All right.

I know my uh I know my other council colleagues are here, but it the time is now 10 01 a.m.

on April 6, 2026, and the meeting of the economic workforce development committee is now called to order.

Madam Clerk, please call roll.

Councilmember Gastillo.

Councilmember Galvane.

Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez.

Councilmember Spears.

Chair Via Gran.

Here.

Chair, we have quorum.

All right.

The first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes.

Are there any corrections to the minutes?

All right.

Can I get a second?

Can I get a motion and a second to approve the minutes?

I've got a motion and a second.

There um all in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no.

Motion carries.

All right.

We do have citizens signed up.

And for the record, uh, Councilwoman Messi Gonzalez is here.

So we will go ahead and uh start with our public comment.

Every person on in public comment will have three minutes to speak.

We'll begin with uh Melanie McCoy.

Good morning, council members.

Good morning, Ms.

Lopez.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak today.

It's kind of weird to be first, but um, I wanted to speak on two items the artificial intelligence certificate and workforce acceleration program, and also the veterinary small business support.

Uh my name is Melanie McCoy.

I'm with Supply SA, and the goal as a is to make San Antonio the military procurement capital of the country.

We really wanna um, you know, I'm also a veteran, and um I'm excited to be here talk about these two topics today.

First, um uh artificial intelligence.

We know it's already here, and um you guys proposing this topic today and this item uh is exciting because it provides our um community the opportunity to upskill and present themselves in a way where they have a competitive advantage.

We know that military spouses, single parents, and um some of the maybe trade workers or displaced service workers sometimes have a really hard time being competitive, but I know this um artificial intelligence solution would provide them with the opportunity to be able to be competitive and stand out.

Uh from a supplies a perspective, I'm excited because I want to hire one of those graduates because I have to force multiply.

I have a really small team, a mighty team at supplies, and we're doing really great things in a procurement space, and anything we can do to make sure that we grow our capacity and also make sure that we utilize um agents and intelligence, and our team can work on the things that AI cannot do, like work with our community is going to be super important.

So I am excited that you guys are discussing this topic topic today to move forward.

And when uh one of the graduates is ready to be placed, I'm excited to be able to hire one of those.

I have an open slot uh where I want to be able to place them and see what they can do for us.

So I'm super excited about that.

And then um as it relates to veteran small business support.

I'm also a small business owner, of course, not currently actively working on my business, but um there are various um programs and um things that are available across the country, and I'm super excited to see that you guys are proposing something here in San Antonio right here in the backyard.

So, fellow veterans don't have you know to look for anything outside of the backyard.

They can be right here in an accelerator program and also with the pitch competition, make sure that we know what's out here in our community, the innovation, the veterans that are growing their businesses, and being able to do that is amazing.

Uh, one of my uh fellow veteran entrepreneurs who's not here in the city today who wanted to speak, but is actually Houston at a pitch competition, and so I was like, this is amazing that you guys are proposing and bringing something for forward, and councilwoman um spears, thank you for that.

That there's gonna there's a potential to have something right here in our backyard so we can grow our veteran small business community.

Um, understand who is here and grow those small businesses here.

So thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak with you today, and um thank you for all the wonderful work you guys are doing, which will feed the supplies a pipeline.

Thank you.

Thank you, Melanie.

Francisco Martinez.

Good morning, members of the council.

Francisco Martinez, president and CEO of Project Quest.

Uh, wanna come here and address the kind of the elephant in the room as we talk about job placement and workforce, especially in the IT spec sector for the last year, more so the last four or six months.

We've heard continue to hear about AI displacing, uh AI effect on the workforce.

And want to commend Councilwoman Spears and this council and her staff uh for bringing to light what we just heard from the previous speaker, which wasn't planned, is that there's an opportunity to address the issue, uh, have the conversation uh bring it to light, and more importantly, look at options that will help connect our residents uh who may be in ready to work already or who may be looking to start some other program in the city, connect them to those careers as we just heard from Supply SA willing and ready to hire.

And I think it's important to bring that conversation to the forefront to make sure that we it's a concerted effort, but it's a strategic approach to a problem, but more importantly, turn that problem into a potential opportunity for our community, uh, because we're either part of the problem, part of the solution.

So want to thank this council and this committee for bringing that solution to the forefront and hopefully getting us closer to identifying one, if not more, opportunities for uh upskill mobility in our residents in San Antonio.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Francisco.

Good morning, council.

My name is Janet Burton.

I'm the CEO of TriStart Talent.

We are a 40-year woman-owned business here in San Antonio, Texas, born and raised.

I'm also a local steward of our workforce.

Um, here to talk about the AI acceleration program.

We've talked about the impact that AI is going to have on our community and the jobs that we have here in our community.

There, the good news is we have the infrastructure in place.

Um, it's pretty revolutionary with programs like Ready to Work and Project Quest, removing barriers for San Antonio citizens to actually get access to curriculum and training and certification and the wraparound services they need to get that on-ramp to a career.

Um this is a huge step and something not every city is doing.

But where employers sit, and that's where I'm specifically here to speak today, the gap isn't just the talent, it's alignment to real hiring demand.

That is a gap that TriStar has been very fortunate and grateful to sit in.

And it's a gap we've seen where you partner with employers not just as partners but as co-designers and really get a commitment to hiring.

It's when these training programs stop becoming just training programs and they start becoming real hiring engines.

And so I'm here today to really stress the employee uh importance of that employer engagement and alignment and having them be co-designers and committing to hiring our uh participants and graduates.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Henry Griffiths, good morning, council.

Um, I'm here to speak to you about the uh the topic of AI that we'll be discussing today as well.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

I am uh currently a dean for academic success at Northwest Vista College, part of the Alamo Colleges district, and I really wanted to highlight the portfolio of work that we're we've been doing in this space over the last three years.

So in about 2023, uh we committed to developing a data science and artificial intelligence associate of applied science degree.

Uh, that was done in partnership with industry leaders, uh, AWS, Nvidia, Microsoft.

One of the really cool things that we were focused on at that time was trying to unlock opportunity to the career paths to develop AI solutions uh for individuals that didn't necessarily uh weren't weren't particularly in a place where they could pursue a four-year STEM degree that traditionally served as a bottleneck for actually uh getting into those roles.

Uh, we've been incredibly uh successful in the rollout of that degree program.

Uh uh, I think we have about 110 applicants to date, uh, incredible success rates in the initial coursework.

And uh, I had a wonderful conversation with uh one of uh Mr.

Mr.

Ramsey uh last week, and one of the things that we discussed is how we're finding that although that program is designed in order to prepare people to build their own AI solutions, that just from taking a class or two, a lot of uh the enrollees within our program are experiencing tremendous uh economic mobility.

Uh, they're getting skills that can advance their placement in their current role, and we really think that there's a tremendous opportunity to partner uh with you and with a lot of the uh speakers so far in continuing to advance that work.

One of the things that we're most excited about is the uh level of support that we have at the state level uh through the Texas Workforce Commission, their JET grant.

We have an incredible level of infrastructure at the Alamo Colleges that students can use.

In addition through a recent true grant, we're particularly focused on developing uh pathways that will allow uh residents in San Antonio to rapidly upskill in AI if they were displaced uh due to automation-related job loss.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you, Henry.

Mira Shaw.

Hello, everyone, good morning.

I may bring this down a bit.

Thank you so much for having me here and giving a chance to speak here in front of you.

Uh so I'm Mihir Shah, the founder of a company called Learn2 AI.

We are here from a couple of years already.

We started here in San Antonio.

Basically, it's a San Antonio-based AI company.

The purpose is that how we can do more AI literacy, we can make people AI fluent, and then we can have more, I would say upskilling opportunities and workforce development.

So we have been doing, we have trained so far over 100 people across the country.

But then when we talk about specifically in San Antonio, we have done already 82 people.

We have trained 82 with over different 14 cohorts.

We start from basic literacy to we go to the advanced level, beginning with AI with sales, how you get better with marketing, how you could do basically do different things.

We basically have built pretty good solutions also, like how you can identify white just by scanning your face, or you know how you can do the transcript evaluation.

Basically, it reduces 10x of what it can be done.

The good thing is then the happiness is when you see a homemaker doing all these things just by prompting at the end after four weeks.

That's something really phenomenal.

We have been partnered with ready to work recently.

We also work with Supply SA.

Thank you so much for giving us that opportunity.

And we are on a mission to make San Antonio one of the most air electricities in the next five years.

I know a lot of people feel weird about that, but I'm pretty confident.

And I guess the way that we can do it is with partnerships.

And one of the things that I am seeing is the AI acceleration bill.

Um, so that's something definitely would be helpful and willing to partner.

We also offer the workforce development opportunity.

We hire, we uh hire for our own purpose.

We offer some other internships as well.

So the idea is how we can get better.

And our offices are located at the district eight.

So that's one of them right now, but we are willing to open a hub here in downtown as well for making sure that we all grow together.

So thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all to the speakers that came out and shared.

Well, we appreciate you uh coming out and sharing and using this time of public comment.

We'll move on to the items, which I believe all items are for briefing only.

So we'll have a robust conversation today.

So we'll begin with um item number two.

It's an update to the San Antonio Ready to Work.

And I believe there's a staff presentation.

Mike, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Councilmember.

All right.

So the Ready to Work Program Review and Update.

So we always start our briefings with a point of light to remind us of why we're doing this work.

Um, Alicia Klein Miles, she's a was a graduate of Hallmark University.

Her employer is Methodist Healthcare.

And as a single mother of three, Malicia said that going back to school felt overwhelming at the time.

While studying at Hallmark University, she learned about San Antonio ready to work, was able to gain access to case management services to support her journey.

Her quote is I needed to stay focused and keep pushing even when life got heavy.

Malicia said.

Now I've earned my degree and secured my dream role as a psych ICU registered nurse with Methodist Healthcare, our number one employer ready to work, by the way.

I'm proud to close my bartending chapter and step into the career I've worked so hard for.

Melissa went from earning $2.13 an hour plus tips to more than $30 an hour in her current role.

So our program targets.

So we initially launched ready to work, um, over 39,000 applicants to be served through intake and initial assessment was our initial target.

28,000 participants enrolled in courses with subsidized tuition, emergency funding, and wraparound support, and over 15,600 training completers placed in well-paid jobs in high-demand career fields here in San Antonio.

So our progress so far.

We've got 15,477 individuals enrolled in training to date.

There's about 917 that are still working with our partners to create their education and training plans.

4,724 of those 15,000 are still in training right now, and 6502 have already successfully completed their education and training programs.

There's 2,104 individuals, 444 individuals in job search, and 4,358 placed in approved jobs as of March 30th.

About a 62% training completion rate, 6% placed in jobs within six months, and 73% placed in approved jobs within a 12-month period.

So our dashboard reflecting what I believe is the most impactful metric of ready to work, a $33,000 plus average annual increase in salary by our graduates who found approved jobs, and that number continues to grow every day.

So the program continues to accelerate.

About the first three years of the program, we're seeing about 97 training completors per month.

Now we're seeing about 258 training completors per month over the last 12 months, 166% increase over the first roughly three years.

We averaged about 56 job placements per month.

Now we're right at 200 job placements a month in the last 12 months, a 255% increase is a testament to the hard work of our partners who are implementing the ready to work program and serving our residents every day.

A significant return on investment.

So we just completed an ROI study that covered roughly the first three years of ready to work from May 2022 to October 2025.

And it found that over the earning careers of our participants who found approved jobs, an 11.7 billion dollar impact on our local economy.

Most of that coming from increases in income for our ready to work participants, about $7 billion in that regard.

Impacts of their increased spending in our local community and social savings from programs such as SNAP.

125 dollar return on investment for every dollar invested within ready to work in total.

And again, those numbers were about 11,500 participants at that point in time, 4,000 completers, and nearly 3,000 approved job placements.

We are again accelerating rapidly beyond those numbers.

Some accomplishments to date.

Partnership is the bedrock cornerstone of what ready to work is.

We've got some phenomenal partners from the employer standpoint.

Method is again our number one employer within Ready to Work, HEB, JCB, SAWS, Guide House of that amazing partnership that they have developed with us in our paid for an internship model.

I believe is going to continue to explode as more employees hear about that.

We've got state scale of citywide educational attainment is enormous again, over 15,000 people enrolled in education and training programs in the city with low educational attainment rates.

That makes a huge difference for our adults in our community getting those credentials and degrees.

