn't fall out of your cost budget if it was over.

Well, yeah, it could be um let me see, unfunded.

No, unfunded would be if we un if we didn't fund it, you'll see three were unfunded.

Okay.

And you'll see over here three unfunded.

That means those were out that we we sent those out and said, hey, there's another program that can assist with those.

So those three that were unfunded that you'll see there were sent out to others.

The ones that were cancelled may have been because maybe the family helped them, maybe they got you know help from a church or or something else.

So it wasn't because you guys canceled it, maybe because they canceled it.

They canceled it, they did it, yes, sir.

And then if they canceled, did they notify you or you get out there and it's already been done?

Sometimes we'll get out there, we'll see it's done.

Sometimes they'll tell us, hey, don't worry about it, we're gonna do it.

They do it, our officers make the reinspection once it's done and close the case out.

And then that money can be used for the others that correct, yes, sir.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, and if I can, Mr.

Andis, uh again, Danny League's interesting director.

For the unfunded ones, I think so far it's only been three.

Uh one of those three was an estimate that we received for a tree removal, uh, approximately thirty thousand dollars.

That that would have been close to about a third of our budget.

So um rather than do that one for thirty thousand, we figured it'd make sense to kind of outsource it somewhere else.

And so we actually got some assistance from parks and recs through one of their uh neighborhood or excuse me, tree care programs, and they were able to go out there and abate it at a at a lesser cost.

And let me ask you, because that goes into another thing too.

If you remove a tree thirty years or better, you have to replace the tree.

Does that go in this case too or no?

Not in this case.

Because it's private property?

No, because it's not new construction.

These are existing trees.

And they serve these are uh occupied homes or residential structures.

And we're not just cutting down trees.

We with these trees that we remove the arborist goes and said, hey, these are dead or in such a decay that they need to be removed.

Well, that's why I'm saying.

Because it is the ordinance that if you remove a full tree at X amount of years, you have to replace with a specific tree at or several trees for that.

So in this case here, some of the stuff would be over cost, which would be the one that would be unfunded.

Correct.

So that tree definitely unfunded.

Yes.

It would fit within.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions on the senior program?

Okay, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

We'll move into the BS BSB process.

Good morning, board members.

I am back.

We're moving very well on time.

Thank you very much.

And we're gonna keep this rolling unless anybody needs a break.

Do we need a five-minute break?

We're doing well in time.

I think because of the way we've structured, we can go ahead and just take the break individually.

Yes, that's it.

Okay.

Very good.

All right.

I will keep this removing.

Uh we were asked to just kind of present a high-level uh processing of how some of our BSB cases once how do they arrive here?

So what we kind of developed was very, very high-level kind of a little timeline, a little charting of what kind of goes into the background a little bit before the cases.

You know, you'll see a polished case, you'll see a presentation here at the board on any one of our given panels uh throughout the years.

But we wanted to just provide a little bit of background of what is happening, uh, kind of boots on the ground when the staff are making their visits, when they're putting their pro uh their paperwork together and documentation efforts together.

So this is kind of what this lays out.

Again, it's very, very high level.

Um I probably wouldn't say that maybe one in five would follow this exact steps because there's so many different pieces that are always moving and very unique to some of these cases.

And that's kind of what draws our staff come in every day to work because of the uniqueness, things like that that they're kind of working and remain flexible on.

But uh we just wanted to at least put something on paper and have that presented to you guys today.

So if I if and please stop me for any questions or or things that may seem out of order, um, but uh we'll we'll go through this.

Um we'll go through this quickly.

So initial inspection when an officer receives a case.

Um it is typically either um a referral from either code staff who are in the field, uh a citizen complaint, or even uh a fire report.

We do receive fire reports um every week where a fire has occurred.

We want to get um extra eyes on it to determine what's the status or situation.

We call that an initial inspection occurring where the violations are identified.

Uh a notice of process uh a notice of um repairs are um are prepared by the officer, they will check many, many boxes starting from the foundation uh walls, uh roof lines, things like that that are needing that are seen to be deficient.

They'll send that notice.

If possible, if there is somebody of record um for through their quick um inspections or checks on uh Bear County appraisal, they'll send out even a uh a consultation letter trying to meet with the owner.

The typical normal you know structure is gonna be vacant, so there's nobody on site to knock on a door to get access to.

So that's where the consultation letters will come into play where we'll send a letter out at the same time we're sending a notice violation out or preparing that notice violation out.

Those notice of violation for repairs are you are gonna be a 30-day notice.

So next stepping in, um, they'll they'll send those notices, they'll they'll let those notices go through.

Reinspection for those notices and follow up will typically take place at 30 days.

At that time, the officers are also preparing in the background.

