This week! Short term rentals, drought conservation triggers, childcare tax exemptions, and way too much detail on the tedious Lindsey Street negotiations. I’m very sorry about this.
Let’s get into it:
Hours 0:00 – 2:08: A little bit of fiscal reports, a little bit more on short term rentals, and some arguing about water conservation and drought triggers.
Hours 2:08 – 5:07: Sorry about all the tedious machinations of the Lindsey Street apartments. Also an important bit on childcare costs and daycare tax exemptions.
Just a note: “2024 YTD” is weird and confusing! Just to be clear, we’re talking about October, November, and December of 2023. It’s Q1 of Fiscal Year 2024. And “2023 YTD” means the last three months of 2022.
Anyway: The green bar is a little low. This is because property tax payments are coming in more slowly than last year. The speaker didn’t say why, but I assume it’s because Prop 4 passed in November, and so people got their tax bill later than usual. But the guy reassured us that it’s fine.
There’s also six Enterprise Funds: electric, water/wastewater, stormwater, resource recovery, airport, and hotel. They’re all fine! Everything’s fine!
Item 4: Short Term Rentals
We discussed short term rentals here and here already. We used to ban parties and require that STRs be owner-occupied, but (I think) the courts struck this down and so we had to rewrite our rules?
Loosely speaking, here’s what’s being proposed:
All STRs would need a permit.
Owners can only have one STR.
Only one STR on a block, or at least 600 ft apart.
Short-term tenants can have parties, but not excessively noisy ones, just like any other resident.
Everyone who lives within 400’ gets a postcard with a hotline number to call if you’re having any trouble.
At the March meeting, both Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza voted no, but they didn’t exactly say why. Jane Hughson chided them to come back with amendments that make it work for them.
To his credit, Jude Prather did come back with amendments to make it work. This is good governance! Let’s problem-solve!
Jude proposes that we strike the limit per block. In other words, anyone can have an STR wherever they want. His reasoning goes that everyone should be able to rent out their own home, regardless of whoever pulled a permit on your street already.
Matthew Mendoza doesn’t like it. You could have whole blocks which are full of STRs! It’s happened before, like on Riviera Street!
This is Riviera Street:
You might recognize this backyard from the river:
right when you’re floating here:
I got those two images from the VRBO listing, so feel free to rent it yourself if you want.
Riviera’s probably the only place in central San Marcos where backyards open up right on the river, so yeah, I can believe Matthew when he says that they’re all STRs. (And he also says they each have different owners – it’s not a case of one outside developer buying up the whole block.)
What do I think? Eh, I think it’s fine. I don’t think entire blocks are going to get bought up, in general. The other rule – “1 rental per owner” – is really much stricter than the “1 per block” rule, as far as preserving your housing supply.
And it seems reasonable to allow everyone to at least rent out their own homestead. If I had an ADU and I couldn’t rent it out because someone down the block was already renting theirs out, I’d be annoyed.
The vote to strike the “1 per block” rule:
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza
The vote on the whole set of STR rules, all together:
Yes: Alyssa Garza, Jane Hughson, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott No: Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza
So there you have it. Done.
…
Item 7: Water Restrictions:
We’re writing new water stages. Twenty years ago, we got a bunch of money from the state to start up ARWA, which drills from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer and requires a little more treatment before you drink it.
(Confidential to city staff who deal with water stuff: your slide is a few years out of date and it’s throwing me off, because I thought we weren’t getting ARWA water until later this year?)
Now:
The main thing that’s happening is that we’re going from 5 drought stages to 3 drought stages. This is supposed to make it simpler for everyone.
But there’s one other thing I want to discuss.
Last time, Virginia Parker from SMRF spoke about how the drought stage triggers were being recalculated. The staff person said hey, no worries! We look at all the sources! The details aren’t in the ordinance, but it’s department policy. No worries! So I didn’t worry.
This time, Virginia Parker spoke again and made the same point. However, this time it was a different staff member, and his answer was VERY different. So let’s dive in.
Background for Parker’s concern:
There are triggers that cause you to go from one drought conservation stage to the next. Under the old rules, we checked the Edward’s Aquifer level, the Comal level, and the San Marcos Springs level. If any of those were low, we moved to the next stage.
For example these were the triggers for stage 4:
(Full text here. ) The J-17 well is the Edward’s Aquifer. So we measured three sources, and if any of them were low enough, it would trigger stage 4.
Under the new rules, the drought triggers are very different. What we do now is combine all the sources first, and then check how much of the total we’re using. So if one source is running low, another source can compensate, and we don’t enter drought restrictions.
Here’s the specific text:
It’s way less detailed than the old triggers. Take Stage 2: “The average daily water consumption reaches approximately 75% of the rated available water production capacity for a seven-day period.”
In other words, now we take Edward’s Aquifer, Comal, and our new water source Carrizo, and we add all those together. Any one of them can be really low, but maybe the others compensate. If we’re using 75% of the combined total, then we’ll go into Stage 2.
You can see the scenario that Parker is worried about: The Edwards Aquifer could be way down, and our river is super low, but we’re not under any drought restrictions because the supply from Carrizo.
Here’s the answer we were given this time:
We’re allowed to use a certain fixed amount of Edward’s Aquifer water until the Edwards Aquifer Authority says otherwise. And dagnabbit, we’re going to use it, because it’s the cheapest water we’ve got, and the way our pipes are set up means that we can’t easily switch from one source to another. The EA water keeps our system pressurized.
When the Edwards Aquifer Authority tells us we have to cut back, we cut back. But otherwise we just take the same amount every week.
Jane Hughson: Would it be possible that Edwards Aquifer is in severe drought, like stage 3 or 4, and we’re still in stage 1?
Answer: Yes! That could happen.
Jane: What about people in San Marcos on well water that comes exclusively from the aquifer? We’d be telling them that San Marcos is Stage 1, but they’d need to know that Edward’s Aquifer is in Stage 3.
