John Tedesco

Photo courtesy of Ernest Ruiz

After a tall retaining wall buckled in a San Antonio neighborhood, threatening dozens of homes, rancher Ernest Ruiz called us with a tip about another faulty retaining wall.

Ruiz’s story had an interesting twist: The collapsed wall near his rural property hadn’t been constructed by Centex Homes or other homebuilders. This wall was owned by the city:

From a mostly quiet tract of land surrounded by the hubbub of urban life, Ernest Ruiz has waged a nearly three-year fight against the city of San Antonio over the failure of a retaining wall.

In the summer of the epically wet 2007, a city-owned retaining wall that sits between Pearsall Park and Ruiz’s South Side ranch collapsed during a rainstorm, sending dirt and debris onto his property and into Leon Creek.

“There were rocks all over the place,” said Ruiz, a 72-year-old rancher who has been buying property in the area since the 1980s and now has about 265 acres that he calls Leon Creek Ranch. “When that rain came, it tore everything right down the middle.”

While San Antonio rebuilt the damaged portions of the retaining wall and cleaned up its property, Ruiz said the city has done nothing to clean up his property, and he’s still trying to recover.

Ruiz found it ironic that the city criticized Centex Homes for not pulling a permit for the wall at the Hills of Rivermist, while the city suffered its own wall failure.

Jen’s story about the legal dispute featured some colorful details about the ranch — how Ruiz’s family likes to play cards on poker nights and fish for perch, and how the rumble of jets at Lackland AFB drowns out the country tunes from the AM radio in Ruiz’s Toyota pickup.

I like articles that paint a scene for the reader. One way to do that is to write descriptions that engage all the senses — not just how something looks, but how it sounds and smells and feels. Jen’s story makes you feel like you’re sitting in the truck cab with the old rancher, going along for the ride.

WOAI featured a unique, data-driven story last week about the high number of accidents caused by inattentive drivers talking on their cell phones. Journalists at the television station analyzed an accident database kept by the Texas Department of Transportation that tracks contributing factors for all vehicle crashes in Texas.

To get the story, WOAI had to fight a lengthy open-records battle with TxDOT. During their legal dispute, TxDOT took the unusual step of asking a state senator to write a bill that, in its original form, would have kept the entire database private.

The dispute between WOAI and TxDOT is a telling example of how difficult it can be to get important information out to the public. In some cases, it’s a long, expensive slog — it took nearly two years for WOAI to get its hands on the data.
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The friendly folks at the Consumerist linked to my post about Caribbean Cruise Line, the telemarketing firm that offers “free” cruises on behalf of Celebration Cruise Line. As usual, the comments at the Consumerist were interesting. The blog looks out for consumers, and over the years it has fostered a savvy online community that discusses scams and corporate shenanigans.

The comments about the cruise line included one from someone claiming to be a former employee at Celebration:

I used to work reservations for Celebration Cruise Line, the company which owns the ship, the Bahamas Celebration, and this is pretty much par for the course for Carribean Cruise Line, who occupied the downstairs office.

They, us, and somehow Ramada Plaza Resorts were involved together (I’m still not sure who owns whom). The offer is legit-ish: this is their MO, and you will eventually (often months later) get a free cruise after a time share presentation (forgive me, vacation club presentation). In an interior, 140 square foot cabin. On a two night cruise leaving on a Monday or a Wednesday. Plus, the ship itself is not all that exciting; it is a converted Norwegian ferry. Just… save your money.

Other commenters debated whether it was worth taking a cheap cruise in exchange for enduring a time-share presentation. Some people thought it wasn’t that bad:

My gut says the woman who called Tedesco never took the job intending to defraud people.

And the $118 fee for the free cruise certainly sounds scammy, it could even be a scam. But I think what it amounts to is that the telemarketing company gets paid to book people who are qualified (ie, can get a loan to pay for a timeshare.) If they book a bunch of people who never show up or don’t qualify, they’d be out of business pretty fast. By charging these “lucky” people $118 it pretty much insures they’ll show up, and if they don’t then the telemarketers get the money they’d have gotten from the cruise/timeshare people.

I still wouldn’t do it myself, but like others have commented, I have also gotten some nice freebies for sitting through a timeshare presentation.

If you’ve received a call from this company, feel free to weigh in and share your experience.

We sat down with Terry Gildea of Texas Public Radio for this week’s episode of The Source, Terry’s show about journalists who cover complicated issues in San Antonio.

Terry is an oddity in the soundbite-world of broadcast media — he’s a radio reporter who values in-depth reporting. So we had an interesting talk about the weeks or months of legwork it can take to write an investigative story. Terry talked to Karisa King, Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje and me about nursing homes in San Antonio that provide poor care with little state oversight.

It took about three months of work to write this story. We read 3,000 pages of regulatory reports, stacks of lawsuits, and interviewed dozens of people.

You might ask, why bother doing all this work? The alternative is shallow journalism — make a few phone calls, interview some talking heads, and slap together a shoddy story. That’s the last thing we need in an age of shrinking newsrooms and a skeptical readership.

