Big meeting! Big, frustrating meeting. The theme of the night is “San Marcos Has to Pay Bills” and the second theme is “lalala I can’t hear yyyyyooouuu”. Lots of budget drama!
Hours 0:00 – 5:51: EMS billing, a boatload of budget and rate hike discussions, some minor SMPD funding, and CARTS
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: the 10 year CIP list and the next draft of the River Parks and Quail Creek Park plans
whew. It was a weird night.
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Election tidbits!
On We the People, over at KZSM, so far Rob Roark has interviewed:
Lisa Prewitt will be on this week, Wednesday at 2, on KZSM.
I’ll update with more links as I get them.
Candidates: get yours scheduled! This is a great way for me to get to know you.
In addition, he’s holding a Hays County DA debate between Kirsta Melton and Alfonso Salazar on Monday, September 14th, from 7-9. (More interviews: Kirsta Melton from earlier, also Ruben Becerra on this whole hospital district thing.)
The director of the San Marcos River Foundation has some recommendations for Quail Creek park, to keep debris out of the Blanco River. Namely, relocate the baseball fields and put grass fields in the floodway, instead.
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Item 1: City EMS
Backstory: Back in 2022, Hays-San Marcos EMS covered three Emergency Service Districts of Hays County. They decided to unionize, asking for benefits such as extra pay for bilingual EMS workers and stable work hours.
The local Emergency Service Districts lost their minds, and basically dissolved the combined EMS program
Northern Hays and Dripping Springs vote to leave in 2024, and form their own EMS
Kyle also votes to leave in 2024 as well
Then it was just San Marcos.
This past spring, we had to decide whether or not to keep using Hays-San Marcos EMS or build our own. We decided to build our own. We’ve been hiring people and figuring out logistics and buying equipment.
Starting October 1st, San Marcos residents will receive San Marcos EMS ambulance rides. That’s what this is about.
…
Today’s issue: Suppose you have an emergency and call 911, and get taken to the hospital. Later on, San Marcos needs to cover the costs of this ride. How much should our new EMS charge?
The total cost to run San Marcos EMS is estimated to be roughly $9.1 million/year.
Here are the possible sources of money:
City taxpayers
Insurance companies
Medicare and Medicaid
Sending a bill to the person who needed the ambulance
Here’s the general strategy:
Try to get as much money as possible out of insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid.
Have city taxpayers cover a lot of the rest for people in the city.
When some random out-of-towner is driving down I-35 and has an accident, they get the bill for any extra costs, instead of passing it on to tax payers.
This is easier said than done!
Step 1: Set rates with a the goal of maxing out insurance payments and Medicare/Medicaid.
Here’s what’s being proposed:
“ALS” is Advanced Life Support, “BLS” is Basic Life Support. They said $1600 is the most common base rate, and then it might go up from there.
This is pretty similar to what everyone else charges:
So San Marcos charges insurance or Medicare/Medicaid with the $1600 bill.
I tried to find how much of the $1600 the city could expect to get out of Medicare/Medicaid/insurance, but it’s tricky.
For example: “Medicare Part B covers 80% of approved ambulance service costs after patients meet the annual Part B deductible of $257 in 2025. Beneficiaries remain responsible for the remaining 20% coinsurance plus any costs exceeding Medicare-approved amounts if providers don’t accept assignment.”
Insurance companies often claim they cover 80%, but between copays, deductibles, and other bullshit, I’m not sure how much of that the city actually sees.
Step 2: Whatever the insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid doesn’t cover gets sent to the patient.
If the insurance or Medicare actually pays 80%, then the patient would get billed for $320. But it could be a lot more.
Step 3: Somehow we want to help local people that got billed, but not help rando out-of-towners driving down I35.
This is where Council gets bogged down.
Which residents do we want to help?
How do we want to verify who lives where?
Do we automatically knock off their bill, or do we require the resident to call the city and negotiate?
Do we want to help people who live outside of San Marcos, but are part of the community?
Do we want to help people who live outside San Marcos, and have nothing to do with San Marcos? Like, they were just cruising down I-35, or they came to watch a PAC 12 Texas State football game?
The answers are a little spotty:
For people in the city limits:
We cannot automatically knock the rest off the bill. This is a problem! Suppose you take an ambulance ride and get a bill for $700. On the bill, it would say, “You can call the city to discuss a payment plan or other assistance.”
But it would not say, “Hey! This $700 is not real! You’ve been paying taxes to cover it. You need to call us so we can knock the bill down.”
Most of San Marcos would stress out about the $700.
For people nearby the city:
There is some momentum on Council to help nearby people with the rest of their ambulance costs. They don’t pay property taxes to the city, but they pay some sales tax to the city when they visit San Marcos.
There is not much appetite to subsidize true out-of-towners.
If someone is driving from Austin to San Antonio and gets in a wreck here, they’re just going to go through the billing process.
….
It is estimated that insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and people paying their bills would bring in about $3.16 million:
That means that the last $5.9 million falls to local taxpayers.
My back-of-envelope math is that half of that gets covered by sales tax and half by property tax.
$3 million over 9000 households is about $330 per home owner, in property taxes.
$3 million over 70,000 adults is about $43 per adult, in sales tax.
There are no other sources of money. The total has to come to $9.1 million.
It’s almost as though insurance companies aren’t helping! So weird. It’s as if they are just extracting profit, without providing better health care.
…
Bottom line: We’re going to look to see how New Braunfels handles residency issues, and come back with more precise scenarios.
Alyssa: New Braunfels does not think about residence as generously as we do. Answer: It will just be a starting off point.
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Items 14 – 19, and 3: All the Budget Stuff
This is where the meeting gets hairy. We’re about to hold votes on:
Setting the 2027 budget
Setting the tax rate
Raising the electric utility rate
Raising the water and wastewater rate
Raising the stormwater fee
Raising the trash/recycling rate
Charging developers an impact fee
NONE OF THIS IS BINDING! This is all the first vote.
Last year, everything went off the rails a few minutes before the second vote. There is still plenty of time for everything to unravel.
….
The theme this year seems to be: Lorenzo wants to dismantle local government. I don’t know how else to interpret what goes down.
Lorenzo and I chatted for a few minutes in 2024, when he was running for office. (He most likely does not remember this.) He reassured me that he was liberal, progressive, all the things I’d want in an elected official.
As far as I can tell, he is actually a 1980s Republican: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Note: Shane Scott also does not give a shit about city services! It’s just that I expected that from him. (And Matthew is… erratic, this evening.)
It was a weird night! Let’s dive in.
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Setting the 2027 budget:
Last year, the property tax rate was 65.15¢. This year’s budget was built on the same tax rate, 65.15¢.