Employer partnerships again, community collaboration, the whole ecosystems leaning in to make sure that San Antonio Ready to Work achieves its overall goals, transparency and accountability with that public facing dashboard.

It has found national recognition from results for America receiving an award for its transparency.

We're recently awarded a community impact award from the ICMA for the Ready to Work initiative.

And that concludes the update on the program.

And then now I'll shift over to the budget.

So where are we right now?

So in revenues, we've collected all we're gonna collect.

The revenues have done cease being collected by ready to work, December 31st, 2025.

That's now shifted over to VI.

235 uh 235,84,672 dollars is our total of our collection.

Our expenses through January of 2026, just over 101 million dollars, and we're spending about 7,07100 per participant enrolled in training, and that's total expenses.

And all funds are expected to be expensed by 2030.

So for FY27, some of our proposed budget assumptions.

Um, number one, on-the-job training funding is not included in the FY27 budget due to decreased employer utilization.

We're gonna reevaluate that as local market conditions shift in future years.

Um, workforce solutions Alamo, our local workforce board, our biggest partner by far within ready to work.

They've got over 2,000 plus job placements in the program, but we're shifting our direction as ready to work continues to evolve, and we can look at the sunset of the program as we begin to exit in this primary funded role within a local ecosystem.

Our workforce board has a phenomenal uh structure through employer-led cohort training models such as Texas FAME.

So we're gonna support them as they continue to expand that employer-led cohort model where they're working with employers to co-design training pathways to replicate that FAME model into other sectors throughout our community.

We believe that's gonna have a long-lasting impact within our community in the workforce area beyond even ready to work.

Our FY27 proposed budget.

There are no additional FTEs proposed.

22 FTEs will remain flat for FY27, 42.8 million dollars in total budget.

This is the apex for ready to work funding.

We begin to sunset as we land the plane heading towards 2030.

50% of the budget is focused on tuition to our participants, 21% for case management support, 10% for intake and assessment support for our participants, and 5% in emergency assistance.

Administration, city cost for administration at 5% of the budget, 4% for marketing and outreach or support programs, such as our contract for third-party evaluation at 3% of the budget, and child care at 2% of the budget.

As you all know, child care is available to our ready to work participants who are pursuing their education and training careers and are on that state wait list.

Focused uh FY27 focused on participants served, about 6,773 intakes will be completed in FY27, about 4,730 individuals enrolled in training or case managed.

We anticipate about 3,825 training program completors, and we plan to place 2,410 individuals in jobs throughout funding for the FY27 program year.

Also, as a part of our budget is a contract amendment for restore education.

As you all know, restore education is a wonderful job in our community helping individuals to obtain obtain that high school equivalency.

One of the smallest of our four partners.

We needed them to increase the value of that contract.

We'll be asking council to increase it to 6.285 million dollars for FY27.

The new six-year contract total will be 11,591,000.

And this will allow them to increase their capacity and take on some additional subcontractors as a part of their work.

So our proposed budget in millions, again, 41.1 million is when we anticipate ending the year in FY26.

And for FY27, we're proposing 42.8 million, again, the apex of ready to work as we begin to sunset the program projected to expense all funding by 2030.

So future program and budget considerations, FY27 is the pinnacle for all service levels.

Program enrollment will stop in fiscal year 29.

All training will be completed by January 2030 for ready to work.

Seems seems so far away, but now it seems so close.

Stakeholder input is needed to determine future workforce offerings by the city beyond fiscal year 2030.

So our next steps will have a April 15th City Council B session to brief the full council on ready to work and our budget proposed for FY27.

Pre-K for SA will have to approve the board the budget on by their board on April the 28th, and then City Council A session consideration on May the 7th.

That concludes the briefing on ready to work and the budget, and I'm happy to answer any questions or dive further into any details that you all may want to hear.

Thank you, Mike.

And this is for briefing only, so I'll get us started with a few remarks, and all my council colleagues will have three minutes the first round, three minutes the second if you have additional questions.

The um the board and the committee continue to work, and your board has continued to work.

So I want us to continue to ensure that we're going to be finance fiscally responsible.

And the the fact that we have one in a community impact award is one thing that I think we need to tell that story because we are modeling and understanding that not everybody is going to go into advanced manufacturing or resource manufacturing.

But what how do we continue to keep our residents employed?

So as we as we look at the budget and and we see where we're kind of headed.

Um are we seeing any other challenges that may come up under this current economic crisis?

We we loom and and I'll just be the gas prices.

Getting these people to work.

Have we kind of looked at our budget and say, okay, how how do we do this if we need to get more people on the bus?

Have we kind of looked at our budget and say, okay, how how do we do this if we need to get more people on the bus, if we need to get more people, if we need to incentivize employers to maybe do um like a pickup service where they're they're uh their park in one location and get them to the locations.

Have we have we thought about that and looked at that, Mike?

Well, our emergency services funding um is there for to handle transportation issues, whether they be bus passes, whether it be gas cards, um, or any other creative models of getting people back and forth to work or to school.

Um, and as those needs increase, we have the capability in the latter years of our budget to make those adjustments.

So we're projecting this for FY27.

But if the need increases in FY27 and the end of FI26, we'll shift at the mid-year and we'll divert more resources to where they're needed.

Yeah, thank you.

Because and you know, as you talked about Methodists being our largest um employer here with ready to work, and I think as we talk through our other subjects with uh AI and things like that, we may see people working from home, or we may see them going into other uh companies that have uh sites that we can do that, but getting our residents and our participants there is gonna be key.

Methodist has so we know where the big hospitals are in the medical center.

A bus route there, not a problem.

But when they're in the far west side or south side or southeast side, and in even in some of the the northern sectors where it's just a little harder to get out there, and we know we have that they have their their clinics and their standalone emergency rooms there, making sure that we we take that into consideration as we go through this process.

So I I wanna thank you for the efforts.

We we understood that there wasn't an industry coming like there had been in the 80s or 70s and 80s with the airline industry.

We knew that we were struggling with military and that we needed to diversify, and I think ready to work was uh you know, visionary and a long time coming that um our former mayor helped get crossed the goal line and that this committee continue to move forward and that this committee now sitting here um I think is is ready to take this to the next level and uh expect a lot more awards also.

So thank you, Mike.

I appreciate it.

Uh any of my colleagues like to share?

Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mike, for the presentation.

Um, I really appreciate the commentary by the chair.

I was checking in with my staff last week, and Cynthia and our team, she's like, hey, we've seen an increase of constituents asking if we have gas cards, right?

So I think that is something uh worth considering and uh continuing to have a conversation on.

Um, but given the program momentum side, uh looking back at the first three years, there's a drastic increase in success of placement and completion.

Can you share a little bit about uh what has contributed to that increase and those uh successful increases?

I think our partners have really um gotten into a groove with getting people through the intake process and getting them across the finish line of their training programs, figuring out which supports are gonna be needed for different population groups has been critical to that success.

Um I think that they've made huge strides in serving different subcategories of the population, including those that are justice involved.

We still got a lot of work to do there and a lot of growth to do in that space, but recognizing who's responding to the program, providing the wraparound supports necessary to get them across the finish line, they've just gotten better.

I think that's one of the the best things about ready to work is the collaboration between the partners because they're gonna be here long enough for this program expires.

As they get more efficient and better at serving our community, those numbers are gonna continue to increase.

Yeah, and I think that leads me to my next question in terms of social savings, right?

Uh, what do you all identify or consider a social savings?

Is it a participant who may have signed up for rental assistance that no longer needs to apply for rental assistance, or what is that uh look like to you all?

So for social savings, that our economists who did the ROI study, Dr.

Stephen Niven, um, he's got several categories that fall into that group.

The majority of them are the federal uh program savings, such as SNAP TANF benefits that individuals are coming off of due to increases in their incomes from ready to work.

We haven't done a microevaluation for the city's rentable assistance program to see how many of individuals were on that program that now have gone through ready to work and now do not need that rental assistance, but that is an area that we can delve into further.

No, I appreciate that because again, with our constituent services team, when we have individuals come in seeking utility assistance, right?

I encourage my team to just have a conversation rather than completing just completing the application, right?

Have a conversation and understand why they're in need of that assistance.

Is it because someone lost a job?

Um they you know, someone got sick, like so that way we know what program best to plug them into.

And we've uh connected some folks to the ready to work program when they share that they've been laid off, or they're currently looking uh to increase their skill set.

So I really appreciate the focus on the social savings uh in terms of the proposed budget assumptions and the shift to employment-led cohort.

Absolutely.

I think our unions make a huge impact for participants who are able to get connected with them.

As you know, is based upon their hiring timelines.

When the unions are hiring, those jobs are coveted because they have such great benefits and offer such great income, and you don't need to have an education or a degree in order to get your foot in the door.

Um, so we would love to partner with the local unions to expand those partnerships in this construction and skill trades as well as other areas that they impact.

Okay, and I'll chime back in the next round.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh who'd like to go next?

Councilman Galvine.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mike, for the presentation.

Uh, really exciting stuff that we're constantly seeing through ready to work, um, and things that I think you know, uh continue to give us confidence about this program even as it continues to move forward uh at the end of its cycle.

Um I had similar concerns about the emergency assistance as well or questions about them, wondering you know how it's gonna be affected by the growing economic concerns.

Uh do you feel as though that you have enough capacity to withstand some of those large issues coming in?

Luckily for us, we're extremely flexible uh from year to year based upon what the need is from our participants.

Um we're constantly working with our partners to try to get more funding out to participants through that emergency funding pot.

Each of them have up to $1,500 in emergency funding that they can utilize through ready to work.

And we want to make sure that you know we're doing everything in our power to make them number one aware that these dollars exist and work with our partners to speed the um act the access to those dollars when that need does arise.

Great.

Okay, just wondering on that one.

One other questions I had, of course, looking at the the budget breakdown of tuition's consistently the largest portion that we're looking at here, and that makes sense as to why.

Um, but I was thinking about during the last education opportunities committee, meaning we had the promise programs come in with all the different partners here.

Uh talked about that.

Do we have any data on how many ready to work participants qualify and don't qualify for the Almo colleges or UTSA or Temusa promise programs?

For promise.

Um so for everybody qualifies for Alamo Promise if they're graduate within that window of time.

Um so that's really not an issue for ready to work participants.

Um, our primary focus is on the adult community, you know, those individuals who you know you know are already working and looking to upskill and get to a better place.

But we 18 years old is our entry level.

So everybody who um is graduating from a Bear County high school qualifies for Alamo Promise, so they also would qualify for ready to work.

We encourage them to also tap into ready to work dollars for the wraparound supports because then that emergency assistance that's available that can assist them, you know, with issues that the Alamo Promise Scholarship is doing last-solid tuition may not fully cover.

Right.

Um, but you know, we haven't seen um what's that I'm looking for, a gap between those promise programs and ready to work because again, they're two different focus primary focus audiences.

I see.

Okay.

Um there any other tuition assistants that goes through that the promise or through their community college or UTSA or Temusa that our ready to work persons are qualifying for?

As far as for ready to work or for the colleges, uh through funding?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, our students can qualify for any institutional funding that the colleges offer.

We encourage braided funding.

One of the things that's uh again a cornerstone of ready to work is leveraging all the resources that develop into the community, including scholarships and resources available through those institutions.

Got it.

Okay, and that's the same thing for uh Cafe College as well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Um, Cafe College is a partner with ready to work.

Um, they share information about the program, and it can only help those students to stack those funding sources together in order to meet their total educational funding need.

Great.

I think if we can just get any uh or if I can get any kind of uh more detailed data on that, the kind of overlap with these programs, that is be helpful to kind of shape the better shape the understanding of this a bit more for myself.

Um, but otherwise, I think uh really great stuff going on.

Um, and thank you so much.

Thank you, Mike.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um, thank you for all the work you're doing and to the board and all the partners I see in the room.

Um, just a few questions on slide seven.

The intake increase to uh at 11% and enrollment at 26.

Have has the completion, I'm assuming the completion rate is also increased as well.

That box on the right.

Slide seven.

Right there.

My slide seven.

Is this the wrong size?

Four, five, six, seven.

There we go.

Okay.

The box on the right.

As far as uh the intake, 11%, those are the the uh numbers of intakes we've done increased 11% and the number of enrollments and training 26 percent perplusion has increased as well.

I'm a absolutely yeah, completion is going up exponentially through the program.