Answer: We’ll have to publicize both stages. But we include the usage of people on well-water in our budgeted Edward Aquifer totals.
Jane does not like this. Neither does Jude Prather or Matthew Mendoza. Neither do I! It just feels icky to say that “haha, we’re going to use all this LUSH PLENTIFUL WATER no holds barred” in the middle of a drought, because we’re shipping it in from another part of the state.
I see what the city staff guy is saying, too – our Edwards Aquifer usage doesn’t fluctuate. End of story. Conservation doesn’t help the aquifer and being wasteful doesn’t hurt it. But he’s being a cold engineer about how real people internalize drought stages. Drought stages are also about setting people’s expectations and communicating to people that we need to be good stewards of our environments.
Yes, we’ve planned well and gotten into a healthy water supply situation. But if you zoom out, the entire state needs clean drinking water for decades to come, so let’s not be all “WE GOT OURS, SUCKS TO SUCK!” to everyone else.
In the end, everyone votes to approve the plan, 7-0. As Jane puts it, “I have concerns, but I’m willing to see where this goes.”
You guys. These numbskulls spent ANOTHER 2.5 HOURS on these apartments. At one point, Mayor Hughson called it the most difficult zoning case that’s come before her in all her time in city government.
We’re still talking about these:
I dug this new visual from city staff:
(She comes in colors everywhere. She combs her hair. She’s like a rainbow!)
Anyway: that’s the view if you’re standing on Moore Street looking east towards campus. Project Site 1 is called “The West Half” by everyone, and Project Site 2 is called “The East Half”.
Remember we’ve got this list of 14 concessions from the developer already:
In exchange for all this, the developer wants 7 stories and a permit for Purpose Built Student Housing on the East Half, and 4 stories on the West Half.
Let’s see if he gets it!
Recomendation 7: How much advance notice should tenants get? How many tenants will get guaranteed leases at the new place, at a similar rent, when it gets built eventually?
In Citizen Comment, a speaker asked for 12 month advance notice for all tenants instead of 6 months. The developer says great, no problem.
Also in Citizen Comment, TAG (Tenants Advocacy Group) says that they went door-to-door, and most tenants did not know this was going on, and there were way more families and seniors who were going to be displaced than previously claimed.
Jude Prather makes a motion include up to 10 families and all seniors in the guaranteed cheap leases, in the new apartments.
What this means is that the families and seniors will have still have to find housing while the new complex gets built. That should be 2-3 years. After that, they’re guaranteed a lease in the new building, at a price that’s similar to what they pay right now.
By the way: what do they pay now? Apparently the current apartments go for $850/month. I gotta say, that’s shockingly affordable.
Jane Hughson points out that we missed our chance – we could have required a certain number of housing units to be set aside as permanent affordable housing, when we gave them 7 stories. (This is a normal deal to cut with a developer.) But no one thought of that at the time, and now it’s too late.
(Was it actually too late? I wondered about that. But no one takes the conversation in that direction.)
The developer says that he’s fine extending affordable leases to those current families. But for how long? Would 7 years be okay?
Shane Scott cries, “7 years! That’s way too long! How is the developer going to pay back his loans?” (I don’t know Shane, but the developer is literally the one who suggested 7 years. I bet he’s going to be okay.)
Jude originally suggests families and seniors over 60. Later on, he changes it to be seniors over 57, which is oddly specific. (Those born in March? Under a full moon and a high tide? Or just the regular kind of senior?) But everyone is fine with that. Great.
The Vote: It’s actually three separate votes.
12 months advance notice for current tenants? Yes, great: Everyone No: No one.
Affordable leases for ten families and seniors over 57 years old? Yes, great: Everyone No: No one
The affordable rent lasts for seven years? Yes, great: Almost everyone. How dare you, hell fucking no: Shane Scott
Recommendation 10: The developer won’t sell to any entity that doesn’t pay taxes for seven years.
This is because the university recently bought Sanctuary Lofts and The Vistas, and San Marcos lost a bunch of tax revenue.
Shane gives me whiplash. Now Shane makes a motion to amend this recommendation so that the developer can’t sell to ANYONE for seven years. Not just non-tax-paying entities, but also flipping it to another owner. Shane just doesn’t want the developer to flip the property, period.
Look, I am still totally indifferent to this whole thing. But Shane is being weird. Of the hours of complaints we’ve sat through, no one has complained about the developer flipping the property for flipping’s sake.
The developer says “The bank wouldn’t lend to me if they can’t unload the property if something happens to me. This would kill the whole project.”
Shane withdraws his motion.
Recommendation 5: PARKING. After P&Z, the developer was going to provide 0.85 parking spaces per bedroom.
Originally the developer asked for CD-5D zoning on the whole project. Jane is the one who got everyone on board to change the zoning on the West Half to be CD-5 instead. What’s the difference? The extra “D” stands for “Downtown” and she didn’t want to increase downtown.
But here’s the problem: CD-5 doesn’t require as many parking spaces as CD-5D.
So Jane has kind of gotten herself in a pickle! She was the only one who cared about CD-5, but she’s also the only one who cares a lot about parking. So her move to CD-5 worked against her own goals on parking. Now she has to convince everyone to re-raise the parking back to the old levels.
(Well, Saul cares too. But he’s just a plain no on everything.)
The developer offers 0.78 parking spaces per bedroom. Jane wants 0.85 spaces per bedroom.
Briefly:
Arguments in favor: if there’s not enough parking, students will park on the street.
Arguments against: it’s super expensive to build a parking garage. Each space is $30,000.
The vote after a very long, tedious discussion: Should parking be 0.85 per bedroom, overall?
Yes: Jane Hughson, Saul Gonzales, Matthew Mendoza
No: Alyssa Garza, Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott
So it fails, 4-3. The developer will provide 0.78 spaces per bedroom.
Recommendation 8: How many stories high should the west side be?
Jane does not like the 4 stories on the west side.
She does not like the height, specifically because it’s too close to Moore Street, which is too close to neighborhoods.