If again they've made no contact with the owner or ownership or anybody um in control of that property, they'll prepare an administrative warrant to do uh interior inspections.

Uh that interior inspection is definitely designed to collect photographic evidence of what's going on in the inside.

So they may have already assessed what the outside is looking like, but to go into these structures, even if they're vacant, they're attempting those those uh they're getting that warrant pulled, coordinating it with police.

That's a big that's that's a pretty big process because while we prepare the warrant, we swear out to the warrant, uh police still have to serve that warrant, and also clear clear the structure for our safety for staff safety.

So that's a coordinated effort.

Uh around that timeline in between there.

They're also coordinating with um Office of Historic Preservation to let them know this um property is under investigation.

There's early warning reports that that department does receive to let them know their pending cases being created so that they have a head heads up.

We literally call it an early warning report.

They have a heads up of what's going on in our in our day-to-day cases and investigations that are occurring.

Again, more contact is attempted to be made with the owner, whether they're talking with the neighbors across the street or neighbors are coming out or follow-up, they're leaving door tags, they're they're trying to make any type of uh contact to get somebody who's responsible for those properties during those timelines.

And what we added here is a bullet where this can this can kind of this will kind of continue on.

There may be additional reinspections occurring.

At a minimum, we're asking that officer to follow up on those almost every month, if not sooner, after that initial inspection has um or that notice has expired.

They're doing their research, they're doing coordinated efforts.

If cleanup, if the structure on the outside, you know, just the property itself is unsightly, overgrown, stuff is you know thrown about.

If the structure is unsecured, they're also going to be preparing a case for that as well.

Having the structure secured, having it cleaned up, trying to prevent uh any type of uh vagrant activity is what is also occurring in the background on this property.

So there's there's two different tracks that may occur while this property is continuing through a dangerous premise investigation.

Next piece is also uh referencing where they create a hard copy of a dangerous um, you know, their file folder.

We call them red folders in the office.

You'll see it's a big bright red folder.

Those things can get about three inches thick, but everything they're collecting, all the information they're collecting photos, notices, copies of warrants, things like that.

We do hard copies, our our city attorneys still want us to kill unfortunately the trees.

So we still prepare those hard copies and are putting everything and collecting all that information into a hard copy file folder.

So in the instance, you know, files, um, files are lost in a computer, which you know it does happen.

We we hate to ever know that it happens, but we have the backup copy because we want to be um as redundant as possible.

Also, we will deliver those that information as a complete packet so that we're not having to do it at the very end later.

Now, archiving is a different issue.

We don't even get into that with our admin staff because that's a little bit of heartburn.

But that is something we still work through.

Um, but we and that's its own time consuming piece.

The staff are wanting to make sure they're making their entries in our in our system of record on online, but we're also creating those hard copies to uh to prepare and document that process along the way.

Case summary does occur.

It's an internal process, it is an external process as well.

We do an internal review with uh managers, supervisors.

Uh the staff will bring forward their case, their photos.

You'll probably we'll probably review about I've always told staff there's no limit, so I've had somebody bring in about 60 photos, and we'll go through all those photos to make sure we have the story being told.

We parry that down considerably when these cases are presented to the board, but staff will go through all their photos and collection efforts because we want to make sure we're presenting you know the best case forward.

We also want to make sure the recommendations we're making, whether it is a recommendation for repair or a recommendation for demolition, also tells the same consistent story as much as possible.

So we're we're preparing with questions, we're preparing with explanations.

We're we're making sure we're also making sure we've covered, is there any referral again?

At that time, that's kind of it's not the last time it'll be brought up, but it is absolutely being brought up with managers with supervisors to make sure.

Did we cover all of our steps for any referrals?

Did we make sure if it's an occupied structure, is there um, you know, have they been granted that service?

Have they applied for that service?

Where was the sticking point?

Did they not qualify or things like that?

If it's not occupied, you know, is there any program that you know a resident may qualify for?

Um, of course, it's very limited when they occupy unoccupied, but there's still some programs out there that we try to make sure we've uh checked those boxes to ensure and also the hardship we have on on our books and in our ordinance, a hardship um allowance.

We'll make sure.

Did they go through the hardship?

If there's you know, if time if funding is a hindrance and they just need additional time and they have a plan in place.

Have we covered that?

Because we're not looking to bring these as quick as possible.

We're wanting we're wanting to make sure we've covered all those steps.

So ringing that into collective uh internal review is very helpful for our staff because they're in the boots, they're in the they're in the flow of their inspection, and sometimes you know, if they've missed a step, that's the time we can catch it, revisit it, and make sure we've um covered those issues.

So that's that's typically what is done through an internal review.

An executive review also takes place.