City services and programs have been cut back, because department budgets have not been increased in 3 years, despite inflation.
My $0.02: we should always raise property taxes a teeny bit, rather than digging ourselves into a big hole and hitting the community with a big hike every few years. But here we are, digging! Oh well.
We’ve been over the details back in March, and in May, and in August. There is basically no additional discussion tonight.
The non-binding vote:
(Josh Paselk is absent.)
Great. Non-binding, but fine. The real vote will be September 15th.
……
Progress:
Setting the 2027 budget
Setting the tax rate
Raising the electric utility rate
Raising the water and wastewater rate
Raising the stormwater fee
Raising the trash/recycling rate
Charging developers an impact fee
…
Moving onto the tax rate.
Now they need to vote on the tax rate, 65.15¢.
Home prices have fallen a little bit, so the expected tax bill will fall a little, too:
SMCISD tax rate: 1.0152¢, but with a $140K exemption from the state
On a $296,301 house, you’d pay:
total property tax bill: $4701
$1,930 to the city
$1185 to the county
$1586 to the school district
Ok, fine.
Note: Renters pay property taxes indirectly, because landlords generally set rent that will cover their costs and turn a profit.
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Humor me while I gripe:
San Marcos subsidizes home owners:
Every home owner gets $15K exempt from their appraisal, or about $97 knocked off their tax bill.
Home owners over 65 years old get a $35K exemption, or about $228 knocked off their tax bill.
Some senior citizens are living close or below the poverty line, and desperately need that $228.
Every member of Kissing Tree is over 65, and none of them are close to or below the poverty line! The average Kissing Tree home was worth $500,000 in 2025:
Every home owner of Kissing Tree gets an extra $228 per year, for being over 65 years old. Just some nice pin money for the ice cream shoppe. (This is on top of the $1.7 million TIRZ subsidy!)
There are 933 homes in Kissing Tree. Every year, San Marcos gives Kissing Tree an extra $212K, for being over 65 years old.
…
Total, these tax exemptions add up to $1.6 million:
Remember: this is a gift to home owners. The city spends $1.6 million subsidizing home owners every year!
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The reason we are not raising the tax rate is that Council decided this, back in January 2026, at their visioning session.
Over the next 9 months, we heard over and over again:
Council does not want to raise taxes.
Department budgets will not change for the 4th year.
We’re spending $5 million on EMS now.
This is unsustainable.
Last meeting, we locked in the max possible tax rate. This is a weird Texas rule: council has to set a maximum ceiling tax rate, in August. Council picked 65.15¢, (ie the same tax rate that the budget is based on).
Tonight, Matthew says, “You know what guys? I’m going to put my head on the chopping block and do the right thing. Let’s be responsible and set the tax rate at 67 cents!”
Everyone looks at him, gobsmacked. Like, “Where have you been? You’ve been on council since 2022. You know how this works. You literally voted for a max rate of 65.15¢ two weeks ago. You could have spoken up then, but now it’s too late.”
There are two possibilities:
Matthew pays zero attention to what’s going on. He is literally ignorant, after four years on Council.
Matthew is scheming, and trying to look like a good guy when he knows it’s too late.
I don’t know what the answer is, but neither one is a good look!
….
The non-binding vote on setting the tax rate at 65.15:
Great. The real vote will be September 15th.
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Progress:
Setting the 2027 budget
Setting the tax rate
Raising the electric utility rate
Raising the water and wastewater rate
Raising the stormwater fee
Raising the trash/recycling rate
Charging developers an impact fee
Two down!
…
Electric rates, Water/wastewater rates, Stormwater fee, Trash/recycling rates:
There are rate increases being proposed in every category. Here is what we’re talking about:
An average household would see bills increase by $8 a month. (But in the peak of summer, a large household would see bills much higher than this.)
Here is the problem: If you don’t raise rates, the tax payers will still foot the bill. San Marcos residents will paying these costs, either through your utility bill or through your tax bill. There just is no squirming out of this.
Here is Lorenzo and Shane:
I also debated using this meme:
You get the picture. We have to pay for the cost of providing electricity, water, etc, and there’s no magical thinking that will undo this.
…
First up is the Electric Rates:
Here’s the increase being proposed:
This is an increase of 1.3%. The Community Benefit Charge is a flat fee, which will go to replacing streetlights and adding new streetlights.
What happens if we don’t raise rates by 1.3%?
If we don’t go for this hike, then taxpayers still pay the difference. It’s just that it comes from the General Fund, instead. There is just no way around it – we pay for our electricity and infrastructure.
Second problem: the Electric Utility Bond Rating. If our bond rating gets worse, costs go up. If our bond rating gets better, costs go down.
Small regular rate increases help your bond rating. This will help keep our costs low, over time.
Finally: we have worked really hard over the last few years to fully fund an accessible utility assistance program. This is supposed to help those residents who are financially precarious.
The vote: Raise rates by 1.3%?
Shane and Lorenzo:
But it passed anyway, so fine. Great. Nonbinding, but great.
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Water and Wastewater:
The meeting starts to deteriorate in this next item.
Here are the proposed rate hikes:
These are recommended by CUAB, which stands for Citizen’s Utility Advisory Board.
Here is the big issue to understand:
In other words, we legally have to raise rates. We do not have a choice.
Furthermore, we have the bond rating problem again. If this doesn’t pass, it will be more expensive to borrow money for infrastructure projects.
Lorenzo: I don’t care. We shouldn’t be borrowing money if we’re broke. Answer: You’ve already borrowed the money. You have already signed the contracts for a new wastewater treatment plant by Redwood.
Lorenzo voted for the water treatment plant in June, and he voted for all the developments that need the new treatment plant in March 2025, December 2025 , January 2026, and July 2026. There is no surprise! You have to pay for the infrastructure once you sign the contract!
[You feel how frustrated I am getting??]
Alyssa: I still have questions. My neighbors and constituents say that this chart of rate hikes does not match their lived experiences of what they get billed.
The vote:
That means it fails.
Well, fuck!
I keep saying “These are nonbinding votes”. But they’re only nonbinding if it passes, because then it advances to the real vote. If it fails, it tanks the whole thing.
….
What do we do now?
This is one of those moments where it gives lie to the bullshit. Everyone knows that it is bad for everyone in San Marcos if it fails. Therefore we have to find a way to allow these chickenshit votes to keep from actually screwing everyone over.
What do we decide to do?
We phone Josh Paselk. Literally, we phone a friend like we’re on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
Josh had some emergency and was not able to attend the meeting. But he sees the Bat Signal, and hops on the phone.
Hi Josh:
Sorry to bother you like this.
We reopen the vote, and ask him over the phone how he votes:
Alyssa also switched her vote.