But she also does not like the sheer quantity of people who will be living there. She was okay with the 4 stories on the west side until the last meeting when Council approved 7 stories on the east side. That made the whole project too big for her.
Everybody argues with her. Here’s the thing:
This is the zoning map of the region. You see all those tan regions to the left of the bright pink building I drew in? Those are all zoned multifamily. Any developer can build a 4 story multifamily building on any of those parcels right now, without getting any special permits.
Nobody is doing that because they’re zoned Multifamily 12, MF 18, and MF 24. That means sure, build your 4 stories, but you can only put 12 apartments in it. (Or 18, or 24). Whereas this developer is claiming he’s going to put 60 apartments on the 4th floor alone of the West Half.
(Side note: How the hell are you going to fit 60 apartments into a single floor, on the west half of that lot? Ie just this piece:
There’s no way. But the developer definitely claimed 60 units per story. Are these apartments going to be tiny shoe box sized little space-savers? Is that because it’s going to end up as a Texas State dorm at some point?)
[New thought: I just realized that those tenants who are going to be offered affordable leases in three years? I bet the new apartments are half the size of their current apartments. They really are getting screwed by this deal, even if the damage was mitigated.
Of course, we urgently need to deal with affordable housing on a meaningful scale, not just this one pocket of renters.]
Anyway: you can already build 4 stories to Moore Street, but you can’t pack in very many apartments per acre.
Jane finally makes it clear: she doesn’t like the height AND she also doesn’t like the density. The area can’t support this much traffic, she says.
The developer says, “We had a traffic study done! By the main San Marcos traffic study dudes! You saw it! They said it wouldn’t add any traffic.”
Jane says, “I’m talking about pedestrian traffic! There will be too many people walking.” (Literally she says this, at 3:56:40. Go listen if you want.)
Let’s just repeat this for the folks in the back rows: the literal problem Jane Hughson has with this project is that there will be too many students walking down Comanche Street to get to class.
MAYOR HUGHSON!! I implore you to stop making up stupid shit to worry about! That is not a real problem!
Jane also says there are a whole lot of other issues, too many for her to get into.
Enough of this. Let’s vote.
The Vote: shall it be restricted to three stories?
Yes: Saul Gonzales, Jane Hughson, Matthew Mendoza
No: Mark Gleason, Jude Prather, Shane Scott, Alyssa Garza
So it fails, 3-4. It can still be four stories high.
But there’s a plot twist: later on there’s a vote that requires a supermajority. The developer must win over six council members in order to clear that vote. So Jane can still tank this whole project. (Saul has that one “no” vote locked down tight.)
So here is the developer’s final offer: hey look, the ground is sloped. What if it’s three stories on the corner with the highest elevation, and then there’s a extra partial story on the part with lower elevation? From the one highest corner, it will look like it’s 3 stories high.
Jane begrudgingly agrees to this.
The re-vote: Shall it be 3 stories with a secret 4th story where the ground slopes down?
Yes: Everyone except for Saul Gonzales
No: Saul.
And with that, the wheeling and dealing comes to a close.
Oh it’s not over! the whole thing goes on for another 40 minutes – there’s the final vote on the permit for Purpose Built Student Housing, there’s a PSA amendment, and there’s the final re-zoning vote.
I’ll pull one last quote, and then be done with it. This is Alyssa Garza, at 4:24:
It’s important for me to share how complicated it was for me to form my stance on this development. Distinguishing genuine community concern from personal interest has been exceptionally difficult in this situation.
I’m going to ultimately support the development. It’s with frustration and reservation because my perception is that our failure to prioritize honest dialogue on affordable housing leaves us feeling like we’re settling for concessions from developers. I also think it makes it seem like elected officials are guided by fear of backlash from their base, rather than genuine community needs.
And we’re going to end up in this situation again, and it’s fueled by elected officials and city leadership who have historically have failed to confront the issue of affordable housing critically and with imagination.
This whole process is super frustrating to me. The university, developers, and others take advantage of structures that we created, right? Until we address that, we’re going to keep ending up in situations like this. Personally, I think we can’t claim to prioritize community wellness and housing until we start funding initiatives like tenant’s advocacy, making participation in planning and zoning conversations more accessible, and directing our very well-paid state and federal lobbyist to push for policy recommendations by entities like The Housing Playbook Project, Texas Houses and so on.
All our neighbors concerns were super valid. But denying this project doesn’t address any of them. I think it’s important for me to name that before we go into voting. If we want to have a real conversation about that, we can, but I just don’t see the interconnectedness with this development. That’s all I got.
Lightly edited for clarity, but not much.
I basically agree. We need to do real work on affordable housing and tenant protection. This isn’t that.
Can we be done with this now?
…
Item 17: Childcare Tax Exemptions
Texas used American Rescue Plan money to subsidize childcare in 2021 and 2022, to the tune of $34.6 billion dollars. So when it ran out last year, we had a childcare crisis in the state. Apparently 44% of the childcare facilities were predicted to close with the end of the funding, and 300,000 children in Texas stood to be affected.
Look: you can’t do free market childcare. It’s too expensive. You have to heavily subsidize it. Right now, we barely subsidize it, and so the average salary for daycare workers is $12/hour. For one of the most exhausting jobs on the planet! Insane. So daycares have trouble finding workers, and are starting to close in large numbers.
According to this, Texas needed to invest $1.13 billion dollars in order to shore up our childcare. That seems like a bargain, compared to the $34.6 billion of ARPA money we just spent! And good news! We had a massive $32.7 billion budget surplus in 2023. Easy-peasy? Nope, sorry.
To be clear, the state spent $0 on this solution. Cities foot the bill.
Each city gets to vote individually if they want to implement the tax break or not. So we voted this meeting to give the tax break to qualifying daycares in San Marcos.
This is good! This is the right thing to do. It is good to give a tax break to these entities.
It’s just nowhere near enough. We’re a wealthy state! We could be doing so much more.