That takes place between the director of our department, um, our assistant director and um office of historic preservation director, deputy directors as well, will review those cases one more time to make sure there's no concerns again to make sure we've covered uh any steps to make sure they are in concurrence with the recommendations as well again before it is coming to the board.

Um, and that's that's kind of um very very tight, very quickly run through of some of the the background processing before it gets to the hearing.

At the time of the hearing, uh we will present the staff will present their own cases.

Um if they have uh interior photos that are possibly usually we'll even go 60 days.

Um, we'll we'll typically try to have 30 days or less of interior photos so that we can ensure has work occurred, did a permit get pulled we didn't see.

Um, if there's anything that has changed on the structure or gotten worse, you know, with the weather we've been having, that's a perfect example.

Rainstorms, things like that, um, could could exacerbate uh an issue with the roof or with walls and and foundation issues.

So we'll take a look at those to ensure nothing um additionally has occurred on the property to maybe um something we want to point out or staff will want to point out.

They will prepare their scripting, they'll prepare their outline, they want to be as succinctly as possible on explaining all their timelines and um those efforts that have taken place.

Uh when they when they come to the presentation, again, we've pared down possibly from 50 to 60 photos.

I believe our average is about 25, 25 photos is what you will see, but there is always you know many many more um saved in the background.

If uh if a demolition order is um given by the board, staff will then follow up out in the field at the structure.

We have different placarding that we will post at the property, they'll take photos, we'll document those efforts.

Once it comes to the actual demolition process, if um staff are still continuing to monitor the structure, if it needs to be secured up until that point, if it needs to be cleaned, up until that point, they're continuing with those cases and reviews.

They're also double checking to make sure there's no um, you know, lawsuits have potentially been filed.

Uh, we will usually receive, you know, up even until the day of um when the order or the permits are pulled.

If we receive an order that a lawsuit has been filed or restraining orders been filed, we will double check with our city attorney's offices to make sure because we we don't want to do a misstep, because when you take a structure, you cannot put that structure back.

So we want to make sure we've covered all the steps as much as possible with those with those efforts.

The staff at that time will work with the demolition contractor if it is a structure that is needing the deconstruction as mentioned before, or if it's needing the demolition, um, if it meets those orders, they're ensuring they're taking their photos, they're on site.

When the first you know action takes place, they will then follow up to make sure it's completed, structures on the ground, no longer a hazard, but then also to follow up to make sure any debris um is properly removed and ends up in the proper um proper disposal methods.

So that is a very, very high level, very quick processing of uh kind of just a little bit of background of what's going on what goes on.

In defense of counsel, it is easier to read paper files.

I agree.

I do agree, I do agree.

And in further defense counsel, because uh many of the cases, or at least the cases that are ordered demolished, and uh there's a subsequent demolition by the city, uh, there is a 10 year period for an owner to come back and sue the city for a takings claim.

And uh the statute of limitations for takings claim is 10 years.

That's why we need to maintain those files hard copy uh for that long.

I didn't realize you were defense counsel.

Oh no, I said in defense of council.

And uh I guess for Fred and I we don't get to ask the question why did it take so long anymore, Fred?

Because obviously the background work is extensive and is cumbersome, but it's thorough because obviously all the boxes are checked because they've checked all the boxes three different times.

Well, and as a result of that, the building standards board is indeed the last resort.

According to council, they may be checking the box a little more up to 10 years if it needs to be checked.

That is absolutely true.

Um, and and what we don't put in here, of course, is when staff leave, we do have turnover even in this division or unit.

Um, they are dedicated staff that are trained to do these type of inspections.

When we have staff turnover, we do our best with that if the if they give us enough notice.

Two weeks is not enough notice when we know staff are leaving.

So we try to do a 30-day notice if possible, so they prepare their pending case files to do handoffs.

Sometimes that happens very cleanly, sometimes not as cleanly as we as we would like.

So we will start cases over, unfortunately.

We don't close cases out, but you know, new notices may need to be issued or um photos may need to be taken to make sure we have that evidence as well.

So we we want to be very careful, um, and we want our staff to be as prepared as possible to present as clean a case as possible.

The review internal it just amazes me the number of times that you've you've actually look at a piece of property and the number of people on the staff that look at that property before it ever comes to us.

It to me is just amazing uh the detail work that you put into it and the expertise required to even look at the case files that goes with it.

So congratulations to the entire staff.

Uh it's it's a difficult job before it ever gets to us.

Uh and so we actually have the easiest job when you take a big look at the big picture itself.

Uh any questions of the process?

Yeah, Mr.

Chairman.

For the newer members of the board, could you describe briefly the uh owner's opportunity to appeal a decision of this board?