Can you just add that there to reaffirm that to everybody?

Um, the completers is the green box there.

It had a hundred and sixty-six percent increase in completers per year.

Yeah, okay, got it, got it.

Um what was the next question?

So some of the ready to work participants may qualify for those workforce Pell Grants, which I'm assuming would be a savings to workforce are ready to work.

So can you report back maybe in this next year if there is any sort of cost savings with those workforce Pell Grants, which then I am assuming would also extend the life of ready to work?

Absolutely.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

We're hopeful that that does have that exact impact.

Okay, and would you be able to maybe add that to your presentation?

If that does occur, absolutely.

Yeah, just or just kind of uh um so that councils can just be have that on their radar.

Yeah, absolutely.

And um, I I just have to give it preference that those rules are still being worked out.

It's gonna take a while before it ramps up, but when it does, we hope that it has a huge impact on our savings and tuition dollars.

Yeah, if you can just include that in the B session presentation, just as a quick slide, that would be helpful.

Absolutely.

Um I think that's it.

Just thank you for all the work you all are doing.

And um, I don't I don't know if board members are here.

They are here, maybe, maybe not.

But they're always doing stuff anyway.

Thank you so much.

That's all.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Councilmember Spears.

Thank you, Chair.

Um I'm uh grateful for your presentation today.

I too am very focused on ready to work, so I share that with uh Chair Via Gran.

Um I think there's great opportunity here.

So uh I did have some questions though about your presentation.

Um on slide four on the program targets.

Are we on track to meet our placement goals?

April 2030, we'll hit 15,600 placements if we continue on the same trajectory that we're on now.

At the end of next year, we'll be over 6700.

Is that our goals though?

Yes, it is.

Do you have our projections like what our goal setting was for this year, and then like an actual comparison of the numbers for FY26, the current we're in now?

Yes, and then actually moving forward if you have it.

Yeah, I can get that to you, a chart of what it looks like to hit the goal in April 2030.

But April 2030, we hit our target of 15,600 job placements.

Um let me see on slide five.

So I see there's a large enrollment versus the placement gap.

Can you help me understand?

Um that is, and then how what's what's the goal to fix that?

That's a great question.

And uh it's not really a goal to fix, it's how the process flows.

Okay.

So there's 15,000 that have enrolled in training to date.

6500 of that 15,000 have completed training, about 62 percent of all the people who enrolled in training.

Our target is 70 percent.

So we're about 8% behind where we want to see that number at.

So we continue to work with our participants to provide the resources, provide the supports to get them across that finish line.

But life is happening.

That's this target population that we're facing, the smallest thing could not come off course, which is why we try so hard to provide those emergency assistance dollars to make sure that that doesn't happen.

4,724 are still in training right now.

So if you take the 4,700 and the 6,500, you're over 11,000 of that 15,477.

4,358 of those completors have already been placed in jobs, and that's where that number tracks towards that.

So it's not as uh you look at the 6500 who've completed training and the 15,000 that have enrolled, you have to take into account the 4700 or nearly 5,000 that are still in training.

So that makes that number look a little bit different.

And again, 62% training completion, our target is 70.

We're working hard to improve that.

Okay.

Can you identify the industry that has the most graduates that are taking the longest to get placed?

IT.

IT.

Struggling in that space.

Uh we have since day one of the program.

We have a mismatch between what our employers are looking for and what's coming out of the pipeline.

That's the simplest answer to that.

They want people with degrees and experience, and we don't have that in ready to work.

I'll have to come back around.

All right, we're gonna start our second round.

Uh councilwoman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate the ways in which y'all incorporate the experiences of participants, right?

The story you open up with is a single mother of three and how she felt overwhelmed.

Uh and I think oftentimes when we look at the metrics, right?

We tend to evaluate it the same way we evaluate street lights, sidewalk gaps, but these are people that are very complex and have needs and unique challenges.

Um, and I see with the two percent child care uh investment.

Is that enough to provide the the support?

Uh do you believe if we were to increase that two percent for child care, we'd be able to increase participation from uh more parents.

Do you all uh expend that entire two percent, or what is that?

So we have not um had to turn anybody away, if that's your question.

We wanted more people to participate in the child care benefit that rhetoric provides.

We continue to market to our participants to tell them that this benefit is there, and if we ever get to a point where we exhaust that two percent, we're gonna come back to you all and say we need more money because we know how important it is to this council, we know how important it is to our community, and we want to make sure that that is not the barrier that keeps people from going to training or work.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And that was my last question.

Just wanted to see if there uh would be a need for us to consider increasing that to increase potentially increased participation.

But I appreciate that y'all come with the ask if that was necessary.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh council councilwoman Spears, did you want to go again?

Okay, let's see.

I had also the same sort of question about child care.

I just wanted to make sure you had enough, or if you were using everything that you had, or if you're just trying to recruit more moms and parents that that into that, so that if that's the barrier, or if they're even aware we don't have enough parents that need the child care.

Um do you feel like you're gonna spend all that money?

We we certainly are gonna try our best to um we want to exceed it.

Um again, we know it's a huge barrier for our single parents.

The number one demographic within ready to work are single parents, so we want to make sure that the resources aren't the reason why they're not participating.

That's definitely true, and that's that's what's on my heart about it is that it's single parents and how we can help them.

Um so on slide 14.

Let me ask.

And we kind of touched on this.

So you have 2400 approved job placements.

Can you if we've had training completed of 3800?

You said some life gets in the way, right?

Yep.

So how do we improve that number for where we have actual jobs like that they're actually gonna move in too?

Is this where we're moving into the employer led to you got it?

That's exactly what that is.

Let's try to make sure our largest contractor is working with employers to co-design those training pathways to co-design the support systems to make sure that a higher percentage get placed quicker.

So then I'm gonna ask about Guide Guide House.

Guide House.

How many have we placed with Guide House?

Let me uh lean over to my assistant director, Joel.

How many has Guide House done?

They've hired eight.

They've hired eight individuals through our pay it for an internship model, is what they're really focused on.

Um that paid for it model we work with Tri-Star, Jana and her team to provide the support for screening applicants for making sure they are exactly aligned to what Godhouse is looking for and helping them to get through that intake process, then they host them, they are on TriStar's payroll while they spend their first six to ten weeks proving that they've got the technical skills, the soft skills to fit, and then once they do, Godhouse hires them on full time, then they reimburse the city for the wages that we covered for that internship.

Um it's a phenomenal model.

Um, we're extremely proud of it.

We're extremely thankful for the Godhouse for the partnership.

They want to expand that to 40 hires next year, and we want to make sure that we can fill those orders to be ready to work.

I'm very excited about that, and I'm glad TriStar is here.

Um I see I think we've seen they're excited about this, some of these new programs that we're talking about, or expanding the programs we have.

But um, let me make sure about my questions.

How help me understand slide 13?

So is there a gap there on what was spent on the 9.4 million in 2025 that was higher?

And then how were how did you get the budget down so much more in 26 on the spend?

Which line are we talking about, council member?

I'm sorry.

Well, I'm actually kind of a little unfair in this because I do have the budget book where oh gotcha from 25, we we spent 49.3, but then you were able to get the number down to 42 on 20 in this 2020.

Total budget, oh got it.

So our total budget typically our savings are in the tuition categories, or we have our largest savings.

Okay.

Um we again encourage braided funding.

So if individuals receive different scholarships or different funding sources, that number goes down.

We've seen decreased spending in IWT OJT earlier this year.

We stopped doing incumbent worker training and on-the-job training is being reduced going forward, so that's where our biggest savings are in the budget.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Mike.

And I just want to go back to one slide we talked about, the one with the um those currently in training, training in progress.

Yes.

Are some of these these people training in progress?

They're training and they're still working part-time jobs, possibly.

Absolutely.

The majority of our participants are working some type of part-time job.

Um, again, we don't have stipends within ready to work.

We do emergency support to try to meet those needs, but a lot of them are working part-time jobs, so our average income at intake is about 11,000 a year.

Yeah, and and that's that's the one thing as we as we look at these numbers, and you look at the 4,000 training in progress, or you look at the 2000 in job search.

Uh odds are these people are still working some sort of job.

Absolutely.

Uh, so the thing is they're not working a job that we feel is approved with what we've asked for.

So I think I think as we move forward, we need to take that to in consideration.

And I see Carlos Contreras there, and I just have to give a shout out to Goodwill.

I spoke at the graduation of the academy, and I I try not to choke up because as y'all know, when it comes to health care, nurses, nursing assistants, anybody that's in the hospital there, and they had so many graduates in that category.

So I want to thank y'all for what y'all do, and and the key in working with the employers because they know what we need and they know the trends that are happening before we do.

So thank you for that, Mike.

Well, thank you, and we're gonna move on to item number three.

Great discussion, uh, members.

Item three is a briefing on the strategic plan implementation and results, including an update on the status of the local tourism and hospitality industry by Visit San Antonio.

And there's a staff presentation.

You got that.

Mario, the floor is yours.

You may want to bring it down just a little.

Yes, we'll do.

It's on the quite at the same height.

There we go.

Oh even better.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well, good morning, everybody.

My name is Mario Bass.

So if we haven't had the pleasure of meeting, I'm the president and CEO with Visit San Antonio.

And as the city's destination marketing organization, our mission is to bring the world to San Antonio.

We invite everyone to visit to explore and experience our authentic culture, our deep-rooted history, and of course, our timeless traditions.

San Antonio has been very fortunate over the past few years to be a destination that has experienced or continue to experience year over year visitor growth.

Our total visitation topped 39 million for 2024, nearing pre-pandemic numbers.

We attribute the success to strong regional visitation, which accounted for more than 75% of total visitation.

We're very fortunate to have 45 million of fellow Texans and our tourists right here in our backyard that we're able to take advantage of.

Recent years, we've seen other Texas cities aggressively go after these very same regional visitors.

Our focus for 2026 is to strengthen and defend our position as a top leisure destination in the state.

Equally as important, uh to our success is a meetings attendee who books further out, spends more, and helps establish a strong occupancy base for our city.

In fact, in 2024, we welcomed 5.7 million meeting attendees who met at our convention center and enjoyed hotel accommodations throughout our city.

San Antonio also worked uh to welcome 2.4 million international visitors in 2024, with Mexico at the core of that specific international market.

This was a 15% increase over 2023 when we hosted 2 million international visitors.

San Antonio's tourism hospitality industry is one of the city's greatest engines of growth.

In fact, driving economic impact is at the heart of everything.

We do have visit San Antonio.

In 2024, the tourism and hospitality economic impact reached a record-breaking 23.4 billion dollars, which is again a record for our destination.

The tourism-generated tax income of 284 million helps local businesses grow, new investments emerge, and of course, our neighborhoods to flourish.

This means infrastructure development, enhanced public spaces, safer streets, and of course, job creation.

And total tourism hospitality jobs topped 150,000, which uh once again I'll expound on a little bit more shortly.

Selling and marketing our city as a destination.

Everyone wants to visit, explore, and experience is a visit San Antonio's primary focus.

You could go to the next slide.

In 2025, 1.9 billion in total economic impact was directly generated by Visa San Antonio selling, marketing, and PR efforts, producing a 45 to 10 on investment, demonstrating the measurable value of our efforts.

A message point visit San Antonio really leans into San Antonio is a city of hospitality.

Therefore, we know how to make our visitors feel welcome and at home.

In fact, more than 150,000 residents work in tourism and hospitality in our industry.

That's one in every eight San Antonioans who are employed and is a powerful economic driver.

Visa San Antonio creates a meaningful impact by supporting education, local creatives, and expanding access to cultural experiences.

Next slide.

Through hospitality scholarships at St.

Philip's College and UTSA, the organization is helping to build a strong pipeline of future tourism and hospitality leaders.

At the same time, contracts and business referrals to local artists, musicians, and entertainers provide valuable economic opportunities and elevate San Antonio's arts and culture community on our national stage.

Complementing these efforts are free riverwalk programming, which draws millions of attendees, driving visibility and foot traffic that directly benefits small businesses and fosters an inclusive and vibrant community for all to experience.

Our primary priorities for fiscal year 26, you'll see on the screen, our focus on visit San Antonio's overarching mission of driving economic impact and meetings and conventions and international travel.

Goals are strategically structured to increase San Antonio's hotel occupancy tax, our sales tax revenues as well by driving hotel demand, increasing foot traffic to small businesses, and cultivating connections.