…
Items 23-26: We then punted on a bunch of items, because it was nearing midnight.
Economic incentives for a new grocery store? POSTPONE.
Bylaws for commissions? POSTPONE.
Paid Parking at the Lion’s Club? Sure, staff can start putting together a plan.
Appointments to Boards and Commissions? POSTPONE.
This is all fine. People don’t do their best work at midnight.
….
One last thing
This is my highlighting:
I just love how everyone’s gotta be a Soviet Cold War Era spy when it comes to code names for your secret business plan.
This week, Council basically talked about the Lindsey Street apartments for 5 long hours. Straight talk here: I just don’t care about these apartments! At all! I’ll still tell you about them, but this post may be a little lackluster. I’ll bring the blather, you can be the judge.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 5:18: Citizens call for a council resolution for a ceasefire. But mostly just five hours of those Lindsey Street Apartments.
Hours 3:18-3:28: A teeny little bit about water restrictions!
Calling for Council to pass a resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza.
There were 9 speakers on this topic. That’s a LOT! Especially because different activists have shown up pretty much every meeting since January.
One speaker said she’d met with Mayor Hughson about this. Apparently Jane’s response was, “What good can little old San Marcos do?” and worrying over internal division. It’s easy to see where Jane is coming from – why bother going out on a limb, when it doesn’t benefit the San Marcos directly?
But the thing is, it does matter to people who live here – they’re showing up and telling you this, over and over again – and they’re correct that US taxpayers are contributing towards this is a horrific bloodbath. The reason that cities should call for a ceasefire is to amplify the voices of its citizens towards the federal government. (It’s not just San Marcos. 100 cities have done so already and here’s a partial list from February.)
And look: the grassroots pressure is working – Biden’s relations with Netanyahu are getting increasingly frosty. It’s going extremely slow, but Biden is responding to public pressure.
Here’s the other thing: ignoring this many speakers is a REALLY bad look. Why not call for a ceasefire? It’s very easy and respects the voices in your community.
……
Fast-forward six hours. It’s almost midnight and everyone is tired. At the very end of the meeting, there was one person left for Q&A. She asked Council, “Would you vote yes for a ceasefire resolution, if it were before you right now?”
Alyssa Garza said yes, of course.
As the question hung in the air, the lawyer spoke up and said something like, “This item is not on the agenda for discussion, and it’s most likely a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act if you all discuss it in public, without it being posted with advance notice so that anyone can attend.”
Jane Hughson said she’d wait to discuss it until it is properly on an agenda. (Guess who controls the agenda?)
Shane Scott shrugged and said sure – he’d sign anything that has the word “peace” in it.
Mark Gleason said he’d vote no, this is a local government and it’s a waste of taxpayer money and everyone’s time to weigh in on international matters.
Saul Gonzales, Jude Prather, and Matthew Mendoza just stayed quiet, and let the moment pass.
One speaker talked about civil discourse, and how it’s deteriorated. The claim was that pre-social media, speakers used to hug and mingle in the hall, and then put their differences aside after they spoke.
But now they get skewered ruthlessly online. It’s very nerve-wracking to talk at City Council, and the rude treatment online doesn’t help. Threat of retaliation, intimidation, vitriol, even from people you might otherwise agree with. We should support the people who speak up at council and respond civilly.
So I am probably part of the online crowd being referred to here? I feel ambivalent about this.
It does take courage to speak at city council meetings! We need people in the community willing to step up and present their point of view. If I’m over here jeering and mocking from the cozy sanctity of my blog, it could make people less likely participate.
But on the other hand, speakers are advocating for a particular policy outcome. They are trying to tip how an issue plays out. That affects other people. If I think they’re peddling crap, I want to explain this to my readers, because I’m also advocating for particular policy outcomes.
(Ok fine, but do I have to be so mean about it? I try not to be mean exactly, but it’s kind of lifeless and dull to write a blog without any kidding around. But I do try to stick to ripping on people’s positions and arguments, and never make personal attacks.)
Lindsey Street apartments. This is what we’re spending nearly all the meeting on. Let’s not make that part even longer than it needs to be.
Items 8-11: Those dang Lindsey Street Apartments.
Quick backstory:
Should we allow student apartments here?
The street dividing the two pink parts is North Street, and it’s also the official boundary for downtown.
So we end up having separate conversations about the West Half, the pentagon on the left, and the East Half on the right.
What did P&Z say?
For the West Half: P&Z said “Get outta here, ya punk.” No to everything that the developer asked for. (Discussed here.)
For the East Half, P&Z hedged:
They agreed to rezone it CD-5D, instead of the mishmash of antiquated zonings that we don’t use any more.
They agreed to permit it for Purpose-Built Student Housing.
Look: my whole shtick is that I care about all the little San Marcos issues, right? Every two weeks I get down in the weeds with you. And yet …I just don’t care about these apartments. At all. I just don’t. I can’t muster any enthusiasm either way.
But other people do! So let’s get into it. First, public comments:
Arguments that I just don’t get:
Student housing is full of mold, foundational issues, pest infestation, water problems, and other maintenance issues. Complexes won’t address these issues.
Halt any developments that might worsen gentrification in San Marcos.
Do not build more student housing without resolving the existing problems of student housing.
RBB leasing process is exploitative because students view an immaculate show apartment and not the actual apartment that they end up leasing. When students move into their actual shitty new digs, they lack recourse. They must document every issue within 48 hours or be held liable. This is predatory and manipulative.
RBB undermines student retention at Texas State.
90% of the leasing-related conflicts that go to the attorney for students at Texas State involve RBB. [Note: you can’t evaluate this claim unless you know the percent of Texas State students who live in RBBs.]
Roommate matching programs are problematic. Sometimes students get placed with families.
Students are asked to sign leases up to 10 months ahead of time. This is predatory.
Housing is a human right. Therefore we are calling for a 5 year moratorium on RBB housing. This would allow us to focus on fixing the existing problems.
Restart the city subcommittee on student housing.