Yes, so when a determination is made typically for the demolition um as a 30-day demolition order by the board, and I'll ask the video to step in at any point I missed that, but there is um there is a letter that's created, there is an order that's created, it'll get reviewed by the by the city attorney's office prepared by our staff, reviewed, final signature is coming out um by the chairman.

Chairman will have to sign those orders.

Um that letter then gets created and sent to the owners.

I believe they have it's an appeal period of 30 days to appeal within that window once they receive those those orders.

Um that's where we're looking for those appeals.

We still receive them days after, weeks after, even months after.

If a new owner pops up, they they they buy the property without doing a proper search, without doing a proper title search, things like that will occur.

Um that's where we get our city attorneys involved with their attorneys to look over what what is going on.

So it but the 30 days is the tip is by ordinance what um what the timeline is for for those owners, those current owners.

And the appeal is to a state district court, it's not to the city council or any other city body.

That is correct.

Yeah, uh to add on to what Jenny uh said, it's uh 30 days following the date the order is mailed.

Um the legislature purposely stated that uh the appeal period starts running the day after it's been mailed, as opposed to uh decades ago, it was based on when it was received uh however uh by statute we're required to send the memorialized uh BSB order um by certified mail and uh the legislature again uh decades ago uh realized there was a problem because by having it send certified mail uh owners can refuse to accept it so uh the legislature revised uh chapters 54 and 214 of the local government code that it's for uh 30 days start the date after it's mailed and I also want to kind of uh just uh jump in on uh behalf of uh Judy and Esther uh when the case uh is finally uh determined that it should be presented to the board uh they do an amazing job uh searching for all people with some kind of legal interest in the property uh we go uh far beyond what the statute requires which is uh to look on bear cad uh utility records uh secretary estate if it's a company uh tax assessor I think those were the only four requirements but instead uh what DSD does is uh request a title search for every property that's uh headed this way and everyone listed in that title search indicating uh they have some type of ownership interest is notified to attend this hearing that is um thank you Savena on that end because I did uh want to reiterate that I mean we've had um that's why we don't do um rescheduling of cases lately that that is something our staff will hear about if there's a reason or if there's something that was missed or some notifications miss is never done that is never missed by our admin board or admin staff.

They are very detailed driven and I cannot thank them enough for keeping us all uh in line and on schedule what we didn't have the opportunity to do on our timeline was include all the background work that goes on by um Judy Esther and Melissa as well that make sure that we're meeting our deadlines for case review we're meeting our deadlines for um our agenda the our agendas that are published or agendas that are uh posted um that are meeting all of our title search uh mailouts we've had what's the record right now for a title mail out of 60 at one property um that is very heavy on the paperwork additionally that goes into our red folders as well we we capture copies of all that information but just those deadlines um because this is such a deadline driven we want to make sure we've given everybody the opportunity who has ever touched those properties to have that that last chance to include coming to the board hearing and have that opportunity to be at the hearing to present or to um you know in part their plan uh their plan of action because it is just a recommendation we're making at the hearings uh final decisions depending on the owner's plan of action um can come forward at any time and we're we're happy to have that happen.

Oh one more thing to add sorry I'm just very proud of uh the job Judy and Esther do uh the city chose to uh take a further step from what is required.

Uh the notices of hearing regarding the property.

Uh they will file uh copy of the notice of BSB hearing in the county clerk's records, so it's uh notice to uh all lien holders, mortgages, unknown errors, uh that a hearing is being held regarding this structure, and then after this board issues its ruling, uh it's memorialized a copy of that order is also filed in the deed records to make sure uh all affected parties are uh aware that a demolition order has been issued on that property.

I'm sorry, Judy, we did not mean to make your job so difficult.

I got uh a note on day one.

We're going back in history here, in time.

It says mailed notice to owner, but one of the first things the code officer does post the notice, correct?

Um that would be for the hearing.

The hearing, there's a notice posted for the hearing.

It would be the violation, would it not be posted?

No, we don't post, we don't put we'll post a door tag.

We will post a uh because those notices are very descriptive, meaning they can check 50 boxes of deficiencies.

It's we don't really we don't post at that time, so they're they're putting they're putting their door tag, and that door tag will have we're trying to make contact with somebody, name number, our staff name and number, contact information is there.

The mail outs are the sort are the notifications that are happening for these type of repair orders, repair notices, it's all by mail.

So would that not have happened up here at the top as well on day one?

A notice would be the door tag, or in some cases we can put it in.

Yeah, we rolled that all up together just for for uh for sizing of these little bullets here.

But yes, it is a door tag that's posted, uh leaving name and number of contact requests.

They are also doing the mail out for the consultation information, they'll do that a couple of times.

They'll do that before the hearing again.

We didn't include that in this timeline, but they'll do that again before the hearing.