However, remember: this is non-binding. This allows us to get through to the real vote, on September 15th. Both Alyssa and Josh say that they have major reservations, but they want to move it forward.
Good fucking grief.
…
On to the Stormwater fee:
Unlike most of the other fees, this is a flat rate. This is to fund projects to stop floods from flooding people’s houses.
Right now, the people of Sunset Acres are especially impacted – they’ve been flooding for decades.
Construction started years ago, but it is a big, slow project to fix the flooding:
Before this, Blanco Gardens had their flooding addressed, with years of construction following the 2015 floods. Rio Vista had a lot of stormwater work done in their neighborhood in the early 2010s. Bishop and Belvin have had stormwater work done. There are other neighborhoods still waiting their turn.
Getting water in your home is soul-crushing. These projects are big and slow, but so deeply important.
Everyone’s stormwater fee would go up 86¢ cents per month.
Lorenzo: this is all because you all didn’t have the gumption to raise the tax rate! We’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, but worse, because this is rate payers and not home owners.
City Manager Stephanie Reyes: Raising the tax rate does not help with stormwater projects. Property tax goes to the General Fund. Flooding projects are paid for from the Stormwater account. These are separate funds.
I’m going to actually transcribe Amanda’s and Lorenzo’s fight here:
Amanda: This is where I sort of get frustrated, because I have been saying this from the very beginning, and we are all – everybody on this dais – privy to the way the budget process works. When you say that you don’t want to raise taxes, under the guise of saving taxpayers money, there are consequences to passing that dime over, and over, and over again.
We were all afforded the opportunity to raise taxes that way earlier, and no one made that motion.
Lorenzo: I voted to NOT raise the tax rate and I have consistently voted not to raise utility rates either. If y’all want more money, y’all should just have the balls to raise the tax rate.
Amanda: Arguably the hardest thing we do as elected officials is address the budget and address rates. And I don’t think any of us approach this as if it’s easy. The scenarios that Ms. Garza is talking about, I have lived, my mother lived. These are not easy decisions.
But inaction has consequences. We are required to make tough decisions, looking at the financial viability of our city.
(Lightly edited.)
Lorenzo does not want to raise taxes, nor raise rates, nor pay for stormwater projects. That is why I said that he wants to “drown the government in the bathtub” above.
How much will this 86¢ help?
Raising the stormwater fee by 86 cents a month would allow us to borrow $24 million to fund stormwater projects.
The vote:
Yes, Shane and Lorenzo, we see you:
Like, do they not believe that people’s houses flood every time it rains?
Anyway, it passed. Great. Nonbinding. Great.
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Last is Trash and Recycling.
Everyone is sick of discussing these same things. Here’s how the (nonbinding) vote goes:
Great.
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Progress Report:
Setting the 2027 budget
Setting the tax rate
Raising the electric utility rate
Raising the water and wastewater rate
Raising the stormwater fee
Raising the trash/recycling rate
Charging developers an impact fee
One left!
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Next we have Impact Fees
Good news! Finally something you don’t pay!
Background:
Remember this map?
These are just some of the future developments coming for San Marcos.
We’ve seen it a LOT lately. (Most recently here, in August.)
These developments cost San Marcos taxpayers more money than they will bring in. Sprawl is very expensive! The people who will someday buy those houses will not pay enough taxes to cover the cost of running electricity, water, wastewater, roads, fire, police coverage, and EMS out to them. (Plus longterm maintenance of all those things.)
We do need housing! We need:
affordable housing,
housing closer to town and in town
environmentally friendly housing.
We should subsidize the impact fees in these cases, because this is the kind of housing that San Marcos needs.
But for sprawl? impact fees cover the costs associated with sprawl. Developers should pay them.
…..
We have not raised impact fees in a very long time. Things have spiraled out of control. This is costing taxpayers a lot.
To get things back under control, we are proposing to raise impact fees by a lot:
So in 2018, we set fees at $6486 for an average house. Now the fee would be $25,680 for an average house. (This is huge! This is why regular small increases are better. But here we are.)
….
Developers are losing their fucking minds! Their argument is “This will raise home prices by $20K! Do you really want to punish young families?”
Listen: we do need more housing. But developers are grown ups! They decide what to build and where to build it. They can build cheaper housing, if San Marcos residents can’t afford what they want to build.
To save $20K, developers could:
reduce square footage by about 100 square feet. Instead of selling an 1800 square foot house, they’d have to build a 1700 square foot house.
Or they could remove a half-bath.
Or build a carport instead of a garage.
I’m not a builder! Let them figure it out. They are grown ups.
San Marcos is a Target/Old Navy city, not an Anthropologie/Nordstrom city. These developers are crying because they want to make Nordstrom houses and sell them in an Old Navy city, and have the tax payers pick up the $20K difference in cost.
Developers: Feel free to lobby the city for smaller lot sizes! Feel free to lobby the city for more opportunities to build quad-plexes and other small scale apartments as infill! These things would help affordability. Just don’t pretend that San Marcos has to subsidize your large sprawling bullshit.
I’m sorry. I’m very, very cranky by this point.
….
One wrinkle: what about those developers who have already designed their houses and can’t easily go back and make them smaller and cheaper?
City Staff say there are 28 developers who could finish pretty quickly. These 28 projects have already been substantially started under the old fees. Fine.
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If we don’t pass these impact fees, what happens?
Each time we give developers a break, we are going to have to raise rates on the rest of us.
How much are we talking?
These are the projects that we have to pay for:
We need to cover roughly $60.5 million over the next 10 years.
These developments are definitely coming! We already approved them! The infrastructure has to be built.
…
The wheeling and dealing begins:
Jane: I propose that we delay implementation until December 1st, to let those 28 developers in the pipeline use the old rates.
Lorenzo: I intend to vote no on every possible option. I do not want any impact fees, whatsoever.
Amanda: What about credits and rebates for infill, green development, and affordability?
Yes! Do this! Taxpayers should subsidize housing that benefits San Marcos. But no one appears interested in discussing this, so it dies on the vine.
Matthew, Josh, and Lorenzo are hashing out all these different possibilities.
What if we wait till January?
What if we do half the increase today, and half in 12 months?
What if we kill this entire thing altogether, and start over from scratch? (yes, this was Lorenzo)
Alyssa: No one brought this kind of energy to our neighbor’s utility bills.
…
Matthew makes a proposal that everyone listens to: Put 60% of the new fees in place on October 1st. Save 40% of the new fees for October 1st, 2027.
Matthew: “This is for the mom and pop builders, that only build 3 houses per year. I’m thinking of them!”
Amanda: Your amendment is a giant giveaway to the huge homebuilders. Why not just carve out the mom and pop builders?
Matthew: Yes, but I’m thinking about the mom & pop builders.