At the end of the day, we are charged with putting heads in beds.

Each visit San Antonio's department goals directly reflect that sentiment, which you'll see on the next slide.

So this is just a very high-level executive overview of the KPIs that we share with our board of directors on a quarterly basis as well as our stakeholders.

Each department has much more rigid and structured KPIs for their individual areas of expertise and responsibility.

With convention sales, we have redeployed our sales team to concentrate on geographic regions, casting a wider net to bring in more group business.

In fact, at the end of fiscal year 25, we have booked a record-breaking 990,000 group room nights into the city of San Antonio.

Prior to that, pre-pandemic was the highest number we had, right at about 960,000.

So that was a 30,000 more group room nights.

We recently also launched a new marketing campaign called Unmistakably San Antonio that showcases a unique attributes that sets San Antonio apart from other destinations.

And really what it comes down to is yes, we're blessed with the San Antonio Riverwalk and the Alamo and incredible convention campus, but what you hear in the consumer sentiment year after year, time after time, is it's about the people that live here, right?

There's something different about this place.

They might not be able to articulate it, but what it comes down to is everybody that's in this room.

Media relations also inspires uh travel to San Antonio by working with national and international media outlets and journalists.

This fiscal year, the team is focused on story angles that spark not only urgency, but also excitement creating buzz for eager travelers.

The membership team builds connections with our businesses and creative communities and amplifies community impact.

And in fiscal year 26, there is strengthen strengthening that engagement and business visibility through targeted marketing.

What you see up on the screen, and I'll walk through it is basically our group booking pace compared to our best pre-pandemic years, right?

17, 18, and 19.

And in the short run, you can see that San Antonio is holding our own.

2026 through 29 hanging in there, as we should be.

Austin doesn't have a convention center, it's been completely torn down.

Half of Dallas is off uh the marketplace right now as they go through the renovation.

Uh, what happens though in 2030, that right uh just inverts completely.

We fall off a cliff.

Um, what is happening during that time is all these new destinations, convention centers that they're actively selling now are opening up, right?

So typically that runway is three to five years for a large uh group uh to book in a destination, and they're actively selling into it, and that's where you see that dip specifically in 2030 through 32.

I didn't go with the notes on that, so I'm sorry.

Um so last year we were very fortunate.

Uh San Antonio sent a delegation uh to Madrid to present the city as an ideal destination for a FIFA base camp, as well as promoting airline connectivity between our two cities.

Uh that delegation included Visa San Antonio and representatives from the airport and Greater SATX, and as well as Councilwoman Via Gran.

Uh it was well received, and I'll go into the next slide that touches on the FIFA portion of it.

So Visa San Antonio's sales team consistently pursues sports-related group meetings and events and opportunities from a hotel and convention uh perspective.

We're happy to assist the efforts led by Spurs Sports and Entertainment to pursue an international soccer team to make San Antonio their home base during the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons and factors, including scheduling and match location.

Our city was not picked by one of the national teams.

However, in spite of not securing a base camp team, the World Cup is a marketing priority in driving visitation to San Antonio.

You can go to the next slide.

Though not having a game is obviously less than ideal.

We have a three-prong marketing strategy to leverage the World Cup to our advantage.

We are geofencing Dallas and Houston during the World Cup games, so that San Antonio is presented as a viable short getaway option during their stay.

In those markets, we're also advertising in airport billboards to bring San Antonio into soccer fans radar as an option for downtime in between games.

We're also messaging to the local Houston, Dallas, and Austin potential travelers to escape the craziness of World Cup madness and enjoy some quiet time on our beautiful and tranquil river walk.

With that said, Visit San Antonio's success is not achieved alone.

It takes collaboration with our local government, community partners, small businesses, arts, and culture, and especially the people to achieve great things and keep shining a bright light on our destination.

Thank you for the opportunity to present today, as well as share our successes.

But at this time, that concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mario.

As a former employee of Visit San Antonio, I know the competition that the city has to aim for to bring more visitors and tourists.

And y'all know I do sit on the Visit San Antonio board.

I sit on the executive committee actually.

And so we will have some years where people who used to go to Corpus or go to San Angelo, we're gonna ask them to come here and have their meetings here.

And I think this is a time for us as a committee to dig deep on all those associations we're part of and see if they want to come to San Antonio in those years where we kind of need help.

The convention center, the Alamo Dome for concerts, uh we attract business, we are location, the walkability here is something everyone talks about.

Um so as the economic workforce and committee development, we must continue to lead to find attractive ways for more visitors, as it is such a key uh portion of our economy in the fact that this is the this is the job that if that single mom needs some extra funds, she can she can take a catering gig or she can she can work uh as a waitress, you know, um, or she can clean some rooms and and help with that too uh when we have those big conventions uh come into town.

So um, I want to thank you for presenting today.

I think um I think the one question I I do want to talk a little about the um FIFA World Cup.

Are we gonna get understanding of what's happening right now at our at our airports?

Um I know that's not necessarily San Antonio, but nationally are we keeping track of of how that's gonna slow down the the uh tourism we would normally get for a FIFA World Cup.

Yeah, so the FIFA World Cup has experienced a couple things.

Um this particular scenario that I mentioned isn't only indicative of San Antonio, was not a reflection on the city by any means.

There was a lot of excitement uh by several teams uh regarding San Antonio.

This was again simply a matter of luck of the draw in terms of uh location to matches, you needed to be within a two-hour window uh if you were gonna be a base camp team to that match, as well as scheduling.

So you had teams uh no no secret here, France, right, with Wembiyama, very interested in in San Antonio, but I believe they're on the on the Northeast, so that wasn't gonna work.

Uh so yes, councilwoman to answer your question, uh airlift uh has been a concern.

There's been some concerns uh and speaking with my counterparts that actually have matches happening at their destinations, that the impact that was originally forecasted associated with even having a match in their destination, it might not be as robust as they thought that it was gonna be.

So uh a lot of you know, some of that is air-lip, but I think some of that is just international sentiment as a whole, as well as economic uncertainty uh that is uh prevalent globally.

Yeah, I thank you.

I I I think there's still gonna be opportunity there, but I I do I do notice that people want to be closer to the to the to the sites rather than you know uh an airline a visit away just about how it is to get in and out of the airlines.

Uh a little additional context.

FIFA had contracted so before obviously the matches, they go out to um I think it was 48 destinations uh that they contracted with uh for these base camps.

Um and they do that ahead of time, right?

So the teams have plenty of choices, they're baked in, they're ready to go, but they found that about half of those um teams chose other locations and other facilities than were contracted.

So it's a little bit of just a an anomaly here for FIFA in general uh as it pertains to it.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Uh any questions for my council members for my committee members?

Uh Councilmember Spears.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, I completely completely agree with you, Councilwoman Vicron, about us leading in this space as a board.

Um I don't know what all that could entail, but I love Visit San Antonio.

One of the things I love about Visit San Antonio is you come with percentages and numbers, the actual numbers, and I appreciate that so much.

Um but yeah, however, we're able to to support in this space.

I think I mentioned writing letters to for the Alamo Dome.

And I'm I'm not kidding about that because I'll just bring this up now.

I was on an air, I was flying back from DC, and these people were on the flight, a lot of people on a flight from Canada for a grass conference in Floresville.

But they coincided it with the Cheryl Crow concert, so they made it into a fun event.

I I was shocked at how many people were on the plane for a grass like conference in Floresville.

But to that point, you know, how how many visitors are we gonna see as we see the airport expansion?

It's strange, right?

Grass, right?

Yeah, anyway.

Maybe we should track that.

I don't know.

But um, you know, we've got the Toronto flights starting out, and and and what we can do to support our direct flights through the airport, and if you have an idea of a way to metric or measure um as we as we support our airport moving forward, how that impacts what you're doing.

Um, I think that would help us too and to see how that uptick in the expansion and everything we're doing just ahead of time.

Um are you are you tracking any medical tourism figures at all?

Um we from a group segmentation, yes, but not for that individual that might be coming in for a medical procedure, but yes, from a medical group standpoint.

Um it does very well for us.

I will say though, um, and you probably have seen stories about it, uh, regarding the tourism concerns here in San Antonio, and if I can just have a second address that the fourth quarter of 2025, uh, we did experience a seismic maybe uh downturn in terms of uh group business specifically into San Antonio.

But uh just for clarity and some additional context, it wasn't around groups not wanting to be in San Antonio.

They were here, and it was in the medical uh medical segment specifically that we had those uh running October through December.

In fact, in July of 2025, uh we were thinking that we're gonna be up about two to four percent, if I'm not mistaken, in terms of occupancy and revenue.

Unfortunately, though, due to uh tariffs and economic uncertainty and government funding, those medical groups did not pick up.

Typically, a medical group, when you see them, you get very excited, especially the way they were laid out, right?

They spend more, uh, they have a higher ADR, average daily room rate.

Um, they are entertaining out and about all over the Riverwalk in San Antonio.

Um, typically they pick up about 80, 85 percent is what she was.

So they picked up 50 percent.

Um, and that's really cause that shift in terms of the hot tax collection um and just occupancy overall in the fourth quarter.

So, yes, we're we're tracking it.

Um, just a lot of just anomalies that are playing into what we do, yeah.

So can I ask one more?

Okay.

Um, so when we were in Taiwan, they spoke to us about the Spurs at length, they're big fans, huge fans.

So that speaks to sports diplomacy.

And then I would talk about well, we also had the missions, and we also have football with the UT San Antonio, and this was mind-blowing to them as a call in Taiwan.

And um, they're really entering into this space.

It's kind of new for them.

But um, my question then is how beyond FIFA, which is great, uh, how are we focusing on sports diplomacy on your end?

So we partner um with San Antonio Sports uh currently in terms of bringing or being a part of the conversation and bringing sports and events to the city of San Antonio, specifically where we currently play in that role is in helping coordinate dates if they need convention center space, and or more specifically in the hotel space, uh garnering availability rates and whatnot.

So we work in tandem uh with them.

Um I think moving forward, we're talking about is there an opportunity for Business San Antonio to take a bigger role in that effort?

Um, and I believe in the B session, we'll be talking about that on April 29th a little bit more.

But to your point, uh Councilwoman Spears, it's a team effort, right?

Uh the stuff that you experienced on that flight, right?

Grass, um, and then that turned into a Cheryl Crow.

Kudos to the Alamo Dome team because they have an incredible fall lineup happening there that is driving visitation to our destination as well.

But uh to say all that, we're we're a part of that conversation.

Um, but I think we're anticipate anticipating playing in an even bigger role as we look forward into the future.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Galline.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation.

Uh incredible job as per usual.

Um I do have a grass question as well later on, but I'm gonna get through this one first.

I promise related.

Uh I did not prepare for the grass question.

It's a great.

But before I get to that one, I did want to ask a bit more questions on World Cup.

Um one of the big things I wanted to ask about was uh, well, first of all, when when did the uh meeting with or the trade mission to Spain take place?

When was that?

It was a couple months ago, right?

That was last fall.

Fall.

Okay.

So I was wondering, I guess, uh in conversations about um the role we play in Santa FC's uh incredible uh impact to our community.

Um thinking about the current labor dispute that's going on there.

Wasn't that come up then, or has that been uh a conversation?

I I I'm not sure I followed the the question.

I heard the labor disputes, but with the FC players currently, I think they're on strike, is that if I'm not mistaken, has that come up at all with any kind of promotional efforts or recruitment efforts for conversations with FIFA?

Um no, there was none of that.

This um when the teams that came to San Antonio uh and look at the facilities, looked at uh the hotel got it uh they it they were enamored with the city, they fell in love with the city.

This was literally unfortunate timing and scheduling.

I just hate to put it on that, but it it behooves us to take a very critical eye when we're not chosen for any event, yeah, right?

And to really get underneath it and understand it because that's the only way you can prevent the next one.

And we looked at this through a myriad of different ways, and it can't it kept going back as we asked these teams, it kept going back just to location of matches and scheduling.

Yeah, okay, that's helpful.

And because I'm assuming it'd be played at Toyota Field.

Was that the They were gonna play at Toyota Field?

Okay.

Is there any conversation as well with transit?

Um, not only regionally within or locally within downtown going towards Toyota Field, but also even regionally from other other major cities.

So I wasn't directly involved with the initial um FIFA base camp conversation.

That was spearheaded by San Antonio Sports and Entertainment and San Antonio Sports.