Once the day gets set for hearings, once we're doing that internal review and we know it's going forward, staff will typically push out another consultation letter as well.

So when would the packet do be left with the copy of the copy of the packet?

I believe is it a week?

It's a 10 days.

10 days.

Yeah, it's within that 10 days before the hearing.

Mm-hmm.

Or copies are left.

On day one when they get notified by tag, I thought they were posting the violations as well on the on the building, sir.

No, sir.

Not at that time.

They're receiving those by mail.

The owners are receiving that by mail.

So that's a different.

There is some other there are other items.

There are other um for property maintenance violations, that would be uh, that is a posting.

There are copies, those are triplicate forms.

We do that, but that is this is a different the repair notice is very different because it can be so long and so detailed.

Um, yeah, there's we don't have that form in triplicate.

We do straight strictly mail outs for that.

Okay, okay.

No, let's go to organization chart then.

Uh Jenny, did you like sorry?

I I might have zoned out.

Did you go through the process for emergency demolitions?

I did not.

We can it's a one-pager, we can go through that.

It's a much faster timeline.

Um I definitely want to I want to be preemptive on this.

This is you will when you hear me when I read into the record this morning.

Uh, we have items to read into the record, no action to be taken by the board.

This is some of the background work that is uh that is occurring for the staff.

Um, a very high level um this is timeline driven.

So we do have timelines uh involved in this type of investigation.

As I'd mentioned before, on a regular case, we do receive complaints from citizens, from officer referrals from the fire department where we get a fire report on the weekly.

Staff are going out and proactively investigating that.

If they determine through any of those processes that this may reach the the level of uh an emergency, they will make a referral to our building, our chief building inspector to come out and conduct an assessment.

That usually takes place with an email and a phone call.

Photos are sent, coordinating efforts are happening.

It's a very fast turnaround in this because we are under, we are under, you know, city code to make that determination very quickly.

What is occurring from the building inspector, they will either go out there the same day or the very next day to do their on-the-site inspection.

They will either give a concurrence that they do agree with that initial assessment and make that referral to our building official who is typically our and in this case again our director of the department of DSD.

Our director will then take those opinions, we'll take those photos.

They will go make a site visit if they see it necessary or if they have questions, and they will make a final either concurrence or or you know it track it a different way.

If the concurrence is made by all of those reporting staff members, the building official will make his will have that affidavit created by ordinance.

We are required to do that affidavit, and it will be signed by the building official.

During that timeline, that 96 hours by ordinance is required to then start ticking.

Staff will prepare a notification for city council, Office of Historic Preservation, all any departments that are needed, city attorney's office, everybody's kind of notified.

Not kind of, it is a directive order.

We will prepare an email, we'll prepare photos, copies of the affidavit, copies of the orders, copies of the ownership records to ensure that all city staff have been notified that this is occurring, that this is going to move forward into an emergency demolition when that occurs.

Will then do an expedited title search.

They will be working in the background as well at that time during those one to three days that this is all occurring.

Staff on the ground will be contacting CPS, saws if necessary to ensure that those disconnects have occurred.

Whether this is, you know, this is this is scaled very little to a you know an accessory structure to a residential structure, and in some instances it happens at apartment buildings where you're having multi-unit structures that need to come down in this type of event.

So when this is occurring, it's a lot of a lot of moving pieces and a lot of preparation that is happening very quickly.

Again, because of the very nature of what this is considered an emergency demolition, we want to make sure if it meets that threshold, then it needs to come down because it's a hazard that's been declared.

Once those disconnects are confirmed, and the demolition contractor has been coordinated.

We have staff that will coordinate with the demolition contractor that he may have his weekly list prepared, but these are emergency, so these will these will rise to the top of the list because it does need to become down within those 96 hours by city by city ordinance.

We will again also be continuing to ensure has any court action been filed.

The owners, you know, if they do come forward and they do process that that they do have that opportunity to file again a restraining order through the district court.

We were still working closely at this time and do through these processing to make sure has anything been filed before the contractors will step foot on the property.

Because of the quick turnaround, we're making phone calls, documenting those emails, and ensuring that we've made it every effort.

If there is an owner available and if they're aware, we're also coordinating and then letting them know what steps are happening and why this process is happening so fast.

But if at any point they have action to take to include uh court action, we will make sure that we're letting staff know and our demolition contractor as well.

Once that structure does come down, that does take place of that, and we will process that with the owner, you know, and take the appropriate action.

The end result will be on the monthly or um during our BSB hearings that we are reading those into the record here at the board.

Um there is no action to take because the structure is already gone, but we do read them into the record um as part of our processing through ordinance.

Again, that is a very, very fast, very high-level processing, but these do happen very fast by ordinance because it has been determined by building official that uh it needs to come down.

Okay.

Questions?