Amanda: This is not saving money. This will drive up costs for tax payers.
My back of the envelope math:
We’re trying to cover $60.5 million over 10 years. So in 2027, we’re hoping to bring in $6 million. Our old rates are about 20% of what’s proposed, so let’s say the old rates would bring in $1.2 million.
Matthew is proposing to let developers cover an additional $3.8 million next year, and have San Marcos residents cover the other $2 million.
The vote on Matthew’s proposal:
Just WOW.
Look: I’m not actually anti-developer! We really do need housing built!
But we shouldn’t subsidize sprawl. We should subsidize infill, affordable housing, and sustainable housing.
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But wait! There’s more!
It seems to drive Matthew crazy that Jane voted against his proposal, even though his proposal passed. The two of them keep wheeling and dealing.
Jane: One year is too long.
Matthew: I could do May 1st.
Jane: How about April 1st?
Amanda: How about February 1st?
In the end, they decide to split the difference: March 17th, St. Patty’s Day.
The vote: 60% until St. Patty’s day, and then 100% after that:
According to my ballpark math, this will roughly mean rate-payers are covering $1 million, instead of $2 million. Better!
This is the end of the discussion. This is what sticks.
….
Note: Currently, there are no subsidies for:
affordable housing
Infill
environmentally green housing
We are not subsidizing housing that is good for San Marcos!
I sincerely hope we change that! But after this clusterfuck, I doubt it will come back around. JFC.
….
This is me:
This is the end of all the budget stuff.
(Till next time! This was all non-binding!)
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Items 10-11: SMPD funding requests
Expedited drug testing of evidence
We pay to speed up evidence drug testing, so that it gets completed in 30 days instead of 150 days. We contract with DPS to do this. In other words, if cops seize a bunch of pills during an arrest, they send it off to verify whether it’s aspirin or ecstasy.
The current funding being requested to do this is $130K, which is large enough to come to council.
Amanda: Has this amount changed? Is it getting more expensive? Answer: Actually, Hays County forgot to bill us for two years. So this is more expensive than that.
(What. What on earth.)
Amanda: Are we going to be back-charged for those two years? Answer: Nope. They’ve been cleared.
Lorenzo: Why are we paying for expedited services? This should come out of county money, because it benefits them.
There’s a kernel of truth in what Lorenzo is saying. The Hays County DA benefits if we pay for expedited 30 day evidence testing. But it’s stingy as hell and bad for maintaining good relationships with other governmental entities. It’s good to exonerate our residents quickly if the evidence comes back clean.
Here’s what Lorenzo is missing: the world runs on relationships. If you can approach other agencies with grace when something is small potatoes, then you’ll have a better time holding on to your convictions when important issues go down.
This is small potatoes.
The vote:
Josh has since hopped offline, and Lorenzo has switched to remote.
Anyway, it passes.
2. an SMPD contract with Axon Enterprises
Axon has been in local news lately as a data center that the county may or may not have signed a contract with. It’s confusing. (There are not enough hours in a year for me to cover Hays county politics.)
Anyway: This isn’t that. This is evidence storage.
Any time police take evidence, they have to legally hold it for a certain number of years. If they confiscate a computer or a phone or an apple watch, they have to upload the data as evidence and save it somewhere.
This is where they save it – we’re paying $46K yearly to store digital evidence with Axon.
Alyssa: there’s a bit in the contract about using data for product enhancement. Can we opt out of that? Answer: Yes we can!
This will come back around with that provision.
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Item 20: CARTS
CARTS stands for Capital Area Rural Transportation System.
And the two systems don’t overlap or coordinate on their boundaries, so there’s just this cliff dividing San Marcos from its neighbors:
Puzzle pieces! (I had fun making that picture.)
Suppose you use the shuttle service because of your physical disability. How are you supposed to get from San Marcos to Seguin? There are a lot more mental health resources in New Braunfels than in San Marcos, but only if you’ve got the means to get yourself there and back.
Listen: Seguin, New Braunfels, and San Marcos need to triangulate on some shared public transit along I-35 and 123. Austin Metro is not meeting our needs here.
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Item 24: Food vendor fees
This is just a very quick item, because it was already past midnight.
Amanda: When people want to sell food, it’s $79 for a 14-day mobile food permit. Could we see about reducing this, to help our everyday people?
The next draft of the River Parks and Quail Creek Park plans.
Let’s go!
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Workshop 1: CIP Projects
CIP stands for “Capital Improvement Projects”.
These are the major construction projects that need planning over 5-15 years.
These are SLOW. These are the projects where everyone asks, “Why does it take so long?!”
They get planned 10-20 years out, but the funding comes one year at at time.
So in September, 2026, we are approving the projects that we’ll work on during 2027, and we’ll start paying the debt on this starting next fall.
Here’s some of our biggest projects right now:
They are constantly trying to figure out how to fund these projects:
Sunset acres stormwater
Wallace Addition stormwater
Bishop/Belvin
The new water reclamation facility by Redwood
Also construction costs have roughly tripled since 2018. In 2018, a $33 piece of PVC pipe might cost $100 now. If something has been planned for a decade, this is going to mess up your plans.
….
We can – and do – apply for grant funding:
Grants help a LOT with the costs.
However, grants slow down construction. You might get awarded $5 million, and told that it will be available in 2029. So this is the tradeoff – cheaper for tax payers, but slower for people who need the project completed.
…
Just for funsies, have we been doing a lot of these projects?
Yessir! These are just the big projects from the past 3 years.
…
They stop to focus on those four big projects in a little more detail:
Each of these is phased in over time:
Sunset Acres has had awful flooding for years and years.
Wallace Addition:
Historic District is mostly done:
This is to deal with all the sprawl we were talking about, and why we need impact fees.
great.
…
What does Council say?
Amanda: Highway 123 is super dangerous, especially to pedestrians. What can we do?
Answer: It’s hard because it’s a highway. We have to work with TxDOT. We meet quarterly and tell them our concerns. Eventually we want to put in sidewalks and put in a median. We’re having trouble with TxDOT because they’re so focused on I35.
Everyone is happy with all the grant funding, although the tradeoff is that it slows things down.
….
Workshop 2: River Parks and Quail Creek Park
We’ve discussed these parks before, back in July. If we were to overhaul these parks, what would we want to do?
City staff has met with more community members and implemented Council opinions, and come back with the next draft.
First up is the parks along the river, in the center of town.
Starting at the Children’s Park:
The Children’s Park playscape would stay put. They’d change the parking lots all around, and add a bunch of spaces.
Over by the dirt bike trails in the woods, they’d add some “natural play”, which I think means this kind of thing:
Council talks about adding game tables? And connecting some of the paths to the parking lot, for accessibility? Answer: No problem!