But yes, it's my understanding that there was conversation regarding all that.

Um, you know, in an ideal world for a base camp team, um they would have had hotels on property of the actual facility and world-class facility.

Um, and I think that's what they ran to with these other destinations.

Um, that there's not a lot out there that you have a world-class facility with a hotel on property, right?

And you does not require any transportation.

But they did.

There was conversations.

I long way to say yes, there was conversation.

No, I appreciate that.

Because I think it's also part of the the marketing that we're gonna push, right?

When we talk about uh bringing folks in from Dallas and Houston, ways that we can continue to explore that.

And of course, it's a larger statewide and even federal funding conversation related to transit.

But even just if we can, I don't know how effective it would be, but talking about what it looks like here locally to use via to get to some of these uh major places and how easy it is, as council member Ivan mentioned about um our walkability downtown, etc.

to our major destinations.

But Tramel Brown with via is on our board of directors, so there's there's uh a constant conversation of how do we build a better mousetrap, right?

Um, all in the spirit of trying to do what's right um for a destination.

But yes.

I like the way you phrase that.

Yes.

Thank you.

If you have more questions, you can take your other three minutes right now.

Do you have any other questions?

Yeah, I do.

Not related to FIFA, but I will shift gears.

Um slide two, the tax revenue one.

Do you have the breakdown of uh hot versus sales versus well, I don't know if property would qualify here, but so I I actually do give me, let's see, should have it here.

80% of that tax collection is going to be hot property and sales with everything else falling off.

But I let me let me see if I have the actual breakdown here.

So uh hot occupancy makes up 35.7.

Uh the next largest one is sales tax at 28.8, followed by property tax at 16.6.

CPS also plays in 2006.2, and other at 12.5.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

That's helpful.

Um, just to kind of understand where that money would then be going and how it impacts our general fund.

Um the last question I had was related to kind of grass, but more so I think the overall I don't know if the right term is like a hobby kind of industry.

Uh I think about I think in the budget presentations last year we talked about the the impact of regional tourism to San Antonio.

That was one of the biggest driving or biggest uh connectors there.

Absolutely.

Um, and so I'm wondering a little bit more uh some folks in my family work uh in a lot of like the card game collecting industries.

Uh huh, and so there's a lot of folks who come in for different tournaments and different activities that take place only here in relation to the RGV or even some of the rural areas or smaller towns that they'll come to San Antonio to go participate in these things.

And I'm wondering uh it's a little bit with crafting a little bit, but that a little bit with even uh lawn care and home care.

Is there do y'all track that kind of uh tours?

I don't know what that's called though, is my question.

So it it depends.

Some sometimes it's called trade, sometimes it's called a gate show because they might be charging uh for entry.

Right.

So a lot of these uh uh San Japan charges a registration or something to that effect, but we do.

Um, and and that's where we really have gotten pragmatic in terms of not only our selling and marketing, but just our strategy.

You have this ecosystem here in in Texas, right?

45 million neighbors that will visit and consider San Antonio their second home.

Um, how do we take advantage of that?

Uh not only from a leisure standpoint, but also from a group.

Um so yes, that's where we are ensuring that we're fishing where the fish are, okay.

Right?

Where you know, yes, we want to keep an eye on emerging international destinations that would consider San Antonio, but the reality is out of the 2.4 million international visitors, two million are coming from Mexico.

Um 70 or 80 percent of our our visitation is leisure, right?

With uh 70 uh 8% of it coming from Texas, right?

So, yeah, we we're hyper focused on that, not only from again from a leisure standpoint, but from a group standpoint.

But we could get we could find out like if you're looking specifically for Comic Cons and you know, with that car collecting absolutely and I guess the last thing I was gonna say about that was wondering what the conversation with small businesses are like here locally to see how that they can help help that conversation is let us know what things are going on and how they can then be plugged into these conversations a bit more.

And I guess the last thing I was gonna say about that was wondering what the conversation with small businesses are like here locally to see how that they can help hold that conversation is let us know what these are going on and how they can then be plugged into these conversations a bit more.

That would be excellent.

Yeah, it takes a village uh to to keep this thing going.

Um but it's everybody in this room, you all, if you hear of anything, uh kudos to Mary Jones uh because probably every other week we get an opportunity uh that she is pursuing something on the government side uh that is looking at uh you know you know she wants to see if they'll consider San Antonio.

But if you hear of anything, I'll take all the help I can get.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilman Messenger.

Hi, thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Just a couple of quick questions.

Do we work with our our large employers to kind of see where they're where they head to conferences or we do?

Okay, how does that work?

We do.

So um on our well, our board of directors is probably uh our our biggest opportunity for that.

But certainly as we're working with our chambers of commerce, uh, we just went to SA to DC.

Uh, that's where all those conversations are.

Where is the next opportunity?

Hey, I'm a part of this trade, or this group is meeting there.

So those conversations are constantly being rotated and asked about.

Yeah, it's a big, it's uh it's a big local source of opportunities for us.

And uh, I'm curious, and maybe you can just send me something uh, but what are the uh Spurs finals do to you know how do they help our city as far as you know for the weekend?

Do they come in for a couple of days before after?

So um we don't have I don't have conclusive data.

Sure.

But through Placer AI, um we do are able to have a sense of that.

Um doubt we we hear it from the group customer specifically who's coming in.

Um, and then they're also going to a Spurs game.

But you'll see it, you'll see it at the Spurs games too, right?

Um I don't have a conclusive answer for you, but we'll dig into that a little bit more.

But it's good for us.

I know at SA to DC, all the uh staffers there.

Uh the first thing that they were talking about was a Spurs.

First thing they want to know was about WebMyama.

Um, and then is on slide seven, that uh behind the uh San Antonio significantly behind the pace.

On the convention center, yeah.

What's the how do what's the plan there?

Um beats old in business every time, right?

Shiny.

Um the shiny new penny is where they're going.

Um somebody had asked me the other day.

Uh they're like, you know, will a convention center expansion, how do you know it's gonna work?

How do you know it's going to uh reverse this trend?

And my response is did you have you bought a new car?

Yes, right.

Was your old car still working?

Well, yes.

Well, why'd you buy the new car?

Uh, because I wanted a new car.

Well, it's the same thing on the meeting side of things.

You have board of directors that are to your point uh that you just mentioned, where is the new place we want to have a meeting?

Where is the new place that um we haven't been before?

What is you know, it's just a shiny new penny.

Um you can draw and restratize, um, and that'll help, right?

You can redeploy your sales efforts, that's gonna help, but a laser focus of heads embeds, fishing where the fish are, but a convention center expansion based on just what's happening here in Texas is it's a must uh in order to stay competitive.

That chart right there is evidence of it.

Uh I know we talked a lot about just real quick about the additional billion dollars of economic impact that we have the potential to go after, and that's important to note, but there's a lot of what ifs in there.

I I have to go get it, right?

And anything happens uh globally, that could fall apart.

But this is happening today.

That right there is happening today, and it's ending up in Houston, Austin, and Dallas.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

You got thank you.

Uh Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Mario and team, for the presentation and the work of Is it SA.

I appreciate you highlighting uh the in terms of the trend and the decrease.

Can you share uh where we stand in comparison to peer cities?

Is it a trend that we're seeing all throughout Texas?

Uh are this are there some cities faring uh better than others?

Yes, uh great, great question.

Um everything that we're talking about in terms of right, we're not insulated, uh obviously, because it's showing up in our numbers, but it's happening everywhere.

It's a national trend, and certainly here in Texas.

Now, what I will tell you our other Texas counterpart cities uh could take advantage of uh is the number of corporations that they have in their backyard, right?

So they are able to go after the special corporate business uh that we might not have as much as as we continue to pursue uh finding that opportunity.

But something else that we have found also that plays into this conversation that we're starting to understand better is short-term rentals uh and the impact that it has on overall hotel demand for us.

So in 2019, uh for instance, we saw about four a little over 400,000 short-term rentals of room nights, 400,000 room nights that we're going into short-term rentals.

Fast forward to 2025, that number is at 1.1 million.

That has shifted out of the hotels into short-term rentals.

Um what I what that means is people are still coming, they're just staying differently at the end of the day.

Um so to answer your question, where does that uh uh where do we fall um without having that strong corporate base?

There's always going to be some type of lag between us and a Houston and Dallas for sure, right?

And there's other factors, it's not just that.

But where our sweet spot is is group.

We need to find more group and part this investment into the convention center is so critical.

Um that along with leisure, we are Texas, right?

Everyone, every Texan's second home is San Antonio, and how do we continue to capitalize on that?

Um, as much as we experienced that fourth quarter calendar year lull, I will tell you that we had a really robust spring break, uh specifically in the leisure area.

Hey, focused on the unmistakably San Antonio, focused on the Texas regional drive market.

Um, and we're number one for the first time in a in a in a while in terms of leisure compared to the Texas uh comp set.

So uh cautiously optimistic uh, but at least current trends right now compared to last year in terms of this calendar year, seem to be holding their own.

Yeah, I really appreciate you covering that picture and right because I'm thinking about the short-term rental fee in San Antonio does have one of the lowest permitting fees in the entire state of Texas.

So I think that's something for us to take into consideration.

We have those conversations with development services.

Um, but one last comment, Chair if I may.

Um we had an event over at Rosedale Park to honor uh the installation of a mural, and it was a huge boxing event, right?

Uh and Robert Pinkin Kuroa was one of the city of one of the United States' first world champions, uh a super flyweight champion.

And um one of the coaches came up to me with a whole bunch of packets that we've sent scanned and sent over to Athletics, and he's saying, hey, you know, the the world boxing organization, they bring so many families, and we stay for up to two weeks, right, for training for events.

And he's like, how can we be supported uh and like welcomed into the city in terms of having these events here?

Um and he shared a couple of packets, right?

But his point was is you know, we have large families, large teams come from all over, and I believe Abilene's hosting uh the next one.

He's like, we need to have this here in San Antonio.

And he told me what we already know, right?

That San Antonio is home to so many world champions.

We have Van Rodriguez, Justin Leha, Franco, and Mario Barrios, right?

So, like we are a boxing Mecca in the United States, and I feel like we're not uh leaning into that uh as much as we can.

Uh, and I think there's just a lot of value in terms of how can we host these uh boxing events uh here in San Antonio that bring so many individuals for two weeks at a time, uh, and then of course showcasing our small um businesses like the city of San Antonio and District Five in particular have one of the highest concentrations of like local gyms, and folks drop by those gyms just to buy a shirt sometimes because they're visiting their tours and they want a shirt to say they went in the gym even though they didn't train, and but they want that shirt that says Boxer Station or whatever the case may be.

Um I think there's a lot of opportunity and happy to connect y'all.

Please, I I would love to sit down with them.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And then lastly, just really appreciate you highlighting the role and impact of hospitality workers.

And as someone who worked downtown in the hospitality industry for like eight plus years, uh, I will always advocate that bringing the sports events, particularly college games uh and concerts, is what brings in the money and impacts the pockets of the servers and the hostess and so forth.

So I'd love to see those when uh in the city uh and you all are advocating to bring those events to this uh San Antonio.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Um, and I just want to go as as uh a step further is I I do agree with you.

I think boxing is the next thing that we need to focus on and as we talk about sports uh and tourism.

Uh I do sit on, I do chair the community committee with Justin, and that is one thing is as economic workforce development.

If you want to get involved or send somebody from your team to kind of be part of a subcommittee, so we can look into that.

That's one thing we do.

We have a board, we have committees, and then within those committees, we can form subcommittees to make sure we're moving in that direction and they're reporting to the board.

So that that's another way.

If you see something local and you're like, this is where we need to get back.

And Terry and I, when we first got on, we we we did a boxing match at the dome.

It took forever for it to start, but we were there, and it was incredible.

Um, when the lights went down, it was just like a movie.

So I think that's one thing is we we need to start bringing that back as we look at as we see those gaps, and we want to get people to come to San Antonio.

Uh, you do have a lot of ideas, and I do want to uh bring up the chamber and the greater chamber um is doing that Texas space.

And and that's one of the ways we get the chambers to uh work on that.

And I know South Texas Business Partnership does their mayor's conference, and they're at um the embassy with that, so that's how we continue to get them and encourage them.

So as you meet with the business community, get them to to think about their uh groups and associations that they're part of and send them visit San Antonio's way.

Thank you, Mario, for that presentation.