Uh Mr.

Chairman.

The cost of these demolitions are become lanes on the property, right?

Yes, it goes with the property.

So if that property is sold, those liens will go with it as well.

Any other questions?

All right, okay.

Thank you.

Sorry, George.

I thought you were just looking for another question.

Okay.

Any other questions?

So this also goes to commercial, correct?

Yes.

That does take place, yes.

Depending on the size of property as well, right?

Yes.

That is correct.

And that also adds to the staff's paperwork.

So that's another tree.

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, yes.

And you got to hold those for 10 years as well.

Absolutely.

Those are the ones that uh generally come back and uh uh with the take ease claim.

Thank you.

And now we'll go to organization charts.

Yes, thank you.

Uh this chart has gotten bigger, and we're happy and excited to have it expand.

Um, uh here at development services with Danny taking the helm as an interim assistant director.

Um, this has been updated to include those those changes from the top down, as well as again a growing our growing team within uh code enforcement division, which you will see if you haven't looked lately.

We have the division has changed from field services to code enforcement division.

So with some of the realignment that did pay take place and the growth of um of uh taking into uh the vacant building program, you will see um some of the realignments that have taken place with the teams within this division.

Um, Kathy, um Kathy Rodriguez, who will be doing some presentations.

Uh we are coordinating very closely.

Um she will be uh she is now overseeing the building standards board and staffing and is still in part of that.

We're still working together to do that handoff and familiar familiarizing her.

She comes with a wealth of experience and doesn't really need the familiarizing, and and I'll let her give her background on that if she hasn't uh given that already.

But many many years ago, she's out on the board.

So she's very familiar from both sides of the of the dais of of how the processes work and how and how um everything uh comes together with those timelines and and uh expectations and things like that.

So you're in very good hands with Kathy taking over uh this uh this particular program.

But um, yes, she does.

We do have with that program the vacant building program and integration.

We have our program manager, which you got to meet Britney earlier, who gave the overview of uh the vacant building program itself.

And this is just uh to the far left, you will see um that program and and the positions and the staffing that are now listed within code enforcement division.

That's kind of the biggest change, and with that change, it did definitely uh create some realignment uh opportunities for staff and for um our our department uh development services as a whole.

Um, it gave an opportunity where I now sit as an interim and code enforcement administrator.

Um my position backfield in uh Annette Lopez is now the uh interim code enforcement manager, so that again has been very very good movement and uh allowing us all to kind of realign some things and put a fresh perspective on some of the programs that we're working with.

But those are the kind of big highlights I just wanted to point out with this.

Um it's a lot of small writing, and I apologize if you're looking at it at that on the screen.

We'll work on we'll work on getting those printed out because when I know when I print it out, I do that 11 by 17.

I think it at this point it's it's gotten big and greatly so, and we're we're very happy with that and uh getting to work together with uh with Kathy and her team.

Any questions?

More of a comment.

I think co-chair I said there are no big questions.

I see that we went down from last time with a lot more than 11 vacancies.

We're down a lot.

Um so we are we've been working very hard on that.

Um we we have we've done um some transitioning uh with our training staff.

Or we have a training supervisor previously.

Uh we recently transitioned, we're revamping that training uh from the ground up to make sure that we're kind of capturing keeping that new staff, keeping them engaged, keeping them ready to hit the boots, you know, hit the ground running.

And so that we're hoping is and we're seeing we are seeing a difference to see that that is that is helping to retain staff because as Danny had mentioned, we had some turnover in prior years, and that's kind of the industry.

I think that's the world we're dealing with right now.

But we're working very hard to keep those staff and fill those vacancies and and retain that retain that knowledge, retain that experience is definitely what we're working towards.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Uh I am Kathy Rodriguez, Development Services Administrator.

Um I have a few reports uh for you all today that are specific to the body, the the BSB themselves.

Uh before I jump in, I just want to give kudos also to Jenny.

Um she's right.

I'm familiar with the process from the dais and familiar with the process and the peripheral when I was an OHP, but I'm learning a lot about those that timeline that you saw and all the work that goes into preparing these cases before you hear them.

And uh what we've been able to bring since the vacant building team has joined DSD is aligning that vacant building casework that also happens oftentimes alongside with the DP actions that are being taken.

So uh great opportunity to align those two processes, and we've been working to really get to know the details of those two so that we could see where we can really blend those and be more efficient and meet your expectation that we've truly done all we could before we bring the cases to you on an agenda.

So, with that, I'll jump into the few items that I have to report out today.

Um, the first one is um very easy, it's uh about our calendar of meetings uh for the rest of this calendar year, so throughout 2026, we have those dates already established.

They are subject to change.