Amanda: What about volleyball courts? Answer: Maybe! We’ll price them out.
Moving on to Rio Vista park:
They’d add a concession stand. They’d get rid of the pool, but keep the splash pad. The pool would go way out east, to Quail Creek park.
Everyone hates this idea!
Amanda: Keep the pool.
Jane: We should keep the fun pool centrally located. Don’t put it out at Quail Creek.
What should we do with the pool?
Jane is right: move the pool, but keep it central.
The current location is a terrible location for the pool! Nobody swims in both the river and the pool in the same visit. The current location is competing with the river, instead of complementing it. But it should stay in the center of the city!
Here’s where it should go:
If City Hall ends up moving, move the pool to the current City Hall location.
If City Hall stays put, move the pool next to the dog park and skate park, across from City Hall.
Both of these places have plenty of parking, are big and central, and the pool would be very heavily used.
Other stray comments:
Amanda: Can we add more water refill stations? And trees? Answer: Yes!
Amanda: What about cool concrete, to reduce the heat island effect in the parking lots? Answer: Maybe!
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Onto Quail Creek Park, which is way out east:
It used to be a golf course.
It wouldn’t have a pool anymore, since we’re keeping a pool in town. But it would have a splash pad. (Maybe someday we’d add in a pool there, too.)
They also discuss moving the baseball fields and parking lots further away from residential areas.
Virginia Parker, the director of SMRF, requested that we keep baseball fields out of the flood retention zone, and put grass fields there, instead.
There will be river access, though. Apparently the Blanco does have water here, as opposed to how it’s underground at Five Mile Dam.
Here you could swim in it:
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All of this is a fantastic, amazing plan, with no funding! None of this will happen soon.
Eventually, we’ll probably need a bond election. If it passes and this all gets funding, it will slowly get built, in phases.
Lots of little topics this week! Keeping downtown looking nice, the new city EMS, new tax rates and new utility rates, school zones, bus routes, and new scooters. Each item is pretty quick and zippy.
Let’s get into it:
Hours 0:00 – 1:18: Lots of little topics: downtown, new scooters, EMS, school zone hours, utility rate hikes, tax rates, and bus routes.
Bonus! 3 pm workshops: More detail on tax rates and utility rates, and new EMS rates.
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Elections: the candidate filing period is over, so no one new can jump in. Candidates are locked in!
If you know about any candidate forums or interviews, please let me know.
I’m combining citizen comment from the 6 pm meeting and the 3 pm workshops:
Cottonwood Creek is very far from all polling stations. There is not good public transit to get to any of them. 123 is dangerous and insufficient.
Under the new impact fees, a small 1200 sq ft house, built on an infill lot in town will be $40K more expensive. That’s a big burden.*
San Marcos Civics Club meets the 4th Monday of the month, at Tantra. Candidates should look for the SMCC questionnaire coming out soon. Also their 3rd annual “Reasons Not to Vote” rally will be coming up.**
City government is facing public perception that they only do the right thing when tons of people show up and get mad, and that they don’t do a good job of promoting things that are important to the people. The Ethics Inquiries are not widely promoted. Consider ramping up your outreach and social media messaging.
The streetlights in Allenwood are chronically out. It’s not clear if the city is responsible or if the San Marcos Housing Authority is responsible, but residents are getting the runaround. In addition, the roads are awful, to the point where it impedes mobility for wheelchair users.
* This is true, but this is why Council needs to offer rebates for infill, affordable housing, and green housing. They have said they will do this! They just need to follow through.
** The name of the rally still hurts my soul.
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Item 19: The Downtown TIRZ
Background
TIRZ stands for “Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone”.
Basically, a TIRZ is a way to pull money from the General Fund to one specific part of town. The goal is to make that part of town so much more economically vibrant that it generates way more tax dollars for the General Fund after the TIRZ ends.
TIRZes have a specific time frame. During the TIRZ, the city budget doesn’t get extra money. The pay-off should be after the TIRZ ends.
We have a Downtown TIRZ, which covers this territory:
It started in 2011 and it runs until 2028.
The details are a little weedy, but basically: take all the property tax dollars paid by all the businesses and properties in that green region. Those tax dollars get split up into two buckets:
How much downtown properties paid in taxes in 2011. This is called the base value. The base value is $87 million, which is about $560,000 in tax dollars. The city keeps all the tax dollars from this bucket.
How much more valuable the downtown properties have gotten, since 2011. Since 2011, the downtown properties have grown by about $300 million. That yields about $2 million in property taxes.
This city gives 70% of this bucket back to the Downtown TIRZ. So the Downtown TIRZ gets about $1.3 million from the city this year.
The city keeps about $700,000 from this bucket.
Here’s the actual amounts, split between the city and the Downtown TIRZ in the past few years:
The Downtown TIRZ is supposed to spend their chunk on things that make the downtown a great place to visit, so you’ll want to go and spend money and enjoy it.
It all ends in 2028 – the two buckets get combined again and everything goes to the city.
Are TIRZes good or bad?
The good: Everyone gets to enjoy a nicer downtown! After 2028, the general fund will get a boost!
The bad: The downtown gets their tax dollars before it gets to the General Fund. They get that $1.1 million, no matter what. When department budgets are dwindling, Council can’t revisit this $1.1 million and divy it up differently.
My $0.02: I’m fine with the Downtown TIRZ. A happy, vibrant downtown benefits everyone. However, Kissing Tree is also a TIRZ, and it’s gated off. They get $1.7 million from the city this year, and it only benefits Kissing Tree residents.
That is more than double what we spend on the entire HSAB fund for social services! Just for those residents. It’s wild.
Remember: we subsidize Kissing Tree residents far more than anyone else in town.
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Anyway, back to downtown. Here’s what they’re going to do this year:
They’ll pay to do things like scrape the gum:
And light the trees:
And spruce up the intersections:
Everyone is fine with this!
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There’s a bit of a digression to talk about this tree:
and how it’s tearing up that sidewalk. It’s right by mini-Target, by campus.
It’ll cost about $300K to build a usable sidewalk around it.
Question: Can Texas State kick in some money to help with that price tag? Answer: Maybe! We’ll talk to them.
Either way, the tree will be preserved. Everyone loves giant oak trees.
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Item 9: Scooters
We used to have rental scooters around town. Back in June 2025, Spin Scooters decided to break up with us, and they up and left San Marcos.
Look how happy you’ll be. They’ll be here on September 1st.
You’ll be able to use them in all the green zones (plus Texas State):
But the pink bits are off-limits. No scooters in the river.
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Will these be affordable?
Potentially! There is a low-income discount: anyone who qualifies gets 50% off all their rides.