Um, and we look forward to hearing from you at B session.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank y'all.

All right, so we are on to item four.

It's a briefing on artificial intelligence certificate and workforce program.

I believe there is a presentation, it'll be done by Mike also, and the floor is yours.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um, thankful to Councilmember Spears for bringing this to our attention and artificial intelligence certificate and workforce program proposed by the council member.

AI is impacting local businesses and workers right now today.

It requires upskilling as the technology continues to infiltrate the workforce of our community.

It's no longer confined to specialized technical roles and demand has accelerated at an unprecedented pace as the technology continues to grow.

AI training can help workers.

Um, they can help them to better adapt to automation, enhance their productivity, and help them to remain employable during this evolving job market.

So, proposed plan overview to evaluate the AI skills gap that exists between employer needs and the skills of the current workforce.

The city's proposing a multi-phase plan to ensure a methodical approach focused on employer validation, training provider due diligence, and outcome accountability.

In addition, the city is exploring contracting with a consultant to assist in the development of a comprehensive AI workforce strategic plan.

Um, this technology is increasing capacity, doubling every seven months.

And we believe that now is the time to act to try to ensure that City of San Antonio doesn't get left behind.

So phase one of that plan is of course labor market validation.

Everything we do within Ready to Work is all focused on what employers actually need, what they're hiring for.

The last thing we want to do is to tell people that hey, earn this credential, get the certificate, and you're gonna be able to you make X number of dollars, you know, within a short period of time.

Without employers validating that demand, um, you know, we don't want to set those participants up for disappointment.

So determine whether AI related training pathways correspond to real hiring demand.

Y'all heard from Melanie earlier for supply essay.

Um she's an employer who says you train them, I'll hire them.

Um so we need more employees.

And to get a hundred more Melanie's on board, and what that's this piece of this um phase one is all about is making sure that employers are informing this process so we can co-design what this pathway looks like with them.

Employer demand report would be the deliverable, identifying viable occupations and a hiring forecast.

Key actions conduct targeted employer outreach to validate demand for AI related roles, identify specific occupations, currently hiring locally that require AI literacy, applied AI tools, and advanced AI technical skills.

Engage with a local mayor and major employers.

Councilwoman Spears gave us a great list to choose from, and we'll use that list as our core, and we'll expand beyond that within our pledged employer list within ready to work.

Um CPS Energy, HEB, Methodist Healthcare, the Port, Rack Space, USAA and BA will be at the top of our list of employers to engage as a part of this process.

In phase two, um, training provider curriculum review.

Um, evaluate whether local training providers can deliver employer-aligned AI instruction that leads to favorable employment outcomes.

Creation of an AI literacy credential or badge to be explored at that time.

We've already begin these conversations.

You heard from Dr.

Riffert Henry today with um LMO colleges as we talked about their program focused on data science and AI.

We continue to have conversations with UTSA as well about their offerings.

You heard from Mahir with Learn2 AI and their credentialing programs aligned to our Microsoft credential.

He has been a valuable resource to helping us to understand what this landscape looks like and some potential partners with some training providers may come out of those conversations as well.

Key actions engage potential education partners, UTSA, LACD, approved boot camps, and technical providers.

Review, curriculum design, credential value in the labor market, which is critical, ensuring that employers see value in whichever credentials we align, ready to work with, instructional capacity, completion timelines, cost per participant, historical job placement outcomes if that data exists because these training programs are very new, and then assessing the existing programs in our local landscape.

So phase three, 6090 days, and again, these timelines overlap.

We're gonna move as quickly as we possibly can, deploying multiple phase phases within the same time frame in order to shorten the time to completion.

But objective to determine the feasibility of apprenticeships.

We know apprenticeships are critical for our target populations as you can earn a salary while you're learning those new skills, internships, some of which we discussed earlier, and on-the-job training pathways tied to verified employer hiring commitments.

Deliveral employer partnership framework identifying committed employers and projecting hiring opportunities.

Key actions, conduct structured employer roundtables so we can hear firsthand from our local employers about what skills and training programs they prefer, confirm willingness of employers to offer apprenticeships, internships, or on-the-job training, participate in curriculum and certificate validation to help co-design what that looks like.

And then, of course, we need them to commit to interview and hiring those program graduates.

Evaluate the feasibility using the ready to work employer led cohort training model that we talked about a little bit earlier, and then potential employer paid apprenticeships.

Phase four, participant support, critical.

If we're gonna make sure that our most vulnerable citizens are able to take advantage of the new jobs that are created by this new emerging technology, we've got to make sure that support is there so they can continue through their education and training pathways and find successful employment at the end.

So develop a participant support program structure aligned with workforce needs and stated equity priorities with local workforce development providers, our ready to work partners like Project Quest and Restore Education and our Alamo Colleges are a key piece of that.

Deliverables, participant support framework, including participant pathways to employment model being the key deliverable in that work.

Determine participant recruitment and support strategy in partnership with our prime partners within ready to work, evaluate the wraparound supports, including child care, transportation, bilingual instruction, career navigation services, which all be critical, and coordination to determine support service capacity, the case management structure, participant recruitment strategy, and employer recruitment and partnership strategies to ensure those jobs are available at the end.

Phase five, financial analysis and funding alignment within the ready to work budget, determine the feasibility of funding the program and what that flexibility looks like.

The program cost and funding strategy, estimating our cost per participant, evaluating supplemental external grant funding options to include state and federal workforce programs and philanthropic partnerships that may see AI training as a critical cornerstone that their dollars would be of good value within.

Phase six performance metrics and accountability, ensure transparency with these public dollars and measurable outcomes are being met through integration to our public-facing ready to work dashboard so we can keep the community abreast of our progress.

Deliverable performance measurement and governance framework, key actions, define program success, enrollment numbers, training completion rates, which credentials they're attaining and at what rate, job placement rates, starting wages, and employer satisfaction, and integrate it into that public-facing dashboard for greater exposure and accountability.

Um review, evaluate the feasibility of establishing an AI workforce advisory board composed of city departments, employers, education partners, and workforce organizations.

Again, this is feedback directly from the council members' request, and I think that there could be valuable insights gained from each of these support groups.

And then phase seven, poly implementation recommendation, determine how a pilot program should proceed based on validated employer demand and availability of quality AI training programs and the final delivery real staff recommendation and those key actions will be the review of the findings from phases one through six, identify the occupations, the employer partners willing to hire the training providers capable of delivering the outcomes expected by this council, and consider launching a limited pilot cohort prior to scaling citywide.

The next steps, all phases of research estimated to take approximately six to nine months to complete, with some research phases overlapping based on the feedback received from this committee.

We'll initiate the stated research.

Staff will provide regular updates to the committee as the research is being completed.

That concludes the presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right.

Again, uh, I'm gonna save some of my comments for the end because this is a a large vision sort of piece, but uh we'll start with my uh members' conversations.

Who would like to go first?

Uh Councilman Spears.

Mike, thank you so much for for bringing for coming today with your presentation.

I'm very excited and focused on this, as you already know.

Um this is an industry where I think it's got a lot of fear mongering in the public, but if we lean into this, um, we can be the pioneering city on it.

I want to thank Melanie and Francisco for coming with with Project Quest and Supply SA.

And then Jana, thank you so much for coming with TriStar and um Dean Griffith, thank you too.

I I just see huge opportunity here.

There you the employers are asking for AI skills, and this is something we can build into programs we already have quickly.

It's a scaffolding technique to get our our workforce ahead of everyone else.

And I think it can I like that this can be done in six to nine months.

Um I think that it's an ex it needs to focus on being the accelerator as part of a greater part of their education and um career goals because AI is gonna infiltrate and it changes every day.

And um, you know, when we were in Taiwan, this is already part of their fabric.

So we we can model that and really um as we're recruiting businesses, high-paying jobs for our residents.

Um, we we need to have them skilled up in this space.

It's sort of something that works in tandem.

You sort of have to interlong together.

You have your employers and you have your workforce building at the same time and guidehouse, I know is ready for this as well.

Um, I talked with the St.

Mary's uh president or Winston Urvells, and uh the law school's ready to help on the legislation side because that's coming too.

And then also they have their own AI programs.

So our higher ed is ready as well, and then we have them the mayor's East SAG group, they're prioritizing AI and the economy, and we're the Texas Cyber Command hub.

So I think we're ripe for the state dollars and even the federal dollars that you want to pursue.

And I applaud the fact that you want to look at doing that, and I think we're the ones that are most positioned to do that.

Um this isn't duplicating anything, any existing programs, it's really enhancing and adding in these skills that I think are scaring a lot of people, but we've really got to push that it's not replacing your job, it's just uh you're gonna have more opportunity with these skills.

So I really am excited about this.

We we did the MOU in Taiwan with um Kaosheng and Kumamoto, our sister cities, and they are ready to invest in San Antonio.

So I think as we do this, um I see Sherry in the audience.

Yeah, they were really excited about coming to San Antonio, and as long as we have workforce skip up scaling, then we can we can do that.

So thank you so much for that.

Thank you.

Who'd like to go next?

Councilmember Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mike.

And just wanted to commend Council Member Spears for leading this initiative in terms of identifying a way to support employers uh and how to navigate and uh you know, provide uh clear clarity, right?

Because your point, right?

There is a lot of fear mongering in terms of job replacement with AI.

Um this provides some context and understanding to what uh the city of San Antonio under the leadership of Councilmember Spears intend to tackle this issue.

Um, with the proposed phases, and I know you highlighted it within phase three, but can you walk me through who's going to be responsible for uh facilitating uh each of the phases?

So the city workforce development office is gonna be responsible for each of the phases, facilitating each step of it, and then reporting back to this committee on our progress.

Okay, and then in terms of next steps, right?

It also highlights that city staff will initiate uh research.

So it'll be that'll be done in-house, not a consultant to tackle this work.

Well, we're exploring the possibility of bringing a consultant in to assist.

This is so big and it's moving so quickly.

I don't want to limit us to just our capacity within our office.

Uh, typically, how much do you anticipate uh the costs associated with the consultant?

Somewhere between 30 and 50,000 is what I would anticipate.

Okay.

Those are all my questions.

Thanks, Mike.

Thank you.

Councilman Galvan.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mike, for the presentation.

And thank you, Council Spears, for leading on this conversation.

I think it's really important we talk about uh to your point, right?

A lot of the higher education partners looking into ways that we can skill upskill our our residents to make sure that that avenue is available.

I think about course onto Vista as well as Hallmark University just down the road from one another, working uh generally about how to help uh make sure that these pipelines are available for our our students here in our city, uh, even trying to connect with some of our K through 12 uh partners in the area too.

So I really appreciate that.

I think uh to the point about fear mongering with the two or the concerns with it.

I wonder if there's any way within this, and maybe that's broaden the scope too much, but to understand a little bit more too, which part of our economic sectors are vulnerable to well, not vulnerable, but are looking into exploring uh innovating with AI that could impact our workforce and whether those folks are able to reskill within the same uh field or would have to transition out in some form and what RatedWorks role would be within that.

Um open to kind of having that conversation, but I think that's something that I'm thinking a lot about that as we make new pathways for folks and making sure that folks who may be impacted by the transition to AI are able to effectively transition, not just be pushing.

Right.

I agree.

Uh I think that's a big part of what this research will tell us, what those employers are thinking with each each of those industry sectors and what those opportunities are gonna be, not just now, but three years from now.

Again, is that technology continues to accelerate and change their jobs?

Right, because that's one of the big things.

I know we had a conversation about with uh with Hallmark and others.

Um we talked about the kind of this is incredible work that there's being done already, uh seeing this kind of really good stuff that they're doing, but worried about okay, 10 years from now, technology changes.

Does this person still have that role that they were promised originally?

Yes, maybe they still do, maybe it's less people, whatever it may be.

Understanding those trend lines would be helpful, I think, just to kind of see what things are uh what how we're gonna place our investments here.

Um but otherwise, I don't think um.

Oh, I did want to ask this.

Um earlier we were talking about the ready to work, of course, uh program and the budget.

We talked a bit about the the IT component there.

Do you have any any thoughts on uh the comparison between the IT how radar workers are struggling with IT versus what this could look like?

Is it more programmatic or is it also industry specific?

What is your kind of field on it or feel on it?

Well, I think the struggle we've had in IT is feeding why you see so much employer alignment and validation and co-designing within this proposed plan.