There are instances where we may need to change that date, but the team, Esther and Judy and Melissa do a really good job of notifying you all of those meetings in advance, so you'll know if there's a change, you'll you'll you'll get that brought to your attention.

Also wanted to report out um the um the board uh status right now.

So there are no vacancies on this board.

Uh so we have all of those seats appointed and filled at this point.

Um there are nine of you that have been reappointed, so you've got some history and some experience on this board, and five of them are new appointments that have taken place at the end of uh 2025 and early 2026, and actually we had three of them in April, so we have some new folks on board.

Um, so we're happy to have all of these seats filled.

Uh, Chairman, I think you made the comment about how we do all this work so that it's easy for you all.

Uh, having been on the board, um, I will say it may feel easy for you, but I know there's also tremendous amount of responsibility that you take on uh in your actions, and so we're we're very uh grateful for you volunteering your time, filling these seats, and coming to the hearings to see the culmination of the staff work uh that leads up to your actions.

So, with that, um I'm gonna touch uh just very briefly on board attendance.

Uh we have two panels, panel A and panel B, uh reporting out from October all the way through the end of uh April of 2026.

Um just in summary, uh on panel A, we have 100% attendance collectively for that panel, and on panel B, we have collectively 87%, uh, which is really good.

Uh we have not had to reschedule a hearing because we weren't able to make a quorum, and that's an important point to make is looking back at Jenny's timeline, all the work that goes into preparing the cases and getting them on an agenda, making sure that we have attendance from the panels to be able to do business is important, and you all have met that commitment uh throughout this year.

Um that's all I have to report.

Just again, thank you very much for volunteering your time and bringing us your expertise and insights and for taking on the responsibility of taking the action as the BSB.

You can rely on this board.

We will do everything we can to help you, Kathy.

You've already proven that.

Outstanding.

Thank you.

Thank you, ma'am.

Looks like Alice, you're up.

Good morning, board members.

Good morning.

It's actually very strange to be telling you that because every time it's my turn, it's way after lunch that I present to y'all.

So I just really had to get that out of my system.

But anyways, uh good morning again.

My name is Alice Guardo.

I'm a development services manager with Code Enforcement.

I will be presenting the BSB orders and actions from October 1st, 2025 through April 30th, 2026.

First cases that will be presented will be dangerous structures.

Um there were no uh repair orders with penalty for the board, panel A or panel B.

Repair order without penalty, uh board had zero, panel A had one, panel B had three for a total of four.

Remedy with penalty, there was not any.

Remedy without penalty for panel B.

There was one for a total of one.

Demolition order with penalty, there were not any.

Demolition order without penalty, there were not any.

No longer a public nuisance, there was not any.

30-day demo with penalty, there was one for panel B and a total of one.

30-day demo without penalty for panel A, there was 14.

Panel B had 28 for a total of 42.

There were not any 60 day demo without with penalty, nor were there any for 60 day demo without penalty.

90 day demo with penalty, there was not any.

120 days with penalty, zero.

120 day demo without penalty, zero.

Pulled from the agenda, panel eight panel A had one, panel B had two for a total of three, and total number of dangerous structure cases presented was 51.

Next will be San Antonio property maintenance cases.

There were not any presented.

Summary abatement appeals, there were not any.

And for the administrative items, uh for emergency demolition read into record, the board had two, panel A had 18, panel B had 14 for a total of 34.

Hold harmless agreements read into record.

There were not any.

Reset orders, there was four for panel A, two for panel B, six for a total of six.

My apologies.

Total number of orders and actions, board had two, panel A had 38, panel B had 51 for a total of 91 cases.

As for uh total number of meetings, panel A had four meetings.

Panel B had seven meetings and one full board.

For the total fiscal year through April, 12 meetings.

Number of items were 91 items presented before you.

Last year, just in case you do ask or would like to have that information.

Uh panel A had five meetings, panel B had six meetings and two for uh two full board meetings for a total of 13 meetings with 94 items.

Okay.

Next will be the number of BSB cases by council district.

Council district had one dang uh council district one had eight dangerous premises cases, eight emergency demolitions for a total of 16.

Council District 2 had 11 DP cases and six emergency demolitions for a total of 17.

Council District 3 had five dangerous premises cases and five emergencies for a total of 10.

Council District 4 had five dangerous premises cases and one emergency for a total of six.

Council District 5 had 18 DP cases and 11 emergencies for a total of 29.

Council District 6 had six dangerous premises cases for a total of six.

Council District 7 had three dangerous premises cases, three emergency demolitions for a total of six.

Council districts eight and nine did not have any, and council district one had one dangerous premises case presented before you for a total of 91.

Any questions?

Questions.

We've all been busy.

Thank you.

I think it's kind of interesting that we haven't had any PA PSA PMC this year at all.