How do you qualify? It’s a little murky. Basically, they want to piggyback on other programs that have already figured out who qualifies:
We don’t have a reduced utility program, and everybody in SMCISD gets free lunch. So this will take some tinkering.
Jane: “By golly, let’s vote on this!”
The vote: 7-0. Everyone is excited.
Look out! September 1st, they should be here.
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Item 14: EMS coverage
Here’s the county lines around Hays:
So Guadalupe is directly below, where two corners meet.
Zooming in on that region:
That is San Marcos plus the northern corner of Guadalupe county.
Historically, San Marcos-Hays County EMS has covered that little yellow bit, because we’ve got better road access to it than anyone else, and so it’s safest for residents. But of course, San Marcos-Hays County EMS was dissolved last year because they had decided to unionize.
Every school has its school zones, where you have to drop your speed when the light are flashing. We all know this.
Currently, here’s our school zone hours:
7:00 am to 8:30 am
3:00 pm to 4:30 pm
That’s supposed to cover all schools. However, Blanco Vista and SMHS don’t really fit:
Blanco Vista isn’t in SMCISD, but it is in the city limits.
So your new school zone hours are going to be:
6:30 am to 9:00 am
2:30 pm to 5:00 pm
This is good, because we want to keep kids safe. It is also annoying, because school zones are annoying.
But hey, keeping kids alive is more important than not being annoyed.
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Items 22-23: the budget
There’s an odd state law that requires cities to vote on a tax rate cap, before they vote on the actual tax rate. They will vote on the tax rate on September 15th. Today is just setting the upper bound.
Decision: the tax rate will be ¢65.15 or lower. That’s the rate from last year.
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However, there will most likely be utility rate increases – this is most of what they discussed at the 3 pm workshops.
If this passes, an average house would pay about $7 more per month.
They’ll vote on these increases in September.
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My $0.02: We haven’t increased department budgets to keep up with inflation in 3 years. That means we’re in the hole about $740K this year, and $1.4 million over 3 years. (Amanda asks about this, specifically.)
I’d prefer to see very small yearly increases, rather than walloping taxpayers with giant increases every now and then.
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Item 25: Bobcat Shuttle Service
Did you know that everyone in San Marcos can ride the Bobcat Shuttle for free? I did not!
A good transit system has frequent buses and routes that cover the whole town. If the bus comes once per hour, and you have to make a transfer to a second bus to get to work, it’s going to eat up hours of your day. A bad transit system has incomplete coverage and infrequent buses.
But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem with transit:
If you have a bad transit system, you won’t have many riders. So you want to build a good transit system.
Good transit systems are expensive. You need funding. You qualify for federal funding by having lots of riders.
See the problem? Riders won’t show up until you’ve got a great system, but you can’t get a great system until the riders show up.
This is why we’ve merged with Texas State – they’ve got high ridership, and so this helps us qualify for more funding.
There is huge need in San Marcos for a great system. Owning a car is really expensive – like 12K per year. If we can build it, a great transit system would improve the lives of many people in town.
This is how cities address affordability: they can’t lower car prices, but they can provide cheaper alternatives.
(I combined the 3 pm public comment with the 6 pm public comment, in the first post.)
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Workshop 1: The Budget
It is heavy-duty budget season!
July 25th is the day that City staff finds out exactly how much tax money we’ve received. This is the first concrete draft budget that Council has looked at.
The whole thing has to be approved in the next month.
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Background: How’s San Marcos these days?
We’re growing:
That’s probably an undercount. The city thinks we’re more like 90,000 people.
The next two slides take some thinking.
First: here’s how much the median home owner pays in property taxes to the city:
So home owners pay more here than elsewhere.
However:
the city spends less per resident.
This is because the deck is stacked against San Marcos in some key ways. The only one they mention in this presentation is this, though:
We’ve got more tax-exempt land than most places, in part because the university is our central giant business, but they don’t pay taxes.
You all know about inflation. The city knows about it, too:
However, the city has not increased taxes to keep up with inflation. Department budgets have not changed in 3 years. This year it would take roughly $720K extra to keep up with inflation.
We’ve been extremely careful in watching our pennies, and we are weathering this economy in a stable way. So that’s nice.
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Onto the budget!
There are actually many different independent budgets. Each one has its own revenue and spending. So the Electric Fund is funded by utility rates and impact fees, the General Fund is funded by taxes, etc.
Here’s all of them:
The big one is the General Fund. Here’s how it gets funded:
Here’s some of the major pressures on it:
SMPD gets 5% raises and SMFD gets 4.5% raises, because they’re allowed to unionize. That’s what collective bargaining gets you. Texas outlaws all other public unions besides those, though. So everyone else gets 3% raises. It’s not the slightest bit fair.
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Also: this year we had our first round of Participatory Budgeting experiment. The public was asked to submit project ideas, and then we all got to vote on which projects to fund.
Here’s how it went:
Lorenzo: That’s pretty sad. Only 117 votes? Answer: It was our first rodeo! We’ll promote the projects and try to drum up more enthusiasm.
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Back to the General Fund:
Basically, things are less grim than they feared.
We’re going to have a balanced budget this year, without raising taxes:
For the next three years, we might be on track to have a balanced budget, or we might get unlucky.
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The new property tax rate
Last year, staff presented three different options to Council. Councilmembers all said which one they liked best. City staff went and finalized a bunch of details before the final vote. Then half the council members changed their mind at the last second.
This year, staff did not outline multiple options. They just said, “Hey, we don’t need to raise taxes to make the budget work.”
[Note: I actually think this is a bad idea. The budget is not working! We are not keeping up with inflation. Small incremental tax hikes are much better than having to occasionally lob giant tax hikes at the public.]
Anyway:
They’re not actually voting on the tax rate until September. But for planning purposes, staff is working with the same tax rate as last year, ¢65.15. On a $300,000 house, that works out to about $1,950.
Question: Is Council okay with setting a maximum tax rate of ¢65.15? This is the tax rate we had last year.
Everyone is on board with this.
Note: This is just the tax rate cap. They’re just saying the tax rate won’t be higher than ¢65.15.
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The rest of the budget
The other major funds are:
Hotel Tax Fund: this has to be used for tourism and museums and things like that.
Community Enhancement Fund: there’s a big discussion about streetlights, maintenance, and who keeps track of where they should be located.
Electric Utility Fund: your electricity supplier
Water and wastewater: ie all your water hook-ups to get fresh water and get your toilet waste taken away and cleaned
Stormwater: major projects to keep people’s homes from flooding when it rains
Resource Recovery Fund: think trash and recycling
Transit Fund: busses and bike lanes
Airport Fund: airport repair, etc.
Council has a big discussion about a lot of rate hikes:
So the average house would see a $7 increase in their monthly bills.
