Just This.

Like chapters of a book, each episode of the “San Antonio Storybook” will tell a different tale about the city we call home. The stories likely are ones you haven’t heard before – narratives about the lives of the people behind the headlines, the sounds you hear, and the places you see as you drive around San Antonio.

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“Finding Medina” weaves together the events surrounding the Battle of Medina with the modern-day search for the battlefield itself. Despite being the largest, bloodiest battle in Texas history, the Medina battlefield has eluded archaeologists for more than a century. By the end of this podcast series, we hope to change that.

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We may have been naive to be surprised that a San Antonio resort named La Cantera would be sued in 2018 for enforcing an "English-only" policy among Latino employees, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) this week filed just that lawsuit.

Helping us understand the lawsuit and the procedures the EEOC goes through before filing such a lawsuit is veteran San Antonio employment attorney Chris Pittard, whose background includes four years as an EEOC lawyer.

We also have a special announcement following our conversation.

We may have been naive to be surprised that a San Antonio resort named La Cantera would be sued in 2018 for enforcing an "English-only" policy among Latino employees, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) this week filed just that lawsuit.

Helping us understand the lawsuit and the procedures the EEOC goes through before filing such a lawsuit is veteran San Antonio employment attorney Chris Pittard, whose background includes four years as an EEOC lawyer.

We also have a special announcement following our conversation.

What did you do on summer vacation? Some San Antonio high school students from the International School of the Americas magnet program spent it diving deep into the horrors of the Holocaust. Rick Casey talks to two of them, Sofia Fortuno and Claire Ferrell.

The firefighters' union will have three controversial charter amendmentson the Nov. 6 ballot and each could have a significant effect on political decision making in San Antonio.

This week, Iris Dimmick, who has been covering the firefighters' union contract negotiations for years, joins the podcast to discuss each of the three city charter changes, and Rick explains why he thinks if the amendments pass, the union will be the most powerful political force in San Antonio since the police union of the 1980s.

We talk with Gerry Schwabel, long-time head of international affairs for IBC Bank, which specializes in U.S. companies doing business in Mexico and Mexican companies doing business in the United States. Schwabel was present at the creation of NAFTA here in San Antonio and has closely monitored the current negotiations over updating the treaty. He just returned from Mexico City where he was one of the invited industry representatives who literally wait outside the doors behind which negotiations take place and offer instant responses to negotiators about proposed changes. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked a federal court this week to void an Environmental Protection Agency finding that San Antonio has – like every other United States city of its size or larger – exceeded federal standards for ozone in its air.

Paxton argued the finding would seriously hurt the city’s economy. Will it? And why hasn’t the City of San Antonio joined Paxton in the filing? Brendan Gibbons, the Rivard Report's environmental reporter, explains.

San Antonio City Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8) this week called for Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood to investigate the North Texas developer whose crews recently clearcut most of 38 acres of dense, brushy forest near La Cantera Parkway on the city's far North Side.

LaHood called the move grandstanding. Pelaez joins me to discuss the crimes he has in mind.

This week the most comprehensive study of San Antonio’s housing needs produced a detailed proposal to address a severe and growing problem.

The Housing Policy Task Force Calls for 10-Year, $3.9 Billion Plan One statistic is particularly powerful: Paying the median rent for an apartment requires a wage of $18 an hour, yet 60 percent of San Antonio workers make less than $15. Owning a house is even tougher: The median price of a home has soared 40 percent in the last six years, and the trend is likely to continue.

Addressing the issue, the report says, will require considerable resources and a novel approach to affordable housing. A city’s housing stock is part of its infrastructure, just like water, streets, drainage. and sewage. If the free market can’t provide affordable housing, we need to address the problem collectively as a city – just as we do our other infrastructure needs.

Lourdes Castro Ramírez, who chaired Mayor Ron Nirenberg's Housing Policy Task Force that produced the study, joins us to discuss its findings.