Implement a variety of housing options for low-income residents.
Invest in code enforcement.
There is a housing shortage for students and rents have risen 40% from pre-pandemic levels.
This is a Texas State problem, not a San Marcos problem.
We are overbuilt on student housing. There are 45 student complexes in town. If you crunch the numbers, we have 20,000 RBB bedrooms, and only 13,000 students trying to find off-campus housing. The further away from campus you get, the more vacancies there are.
There is a housing shortage for students and rents have risen 40% from pre-pandemic levels. (I don’t understand how this is an argument against.)
Look, I’m not trying to be difficult here. I’m just mystified by the arguments above. A lot of them are legitimate problems that need solving. But voting against this complex doesn’t solve any of them!
I suppose the argument is that Council should vote “no” as a protest vote? But against who, themselves? They already have the power to prioritize these issues. You can just directly advocate for council to tackle these issues.
Here’s our city website on tenant resources. Council could spend a lot more money supporting tenants, enforcing code, and combating delinquent leasing agencies and landlords.
Arguments that at least seem relevant to me:
Do not displace residents who are currently living in affordable housing.
This will be a domino effect. If this is approved, then next will be the land next it it, then next to that, and eventually it will cross Moore street and eat away the historic neighborhood.
There have been occasions when apartments weren’t finished being built, but they’d already leased units to students, and so when August came around, the students had nowhere to live.
This will be sold to the University immediately, and we’ll lose the tax revenue, just like we did for Santuary Lofts and Vistas.
Historic houses need preservation.
Traffic and parking will get worse
Flooding will get worse
The city and the developer end up working out conditions that sort of address most of these. We’ll discuss this further below.
Arguments in favor:
we have student housing, but not enough within walking distance of campus. All the complexes close to campus are full.
Good spot for students
Tax money is nice.
They’re willing to make concessions on some of those points above.
[Technical note: Jude Prather recused himself last week. Since then, he checked with the lawyer and with the Ethics Review Committee. Everyone gave him a thumbs’ up to participate with a clean conscience. So he’s back in the game.]
Council dives in:
Jude: I’m all in! What a kind and generous developer! I love it.
Saul: Can you guarantee that you won’t turn around and sell this to the University?
Developer: I talked to the bank. They won’t guarantee my loan if I sign something that says I won’t sell it. The reason is that if I go bankrupt or die or something, the bank wants to be able to sell to the highest bidder. But they said that they could give me 5-7 years. For the first 5-7 years, I could sign something agreeing not to sell to any entity that doesn’t pay taxes.
Saul: I’m worried about traffic.
Developer. We did a traffic study. Students work weird hours at jobs like serving and bartending, and walk to class, so they’re actually not contributing to rush hour traffic. They don’t tend to have 9-5 jobs.
Saul: Is this going to be affordable?
Developer: Not really. But there are about 4-5 families that currently live there, and I could extend affordable leases to them in the new building.
Matthew: I protect the single-family neighborhoods. My constituents keep telling me “keep the students way over there!” And students deserve options!
At one point Matthew says, “I never feel right about denying anybody a place to live.” Can we put that on a t-shirt for the next time he starts talking about occupancy restrictions?!?
“I never feel right about denying anybody a place to live.”
– Matthew Mendoza, 4/2/24, 1:53:55
Mark Gleason: This doesn’t encroach on the historic district. It’s a great place for students. The tax dollars will help. He’s on board.
He asks if we can improve some of the sidewalk gaps in this area, while we’re at it? This is a good thought!
Finally, Mark’s angry that people invoke “flooding” as a weapon to tear down projects they don’t like, because it cheapens the real experience that he and so many others went through. Flooding is not an issue here, because it’s already completely paved. Making it higher doesn’t change the flood-math. (This is correct.) However, speakers kept bringing up the flood risk throughout the night, and eventually Mark lost his temper and snapped at them.
Jane Hughson: Can’t bring herself to do CD-5D west of North street. What about a lesser zoning like ND4? CD5?
Answer: ND4 has a lot of restrictions. Their architect couldn’t get more than 55 units in. CD-5D allows for 100 units.
How about CD5? It’s nearly the same as CD-5D, but it doesn’t have the extra D, which literally stands for “Downtown”. This allows Council to say that technically, they didn’t enlarge downtown. They just switched to the non-downtown kind of high intensity zone.
They settle on CD-5D on the east half and CD-5 on the west half. There are some differences in design standards and parking requirements, which we’ll get to in a moment.
….
For a five hour meeting, remarkably little happened. It was incredibly repetitive. So I don’t want to lay it out chronologically because I’d put myself to sleep. Let’s see if I can boil this down enough.
List of Concessions
Tentatively, here’s what the developer is agreeing to do.
The development would be on the rental registry.
This came from P&Z and gets no discussion. No problem.
There are two moderately old, cute houses and one very cute old house on the west side:
The developer is planning on having them moved elsewhere. Right now they have two parties that are interested in relocating them.
If both of those fall through, the developer agrees to a 1 year demolition delay instead of a 6 month demolition delay, to give time for another person to come forward.
3. All the normal code requirements still apply. This is normal.
4. Parking, part 1.
Should a parking space be included in your rent, or should we allow them to charge an additional fee for parking?
The argument goes like this: in places like The Parlor, students don’t use the garage because they don’t want to pay a monthly parking fee. Then they clog up all the parking spaces that the local businesses need for their customers. Whereas if the parking garage is already included to residents, then students will use the garage and get out of the street spots.
The developer has a ridiculous argument: we don’t want to disincentivize students who may not want to bring a car to campus! Because we’re environmentalists!
The actual reason is that it drives up their rates, of course, and gives them a competitive disadvantage. Council votes and lets the developer off the hook on this one.
5. If the place is pre-leased and construction isn’t done, you have to provide housing and let tenants out of the lease. (This is true for all new construction, a change we implemented because it has happened before.)
6. Parking, Part 2.
How many parking spaces should they be required to build?