They spend a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of all these. For example:
The Community Benefit Charge: It’s supposed to cover streetlights and lighting. How do we decide which streets need streetlights? Who is being neglected because the city hasn’t installed their lights or repaired them?
The Electric fund: our bond rating got downgraded a few years ago. This means that it costs more for us to borrow money to complete electric projects. Can we fix this by raising rates? Would it save tax payers money in the long run? (Yes, it would.)
The Stormwater fund: it shows a $0 increase above, but that’s a mistake. This fall, they’re going to roll out a stormwater master plan, and it’s going to take a rate hike to pay for projects in the Wallace Addition and Bishop/Belvin. We have a lot of flooding in town, just from ordinary thunderstorms.
Bottom line: pretty much everyone says “Yes” to all of these increases (besides Alyssa), but none of this is binding yet. They’re just telling staff that they’re open to these rate increases.
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Workshop 2: EMS billing
San Marcos-Hays County EMS was dissolved last year because they had decided to unionize. Police and fire can unionize, and private EMS companies can unionize. But the leaders in Hays County lost their fucking minds when their private EMS company decided to unionize. So Kyle and Dripping Springs each split off to form their own EMS, and San Marcos was stuck holding the bag.
The problem – of course – is that health care is super broken in the US. How do you set rates that are fair within a system that is a hopeless mess?
In San Marcos:
About half of all EMS calls are Medicare patients
About 6-12% more calls are from people covered by Medicaid
About 25% have insurance
The rest – 13%-19% – don’t have insurance and can’t really pay.
You make up astronomical rates in order to get payments from insurance. Then insurance covers some of it, or none of it, and then people are screwed over for the rest. It’s a terrible system.
San Marcos cannot solve the real, underlying problem.
Here is what’s proposed:
The city can offer certain discounts to help residents:
The other major problem is the time crunch. If Council doesn’t approve something, then the new San Marcos EMS can’t start the paperwork with insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid, so that they can be operating by October 1st.
Everyone on Council was uncomfortable with everything. It was super rushed – they only had 15 minutes – and no one had time to thoroughly understand the details.
They did give it the thumbs up, so that EMS could make its October 1st opening deadline, but the plan is to revisit these decisions.
Short meeting! All about sprawl: who should pay for the costs of sprawl? where is the new sprawl going to be built? Plus a little about the river. Welcome to the new 2026-2027 season of the San Marcos City Council!
We need more tax from businesses, we could put them south of town.
Promote river tourism.
Provide services for elderly.
Support Chief Standridge and law enforcement.
THBC issues liquor licenses: why does San Marcos require a CUP? It’s redundant.
We should position ourselves as a major player on I35.
Onto the meeting!
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Item 7: Riverbridge Ranch PID
River Bridge Ranch is a development going in way east of I35.
This is where River Bridge Ranch will be:
It’s one of MANY that are going in around Redwood:
Those are just the ones that have come up in the past year or two. There are way more that are already being built.
In general, I’m not a fan of any of these! This is sprawl. There is no commerce planned. There is not significant density being planned. This will require lots of driving for all residents. It costs the city more support to sprawl than the city gains in new property taxes.
(Note: back in 2023 the plan was for plenty of stores and dense housing:
A lot of that – especially July 7th – is me complaining about how PIDs are a shell game. I guess I’ll spare everyone yet another rambly rant on the same topic, but feel free to click through if you’re curious.
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Since January, the city negotiated for some extra perks: an amenity center that is open to the public, some shade trees, various financial details. Those are fine.
Still all sprawl!
Still, the 2026 Council is very enthusiastic about how much better this deal is than what was proposed in January.
The vote:
Oh well! It’s coming!
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Items 9-10: Water and wastewater impact fees
Here’s the scenario: when these developments get built far away from town, the city has to run utility lines and SMPD and EMS service out to them.
This is cheaper when it’s close, and more expensive when it’s far away. Makes sense!
Today we’re focusing on water and wastewater. Think about all the people who will live in all these developments:
They all need plumbing that connects them to water. None of them will be on septic, so the developers are all arranging ways for wastewater plumbing to leave their house and take it to a wastewater treatment plant.
These costs are set. There’s no reducing it, because we already approved the sprawl.
Environmental impact: there’s a lot of wasted habitats and lost drinking water when you convert undeveloped greenspace to big green lawns. There’s a lot of carbon emissions from the extra driving.
Gentle density – think 1940s mainstreet, not New York City – solves a lot of problems.
The city brings in enough tax money from each block to cover the costs of infrastructure.
Cars are really expensive to own – about $11K per year. But you can’t have functional public transportation until people are living more closely together. Shops, schools, and jobs are easier to walk or bike to. Etc. Gentle density allows people to get by without owning a car.
Saving greenspace and wildlife habitats, and not pouring out our clean drinking water to water people’s lawns, etc. Win-win.
Sprawl is bad! Gentle density is good. Go tell it on the mountain.
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But the developments are coming. Who should pay for the infrastructure?
So who is going to pay to run drinking water out to all these houses, and run their wastewater over to a treatment plant?
There are two sources of money:
Raise rates on everyone’s water and wastewater bill. Everyone in the city pays a little bit, and the infrastructure gets built.
Charge the developers an impact fee, which covers the cost of the new infrastructure. This raises the cost of the houses in those developments.
Which is more fair?
They both seem unfair!
Raising everyone’s rates seems unfair, because the regular residents didn’t ask for ridiculous faraway sprawl.
Putting it all on the home buyers who buy new homes also seems unfair – we know the population is growing. It’s much harder for millenials to afford a home than it was for boomers. Communities should support younger generations.
Fortunately, you can do a little of each.
The real answer is:
Charge big impact fees for sprawl that doesn’t serve the next generation
Split the cost with rate payers to cover the costs of infill, affordable housing, and environmental housing that make San Marcos better for everyone.
Let’s dive in and see what we decided.
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Today’s topic: Should we raise water and wastewater impact fees?
First off, we already have impact fees. This isn’t a brand new idea. We last updated them in 2018.
Here’s the 2018 rates and what’s being proposed for 2026:
(The resolution is crappy because these weren’t in the packet. I had to screenshot them from the video.)
Let me point out a few things:
These are the fees on a typical house. It would scale up for an apartment or a large business, etc, according to how much water you use.
Going from $6,485 to $25,680 is a huge jump!
It puts us right in the middle of all these other towns that have increased their fees since the post-covid inflation price spike
This is why it’s better to do smaller rate hikes more frequently – less sticker shock.
What does this chart mean in terms of the two sources of money?
If we adopt the proposed fees, what’s the split between rate-payers and people buying new homes? Is it 50-50? Is it 60-30? What’s the split?