Terry understands that. And he’s giving journalists a forum to explain how exactly they do their jobs. Tune in on Mondays at 12:30 p.m. if you’re interested in hearing the story behind a good story. You can listen to past shows here.

If you’ve ever had to deal with a government agency that tried to withhold public documents from you, check out Steve Myers’ interview with one of the authors of a new book and blog, The Art of Access.

Instead of focusing on the intricacies of open-records laws, David Cuillier and Charles Davis write about the social dynamics between people who ask for records, and the gatekeepers who decide whether to release them. Cuillier says:

It’s crucial to understand the constraints agencies work under to be more effective in getting what you need. Those folks don’t come to work with horns and cloven hooves. There is a whole bureaucratic world that thinks differently than requesters. Understand that world, and you’ll navigate around it much better.

One technique the pair discuss on their blog is checking the job postings at government agencies to understand the agency’s attitude towards open government.

By coincidence, the same week I learned about this open-records blog, there was local news about BexarMet’s ousted gatekeeper T.J. Connolly, who pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations. We had written many stories about Connolly, one of which detailed his efforts to delay an open-records request at BexarMet. “I want to be as uncooperative as possible … without being obvious,” Connolly wrote to BexarMet officials.

How did we learn about these stonewalling tactics? After Connolly and his supporters left the agency, we asked for their e-mails under the Texas Public Information Act. Under the new leadership at BexarMet, the agency was eager to appear more open, and handed over thousands of e-mails.

So the authors of The Art of Access are making a very important point: The culture of an agency plays a huge part in determining how much access you get.

I got a telemarketing call last week from a friendly woman offering me a “free” cruise. All I needed to do was give her my credit card number to pay $118 in port taxes up front.

I’ve always been fascinated by these kind of sales tactics, so I took notes while she made her pitch. Here’s how the phone call went.

The day after a large retaining wall collapsed at The Hills of Rivermist in San Antonio, Centex Homes held a private meeting with residents. Outsiders, including city officials, weren’t invited.

We received a video of the entire meeting, which shows Centex claimed that the neighborhood was safe because city firefighters were leaving.

That was news to city officials:

“That’s a pretty bold statement for them to make,” Assistant City Manager Erik Walsh wrote colleagues at City Hall on Jan. 25 in an e-mail. Walsh pointed out that Centex was actually hiring off-duty technical rescue firefighters to stand by at the scene.

In addition to the video of the meeting, our story today offers links to city e-mails discussing the retaining wall collapse and Centex’s safety claims.

The San Antonio Express-News published an investigative story Sunday that revealed how some local nursing homes consistently neglect the elderly but are allowed to stay in business with little or no penalty.

Here are a few tips and resources we used for our story that might help you if you’re looking for a good nursing home for a loved one:

Cute video and story by Vianna Davila, who is covering the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo:

Mutton Bustin’ has become one of the most popular events at the rodeo, organizers say, garnering 479 applications this year from children who want the honor of riding an adult sheep until it throws them onto the arena ground. Of those, 220 were chosen.

I like the crowd’s reaction to the kids clinging for dear life to the running sheep. “They get more applause and cheers than even the bull riders,” said Tinker Kelso, a hospitality volunteer who helps take care of the children once their sheep ride is complete.

An interesting status report was posted online tonight by San Antonio officials who are examining the retaining wall collapse at the Hills of Rivermist. Officials met with local builders, who were told they must review all retaining walls built over the past three years that are more than four feet tall. The builders must make sure an engineer designed each wall and that the structure was built correctly. And the builders must pull permits for each wall by March 31.

The builders raised several concerns about the city’s permitting requirements, some of which were discussed in our story about the city’s lack of oversight of retaining walls. Here’s the complete status report on the city’s Web site:

Development Services, the Greater San Antonio Builders Association, and approximately fifty of its members met today to discuss the need for the public to feel assured retaining walls in San Antonio have been built correctly. At the meeting, Development Services discussed:

* The City’s building code requirements to obtain permits for retaining walls.
* Builders need to (1) identify all retaining walls over four feet and built during the past three years, (2) provide documentation the walls were designed by an engineer and built correctly, and (3) obtain permits for the walls by March 31st.
* Development Services will use the information to develop a tracking system for retaining walls.

At the meeting, the builders initially expressed that they did not believe all retaining walls require permits. In addition, since some of the walls were constructed several years ago, they were concerned about the challenges of finding documentation to satisfy the City’s permitting requirements. Finally, they expressed a need to amend the Unified Development Code to clarify permits are required during the site development stage of construction.

Development Services responded to the builders’ concerns by reiterating permits are required for retaining walls over four feet. The department will work in partnership with the builders to issue permits and to obtain documentation that attest to the safety of the walls by the end of the summer. Finally, Development Services agreed to explore an amendment to the Unified Development Code to reinforce the procedures for permitting retaining walls during all phases of construction; from land development to building development.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Development Services and the builders agreed it was important to restore the community’s confidence that existing retaining walls built in San Antonio are safe. Development Services will develop information bulletins and new applications to reinforce the procedures for permitting retaining walls related to new construction.