It's very unusual for us.

It is it is because normally they're kind of balanced out.

And as a result, we haven't had any appeals either.

Which is a good thing too.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Alice, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Council, do you want to go into executive session at this time or would you like to defer?

Uh let's see.

Do you have anything to add to Danny's director's report?

No.

I just want to add to the point of the other meeting.

I heard that.

And you're quite welcome.

Yeah.

Fred Fred wants it on the record, so okay.

My name is Amin Tomas Director of Development Services.

Again, I just want to thank you for all the time you put into this.

Uh it's very important for our city, and as everybody knows, demolition is the last resort, and we try to not get there, but obviously certain cases uh lead itself to that that position.

Um I know you guys have a lot of orders for repairs, uh, if you can.

Um if not that's gonna be demoed.

But again, thank you so much for the time you spend on your detailed reviews.

I know you we do everything and we do a lot of work as you mentioned, Chair, but uh you you check everything we do and uh you ask us tough questions, which is fine because we want to make sure uh you guys have all the accurate information and you make the best decision you can.

But again, thank you.

I am quite certain that you probably feel like the most fortunate person in the room today because you have just an absolutely fabulous staff.

Uh the the support that they give to the board itself is just phenomenal.

And of course, we we look at the two ladies in front of us and the one back in the back of the room and say to them especially thanks to them because they communicate with us extremely well, but your entire staff does a fabulous job for us.

Uh and sometimes we as a board member do not know that or recognize that, but you're the force most fortunate man in the room because of the staff that you have.

Um absolutely, I am.

Good.

I'm glad you agree with me on that.

Council, I refer to or defer to you.

Uh yes.

If we could go into executive session, very good.

The time is now 11 33.

The board will convene into executive sessions, uh, and we'll be back as quickly as we get back.

Then we can call Alice back to make her feel home.

Uh the uh time is 12 27 on 28 May 2026.

Uh the Senate only building standards board will reconvene uh from executive session.

Uh there were no uh official actions taken in the executive session.

Uh chair is going to defer two items on the agenda to individual panel meetings.

Uh the board presentation on uh ethics code and Robert's rules of order will actually be presented.

Uh if council concurs in individual panel meetings, council.

Would you okay with that issue?

No, I I think I want y'all to okay.

Well we'll stay until two o'clock today, then and let you present it today.

No, absolutely.

If you don't mind, uh the there's some value to going to smaller groups, especially on Robert Rule.

Is the reason why I'd like to do that.

Uh we all have received the uh policies and procedures.

Just a minute.

And I think I signed the last one.

16 May of 2024.

And there's an item in it that we changed.

I want to say we changed it in 2024.

I'm sorry, dated 2025.

Thank you.

Yeah, we did.

We had one in May of 24 also.

And then November of 2025 was the date.

Actually, it was still in the month of May and 2024 that we made an adjustment.

But if you would go back in and read, it's on page.

Excuse me, M.

Thank you.

That particular item says each person with a legal property interest before the board shall have the right to cross-examine staff personnel presented to the board.

With the mix of the panel of of the experiences of the panels of A and B.

That particular issue probably is not as appropriate as we thought it would be when we made that change.

So I would propose to the board that we consider deleting item M out of our policies and procedures.

Any discussion?

Mr.

Chairman.

Comments or questions.

Let me verify that just to make sure I'm getting affirmative by that would be correct.

You asking for a motion?

No, sir.

I was just asking for a conversation or discussion.

Because in reality, George, I guess I am actually putting it in motion.

I move that we eliminate item M out of our policies and procedures.

And I guess I'm asking for a second, and then we'll go into official discussion.

Second second, thank you.

And now then in discussion on the motion.

Council.

Can the chair make a motion?

On uh yes, the chair can move a motion.

Because it's on policies and procedures.

On policies and procedures.

Okay, just wanted to clarify.

All right, thank you.

Good question.

And since I signed it, I wanted to correct what I did a year ago.

It's already been okay.

In discussion, uh if none, to do let's do a roll call on that, please.

The to repeat the motion.

The motion is that we delete item M out of our policies and procedures.

You mean item section eight, item M.

Uh, thank you.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

Joane Nelson.

Aye.

Fred Andes.

Aye.

Ryan Baldwin.

Aye.

Doris Olees.

Paul Hernandez.

Aye.

Kayla Miranda.

Aye.

Joel Solis.

Aye.

George Grimes Jr.

Aye.

Yvonne Addison.

Aye.

Jamie Little.

Aye.

Motion passes with a vote of 10 to 0.

Thank you.

Do we have any administrative issues that we didn't bring up at this time?

None being spoken without objections by unanimous consent.

We are adjourned.

Thank you all.

Staff and board.

Appreciate you all