The East Half is CD-5D. In that zone, you have to build 1.05 spaces per bedroom. The West half is CD-5, and in that zone, you have to build 1 spot per unit, which is way less.
If you’re building a parking garage, each space costs $30K (according to the developer) so they want to provide as little as possible. They were already discussing parking breaks, before CD-5 was on the table.
Now everyone’s going to crunch the numbers, and finalize this next time.
The CUP will expire in 3 years if they don’t make progress. (This is also standard)
The complexes will offer both Rent By the Bedroom (RBB) and conventional leases on both sides.
Jane asks: Will the conventional leases be priced less than RBBs?
In other words, if you’re charging $1000 per bedroom, and $3000 for a 3-bedroom apartment, you’re not actually offering a conventional lease that anyone will ever sign.
Developer: Of course we wouldn’t do that! Of course I am just saying random stuff and who knows what I’ll actually do!
On displacing current tenants and tearing down affordable housing:
Current tenants will given 6 months advance warning .
Up to 5 families will be given a comparable rent in the new development. (Of course, they’ll have to find other housing for the 3-4 years, while it’s being built.)
12. West of North Street:
They will cap it at 4 stories. There will only be 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units. At most 80% impervious cover on the ground.
This is all an effort to make the west half less student-y and more general public.
Typically in student housing, there’s one bathroom per unit. In non-student housing, there isn’t. Jane Hughson asks what bathroom ratio he’s thinking for the west non-student side? The developer admits 1 bathroom per bedroom. (More clues that this is just all going to be student housing. Which is fine with me.)
13. On selling to Texas State:
Developer will not sell the property to a non-tax-paying entity for 7 years. The clock starts running at approval, not occupancy.
14. West of North Street will not be designed and marketed to students. It is not permitted as Purpose Built Student Housing. Students can obviously still live there, but the developer has to pretend that it’s regular housing.
…….
HOWEVER! This list of goody concessions is only available to Council if Council agrees to let him go up to 7 stories on the east side. And P&Z said no to this.
What would this look like?
Here’s the city staff’s slides, showing the heights nearby:
That first one is if you’re standing at Texas State, looking south.
Here you’re standing on the west, looking east. Campus is on the left.
This is similar – you’re standing southwest, looking northeast. Campus is on the top left corner.
Here’s the developer’s mock-up of a 7 story building:
This is the view if you’re standing on the west, looking east, with campus on your left again. Currently the 5 story mock-up in the foreground will actually be 4 stories.
I thought Council would balk at the 7 stories, but they zipped through it and passed it, 5-2. Of course, it was past 11 pm at that point. Saul Gonzales and Jane Hughson voted against it.
So here’s where it stands:
The developer got the high intensity PSA they needed on the west side.
The developer got CD-5 on the west, but not CD-5D. This is a meaningless distinction that allows Council to say that they stood firm and refused to extend downtown.
Council postpones the permit for Purpose Built Student Housing until next time. This is where everyone agrees to the 14 conditions listed above. Everyone can sleep on it and think it over for an extra week or two before signing off on it.
The developer got their 7 stories on the East half, and 4 stories on the West.
The director (Virginia Parker) of the San Marcos River Foundation has concerns. Basically, right now, when the Edward’s Aquifer gets low, it triggers drought restrictions. She’s worried that under the new rules, drought restrictions wouldn’t get triggered when the Edward’s Aquifer gets low. The issue is if the new formula for triggering drought restrictions would add together all the water sources (GRBA, ARWA, and Edward’s Aquifer) and use the total as a measure for triggering drought stages. In this case, GRBA and ARWA could compensate if only Edward’s Aquifer is low. Parker’s point is that if Edward’s Aquifer is low, we should go into conservation, regardless of the others, in order to keep the river healthy.
A city staff member addresses this point and says no, Edward’s aquifer will be part of the formula on its own.
It’s not spelled out in the ordinance, and I’m not well-informed enough to know if his answer was sufficient. But I don’t have any reason to doubt him, either.
Hey there, you nut! Are you eager for more City Council details? This week we’ve got the Lindsey Street apartments, some fake low-income housing, our homelessness plan, short term rentals, and we double-check our water supply.
Here we go:
Hours 0:00 – 1:44: your old budget from 2023, your future budget for 2025, the former Quail Creek Country Club, and some proposed low-income housing (which I’m calling shenanigans on).
Hours 1:44 – 3:40: The proposed Lindsey Street apartment complex, our homelessness plan, short term rental rules, and the opioid settlement money.
Bonus! 3 pm Workshop: In which we update our Drought Stages and double-check our water supply.
the proposed student housing on Lindsey street (much, much more to come)
San Marcos Civics Club, inviting Councilmembers to drop in.
In favor of turning the Mitchell Center into an African-American History museum, overseen by the Calaboose board. (This is an item on the Executive Session agenda, so I don’t have any other info on it.)
Five people spoke in favor of a council resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. (Discussed a bit last time.)
Items 1-3: Financial reports. All about Q3 2023, which is last June-September.
How did last summer go?
We came in under-budget and over-revenue. Great.
They also went through the special funds: Electric, Water/Wastewater, Stormwater, Resource Recovery, Airport, and Hotel Tax. It all seemed like normal fluctuations to me, but knock yourself out if you’re curious to know more.
Item 16: We’re knee-deep in next year’s budget. I haven’t watched ANY of the budget planning sessions, because they’re dull as rocks, and I say this as someone who finds council meetings riveting.
I think this is the key part of the Budget Policy Statement:
What does “Eviction Services” mean? We’re helping the tenant and not the landlord, right? We’re not the baddies, are we?
In part A, “Mental Health Diversion” sounds promising. None of this got any discussion at Tuesday’s meeting, though.
I’m not sure what distinguishes As, Bs, and Cs. Funding level? Different departments? Urgency?
We bought it, but it wasn’t inside city limits. So now we’re annexing it.
Google maps tells me that it looks like this:
Nothing I enjoy better than the derelict remains of former wealth, as it returns to the common good!