Answer: the rate chart above puts 100% of the new infrastructure costs on developers and people who buy new homes.
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What does the public say during public comment?
It’s mostly developers and real estate folks:
Don’t charge the same fee for infill as for sprawl! [Note: I totally agree]
Can the city double-check it’s math? Are you sure you’re going to build that much infrastructure in ten years [Answer: yes, they are]
This will have a major impact on new-build home prices. They’ll go up by $20K. [I think this is correct.]
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What does council say?
Jane: when would these new rates kick in? Answer: All homes that are platted by October 1st would get 2018 fees. Anything that gets platted after that would get charged the new rates.
Amanda: can we lower these impact fees for good kinds of development? Infill, green development, affordable housing, etc? Answer: Yes. The best way to do that is through credits and rebates. You’d set these rates now as the upper bound for bad sprawl, and then create incentives.
Informal poll: who wants a future discussion of credits/rebates for good development? (ie affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and infill housing)
Yes: Alyssa, Amanda, Jane, Lorenzo, Josh
No: Shane, Matthew
(Shane and Matthew are so weird. “Hell no! We hate affordable housing, environmental sustainability, and infill!” Ok punks.)
Anyway: great. Credits/rebates for good development will come back in a future meeting.
Josh addresses the developers who showed up for the public comment.
Josh: Hey developers, what would help you all with these impact fees? Kissing Tree Developer: There’s a number of things you could do:
Divide the city into districts, and charge Kissing Tree less than you charge developers east side of I35
At Kissing Tree, we purchase reclaimed water. You could give us a rebate for that.
You could roll this out slowly, let us get more building in under the old rates.
You could double-check your math and really make sure you’re going to build this much infrastructure.
City staff:
The costs are the costs. This was audited by an independent 3rd party. If you take the heat off developers, you are passing it on to everyone else.
Our treatment facilities take pressure off each other. We’re not big enough to justify districts.
Giving rebates for reclaimed water is exactly the kind of thing that Council can do.
Matthew: I’m a no. These costs are too high! I’m thinking of my friends without college educations. This isn’t family-friendly! Jane: So you want rate-payers to pay? Matthew: That’s the hard part. But we need to listen to developers – their livelihoods depend on it!
The vote: should we adopt the fees in the chart?
So there you have it.
Note: Like I said, these rates put the infrastructure costs 100% on developers and people who buy new homes. We are trusting Council to bring this back and offer credits/rebates for good development.
(Good development = affordable housing, environmentally sustainable, and infill.)
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That’s basically the whole meeting! There’s some formalities around Whisper and Trace developments, and some committee appointments, and allocating money for airport construction. But basically it was a very short meeting.
When San Marcos flooded in 2015, Council was worried about local businesses. They ran a campaign “San Marcos is Open”. It promoted river recreation and tourism.
It worked! Hotels did better than projected, and the Lion’s Club had their biggest year. But this is when the river began to get overcrowded.
By 2017, the city was more worried about over crowding and capacity issues.
Amanda: Can we talk to local stores about not promoting banned items? Answer: We used to work with HEB, but Walmart and Academy blew us off. When Buccees opens, we’ll have a visitor’s kiosk. That’s baked into the development agreement. Amanda: Maybe the Chamber of Commerce can take the lead here and work with retailers.
Jane: How far out is signage about banned items from Rio Vista gates? Do we put signage at the baseball fields? Answer: No. But sure! We can work on that.
Alyssa: Do we have a city TikTok account? Answer: Nope. Governor Abbott has banned cities from having TikTok accounts.
Alyssa: You could work with micro-influencers and collab with them, like Luis the food guy Answer: We do have a relationship with Luis!
Bottom line: We’re going to keep our river messaging focused on education, stewardship, park rules, etc.
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Workshop 2: Covid funding
A long time ago, we got two different sources of Covid money from the federal government.
and
Basically, we got about $20 million, and it made a huge difference.
Here’s how we spent it:
Now it’s all ending. All federal Covid money must be spent by December 31st.
As projects wind down, you want to re-allocate that money and get it spent as fast as possible.
Here’s the projects that have come in under budget:
Here’s where we’d like to spend it:
You can’t start any new projects – it has to already be part of Covid funding. BR3T does emergency housing and utility assistance. They’ve gotten about $250K in Covid money so far, so this brings them up to about $300K.
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What does Council think?
Alyssa: What does BR3T say? Can they use some of this on case management? Answer: Yes, they would like to use some of this on case management.
Amanda: Yeah, I came in at the end but it’s great. I hope we revisit our philosophy about only giving money for services and not case management.
Jane: Yes, big thanks.
Bottom line: 94.6% of Covid money has been spent, and we’re just trying to make sure we eke out this last bit by December.
Quick housekeeping post today – a recap of the council election fireworks so far, and the yearly wrap-up. The new season of San Marcos City Council starts next week! Happy July.
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Election season is going to be bonkers. You’ve probably seen it all on social media, but let me lay out the fireworks.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Three seats are up for election:
Mayor’s seat (incumbent: Jane Hughson)
Seat 3 (incumbent: Alyssa Garza)
Seat 4 (incumbent: Shane Scott)
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The drama:
Saturday, July 25th: Jane shocks everyone by announcing she is not running for re-election. Instead, she will be the campaign treasurer for Ryan Thomason, who is running for mayor. (He is a former council member from 10-15 years ago.)
Everyone takes the weekend to digest this.
Monday, July 27th: Amanda shocks everyone by announcing that she will now run for mayor, rather than completing the third year of her term. This is exciting and I am thrilled.
So now there are four council seats up for election:
Mayor (no incumbent)
Seat 3 (incumbent: Alyssa Garza)
Seat 4 (incumbent: Shane Scott)
Amanda’s former seat, Seat 6 (no incumbent)
Immediately, two current and former San Marcos local politicians – Lisa Prewitt and Miguel Arredondo – file to run for Seat 6. Lisa was on council about a decade ago, and Miguel has been on the school board for years.
Then! Thursday, July 30th: Jane shocks everyone again by announcing she’s going to run for Seat 3, challenging Alyssa Garza. Alyssa is a popular, two-term incumbent. What the hell?!
This is wild. It feels like Jane thought she could handpick her successor. Then when she realized the new generation might actually win over council, Jane lost her shit and felt like she had to wage war. It feels unhinged.
(And all within one week!)
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Current state of things:
Mayor: Amanda Rodriguez vs Ryan Thomason
Seat 3: Incumbent Alyssa Garza against current mayor Jane Hughson
Seat 4: Incumbent Shane Scott vs Heather Hunter
Seat 6: Lisa Prewitt, Juan Miguel Arredondo, and Bill Miller are all facing off.
The San Marxist 