question for you so I’m going to ask you
three questions to start out and I want
you all to think just very briefly about
each one so first off what would you do
if you won the lottery is there
something that you’d really like to
check off your bucket list next what
would you do if you had to spend that
money on your community is there some
project in your community that you’d
really like to see you get done and
lastly what would you do if you had to
spend a billion dollars on your
community now think bigger try to think
transformative now I’m going to bet that
most of you have thought about that
first question before I think all of us
have daydreamed once or twice or a
couple dozen times about winning lottery
maybe you want a big house or a fancy
car or maybe you really want to quit
your job and drink pina coladas in the
hammock all day long I’m going to guess
you’ve all thought much less about that
second question but something probably
came to mind pretty quickly maybe
there’s a street that you really want
five blocks on or maybe you want a dog
park in your neighborhood and I’m going
to guess that very few people here have
ever thought seriously about that last
question and it makes sense that you
wouldn’t unless you’re a city planner
you’re probably never going to ask this
and a billion dollars really seems like
an unfathomable amount of money it
certainly did to me but what got me
thinking about this was the beginning of
this year when the oakland raiders were
the talk of the town every night on the
local news and just about every day in
the local online newspaper there was
some article about the possibility that
san antonio could get the oakland
raiders and i kept hearing one number
thrown around it was 1 billion dollars
that was the estimated cost in public
tax dollars it would take to get the
oakland raiders to relocate here and
this really seemed impossible to me but
then Las Vegas proved me wrong and it
turns out the number wasn’t very far
off because they’ve recently agreed to a
deal with the team owners that’s gonna
bring the Raiders to Las Vegas and
exchange for 750 million dollars now I
was having a conversation my family one
night over dinner and my dad said
something really interesting to me he
said you know what great let’s raise
that money but instead of building one
NFL football stadium what if we chose to
endow the sports programs every single
college in the city and get world-class
athletics at every school in town and
this was an okay idea pretty good maybe
but I really didn’t care about that but
what was interesting to me about that is
that he had his own idea for how you
could invest a billion dollars in your
community so I started thinking about
what I would do I was daydreaming about
how i would spend a billion dollars in
my city in the change you could have and
as a scientist I really like numbers and
so I want to see how the numbers
actually played out it turns out the 29
of 31 NFL cities have invested public
dollars in the last two decades on NFL
teams the average nearly three hundred
million dollars this number is climbing
so it turns out it’s possible to invest
that kind of money in your community so
now I want you to go back to thinking
about what you would do if you had a
billion dollars to change your community
if you thought about more public parks
our city could build 5840 community
parks if you want more public art we
could raise our public art budget by
thirty thousand percent in fairness we
could only endow a twelve hundred
percent raise if you’re a dog lover like
me this is my dog stealing the couch
from my roommate my favorite photo we
could spay and neuter 150,000 dogs and
to be clear we could spay and neuter a
whole lot more than that that is the
total number of stray dogs in the city
of San Antonio maybe you’re passionate
about education with 293 million dollars
we could just about make community
college tuition free for every public
high school graduate in the city
we could become the most educated city
in the world overnight me I’m a
scientist I spend my days trying to
advance and promote science and so when
I think about what i would do I look at
cities that did a good job of this and
Pittsburgh they launched a program
called the Pittsburgh tissue engineering
initiative with a relatively modest
investment 19 million over 20 years
chump change in Paris and what we were
talking about they saw six-fold returned
in federal grant dollars over five dozen
companies founded out of the program and
they turned the University of Pittsburgh
and Carnegie Mellon in two world leaders
in tissue engineering with 293 million
dollars Santonio could become world
leaders in every field and that’s what
I’m passionate about but I’m not here to
tell you to be passionate about the same
thing as me today but the next time
you’re stuck in traffic instead of a
dream about what you do if you want a
lottery I’d like for you to look around
your community and think about what it
is that you value and think about what
it is that we value as a community so
I’m going to leave you with one more
question and this time I want you to
think long and hard about it and plan
for it what will we do with 1 billion dollars to improve our community thank