Um we you know have struggled uh to get individuals placed in that space again because the employers wanted something at ready to work, couldn't deliver people that had two to three years of experience already in field with AI because the technology is so new, um, whether those are jobs directly as AI uh prompt engineers or machine learning roles, those roles are so new, the market isn't saturated yet.

So we can get in front of producing talent for those spaces.

We believe we can set our participants up to success, but also AI is penetrating across sectors across occupations.

Right.

So regardless of what your chosen career pathway is, it's gonna be you know very commonplace to be able to have an expectation that employers are expecting to know how to utilize AI to be more productive.

So we've got to figure out a way to make sure that those skills are embedded across the board no matter which industry or occupation you're pursuing.

Got it.

Okay, that's helpful.

Last thing I was gonna mention was I know I think we had a really good list of partners, so thank you, Council Spears and staff for putting that together.

Uh I was gonna also suggest maybe Microsoft as well.

Uh as they're continuing to embark on the uh that work, uh District 6.

I think they're really good partners that try to work with the local school districts as well, related to the kind of STEM and CTE work.

So thank you, Councilman.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Councilmember Messi Gonzales.

Thank you for the presentation.

Um, thank you to Councilwoman Spears uh for the CCR.

Um just a quick question on slide four on the major employers.

Just so phase one, if there's a connection from phase two into phase one, I would just ask if we could include the higher ed or training providers sooner than later, just so that you know folks can be ready for phase two on what they're hearing from the employers that's possible.

Absolutely.

That's a great suggestion, Councilmember.

We'll definitely do that.

That's it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Councilman Spears, for bringing this up.

Uh I it's been a few years when I I asked the city that we need here's here's here's some things that I have in terms of concerns.

Do I think we need to move forward with this?

Of course we do.

However, the city and we as city officials need to look at our policy regarding AI within the whole city and what we allow our city employees to use it for, and what we do we expect to uh lose staff because or not fill positions because we believe our staff can AI can help with this.

So I think I think that's key.

The other thing is as we as we have we need to understand the relationship between AI and data centers as we continue to have data center conversations because it does take a lot of energy to run AI programs, and if we are going to champion this and want to be the leaders, we have to have a conscientious data center program set up.

So I'm glad that we are working on that in moving forward to making sure that when we talk about data centers in San Antonio, we're talking about data center leaders, uh not just uh fly by night data centers.

Um but there is a job loss.

I was at a fair and a graphic artist was there, and I he had this really great Christmas card, and I picked it up and I was like, I was like, oh, this is good, what do you do?

And he was like, well, I used to be a graphic artist, but I lost my job to AI.

And so we've got to understand that that people are losing their jobs, and that with that, how do we how do we take our creatives?

How do we writers?

Netflix, we know that people are losing their jobs because AI can give you some story that some writers were giving you that were pretty bad on those series.

But people are losing their jobs, so how do we have them now navigate this new technology?

So I'm glad to see the pilot program.

I'm leaning towards the nine months rather than the six, and not because I don't think we could get it done at six, is because I want something that other people that other cities are going to look at and say that's what we want to do.

San Antonio took the time to do that.

Um because this is going to be for San Antonio.

I don't think just about navigating AI, but about digital literacy on board.

Like I'm asking seniors right now to get into a classroom for six weeks and and go online and use our app.

You're asking people to look at AI and they're on Facebook and they're being told in six weeks they could learn to do this and learn to do that, but is it profitable?

Does it lead to a job, or does it just help them navigate the internet more?

So I I really want this to work with the employers in terms of what they need in terms of logistics and really carve this out for the jobs that we currently have and then for the jobs that we know are coming to San Antonio.

And I I do think JCB and and thing and uh Toyota manufacturing, but also just yeah, that that creative, that you know, animated series that people can do, thing things like that.

So I think we have a potential.

I know that's not what ready to work does, but I think as we bring in the colleges, as we bring in higher education, that they can do that for for our creative element here in San Antonio.

And before we go hiring a consultant, I would really like us to explore with the grassroot efforts that do an aspect of digital literacy, how they can come in and help with this.

Um I think whether it's ISLR or people that are working at the national level to bring things forward, they may have some ideas or some nonprofits or groups that are willing to help us with this work because of the data collection that we can take.

Because as a um as a former teacher and as a a student and as a graduate student, I just like the idea of what timeline it takes someone who digital like digital literacy was poor to now they're AI and they're working for a company.

What what's that time frame and how did we do that?

So, in terms of the potential being there, I think it's key.

I think it comes to working together and getting the stakeholders.

So thank you for all of you who came and spoke because these are the leaders.

I have, you know, if I use the AI, I mean it's it's for ridiculous, it's to create an image.

So what we're asking for is for you to kind of help them not make them more marketable.

And thank you again, Councilwoman Spears, for for pushing this forward.

And Mike, I just hope we get to please continue to give us updates so we can get to the point where we can continue to tell the story because I know they're doing this in other cities and they are not coordinating their efforts, so they're getting like six different opinions, and they start to argue who's got the best.

So we don't want to be we don't it's a city in Ohio, but we don't want to be Ohio.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

If there isn't anything else, we're gonna move on to item number five.

Uh Ms.

Grace has one more question.

Just one question.

If we could, because you mentioned that bringing the grassroots in, maybe we should consider the MOU we have with UT San Antonio on the consultant, and maybe save money there.

And and I did neglect to mention that they are doing so much in the in the education space in the high school high schools.

And so that's exciting.

Thank you.

All right.

Item number five.

There's a staff presentation.

Good morning, Alfred Brewer, Assistant Director for Economic Development.

Um thank you, Councilmember Spears for bringing forward uh the expressed interest and directed programming for veterans related to small business support.

Um the council member um wanted us to take a look and see what services we have now and how we could possibly create a business accelerator in a pitch competition that's geared directly towards veterans.

Um the goal was to support our reputation as military USA.

Oh, thank you.

Perfect.

Um to support us as our reputation as military USA.

Um about eight point I guess eight point two percent of our civilian workforce are veterans, five percent of our businesses are veteran-owned, and our overall population in San Antonio 10.1% is um a veteran or military related.

That's far above our peer uh peer cities who come in about 4% to 6%.

So it is a key initiative that we need to look at and make sure we are supporting uh veteran small businesses.

Um, an estimated budget for this impact uh that was requested was about 350,000 dollars.

Um components of the request, there were five of them, create that accelerator track.

Um so there's about a 12 to 16 uh week accelerator focused on veterans themselves to provide financing, small business support uh initiatives to support them from idea to uh business launch, uh integrated partnerships, connecting the partners in the community that are doing veteran veteran related um work, um, mentorship and coaching, pair them with a uh current veteran business owner, pair them with an advisor to advise on creating that business, a pitch competition, uh initiative to solve and resol um access to capital challenges, um program evaluation and accountability.

This is tracking yearly what number what percentage of veteran businesses are in the community, what's the job creation out of those veteran businesses, and um uh related financing.

So we are doing a number of things right now to address uh veteran small businesses.

Um currently we're going through the economic development framework update.

Um this is gonna include um extensive stakeholder engagement.

We're going through that right now that's just kicked off.

Uh, we have a number of veterans and veteran business related uh participants in that stakeholder engagement, and also an assessment of the local small business ecosystem.

That's taking a look and seeing where we are today, what gaps there are, and that will have a connection and we'll look at that through uh a veteran's lens as well.

Access to capital, it's always a challenge for small businesses currently.

Uh, we are about to launch the growth stage grants program for second stage companies and SBIR, SDTR funded companies.

Um, this is open to everyone, and often we will um look at targeting uh veteran um communities through our marketing efforts.

Uh and launch essay.

This is the single largest investment currently for small business that the city is making.

Um, over the past over the three-year contract, it's a 1.7 million dollar investment.

And launch SA serves as that small business hub, not only for veterans, but for all people looking to start a business.

Um that contract ends in September of this year, um, and it has uh several renewals uh tied to it, and we'll be coming back uh to this uh group to discuss that renewal.

So given our investment in launch essay, I'm gonna focus in on some of their core services.

Uh Launch SA is not another referral, it is someone coming in, doing assessment, doing a detailed look at what their needs are and their goals, and then launch evaluating what they need and pairing them with an advisor to walk them through that process.

Um based on what their goals are, it may be um certain type of technical assistance.

Launch SA works with a number of volunteers that provide that free of cost.

And if we need to, they will refer to other partners if they don't have that service in-house.

And I'll point out here on the right, that's Carlos Acosta.

He's one of their business advisors.

He is a veteran.

And he's been looking through that lens of veterans to know that you know lived experience where they can know what they need and what that transition out of the military looks like.

Um events and programs.

This is this is the key.

First year there's about 70 events and workshops.

This year we're pushing nearly 300.

Um through these, they are working with partners to understand what they need, the community to understand what they need and evolve.

So they started out with a program Waypoint, which is now their current eight-week um cohort accelerator program that allows someone to come in with an idea and walk them all the way through that process.

Originally that started as a veteran focus, but through all their programming through all their initiatives, they saw that what a veteran needs and another small business owner needs is the same.

They still need that same base tool.

Um, a number of resources are available to everyone that would help veterans alike.

Um program and outreach assessment.

This is this is key to what launch does.

They don't know what they need until they go and ask, and they're constantly evolving and assessing their models.

Just like the Waypoint program, they moved away from veteran focus to everyone.

And so they're currently reaching out in all districts.

I think there's a library series in D6 this week, and there should be one coming to every district here.

And that's an opportunity to share what the community is needing so they can help form that program.

Um and then again, revol refining those services based on demand and data.

They have the flexibility to do this, and that's that's the goal here.

And often, you know, it's communication, and I think we're seeing you know, awareness may be that first barrier.

And so looking at how we make these programs aware to all communities, we can use your help to push this out to key constituents like veterans.

And so our recommendation is to study veteran programming needs and overall demand in coordination with launch essay in Geekdom.

Um we would look at running some pilot initiatives, and we've already started about talk started talking about what those look like, and then also, as I just mentioned, targeted marketing.

We need to push it out to those veteran groups to understand to let them know that that resource is available.

And then we'd like to use the economic development framework to run that run through that process, gather information from those stakeholders, and then also go through that small business uh ecosystem assessment.

And then at the end of the and probably by late summer, come back to this uh committee here and present those results.

So we're gonna look at tracking what demand was there from veterans.

We're gonna look at what is available internally at launch SA and then incorporate that into our uh proposed renewal that we'll bring back to EWC for consideration in uh late summer and that timeline.

Right now, we're already having those conversations.

Um Melanie doesn't know this, but um she is a part of a group V Source, which is a veterans-focused uh um entrepreneur group, and so we're gonna be coming to her.

We've already talked about looping that in and building that early stage or uh hub for veterans.

Um so we're having those conversations now.

Framework is in process, and then June, July, we're gonna run some initiatives, run some pilot programs, collect that data, see what we uh uh what works, what doesn't work, and then how that incorporates into the future of launch SA, and then come back to this committee in late summer to present our findings.

That's it.

All right, thank I thank you so much.

So I I think I'm excited about this.

I think I think we do need to focus on our veterans and our veteran spouses as we move forward.

Do we have a list with EWDC in terms of where the market what their interests are and where there is a potential market for um for these small businesses because again, if they are concentrated in the north, there's gonna be a lot of competition where growth is happening in this in the in the south from the southwest to the southeast, and um you know that is one thing that I think they need to take into consideration.

Um, it's been very successful for some businesses that have planted themselves in the the west or the east side and then grown from there, you know, merging south.

But I think right now that that's going to be as key as we talk to veterans and entrepreneurs in terms of where geographically they're located within the city or are possibly in the city where they can go out to the county in terms of what they need.

The other is what I'm hearing is we we do need the trades.

I mean, that is clear is if you're going to start a small business, um, and even if you're not the expert, if you manage uh a group uh that does uh electrical work or plumbing work, we we know that we need the trades, and they may have a business background or been trained because the military just seems to be very well organized and coordinated that they can manage uh maybe a team and look at that using their skills there.

So I really I would really like to see us do that in terms of if they start something like IT, which we heard is one thing that's hard for ready to work to place, is really understanding the market here in San Antonio and where the needs are, and in terms of entrepreneurship, it may be it may look like this for the next you know, three years, but as growth and construction comes down here, giving them a plan to possibly uh pivot into a subcontracting job with one of the bigger constructions if if that's what they're they're looking at.