….
Item 18: LIHTC projects are low income housing complexes, where the developer gets some tax breaks in exchange for building affordable housing. (We talked about LIHTC projects last month.)
These guys want to build affordable housing right behind the high school:
Great!
How affordable is “affordable”?
What this means is that there are 348 apartments, and all of them will be priced so that they are affordable for people making $58,401 – $70,080.
What does “51-60% AMI” mean?
AMI stands for “Area Median Income”. In other words, the AMI is the middle income in the town. So then “51-61% of AMI” means these apartments are for people earning roughly half of the middle income, or a little more. On the poor side of the AMI though, for sure.
Hopefully you’re thinking, “Wait, what? How is $58K-$70K on the poor side, for San Marcos!?”
It’s not! Here’s where the hocus-pocus comes in. San Marcos is part of the Greater Austin-Round Rock Metro statistical area. The median income for a family of four in Austin is $122K. And therefore 51-60% of that gives you $58,401 – $70,080.
People earning $58K-$70K in San Marcos are above the median income. These households are on the richer half of San Marcos. Not actually rich, but relatively well off for San Marcos. It’s completely absurd to call this apartment complex “affordable” or “low-income”. These are regular, market rate apartments for regular, old San Martians.
But here’s the thing: they’re not applying for tax breaks from the city. They’re only applying to state tax breaks. So this isn’t costing the city anything.
Still, they’re getting tax breaks from the state. Are they at least providing services that go above and beyond?
Eh, not really. Pretty bog-standard.
City Council is happy with this because we’re not giving away any money. So they give it a thumb’s up.
Look, as far as San Marcos goes, this is fine. It’s housing.
But they’re still jerks! They’re diverting funding that would otherwise subsidize actual low-income housing. They’re getting a subsidy, without helping the people it’s supposed to help. It’s not technically illegal – we’re within the Austin MSA, so officially our median income is $122k. Just kinda shitty of them.
The developer wants to put student housing there. (The developer is Shannon Mattingly, former head of the San Marcos Planning Department, which is pretty shady, yes. She was hired by The Dremer Group out of Austin about two years ago.)
There were actually four decision points at the P&Z meeting:
Should downtown include that pentagon on the left? (No.)
Should the mishmash of different zonings all be consolidated to a single zoning? (Somewhat.)
Should they be allowed to have Purpose Built Student Housing? And is this the same as Rent by the Bedroom? (Yes.)
Should they be allowed to go to 7 stories? (No.)
This week, council tackled the first question. The rest of the questions are being saved for next time.
So today, we’re only talking about the yellow, striped pentagon:
Basically, if you start at Zelicks, and walk uphill past North Street, and keep going until you hit the university, we’re talking about the houses on the left when you reach Texas State.
I believe it’s these houses:
One of them burned down maybe five years ago. One of them was transplanted from Riviera Street about ten years ago. Two are bungalows from the 1920s, and one of them is considered a High Priority Historical Resource from around 1900.
This one is the high priority one:
It is very cute!
First off, Jude Prather recuses himself because his wife works for the university, in a building close to this spot. This is probably a reasonable recusal, but it affects the vote calculation coming up.
Second: today is just discussion. No vote until next time.
So: should downtown include that yellow, striped pentagon to the left?
If Council says yes, then they can apply for a zoning (CD-5D) that lets them build up to 5 stories and have 100% impervious cover.
If Council says no, then the developer might back out, and not buy the property. (Or they could build whatever they’re allowed to under the current zoning, which does allow apartment complexes.)
Public Hearing:
Against: Four speakers.
Similar to the P&Z meeting, they were concerned about student housing, expanding downtown to encroach on neighborhoods, and the preservation of historical buildings.
In favor: 10 speakers.
Some of these speakers made sense to me – the current owner, the developers, etc.
But a bunch were totally ludicrous. Lots of students spoke about how passionate they were about this housing complex. “Simple laws of supply and demand!” they kept saying, as if they’d all been given the same script. One collected 1200 signatures of students who are also super passionate. One of the hardcore Historical Preservation Committee people, who would usually spit on this sort of thing, instead turned up and openly raved about only having heart-eyes for this project.
I mean… come on. The developer must have paid students $15/hour to all read from a script. “We students are just madly in love with the application of supply and demand curves to the inelasticity of housing supply near campus! Please, ya gotta approve this Preferred Scenario Amendment, mister! For the kids!” Come again?
…
The developer is offering some new concessions, since the P&Z meeting. For the left hand yellow-striped pentagon:
they’ll cap at 4 stories now,
only have 1, 2, and 3 bedroom units,
no Rent by the Bedroom leases,
limit impervious cover to 80% instead of 100%.
Have the cute old historic houses relocated elsewhere, instead of demolishing them.
Would that sweeten the pot?
Matthew Mendoza kicks things off: he talked to constituents in traditionally Latino neighborhoods. They all say, “Keep students away from me. Why aren’t the students by campus? Why aren’t students staying on their side of town?”
He went over to the proposed neighborhood. The whole character of the neighborhood is university. This makes sense. Alyssa Garza agrees with him.
Saul Gonzales goes next:
I see it just a little bit different. I’ve lived here almost 62 years, and I saw the town when I was on P&Z many years back. It was only a few bars, and that’s all we were going to have. And before you knew it, it spread and it spread and it spread. Now there’s no stopping it. It’s too late.
With a property like this, I see the same thing. Where does this stop? This is still a neighborhood, as far as I can see it. People that I talked to tell me, “Saul, what happened to downtown? What happened? Look at all these apartments. Look at this, look at that.” And I’m going to tell them this time “well, we just put another one up.”
I’m just not in favor of it. There’s other reasons – the flooding, the parking, and I just don’t think… It has to stop. I’ll be voting against it, just because it has to start with me voting no.”