So I just I think there's a lot there's a lot of potential there, but I think we need to we we need to have all the facts of what our what our current marketplace looks like right now and what it's going to look like uh in the future.

So that uh thank you for that presentation, and uh I'm glad to see uh launch essay you know, really trying to address those issues as we move forward.

Um any other council members, um committee members like to speak on this issue, Councilman Spears.

Thank you for coming and presenting today on what we're already doing and how we can really um focus in on veterans and specifically their families too.

When I was up in SA to DC, we went to the Pentagon and we spoke to the um leadership there, they were so excited to hear about us focusing on their families.

This is a big gap.

And identifying how we market to them so that they have awareness because I I go out into the public and around a lot of veterans and their families, and they don't know what we have, and they don't know how to get integrated into it.

And to councilwoman Via Gran's point, like often it's um the spouses maybe they're they're in in active duty and their their spouses deployed and they've got to you know run the fit household, but maybe they can do something in AI even with the accelerator, but how do we reach that person?

And and those are the struggles I'm seeing in your timeline.

I want to make sure that we're able to do the marketing piece maybe before we start looking at at demand because now we're not reaching them.

And um I just feel like this as military city USA, this should be a core function of our city is to make sure we're taking care of their families and the veterans really.

I mean, they're they're a different sort of uh worker.

They're driven and and and not that not that everyone isn't.

I'm just saying we know their work ethic, right?

And and so they're just make the best um you know, entrepreneurs, and I just really want to support that.

I think we could support 50 to 75 veteran entrepreneurs with this initial um pilot programs that we're talking about for the veterans, uh, looking at microloans and grants and procurement opportunities.

Um I know our higher education partners are very excited to do this as well.

Every time I bring this up to anyone, they want to do it, they want to get involved.

And so I really I really am encouraged to see that we have this.

I know we have a launch essay event in District 9 in May, and I'm gonna talk a lot about our veterans there, but um to Councilwoman View Grand's point too.

I mean, you're right, it's often better to be looking at expanding your business their businesses into other parts of the city, irrespective of where they may live.

But I just want to make sure that we're creating a structured pipeline for them and that there's awareness because they're paying attention up in DC and in federal level to how we support our veterans and their families in our active duty.

And the more vocal and the more active we can be in this space, the better.

And it's also something we just owe it to them, I think.

So thank you.

And that's why he's gone out to the districts.

They're housed at D1.

I mean, in District One at the library.

So it's a key key focus for him.

Thank you.

Member Mesigantas.

Hi, thank you for the presentation.

Um, I'm I'm glad to see this item on the agenda.

We talked about veterans last week in regards to housing and this week in regards to uh small business support.

So I'm glad to see this uh happening.

Uh we have veteran centers at each of the college campuses, so I was wondering if there was any connection that we could have with those veteran centers to bring them into how we move this along.

I think there's definitely opportunity.

It's just like the library series.

They partner with the library, partnering with the veteran centers is just another avenue.

So yes.

Okay, great.

Um, and then I don't know if does Launch SA or Geek Dum have any kind of current stats on um support or you know, who comes through the door as far as veterans are concerned.

Um, I know they do have a detailed assessment.

I don't know if we can get that information for you.

Yeah, follow-up.

Okay, we we can follow up because they do have a significant intake form that we can uh provide some statistics on.

And are they kind of are they already maybe talking about better ways that launch us they could support or um just curious uh support what specifically sorry just in general?

I mean, is there um a better setup that launch support could have that would be supportive to our veteran small businesses or are they happy with the service?

I'm just curious, you know, because there it's a it's a unique set of uh folks.

So yeah, so for us, uh this is the third year of the contract.

And of the theme of the year with Geekdom or who uh with launch essay, sorry, Matthew Espinosa, director of launch essay.

Uh for us the first two years, uh the theme of was relaunching launch essay because it's been a pivotal 10 plus year program for the city.

Yeah, and for us, uh Geek and being the partner uh originally it was what do we focus on, what do we specialize in?

But for launch, we realize there's so many entrepreneurs, so many small businesses.

We stay very broad.

Uh, this past quarter, we brought on some part-time contractors to allow us to do more one-on-one advising support, allow us to do more uh outreach.

So uh it's a great opportunity for us to understand what the city's looking for and uh veteran specifically was something we were exploring on our own that has re-popped up.

So uh what's important to us is I think meeting the business owners where they're at.

So we recently have started a peer group uh where it's groups of about 10 business owners that just come together and help each other and talk to each other.

We could explore a veteran-only one, what that looks like.

The challenge with I would say our line of work with how broad it is when you're helping a veteran start a business.

That's a whole different group of challenges and issues versus trying to get them to accelerate their business.

Um, oftentimes as you start to grow your business, the support needs look completely different versus when you're starting a business, everybody's got to go through the same challenges.

Um, so I think it's important getting those groups together, talking to the veterans that are both business owners or transitioning out.

So we'd be happy to uh build whatever that looks like in partnership with the city.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Those are all my questions.

Any other members?

Yes, Councilman Castillo.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Alfred, for the presentation, uh, as well as uh again to council member Spear for um ensuring that this remains a priority for council in terms of input.

I think there would be value in having uh briefing with the veterans advisory commission if that hasn't already occurred.

I know uh Matt Guanar appointee um is just a wealth of expertise and really has his pulse uh on veteran needs in District 5 in particular.

Um, so I think there'd be great opportunity to check in with that committee as well to see what they uh see as potential path forward.

In addition to that, in terms of marketing, right?

I'm thinking about uh veterans that have uh transitioned into a civilian occupation and now are set for retirement, right?

Uh, my dad's one of those, and he's always talking about creating a business.

And when we were younger, he did have one, right?

But I'm thinking about those older veterans that you know can potentially get plugged in as they're exploring retirement uh and how they can also tap into their benefits to help get a small business off the ground.

Um, just ensuring that when we're marketing, right, we're also taking into consideration older adults with this opportunity and uh what business support can look like for veterans in San Antonio.

Uh and then lastly, just wanted to thank Melanie for sharing her story uh and then also um her priorities in terms of being a veteran small-owned business, but also looking to hire locally, uh, particularly through ready to work.

But uh, those are my only comments, Alfred.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Galvine.

Thank you for the presentation.

One last quick thing.

Uh well, of course, thank you, Helder Spears for putting this forward.

I think this is a crucial uh conversation we can have here in the city and make sure that we have uh these programs in line so that way uh our veterans who are ready to go can plug in or want to explore, we can plug in really quickly without having to try to navigate the difficulties of what it means to create a small business here in our city.

We should always try to make it easier as possible, and in particular for folks who are ready to go.

Let's get it done.

So I'm very excited about this.

Um very eager to see how we can coordinate uh with the veteran affairs offices, um, that Council of Ivalis, um, Gonzalez mentioned, uh, with our veteran advisory commission as well that Councilman Castillo mentioned, and even of course, to the point about the older adults, right?

Thinking about um how the American Legion can be supportive in this, how or how we can connect with them along with uh the uh VFW halls and even some of the veteran groups that are here, right?

Uh, and happy to connect wherever needed as well.

I think of the Edgeworth District Veterans too, uh, who are always trying to stay active with the American Legions as other veteran groups as well.

Um, all those uh stakeholders being a part of this, I think will be helpful, and I'm very excited to continue to launch SA relaunching efforts.

Uh and I know my team will be present uh at the meeting uh soon with Geta Library.

So thank you again for this incredible work and thank you, Helder Spears for pushing this forward.

Um, looking forward to it.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

All right, we're moving on to item number six.

Now, as economic workforce development chair, and as we move forward, uh, we will all be traveling, and I apologize that I did not do this when I went to Spain with Sherry.

Uh, but I did talk to Councilman Um Spears, and an item number six is a conversation about the San Antonio mission to Taiwan.

Uh, just with some, I guess three main takeaways for feel free to ask questions, uh, and then just be mindful that as you travel, even if you're traveling for something that you're like was an economic work or trade mission.

If you have something that you want to come back and share with the team, we can put that on the agenda.

So at this time, I am going to hand it over to Councilwoman Spears to kind of share some takeaways and um then we can ask her some questions.

Thank you, Chair.

So I did have the opportunity to join the mayor, uh, Mayor Ortiz Jones on a week-long trip to Taiwan, and we visited Taipei and Kaoshan.

Kaosheng is my sister city with a brief stop in Tiny.

Um the purpose was to strengthen our trade relationships and attract investment and position San Antonio and global tech and manufacturing supply chains.

The delegation was supported by the participation of members of the mayor's economic security advisory group, which included Jim Pershbach, the president and CEO of Port San Antonio, Heather Hansen, the president of BiomedSA, Dr.

Eric Bray, the Dean of the Clesey College of Engineering and Integrated Design at UT San Antonio, Eric Adolphi, founder and CEO of Forward Edge AI, which is a San Antonio-based quantum computing company, and Greater SATX came with us as well.

So we met with the American Institute in Taiwan and Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, hosted a lunch for us to discuss trade and economic alignment.

But every meeting, we reinforced San Antonio's role as a trusted international partner in the four areas that are identified by the mayor as priorities, which is quantum technology, AI, bioscience, and space and advanced manufacturing.

We met with many uh major trade and industry groups, including the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, the Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturing Association, known as TEMA, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.

But our focus was always on business recruitment, trade pipelines, and U.S.

market entry.

We met with defense and technology firms, including Seven Starlake.

They specialize in recognization of military computing equipment.

We visited TSMC, which is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, which was facilitated by our friend at Hello Taiwan, Ming Sheng.

He's he was amazing on this trip.

He really helped a lot.

And they're talking about their potential development and U.S.

investment.

We strengthened ties with Kaosheng through the signing of their trilateral MOU, and which commits San Antonio to economic and workforce development support and alignment.

So the key takeaways for from this trip was San Antonio is competing globally.

Taiwan's model is showing highly coordinated industry, trade, and workforce alignment with San Antonio.

Major opportunities for us in the semiconductor supply chains.

It's not just attraction, but supporting these industries and their workforce pipelines.

And two-way investment matters.

So they want to support San Antonio companies expanding abroad while attracting international firms here to San Antonio.

So those are a lot of opportunities.

Maybe the food's a little different, but it was it was a warm experience.

Love the Spurs, and they seem to know a lot about us in San Antonio.

So that's kind of the takeaways I had from the trip to Taiwan.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

I think I think my only question is did you did you see I I think you've I think your conversation in terms of AI is one of the other.

Did you see any other kind of um focuses that we've been doing here in San Antonio, but we may need to expand a little more on in during the trip, other than AI.

Well, yeah, they're they're definitely talking about um well when we started talking about the biomed side, they got really excited about that because a lot of what we're we're doing here aligns with what they are already doing amazingly with semiconductors.

Um it's a space you wouldn't think about, and then you know what we have at UT San Antonio and our SWERI at the Southwest Research Institute from beginning to end.

That was also something very, very interesting to them in the RD space, because I think that's something that they're also trying to figure out is how do they deploy more resources in San Antonio, well, in America, let's say San Antonio, but then also you know, they've got to be able to scale their technology and where are the markets that can do that.

And San Antonio is unique in that.

And our military presence and our military capabilities only strengthen that positioning.

So if you look at it from a bird's eye point of view, we up our workforce in these areas of AI and and quantum and and cybersecurity and all these things we've talked about, even for the kids in the in um high school and the seniors like you're talking about, all of it.

Add in our military city USA, add in military medicine USA.

We're like the perfect package.

Plus, it's fun to live here, and they know that.

So it felt really uh positive.

I know some really great things are coming out of this, positive that they are.

There may not be right to talk about, but but they are definitely coming.

Great.

Questions from any other of this.

No.

All right.

Well, y'all get ready to report too when y'all go travel.

So they thank you for that.

Um we uh and I see Sarah and Sherry in the audience and your teams.

Thank y'all so much for for the efforts as we move forward and we continue to tell our story globally.

Uh we really appreciate it.

We're trying to I for me, diversity is key.

If our markets are diverse, we we remain um we remain viable, we were we were we continue to move forward.

I learned my lesson in terms of focusing on one industry or one source.

It does not work.

Uh it it can negatively impact a city, but San Antonio is resilient, and we have been, so thank y'all for your efforts as we continue to have these conversations.

And the time is now 1220, and that is the end of our public safety meeting.

We adjourned.

No, I'm sorry, our education no economic workforce and development committee.