Saul, my good man, what the utter fuckare you talking about. Are you really trying to tell me that in your adult lifetime, San Marcos didn’t used to have a lot of bars? In the 1980s, this was a sedate little sober town? Dude, this town has been soaked to the gills since Prohibition. That is some wishful thinking.
More earnestly: Saul is making a slippery slope argument. He’s saying he doesn’t mind any one particular development, but over time, the neighborhood will hit a tipping point where it starts to feel like a university student housing neighborhood, instead of a traditional neighborhood of houses.
The problem is that this ship has sailed. This neighborhood is already university housing.
Literally, the university owns Sanctuary Lofts and the Vistas apartments now. Everything north of Lindsey street is campus.
Let’s pause to count the votes:
P&Z denied this motion. This means that council must have 6 votes to overturn P&Z. Since Jude recused himself, that means it has to be unanimous to override the P&Z denial.
If Saul really is a hard NO, then this whole item is sunk.
(The actual vote is not until next meeting. Today is just discussion.)
Back to Council discussion:
Mark Gleason talks next: I take each case individually. I haven’t made up my mind. But the bright line between downtown and the neighborhoods is not North Street. That’s absurd. C’mon, you all know that I will fight for the neighborhoods. This isn’t that. Clearly Moore Street is the bright line. I will need restrictive covenants to enforce the offer that the developer made, and I haven’t totally made up my mind, but I’m here for it.
Mark Gleason is making the most sense. He’s entirely right.
Jane Hughson asks about the flooding?
Answer: the reason there’s flooding in this area is that it’s coming down from Texas State in waves. This property would have to follow city code, which says you can’t make flooding worse. But you can’t fix flooding from Texas State with this project.
Jane: North Street is a bright line for downtown, for me. But maybe a lesser zoning?
Quick lesson: all the zonings have confusing names. CD-5D, CD-5, CD-4, ND-4, and many more.
As far as I tell, all anyone cares about (in this situation) is the number of stories and the percent impervious cover. Loosely speaking, the choices are:
Up to 5 stories and 100% impervious cover (CD-5D or CD-5)
Up to 3 stories and 80% impervious cover. (CD-4 or ND-4)
The developer is asking for the Option 1, and offering to only build 4 stories at 80% impervious cover. It sounds like Jane is going to try to build a coalition to get them Option 2 under a lesser zoning.
Maybe Saul will go for that! Maybe the developer won’t! Exciting times.
There’s no vote this time – it’s just discussion. Stay tuned!
….
Item 15: American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money is coming to an end. The first deadline is the end of 2024: you have to have contracted out all your money by the end of 2024, and it must be spent by the end of 2026.
San Marcos put $900K from ARPA money for homelessness initiatives. We then hired Robert Marbut to tell us how to proceed. We discussed it here, and I was not a fan of him.
In 2019, journalists just could not stop writing bad articles about this guy.)
After the study, $800K was left to actually carry out Marbut’s plan. You can read his San Marcos study here. It’s loosely stated enough that it has wiggle room – it all depends on whether it gets implemented humanely or not. The council homelessness committee determined that Southside is the best organization to implement Marbut’s plan.
Southside wants to use $50K of the $800K to hire two part-time people to write the implementation plan. One of them worked under Dr. Marbut before. Southside has to have this implementation plan written by June 2024, and so they’re under the gun to get it done quickly and well.
Jane Hughson is skeptical about what the city is getting for this $50K. Just an implementation plan? That’s all?
The counterargument is that we are investing in Southside and setting them up for success. Everyone goes with it in the end.
I’m not bothered by the $50K, but I am definitely nervous about whether Marbut’s worst instincts will show up in the details of the implementation.
Item 20: Short Term Rentals (STRs)
We saw this at a council workshop, back in January. Our current regulations are illegal: you can’t outlaw parties and you can’t require that the owner live on site. So we have to pass something new.
The new proposal states:
All STRs would need a permit.
Owners can only have one STR.
Only one STR on a block, or at least 600 ft apart.
Short-term tenants can have parties, but not excessively noisy ones, just like any other resident.
Everyone who lives within 400’ gets a postcard with a hotline number to call if you’re having any trouble.
Shane Scott and Alyssa Garza are opposed to the proposal, but they’re extremely cagey about why. Alyssa says the zones are weird. Shane is opposed on general libertarian grounds.
Look: hand-wavy arguments like that are lazy. Spell out your reasons. If you can’t spell out your reasons, go think harder about why you’re arguing your case.
Anyway: Jude Prather gives the impression that probably what’s bothering Shane and Alyssa is the bit about how STRs must be 600 feet apart.
Jane makes the same point as I made – Alyssa and Scott should specify what they don’t like in the ordinance, so that we can modify it instead of throwing the whole thing out.
Alyssa is kinda prickly in her response – she doesn’t have unlimited time or any staff to go work on this ordinance.
Confidential to all council members: you can always consult your friendly Marxist blogger for sound guidance, when you’re short on time! I got you.
….
Item 23: There have been a lot of opioid settlements:
We’re contracting with Cenikor to start spending the $325K-ish we’ve got:
That’s running us about $100K. Seems like as good a place to start as any.
We get our water from a bunch of different sources:
We’re actually in pretty good shape, because we invested in ARWA water about twenty years ago. That is water from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. It took a while to get the drilling and treatment set up, but it’s about to start coming online.
Here’s what our water supply looks like, over the next 50 years:
The main point of the presentation is our drought stages: right now we have five, and life would be simpler if we only had three.
The five:
The three:
Jane Hughson makes an excellent point: it used to be that Stage 2 was mild, and now Stage 2 is serious. It used to be that Stage 3 was Medium, and now Stage 3 is The Worst. It’s hard to get people to update their priors. This is going to require a high degree of messaging.
(Nevertheless, it’s probably simpler to have 3 stages instead of 5.)
Updated to add: Someone pointed out to me that the new proposal never bans sprinkler systems, even during the worst droughts. This seems like a bad move. Even if there’s plenty of ARWA water, it’s still resource-intensive to clean and treat it.
The San Marxist 